Who's Winning the Los Angeles Deportation Fight, Donald Trump or Gavin Newsom?
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Los Angeles is quiet, at least for a couple of nights after a curfew imposed by Mayor Karen Bass. But the national debate over Donald Trump's deportations is far from over. California Governor Gavin Newsom has decided to make himself the voice and face of the opposition against Donald Trump's immigration policy and the deployment of

of State National Guard and Marines to the city itself. Who has the political upper hand here as protests are planned for the weekend across the country? That's our subject for today on Potomac Watch, the daily podcast of WSJ Opinion Pages. I'm Paul Gigo, and I'm here with two of my colleagues, Barton Swain and Alicia Finley, a Californian and our chief chronicler of all things California.

Why have things quieted down in California, Alicia? Well, I think it's partly because of the curfew. You've got more law enforcement on the streets. I think there could also be an element of college students have to actually take their final exams. And right now is final exam times. And you saw on Sunday a lot of people out on the streets were young people.

So, don't underestimate that component of it. I think the other element is there's probably just a little bit of fatigue. You know, people aren't going to be out protesting five or six days a week. Some people who were out protesting earlier, you know, they actually may have been working. Our workers, they have to do day jobs. So, the weekend may be a return to some of this, I suspect.

All right. Big development, though, politically here is obviously the trigger here was Donald Trump's ramping up of deportations in the city of Los Angeles. And we want to talk about that. But I want to listen to Gavin Newsom's response to that. He made remarks Tuesday evening that were striking.

sounded like he was really nominating himself as the leader of the resistance against Trump's deportation policy and against really all things Trump.

Let's listen to an excerpt. Donald Trump, without consulting California law enforcement leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state's National Guard members to deploy on our streets illegally and for no reason. This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers, and even our National Guard at risk.

That's when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder. And the president, he did it on purpose. Well, that was just a flavor of the Newsom remarks. They were ostensibly to the people of California. But really, I thought this, Barton, was a message to national Democrats. He talked about the threat to democracy, talked about an abuse of power.

talked about the threat not just to the streets of California, but to Americans everywhere, threatens the constitutional order, threatens to militarize our streets. He did renounce the violent protesters and said they'd be arrested. But the larger message was anti-Trump. I'm the resistance leader. Follow me. Why do you think he did that, Barth?

Well, I personally really don't think that Newsom thought this through very well. A few weeks ago, as we know, he was making gestures toward the center, doing a podcast with Charlie Kirk that was pretty friendly, as if to say, we Democrats need to move past our sort of knee-jerk anti-Trump mania, because look where that got us. I think that was the right instinct if he wanted to run for national office, but

He should have found a way in this situation to keep his distance from Trump on the one hand, but also take a hard line against the rioting and even welcome the help of California's National Guard. Instead, he went back to the anti-Trump well and drank deeply from it. And here's the point. He can't come out of this, in my view, looking like a hero. If the riots go on, it's clear that the guardsmen were needed.

and Trump was right to send them. If they stop, Trump was right to send them in. So either way, I think Newsom loses. Does he win with the progressive left and maybe set himself up to be a contender in 2028? Maybe, but I am skeptical. Why are you skeptical on that last point? Because there's a school of thought that

that says that Newsom's feints to the middle or his gestures to the middle, probably too harsh, his gestures to the middle, particularly on cultural issues,

got him some criticism from the left. And therefore, he figured, boy, you know, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, the governor there, others are positioning themselves as the leader of the resistance. So he couldn't be outflanked. So did he feel that he really had to do this? And here was his opening to do it. Yeah, I think that was his reasoning. I guess I should say I'm skeptical that it's going to work. I don't think

that the progressive left, having taken over the Democratic Party in 2024 and lost so badly, is going to successfully have a redo. I just don't see a path there. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about who's winning the political fight over deportations when we come back. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America. And Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with Google Cloud, using AI to accelerate defense research for air, space, and cyberspace forces. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.

Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch, the daily podcast of Wall Street Journal Opinion. And I'm here with Barton Swain and Alicia Finley. Alicia, you are a follower of Gavin Newsom. You've been doing it for a long time and occasionally getting under his skin on a variety of subjects with editorials.

But do you think given the political dynamics in California, given the degree to which migrants form a huge part of the economy, frankly, I mean, how many hundred thousands of illegals in L.A.? 700,000, I've seen as many. And the degree to which they are prominent in the Democratic Party in California and part of the workforce.

Did Newsom have a choice here other than to take on Trump's deportations? I think that's right. I think he could have done it with more finesse than he did. He could have shown well or opposition to Trump's rounding up workers or people who have been here for a long time, established jobs.

communities or families here, all the while supportive of Trump's efforts to deport criminally illegal immigrants who, you have to remember, also cause problems and do damage in the immigrant community.

And I think the sanctuary city policies, it may play well among Democrats, but I don't think it actually plays well even in the broader public in California because of the chaos in the streets and the disorder. And you've had some news reports about some of the crime that has been committed by illegal immigrants. Now, for the most part, most of the crime isn't being committed by illegal immigrants. But nonetheless, those reports do undermine the sanctuary city policies.

Now, to your point about California and the demographics, Los Angeles County is a majority or near majority Hispanic. Much of the state is now. Democrats in California have been, at least in the last election, they didn't lose the Hispanic vote, but they did much worse than they did in 2020. And mostly because of quality of life and cost of living and just generally the inflation.

And so I think Newsom's trying to use this issue to try to gain back support among Hispanics. It's an interesting political choice, clearly. Actually, it's an important moment because it does signal that the muted resistance of the first few months compared to the first term, where it was right out of the blocks, Inauguration Day, and very hard anti-Trump among Democrats.

That had been muted here for some months, and the deportation debate seems to have triggered it. Now, I want to talk a little bit about why Trump did this with the 3,000 target a day of arresting migrants and deporting them. The stories out of the White House, and my own reporting supports this, is partners at Stephen Miller, who's kind of the deportation czar of the administration, had said, we're just too slow on deportations. We need more.

So he set a target of 3,000 a day, arbitrary seemingly, a target, and said to ICE and others, you need to ramp these up and do more. And that means you're going to have to go into places where these migrants are. And that means workplaces. They gather outside of Home Depots to help people do insulation, say. They coalesce on construction sites. They work at restaurants and so on.

And if ICE cannot go into jails and cannot go into courthouses and cannot go into some of these local law enforcement places because of sanctuary city laws or policies in the city, then they're going to go in the streets. And that's what they've been doing. Why do you think they're doing it? Is it conviction or politics or both? In Miller's case, conviction and politics.

For sure. I'm not totally sure that that's where Trump is. Since 2015, Trump was always about cracking down on bad elements that came into the country illegally. He was always about kicking out gang members and other criminals and so on.

He never really emphasized rounding up Spanish speakers at construction sites and Home Depots or anything like that. That may be where Stephen Miller is, but I'm not sure in the end it's where Trump himself will go. My guess is in the end, he and Tom Holman and others will continue to put the stress on going after bad elements. I mean, we on the editorial page have long said that moderate levels of legal immigration are good for the United States.

and our economy. We still think that. We thought it was reasonable 10 years ago to establish some sort of path to citizenship for people who came here, obeyed the law, and played by the rules. I still think a correct view. Unfortunately, four years of effective open borders have tainted that view in the eyes of many Americans. We're no longer talking about a few thousand undocumented workers coming over the border. We're talking about millions of

and many of them not workers at all, where many of them operating on nefarious purposes, gang members and so on. So for now, and for a long time to come, unfortunately, Trump has a freer hand on immigration crackdowns, and the public will support it,

And our hope, I guess, is that he will continue to emphasize the criminality aspect of it rather than just cleaning out law-abiding immigrants. Can't underestimate Alicia Barton's point about the degree to which the Biden administration just messed this up by allowing so many migrants. I mean, at some point, it was like thousands a day were coming over.

and claiming asylum status, they would actually seek out border agents and say, hi, I claim asylum here. And they'd be waved through. They'd get a date sometime in the distant future for an asylum hearing to see whether it was justified. And then they'd vanish into the interior and may or may not show up for their court date. They so botched it.

that they undermine the case, as Barton suggests, for kind of a generous American spirit on immigration.

And now Trump has an enormous amount of running room here, I think, politically. I think that's right. The numbers, there are about 3 million or so border encounters during 2022 and 2023. That was up from about 900,000 last year of the Trump administration and around 500,000 was the average in the Obama and the first Trump years.

So there was just a huge increase, as you point out, in border crossings and migration. You can dispute whether it's legal or not because they were provided parole and work authorizations and they have contributed. Most of them are contributing to the economy now as migrants.

Barton Point now, there is an element that are engaged in crime or are participating. MS-13, another organized gangs crime. I'm trying to sugarcoat, but yes, it's gangs. And to my earlier point, you read stories about the crime, and this has really soured the public on even legal immigration. And there's a sense that there are too many who are let in. Cities were overwhelmed, New York City in particular, but Chicago and a lot of others were overwhelmed.

And you had taxpayers footing the bills for all this. And I'd also point out to the extent that you're expanding the welfare state, like in California, which provides Medicaid for illegal immigrants and the rest of the country, actually, the Obamacare subsidies, generous subsidies are provided to the migrants. That further undermines support for legal immigration and increases support for Trump's deportations.

We are going to take another break. And when we come back, we'll talk about how far we think Donald Trump and Stephen Miller may take their deportation campaign when we come back. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America. And Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with Google Cloud, using AI to accelerate defense research for air, space, and cyberspace forces. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. That is Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast.

From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. I'm Paul G. Goh here with Alicia Finley and Barton Swain. My view, the big risk for Trump here is if the deportations get to be so intrusive into businesses and you start to hear stories of family separation, people here 10, 20 years suddenly ousted, pulled out.

And those stories kind of cascade. Then you could see the public turn against it. I think that's one risk. The second one, I would say, is if the protests become so large and so persistent and stay nonviolent, because if they go violent, then you've got a big advantage for Trump. But if they kind of stay nonviolent, but they are large enough to really persistent enough to make an impression on the public, then

that something is wrong here, a general sense of things taking a bad turn, that could hurt the Republicans politically. And on that score...

We're having mass protests this weekend. They're planned for something like 1,800 cities around the country. Some of them could be large. There's going to be one here down a few blocks from where our office is on Saturday, and it'll march through the city. I hope you don't have plans for traveling by car above ground. You better take the subway. But I wonder if you think this presents a problem for Trump, the appearances of protests.

It could, yes. Based on the evidence of the Los Angeles events, I think the tendency is to go violent. The visual images really reinforce the message that this isn't about, mainly about immigration enforcement.

So I'll use the term coined by a writer I'm not actually otherwise familiar with, Alicia Ames, and call it the Omnicause, the sort of coalescing of left-wing grievances into the same movement, which is always verging on violence or engaging in violence. So just visually, Americans on their televisions, I have to say, even on CNN, it's not just a Fox phenomenon. Americans see images of Mexican flags. They see Palestinian flags.

They see Guatemala flags. I had to actually look that up to figure it out. You're a smarter man than I am. I have no idea what the Guatemalan flag is. No, I didn't either. But it took me a while. They see burning American flags. So it's clear this isn't mainly about immigration policy like past riots perpetrated by the same

left-wing groups. Going all the way back, I would say to the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999 and even further back than that. This is a collection of anti-American, anti-Western causes

an excuse to break things, burn cars, and harm cops. And as to the politics of it, that is firmly in Trump's favor, and that's what I would expect to see more of. Yeah, I would agree. If that's the way it goes, that'll be turnout for Trump. I guess I want to talk about Newsom's objections to the deployment of the National California National Guard.

2,000 troops at first. Trump federalized them without making a request of Newsom, which is typically what a president does. Second, another 2,000. And then he deployed 700 Marines. Now, they are not, as I understand it, they're there in the city, but they are not playing a role in arresting

illegal migrants. Is that your understanding, Alicia? That's right. I mean, they're mostly guarding buildings, providing some assistance to the local law enforcement, but also they are providing some help in terms of protecting ICE. So they are going along on some of the raids, but to ensure, because you've seen a lot of protests break out around where there are raids or where there are ICE facilities. So they do accompany them there. I think there were some reports that there have been over 300

ICE arrests and some of the National Guards have accompanied them. And this is what Newsom is saying. Well, they are actually, you know, abetting them. That's a stretch. I think there have been actual attacks on these ICE agents. And to that extent, they do need some protection.

The distinction in law, as I understand it, is that if you call in under the statutes that he's employed, the National Guard, they can protect federal assets and do what you're describing, but they can't arrest. They don't have law enforcement power under the law, correct? That's right. I mean, if you were to invoke the Insurrection Act, they could. Oh, they could.

Does it give you any pause, Barton? I have Marines, you know, kind of called into the streets. I know it's so far it's been largely symbolic. They're hanging out there almost as if Trump can say, see, I've called in the Marines.

But, I mean, they're not trained for law enforcement. Let's face it, they really aren't. They're trained for lethality in warfare against an enemy. Does it give me pause? Yes, for sure. Anytime we're deploying troops on American soil, it's a thing not to be taken lightly. But I think the blame for it should be placed on the officials in California. Karen Bass and the mayor of Los Angeles and the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, they're essentially putting forth two contradictory points.

One, they're saying, you know, don't break the law. You'll be arrested. We'll prosecute you. And then on the other, they're saying it's Trump's fault. He inflamed you. Aside from the latter claim, Bass and Newsom are sending a message to the rioters that contradicts their warning against criminality. They're saying it's not your fault. It's Trump's fault. So if you keep rioting, we totally get it.

As to the merits of the claim that the National Guard is inflaming the situation, I really don't think ordinary people accept that logic. If your instinct when you see a guardsman or a Marine in fatigues is to throw more bricks, to catch more Molotov cocktails, I think it's safe to say you're looking for a reason to break things and hurt people. If you weren't inflamed, you're just a criminal.

criminal. So I do worry about the situation, but I think Trump can come out of this argument looking pretty justified. All right. It's going to be interesting to see how this unfolds. I think a dynamic has been set in motion. There's no question of, again, a sort of strong resistance to Trump here on the left. And the issue for Democrats and in many ways their dilemma is

is that anybody who aspires in the party to national leadership is going to have to satisfy that desire to be part of the resistance, if not to lead it.

And that can lead to, as we saw in the first term and especially in the last four years, to taking extreme positions, which got them into trouble with the voters and created this opening now for Trump and Stephen Miller on deportations. We'll see how far Trump is willing to take it. But I want to thank Alicia Finley and Barton Swaim. And thank you all for listening. We are here every day on Potomac Watch.

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.