San Francisco leaders push back against Trump’s National Guard threat

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Donald Trump keeps threatening to send National Guard troops to San Francisco next, blasting the California city as crime-ridden and saying its residents are clamoring for federal help.

But local and state leaders say that couldn’t be farther from the truth, noting overall crime is down and the city has started to turn around its downtrodden pandemic image. Residents and workers out downtown this week said they’re puzzled and concerned by Trump’s threat.

“This is a safe American city,” Mayor Daniel Lurie told The Associated Press last week. “We got this in San Francisco.”

The Republican president has referenced crime as his justification for possibly sending troops to the city of roughly 830,000. He’s deployed the Guard over crime concerns to Washington, D.C., where he has direct control of the National Guard, and Memphis, where the Republican governor supports their presence. Los Angeles was the first city where Trump deployed the Guard, arguing it was necessary to protect federal buildings and agents as protesters fought back against mass immigration arrests. He’s since said they’re needed in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, as well.

Residents and leaders in Portland were surprised by Trump’s attention when he described the city as besieged by violent protests. In reality, nightly protests were small and limited to the area outside a federal immigration building. While there were some arrests for violence, the demonstrations were far less intense than those that roiled the downtown in 2020 following the death of George Floyd.

In San Francisco, too, Trump seems to be relying on an outdated picture of a city often targeted by conservatives.

“The difference is, I think they want us in San Francisco,” Trump said Sunday on Fox News. “San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world. And then, 15 years ago, it went wrong. It went woke.”

His comments angered and baffled Kate Freudenberger, who works in retail.

“You’ve been walking around the city, it’s peaceful, there is no insurrection,” she said Tuesday morning, adding that immigration authorities have not been as active in San Francisco as in other cities, “so there’s really been nothing for us to coalesce around.”

Marc Benioff, the chief executive of San Francisco-based software giant Salesforce, caused a stir when he told the New York Times earlier this month that he’d welcome Guard troops ito help quell crime ahead of his major annual business conference. He has since apologized for his remarks, saying the conference was the “largest and safest” in its history and the Guard is not needed.

The city emerges from struggles

San Francisco is still recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, which emptied its downtown and brought renewed attention to street homelessness and open drug dealing. But signs indicate a city on the upswing. Artificial intelligence startups are snapping up office space, and home rental prices are rising. San Francisco saw a 21% increase from last year in office visits, according to location analytics platform Placer.ai, and public transit ridership is at its highest levels since the pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal this week declared the city was emerging from its “doom loop,” an article the mayor eagerly shared on social media.

Sidewalks are cleaner and tent encampments have largely disappeared from view. In the Tenderloin, one of the most troubled neighborhoods, teams of city and nonprofit workers on Monday helped school children cross the street, walked around picking up trash or counseled homeless people. It was a different image than during the pandemic, when hundreds of people camped on sidewalks.

Still, the Tenderloin is a problem spot for public drug use and dealing, as are the Mid-Market and Mission neighborhoods. But overall crime is down more than 26% this year compared to the same period last year, according to the San Francisco Police Department. Vehicle break-ins — which have vexed tourists and residents alike — are at a 22-year low, Lurie said.

Lurie, a centrist Democrat who has tried to avoid confrontations with Trump by ignoring many of the president’s comments, said Monday he’d welcome more federal help to arrest drug dealers and disrupt drug markets. But sending in the Guard wouldn’t achieve that, he said.

“The National Guard does not have the authority to arrest drug dealers—and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to get fentanyl off the streets or make our city safer,” Lurie said in a statement.

San Francisco voters in 2024 gave police the authority to use drones, surveillance cameras and other technology to fight crime. They also ousted politically progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin in a 2022 recall election and installed Brooke Jenkins, considered to be much tougher on crime than her predecessor. Lurie has pushed to hire and retain police officers, and entry-level police applications are up 40% over last year.

California leaders pledge to fight back

Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has said it would push back forcefully on any deployment, as it did when Trump first ordered the California National Guard into Los Angeles against Newsom’s wishes. California Attorney General Rob Bonta vowed to “be in court within hours, if not minutes” if there is a federal deployment.

Lawsuits by Democratic officials in Chicago and Portland have so far blocked troops from going out on city streets.

Libby Baxter, a retired nurse, said Trump has sent the National Guard to Democratic cities to create “chaos and unrest” and she fears the same could happen in San Francisco.

“I believe that that may happen if they come to San Francisco because we are a very tolerant community, but we don’t do well with somebody coming in and trying to dictate or take over certain parts of our city,” she said.