Gavin Newsom Uses His Grandstanding Powers for Good

There are few humans alive who love to perform on camera like California Governor Gavin Newsom does, and up until President Trump invaded Los Angeles over the weekend, Newsom had used this talent to increasingly marginalize himself in the Democratic Party. The governor of the globe’s fifth largest economy who is clearly running for president in 2028 had a pretty straightforward path laid out for him by virtue of his leadership during the pandemic and the power California’s largesse provides him with. No one is better suited to claim they can manage the federal bureaucracy than whoever is overseeing California’s, but Newsom decided that his path to the White House went through interviews with Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his right-wing podcast.

But Trump’s illegal acts in Los Angeles, like overruling Newsom’s objections to send in the National Guard without his approval, has created a spectacle tailor made for Newsom to use his grandstanding powers for good. The head of Trump’s immigration gestapo, Tom Homan, said that he will arrest anyone who gets in the way of Stephen Miller’s plan to deport everyone who doesn’t look exactly like him, and when Homan was asked by NBC if his threat to arrest people included Newsom or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Homan said “I’ll say it about anybody…It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.”

This prompted the best thing Newsom has done since he became de facto president of the west coast when Trump abandoned us in the summer of 2020.

Newsom: “Arrest me. Let’s just get it over with, tough guy. I don’t give a damn … Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 8, 2025 at 8:35 PM

Newsom addresses Trump directly: “Where’s your decency, Mr President? Stop … it’s immoral. You’re creating the conditions that you claim you’re solving.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 8, 2025 at 8:40 PM

This is very good. Actual leadership from a man tasked with an immense responsibility right now. It would not be an understatement to say that Trump’s actions in Los Angeles are an overt threat to pretty much every American value we hold dear, and it’s vital that our elected leaders in positions of power push back on this authoritarianism. Trump manufactured a crisis because he has always wanted to use the military to squash protests, and a very small protest evoking a massively disproportionate response is where this was always going to head. Like all fake tough guys, as soon as Homan was challenged by Newsom, he backed down and claimed the NBC reporter misquoted him over his threat to arrest the governor of California. Why Homan waited until today to claim fake news is telling, but what else do you expect from a bunch of manchildren trying to mimic the authoritarianism of foreign regimes they so admire?

When politicians stand up to Trump, they have been rewarded. Those who have capitulated and licked his boots like all the Senate Democrats still voting for his nominees have been met with scorn. People want fighters in politics who seem like they genuinely care about our shared pluralistic American values, and it’s critical that they step up to meet this moment against an occupying federal force trying to homogenize society into Stephen Miller’s narrow conception of whiteness. We are only one weekend into Trump’s literal assault on America, so it’s anyone’s guess where this saga will head next, but it seems primed to escalate. We need leaders to lead, and so far, Gavin Newsom is doing a pretty good job showing the way.