Trump to California: Surrender

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

President Donald Trump seems on the cusp of getting everything he loves out of the crisis in Los Angeles. An opportunity to stoke political divisions and violently suppress dissent. A showdown with a deep-blue state’s Governor with White House ambitions. A chance to nurse grievances dear to his base and largely ungrounded in reality. And an opposition party left unsure of how to navigate a minefield of Trump’s making.

Taken together, the blend of circumstances seems trending in Trump’s gleeful direction. The President on Monday told reporters on the White House’ South Lawn that he would be fine arresting California Gov. Gavin Newsom, called protesters against his mass immigration raids “insurrectionists,” and blamed the unrest on professional agitators. He said the United States cannot accept any disrespect for law enforcement. And he seemed on the edge of invoking a 19th Century law that could be used to quash civic protest and sidestep basic constitutional rights.

“Order will be restored, illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free,” Trump posted on social media.

Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta are responding with a lawsuit against Trump for overstepping his power in sending 2,000 troops into Los Angeles to quell protests against federal immigration raids. The escalating situation seems destined to set up a clash that has no apparent off-ramp, winners, or remedies.

It’s quite the split screen for a President who, just four years ago, unleashed a violent mob on the U.S. Capitol after he lost his re-election bid in 2020. Whereas Trump gave a blanket pardon for those accused of the Jan. 6 insurrection against Congress that left 138 police injured, he is now professing fealty to the uniform. While insisting he is steadying security for borders, Trump is at the same time launching the West Coast’s population center into a freefall of uncertainty. And even as he casts the liberal elite as out-of-touch with so-called American values, he is threatening a core of U.S. character: immigration.

“They spit, we hit,” Trump said, suggesting protests against his raids were insulting police and necessitating a violent response. It has more than a few echoes to his impertinent reaction to the Black Lives Matter activism that marked the final year of his first term.

These days, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been wading more aggressively into workplaces and courthouses as part of Trump’s promised crackdown on those in the country without proper papers. Officers are operating in overdrive as they try to hit White House-prescribed quotas for deportations. In response, protests have broken out as activists see the efforts as capricious and mean-spirited.

L.A. police have said the protests there were mostly peaceful, although things in the nation’s second-largest city did escalate over the weekend, with some of that spurred by the guardsmens’ arrival. While arrests reached double digits, the situation was nowhere near the crisis White House aides tried to suggest. Rather than letting this play out, the White House has exacerbated tensions and the city has responded by declaring downtown an illegal demonstration. 

While making clear he’s prepared to fight back, Newsom has tried to de-escalate the situation: “Don’t take the bait,” he told Californians. “Never use violence or harm law enforcement.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass likened it to “intentional chaos.” Democratic lawmakers in Congress are similarly casting this as a mess of Trump’s making, not one rooted in reality.

But here’s the thing: once the kindling is lit, it may be impossible to stop it—especially if the country’s top leader is keen to watch it spread. “We’re going to have troops everywhere,” Trump said Sunday. And Trump’s top White House aides suggested the snowballing situation was exactly what they had in mind. “This is a fight to save civilization,” posted White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s hardline anti-immigrant policies.

This is a moment of political testing unseen since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed the National Guard without a Governor’s request to protect civil rights demonstrators. No White House since then has dared to go around a state chief to activate domestic troops, and the seeming trigger for a careening upswing is an 1807 law that allows the military to be used to quash a domestic uprising. At the same time, the Pentagon has put Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton on high alert and ready to mobilize if things escalate.

The fast-moving clash between a Republican President and the nation’s largest Democratic-led state has left insiders on both sides of the aisle craning for answers. Los Angeles, a city rooted as much in Hollywood as its rich immigrant communities, is not one to be idle as Washington takes a heavy hand. And Washington, a company town driven by ego more than anything, is flexing its muscle over its West Coast power rival. 

The fight seems to be on the upswing, not a descent. Trump is spoiling for the battle and Newsom is laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential bid. Put all of this together and it’s a big ol’ mess primed to spiral in ways that are hard to predict, but destined to define this part of Trump’s legacy.

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.