President Donald Trump’s unprecedented move to federalize California’s National Guard and deploy hundreds of Marines into Los Angeles has sent shockwaves through the Pacific states. Reports confirm that Trump ordered approximately 700 U.S. Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles to support federal immigration enforcement actions there. He framed the protests, sparked by aggressive ICE raids and aimed at immigrants, as a threat to public order, even calling them “rebellion” in one speech. This unprecedented step, critics note, was taken over the objection of California’s governor, and it touched off immediate denunciations from state and local officials from Oregon to Arizona.
In Oregon’s capital, Salem, Governor Tina Kotek (D) was among the first in the region to speak out. At a press event, she blasted the deployment as “unlawful, absurd and undemocratic,” emphasizing that governors, not the President, command the state Guard. Kotek said Oregon would not send any of its own Guardsmen to quell protests in Portland, insisting that Oregon law enforcement could handle local unrest. She warned that using troops without a clear purpose “undermines both public safety and democracy” and stressed the state would activate Guard troops only for “clear, purposeful” missions in defense of Oregonians. In her view, escalating tensions with soldiers on the streets “is exactly what President Trump wants.” She aligned herself firmly behind California’s Newsom as he resisted the order.
Washington State’s leaders took a similarly critical line. New Governor Bob Ferguson (D), who succeeded Governor Jay Inslee in January, joined 21 fellow Democratic governors in a public statement condemning the move. This coalition’s press release called Trump’s action “an alarming abuse of power,” emphasizing that governors are the rightful commanders of their National Guard units. In that document, signed by governors from the Pacific Northwest to the East Coast, Ferguson and the others underscored that unfettered federal commandeering of state troops is “ineffective and dangerous” without a governor’s consent. The unity of these governors in their public denunciation of the federal move sends a strong message about the power of collective action. Washington’s Democratic senators and congressional delegation have also voiced deep misgivings about the Los Angeles operation (though specific quotes are not readily available, their public statements have echoed the state’s executive denunciations).
By contrast, reactions in the Southwest showed a clear partisan divide. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs (D) was among the governors who signed the June 8 Democratic-Governors statement criticizing the deployment. Yet, Arizona’s Republican legislative leaders publicly broke with their governor on the issue. In Phoenix, state Senate Republicans issued a news release on June 9 urging Governor Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes to “cooperate with the Trump Administration” on immigration enforcement and to “keep Arizona communities safe from harm.” In other words, while Hobbs joined California and Oregon in objecting, the Arizona GOP leadership pressed her to fall in line with Trump’s immigration crackdown. No formal Western states’ alliance emerged beyond these partisan alignments. However, this episode highlighted a clear ideological split: liberal-governed states, including California and Oregon, spoke with one voice against the federal move, even as conservative lawmakers in at least one neighboring state urged compliance.
Nevada offered a quieter contrast. The new governor there, Joe Lombardo (R), has not publicly criticized the L.A. deployment, and Nevada’s congressional delegation has been largely silent on the specifics. With Republican leadership in office and fewer immigration protests at home, Nevada’s officials have not taken a high-profile stand. This muted response reinforces that the most vocal voices have come from Democratic politicians reacting against a fellow Republican President’s intervention.
The fierce regional backlash to President Trump’s military intervention did not emerge in a vacuum. It followed a clear precedent of Western states asserting their autonomy through coordinated, cross-border action against Trump. It already occurred during Trump's first term. During the early COVID-19 crisis, a remarkable show of regional solidarity emerged when California, Oregon, and Washington formed the Western States Pact on April 13, 2020, uniting under the principle that the virus recognized no borders and that public health decisions should be guided by science, not politics. These states jointly committed to protecting vulnerable populations, ensuring hospital readiness and PPE supply, softening economic blowback in disadvantaged communities, and linking phased reopening to rigorous testing, tracing, and transmission monitoring. Long before federal directives provided coherence, this pact laid down data-driven guardrails for lifting restrictions. By late April, Colorado’s Jared Polis and Nevada’s Steve Sisolak joined, widening the coalition and reinforcing information-sharing across these five states. In May, these leaders presented a unified front to Congress, requesting $1 trillion in targeted relief to sustain core services like public health, safety, and education. By fall 2020, they were collaborating on exposure notification technologies and evaluating vaccine safety through a joint review process, culminating in shared travel advisories and early recommendations for emergency use authorizations of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. This cohesive, values-driven coalition exemplified a form of mesoscale federalism that filled leadership vacuums and crafted a unified, science-based response long before federal coordination emerged.This framework may serve as a precedent for future west coast cooperation against Trump.
Back in California, outside of Los Angeles itself, top officials were nearly unanimous in condemnation. Governor Gavin Newsom (D) quickly filed an emergency lawsuit and vocally framed Trump’s memo as an unconstitutional overreach. In a public statement, he declared that the federal government was “turning the military against American citizens,” and he warned that deploying trained warfighters on U.S. streets was “unprecedented and threatens the very core of our democracy.” Newsom said Trump was behaving “like a tyrant, not a President.” California Attorney General Rob Bonta went even further at a Sacramento press conference, calling the order “illegal and dangerous” and decrying any attempt to use troops to “intimidate and quiet those who disagree” with the administration. Bonta emphasized that enforcing California’s laws should be left to local police, not to new federal soldiers on the streets. Their lawsuit argues that Trump’s invocation of Title 10 was invalid because Newsom never consented to the federalization of the Guard and that the expanded orders for military assistance to ICE exceeded any lawful federal role.
Local California politicians beyond Sacramento echoed the alarm. In the Bay Area, Democratic members of Congress denounced the intervention. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San Jose bluntly told local media that “it’s illegal” for the President to federalize the Guard in defiance of the governor, arguing the memo gave him unbounded authority to send troops wherever he liked. Rep. Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley posted on social media that the Los Angeles situation was “a test of federalism” and that Trump’s attempt to override Governor Newsom’s command of the Guard “defies the Constitution and the American principle of limited federal power.” Other Northern California lawmakers warned of dangerous escalation: Rep. Sam Liccardo (formerly mayor of San Jose) said he sees a “slippery slope” in using the military for domestic law enforcement, and Rep. Jimmy Panetta (representing the Central Coast) cautioned that bringing troops into protests would itself tend to “escalate” violence. The fear of escalation expressed by these lawmakers underscores the potential for increased violence and unrest. The Southern California delegation, including many Democrats outside of Los Angeles (such as Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Katie Porter), similarly criticized the move in statements and on social media, affirming that Los Angeles’s unrest was manageable by local authorities and did not justify the deployment of federal troops.
Taken together, the regional response has been sharply divided along partisan lines. On one side, the West Coast’s Democratic governors, legislators, and city leaders have responded almost in unison, joining joint statements and lawsuits to block or condemn the order. On the other side, Republican officials in the West and notably the Arizona Senate GOP, have largely backed the administration’s tough stance on immigration, calling for cooperation rather than resistance. There is no evidence of a grand interstate bloc beyond these partisan coalitions. The only coordinated action of any magnitude has been within party ranks: Democratic governors banding together to assert state authority over their Guard units, versus some Republican leaders aligning with the White House’s law-and-order framing. As one Western editorialist noted, the clash over Los Angeles has essentially become a regional test of party identity. In practice, the debate is unfolding not by geographic bloc but by ideology: liberal coastal officials warn of tyranny and federal overreach. At the same time, conservative counterparts defend the need to uphold federal immigration laws (or at least stay silent). For now, barring any new multistate agreements, the pattern suggests partisan unity rather than any lasting strategic alliance among Western states.
In summary, the deployment has prompted a patchwork of reactions: Oregon, Washington, and California’s leaders united in objection (often with dramatic language about democracy and lawful authority), while Arizona Republicans and a few other conservatives urged closer cooperation with the federal crackdown. Nevada’s officials have largely remained on the sidelines. Whether this fractured response will coalesce into a formal “West Coast bloc” or something similar remains uncertain; to date, public actions have been conducted through existing partisan channels. Observers are observing as tensions continue. Many in the region worry that the mix of federal troops and local dissent could further inflame passions, just as leaders assert that democratic governance and the rights of protest must be safeguarded. The coming days will test whether these regional responses solidify or dissipate – and whether state-federal conflict over law enforcement in the West hardens into a durable ideological stand-off.
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