How Donald Trump’s hostility ended Gavin Newsom’s political identity crisis | Opinion
Gavin Newsom’s brief flirtation with political moderation is over.
The governor had been taking a page from Bill Clinton’s playbook, moving toward the center after a stunning electoral defeat last November that saw his party lose historic levels within the core Democratic base, including among Latino, Black and youth voters.
But after months of hosting right-wing figures on his podcast, the California governor finds himself exactly where he was seven years ago: Leading the national resistance against President Donald Trump’s federal overreach.
Trump’s deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles following immigration raids, his administration’s preparation to cancel billions in federal funding to California and the freezing of $250 million in clean energy grants made Newsom’s political triangulation impossible to sustain.
The governor formally requested that the Trump administration “rescind their unlawful deployment of troops” and return them to his command. He defiantly challenged Tom Homan, the acting director of ICE, calling him a “tough guy” and daring him to arrest him for standing in the way of deporting undocumented residents — language that exceeds his resistance-era rhetoric from Trump’s first term.
The symbolism is unmistakable: Federal troops are on California soil, deployed against the governor’s will, to suppress protests against immigration law enforcement. This is precisely the scenario that transforms moderate politicians into resistance leaders... provided they expect to survive politically.
On the social media platform, X, Newsom was defiant: “Californians pay the bills for the federal government. We pay over $80 BILLION more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it’s time to cut that off” — a line that would have been unthinkable during his brief foray into centrist podcasting just weeks ago.
Newsom’s return to resistance leadership isn’t just politically inevitable — it’s constitutionally necessary.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, herself a key target of the administration’s ire, has already characterized the federal actions as an “intentional effort to sow chaos,” while local law enforcement has distanced itself from federal immigration operations.
On the first day of National Guard deployment, the Democratic Governors Association issued a statement signed by all of the states represented by Democratic Governors. “We stand with Governor Newsom, who has made it clear that violence is unacceptable and that local authorities should be able to do their jobs without the chaos of this federal interference and intimidation,” the statement said.
As the only governor mentioned by his colleagues, it would appear that Newsom has had the national lead role of the resistance thrust upon him. Ironically, he consolidated a wide swath of Democratic primary voters when he first ran for Governor in 2018, running on “the opportunity to elect the next head of the resistance” and governing as “the resistance with results” during Trump’s first term.
But a governor cannot host friendly podcasts with right-wing figures while federal troops patrol his state’s largest city.
He cannot pursue centrist positioning while the federal government threatens to defund his state’s university system.
He cannot continue to govern effectively even in the deepest of large blue states when the conservative media eco-system has surpassed the reach of legacy media and traditional newspapers and television news shows — a fact he learned all too well during the fires that swept through Los Angeles earlier this year.
Newsom’s forced return to resistance leadership, however reluctant he might be, may strengthen his long-term political prospects. Inspired leadership during a genuine constitutional crisis may prove more valuable than calculated moderation.
The federal assault on California should resolve Newsom’s political identity crisis; he is called at this moment to be what Californians (and a wide swath of Americans) need him to be. This moment requires moral clarity, and Newsom must remember that doing the right thing shouldn’t be negotiable.
Trump’s aggressive actions in Los Angeles haven’t just ended Newsom’s centrist experiment — they’ve reminded us why Democrats’ resistance leadership exists in the first place.
By forcing this confrontation, Trump may have inadvertently created the very opponent he hoped to avoid: a battle-tested resistance leader with both the experience and the constitutional authority to fight back.
If Newsom can rally other blue states to his standard, it will go a lot further for his national political ambitions than pondering Steve Bannon’s mullings on trans bathroom policies.
Trump’s end game has always been to tear the country apart between red and blue. He has pushed the nation to the brink with this latest action.
The question now isn’t whether Newsom will lead the resistance — it’s whether that resistance will be enough to protect California’s sovereignty and serve as a model for other states facing similar federal pressure.
This story was originally published June 9, 2025 at 11:46 AM.