- By Adam Shanks and Patrick Hoge | Examiner staff writers
- Oct 21, 2025 (SFExaminer.com)
The City is trying to help block the deployment of the National Guard in Chicago before it even arrives in San Francisco.
Along with more than 40 other local governments, San Francisco urged the Supreme Court in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday to block President Donald Trump’s effort to deploy more than 300 National Guard troops in Chicago over the objections of state and local leaders.
The threat of a similar deployment in San Francisco is real and explicit. Trump told Fox News in an interview released Sunday that he has “unquestioned power” to deploy troops in San Francisco. If he does, San Francisco would be the sixth city in which Trump has deployed federal troops or attempted to deploy them.
“We’re gonna go to San Francisco,” Trump said. “The difference is I think they want us in San Francisco.”
City Attorney David Chiu met that threat with one of his own.
“Should President Trump make good on his ridiculous threats to send the military to San Francisco, our city is prepared, and my office is prepared to take the necessary legal action to defend San Francisco,” Chiu said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that the state is prepared to “immediately” sue the federal government if Trump deploys troops to The City.
“Donald Trump, himself a convicted felon who pardoned felons convicted of assaulting federal law enforcement officers, is misleading the public with his false narrative that America, and especially California, is some lawless wasteland,” Newsom said. “But California is proving him wrong — in the courts and on the facts. We don’t bow to kings, and we’re standing up to this wannabe tyrant.”
Chiu’s statement and the amicus curiae brief come as city leaders wrestle with how to respond to Trump’s threat. Prior to Sunday’s interview, Trump had said at a press conference earlier this month that he would “be strongly recommending, at the request of government officials — which is always nice — that you start looking at San Francisco” for a future deployment.
Mayor Daniel Lurie issued a statement that did not directly address Trump, but it touted San Francisco’s historically low crime rates and its existing relationship with federal law-enforcement agencies, which he pointed to as proof that the National Guard is not needed to confront The City’s persistent struggles with fentanyl and homelessness.
“I am deeply grateful to the members of our military for their service to our country, but 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.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi has also largely written off the possibility of National Guard personnel being dispatched to The City.
In an interview with The Examiner on Saturday — conducted prior to the release of the Fox News interview — Pelosi said that Trump “ought not to even think about coming to San Francisco.” Pelosi accused Trump of using such threats as a way to distract from “kitchen-table” issues, such as rising health-care costs.
“He wants us to divert our attention from the kitchen table,” Pelosi said. “That’s what he wants us to do, but we’re not doing that.”
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A federal judge has ruled that Trump lacks the justification required to send troops into Chicago; Trump has appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court. Cities joining San Francisco in the amicus brief include San Jose, Oakland, and Sacramento.
Citing Trump’s declaration that “we’re gonna have troops everywhere,” the cities and counties warned of “a cascade of harms” if Trump is allowed to move ahead with his plans.
Such action would not only illegally infringe on local and state sovereignty, but prove ineffective, they contended. Federal troops are ill-equipped to replace local law enforcement and are only escalating conflict while straining local resources in the cities to which Trump has dispatched them, including Los Angeles, the brief argues.
“Our Nation’s constitutional order demands that domestic deployment of the federal military be restricted to exceptional circumstances and that federal courts hold the line against Executive overreach,” the brief states.
Trump said in the Fox News interview that he could deploy federal troops to cities under the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that allows the president to dispatch troops within the U.S. in order to quell an insurrection or civil unrest.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in a filing to the Supreme Court that the blockage of troop deployment to Chicago “cause[s] irreparable harm to the Executive Branch by countermanding the President’s authority as Commander in Chief, jeopardizing the lives and safety of DHS officers, and preventing the President and the Secretary of War from taking reasonable and lawful measures to protect federal personnel from the violent resistance that has persisted in the Chicago area for several months.”
The cities argued the circumstances in Chicago don’t meet the legal threshold for a federal troop deployment.
Under the Trump administration’s reasoning, the brief states, “the President could issue an order seeking to federalize troops at any time, anywhere, for any reason — based on nothing more than being a disfavored jurisdiction, a perception that local law enforcement cannot adequately do their jobs in their jurisdictions, or even a perceived threat of future violence.”
Later Tuesday, in one of his regular appearances before the Board of Supervisors, Supervisor Jackie Fielder asked the mayor about how his administration “is preparing to defend” San Franciscans’ “civil liberties and rights.”
Lurie responded to Fielder, who represents the Mission, that city officials have been “constantly monitoring the possibility of federal intervention, really, since the day I took office.”
“We’ve been convening a cross-departmental policy group of public safety leaders, representatives from the City Attorney’s Office and other affected department heads to continue coordinating our local response to potential federal actions,” Lurie said. One such meeting had occurred earlier in the day, he said.
The mayor said the city attorney’s amicus brief makes “it clear that local law enforcement is best positioned to keep our communities safe, and that they are doing it well.”
The longstanding sanctuary policy prohibits city police officers “from participating in federal civil immigration enforcement,” Lurie said.
“It is not the role of local law enforcement to assist with military operations on our streets,” said Lurie, who said his administration is in regular communication with community and immigrant leaders.
Marcus White contributed reporting to this story.
