President Donald Trump backed off at the last moment from deploying federal law enforcement to San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie said on Thursday — a reversal Trump confirmed in a social media post the same day.
The decision averts, for now, a combustible standoff in one of the country’s most liberal and anti-Trump cities. Democratic officials like Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and Lurie had been bracing for weeks for Trump to deploy federal forces to San Francisco, likely sparking a backlash that has played out in cities like Los Angeles.
Lurie said in a statement that Trump reached out on Wednesday night, hours after the mayor delivered a speech warning of an imminent federal show of force, and “told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco.” Lurie said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem affirmed that in a followup call.
“Having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” Lurie said in a statement. “We appreciate that the president understands that we are the global hub for technology, and when San Francisco is strong, our country is strong.”
Trump, in a statement on Truth Social, said “friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress. I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around.”
Trump said he told Lurie he thought he was “making a mistake” and that, “It’s an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let’s see how you do?”
While Democrats like Newsom have regularly assailed Trump and condemned his tactic of summoning federal law enforcement to bolster his immigration agenda, Lurie has deliberately avoided provoking the president and said he is focused on quality-of-life issues after ousting the incumbent mayor last year.
That approach appears to have paid off. Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday that he backed off after Lurie “asked, very nicely.” Trump said friends based in the area had conveyed to him that Lurie “was making substantial progress.”
Trump referenced AI executive Jenson Huang and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, a mainstay of San Francisco politics who stunned the city’s Democratic establishment by saying earlier this month he supported Trump and a federal deployment — comments for which Benioff subsequently apologized.
He wrote, “The people of San Francisco have come together on fighting Crime, especially since we began to take charge of that very nasty subject. Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”
