Bonta Says State Is Ready, Vows to Sue ‘In Minutes’ if Trump Sends Troops to SF

After President Trump reaffirmed San Francisco as his next target for National Guard deployment over the weekend, Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday that his office is ready to mount a legal fight immediately.

“If he deploys the National Guard to San Francisco, we’ll be in court within hours if not minutes,” Bonta told reporters on Monday following Trump’s promises to send federal forces to the city in an appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.

“We’re going to go to San Francisco. The difference is, I think they want us in San Francisco,” the president told Fox host Maria Bartiromo.

Bonta pushed back, arguing that the president lacked legal grounds for the action. “There has to be an emergency, there has to be a rebellion, there has to be an invasion, there has to be the inability to enforce the laws with the regular forces,” Bonta continued. “None of those things exist.”

After sending federal troops to Los Angeles, Chicago and most recently Portland to quell alleged crime spikes — claims contrary to the cities’ actual crime trends — Trump has been increasingly focused on San Francisco. Last week, he called it a “a mess” and instructed FBI Director Kash Patel to eye the city for future federal intervention.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, long considered a champion of San Francisco, made news two weeks ago after suggesting that the city was in sore need of federal reinforcement. The call gained traction, and was echoed by billionaire Elon Musk on social media, who said deploying federal troops was “the only solution at this point.”

Benioff walked back the comments after blowback, including a resignation by prominent venture capitalist Ron Conway from the company’s philanthropic arm.

State and local leaders have repeatedly opposed deploying federal troops in the city.

“San Francisco neither needs nor wants Trump’s personal army on our streets. Contrary to Trump’s lie, no ‘government officials’ here have requested federal occupation,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, wrote on the social media platform X on Wednesday, after Trump’s press conference with Patel. “Bottom line: Stay the hell out of San Francisco.”

The same day, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has made a point to avoid going head-to-head with the president, didn’t call out Trump by name, but touted crime data showing marked decreases in violent and property crime in the city. He stood alongside District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who rejected the deployment more forcefully, saying it’s only caused chaos in other cities.

“It is not promoting law and order. It is not promoting safety. It is promoting chaos, terror and fear,” she told reporters.

“Nobody wants you here. You will ruin one of America’s greatest cities,” Newsom wrote on X after Trump’s Fox appearance on Sunday.

Trump warned during that interview that unlike in other cities, he could invoke the Insurrection Act to send the troops to San Francisco, affording him “unquestioned power.” So far, his deployments in other cities have been met with lawsuits contesting their legality, including in Portland, where a federal court temporarily blocked troops from being deployed before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the block on Monday.

“Everybody agrees you’re allowed to use that [the Insurrection Act] and there are no more court cases, there is no more anything. We’re trying to do it in a nicer manner, but we can always use the Insurrection Act,” he said.

The law allows presidents to federalize state National Guard units and deploy federal troops to cities during times of heightened civil disorder or insurrection, often at state officials’ request.

Despite a claim from Trump that about half of the U.S. presidents have used the act, it’s only been invoked in response to 30 crises in 230 years, including during the Civil Rights Movement, after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and, most recently, during riots after Los Angeles police officers were acquitted for Rodney King’s beating, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Bonta said his office was ready if Trump chooses to invoke the law now.

“We have prepared for deployment of the National Guard, we’ve prepared for invocation of the Insurrection Act, we’ve prepared for violations of the Posse Comitatus Act,” he said. “We’re ready. We owe our constituents readiness and preparedness.”

KQED’s Nastia Voynovskaya contributed to this report.