For most of this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has chosen his own way to engage the man in the White House: conciliation over confrontation.
Mr. Newsom went to the Los Angeles airport in January to greet President Trump, who had flown to California after the devastating wildfires. The Democratic governor started a podcast in which he interviewed leaders of the MAGA movement, including Steve Bannon, to the distress of many on the left. Mr. Newsom broke with Democrats when he said it was unfair for trans athletes to compete in girls sports.
And on Friday, he spent 40 minutes talking to Mr. Trump on the phone, during which the president told him to get the local police in line because things were getting out of control with protesters confronting immigration agents, White House officials said.
To many Democrats, Mr. Newsom’s pursuits have seemed like an exquisitely calculated effort by one of the nation’s highest-profile Democrats to thread the needle. But the president’s decision to bypass Mr. Newsom and send National Guard troops to demonstrations in his state seems likely to shatter whatever balance the governor was trying to maintain.
It was a moment that has long-term implications for Mr. Newsom’s legacy as governor, his ability to lead the state through yet another crisis, and his to run for president in 2028.
“He has no choice but to fight back directly — the base is demanding it,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant and critic of the president. “I think his tone, direction, strategy will adjust.”
The stakes could be seen in the sharp, confrontational tone Mr. Newsom adopted this weekend after the Trump administration unilaterally decided to send troops to Los Angeles. He accused Mr. Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, of trying to provoke unrest, and mocked the president for claiming the National Guard had already quelled the demonstrations, even before the guard had been deployed.
“The President is attempting to inflame passions and provoke a response,” Mr. Newsom said in a fund-raising email for his political action committee Sunday morning. “He would like nothing more than for this provocative show of force — and Pete Hegseth’s absurd threat to deploy United States Marines on American soil — to escalate tensions and incite violence.”
Mr. Newsom is in a complicated position as he tries to manage a crush of political and governance forces. He is well aware that this weekend’s events are the kind that, if mishandled, can define the legacy of a chief executive, as Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles learned when she was overseas during the immediate aftermath of the fires in January.
The governor needs Mr. Trump’s support as California solicits critical federal aid to help rebuild Los Angeles from the fires.
And Mr. Newsom, who cannot seek another term as governor next year, is positioning himself for 2028. With the national electorate in mind, Mr. Newsom until recently did not portray himself as a part of the resistance to Mr. Trump. He talked about the need to understand the concerns of many voters who supported Mr. Trump in November, even if that meant violating Democratic orthodoxy.
That strategy was always risky for a governor from a blue state like California, which — along with New York — has been a target for Mr. Trump since the day he took office.
For all of Mr. Newsom’s efforts to placate the president, Mr. Trump in the last week alone threatened to cut funding to California schools because a trans girl won two events at the state track and field meet, eliminated $4 billion in federal funds for high-speed rail in California and, now, sent troops to Los Angeles against the wishes of Mr. Newsom.
“I would hope this would demonstrate to Newsom that there is no accommodation with Trump, that Trump is determined to pick fights in California and to make faux shows of force to build his false case that California is out of control,” said Jim Newton, a former head of the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and a biographer of Jerry Brown, Mr. Newsom’s predecessor as governor.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.
Adam Nagourney is a Times reporter covering government, political and cultural stories in California, focusing on the effort to rebuild Los Angeles after the fires. He also writes about national politics.
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