Donald Trump on Monday suggested that California Governor Gavin Newsom should be arrested over his handling of unrest in Los Angeles, escalating tensions after the President mobilized the National Guard to quell anti-ICE protests over the weekend.
“I would do it, if I were Tom. I think it is great,” Trump said when asked by a reporter if he supported a threat from his border czar Tom Homan to arrest state officials who obstruct federal immigration raids. “Gavin likes the publicity but I think it would be a great thing. He’s done a terrible job… Look, I like Gavin Newsom, he’s a nice guy, but he’s grossly incompetent.”
Trump’s comment comes as Los Angeles entered its fourth consecutive day of protests following large-scale immigration enforcement actions by federal agents across the city. Demonstrators have clashed with law enforcement in downtown streets, where barricades have been toppled, cars torched, and over 150 people arrested since Friday.
Read More: What the National Guard Crackdown in LA Made Us See
The unrest has been fueled in part by the Trump Administration’s decision to unilaterally deploy 2,000 National Guard troops to the city under federal authority, bypassing the governor. Newsom, a Democrat many view as a 2028 presidential contender, has called the move “unlawful” and vowed to file suit to block the federalization of the National Guard. “There is currently no need for the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles,” he wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday, calling it a “serious breach of state sovereignty.”
The barbs are the latest chapter in a long-running, often personal feud between Trump and Newsom, who have clashed repeatedly over everything from the governor’s response to recent wildfires to water policy to California’s high-speed rail.
“All you have to do is look at the little railroad he’s building,” Trump said Monday, referencing Newsom’s support for a project that was supposed to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco, but has suffered setbacks from ballooning costs.
“It is about 100 times over budget. We’re putting a flag pole over there, under budget. I always do under budget,” Trump added.
His criticism echoes years of attacks on what he’s called California’s “failed leadership”—blaming Newsom for a lack of water during the Los Angeles wildfires, surging homelessness in the state, and fiscal waste.
Tensions expanded after Homan warned that officials like Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass could be arrested if they interfered with federal operations. “It’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job,” Homan told NBC News on Saturday. Though he conceded neither official had “crossed the line yet,” he issued the warning nonetheless.
Newsom called Homan’s bluff in an interview with MSNBC on Sunday, urging Homan to “just get it over with” and arrest him. “He’s a tough guy. Why doesn’t he do that? He knows where to find me,” Newsom said. “That kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”
Homan appeared to walk back his earlier remarks during a Monday appearance on “Fox & Friends,” saying he was responding hypothetically to a reporter’s question. “There was no discussion about arresting Newsom,” he said.
Even so, Trump’s public backing of the idea marks a dramatic escalation in his second-term approach to political opposition—one increasingly defined by threats of criminal prosecution. It echoes his Justice Department’s controversial arrest of Newark’s Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka after a clash outside an ICE detention facility in New Jersey last month, though the charges were ultimately dropped. The Trump Administration has also charged Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver with two counts of assaulting, resisting and impeding an officer from the same skirmish.
The deployment of federalized National Guard troops to Los Angeles further strained the relationship between the White House and California. Legal scholars note that Trump’s order to take command of the Guard—without invoking the Insurrection Act—treads into murky constitutional territory. The directive cited federal authority to ensure the continuity of government functions, a justification reminiscent of Cold War-era civil unrest crackdowns, but without clear precedent in a non-insurrection context.
“If we had not done so,” Trump wrote on Truth Social about his National Guard order, “Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.” He added, sarcastically, that Newsom and Bass “should be saying, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL.’”
Protests have also spread to other cities, including San Francisco, Sacramento, Chicago, and New York, where demonstrators are rallying in opposition to the raids and the arrest of a prominent labor leader. The Service Employees International Union is staging protests in more than two dozen cities on Monday, accusing the Administration of targeting immigrant communities and organized labor.
Write to Nik Popli at nik.popli@time.com.
