Stepping up his confrontation with the White House, Gov. Gavin Newsom demanded on Sunday that President Trump pull California National Guard troops off the streets and away from the demonstrations unfolding in Los Angeles.
Mr. Newsom asserted on X that the deployment order was “unlawful” and called on the Trump administration to return the command of the guard to his office.
It is extremely rare for a president to call up a state’s National Guard troops without the permission of that state’s governor for the purpose of quelling unrest or enforcing the law. In California, the adjutant general of the state National Guard is appointed by the governor.
“Rescind the order,” Mr. Newsom wrote Sunday on X. “Return control to California.”
The Democratic governor made his demand as protests against the immigration crackdown took place in parts of Los Angeles, marked by clouds of tear gas and confrontations between demonstrators and law enforcement. There was no immediate response from the White House.
“We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Mr. Newsom said. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”
Mr. Trump’s attempt to bypass Mr. Newsom’s authority and activate the Guard relied on a seldom-used reading of federal law. In signing the order on Saturday, the president cited a provision within Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services that allows the federal deployment of National Guard forces if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
The last time a president overrode a state governor to activate the National Guard to stop unrest or enforce the law was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama in 1965 to protect civil rights demonstrators, according to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
In a letter to Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, David Sapp, the governor’s legal affairs secretary, argued there was no need for such an intervention and that the situation was being adequately controlled by local police officers.
“Local law enforcement resources are sufficient to maintain order,” Mr. Sapp told Mr. Hegseth in urging him to rescind the order.
“In dynamic and fluid situations such as the one in Los Angeles, state and local authorities are the most appropriate ones to evaluate the need for resources to safeguard life and property,” Mr. Sapp wrote.
He also told Mr. Hegseth that the president’s order did not follow the law, which he said requires that deployment orders be issued through a state’s governor.
Adam Nagourney is a Times reporter covering government, political and cultural stories in California, focusing on the effort to rebuild Los Angeles after the fires. He also writes about national politics.
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