politics

Strongly worded letters are all the current Dems are good at.

I'm assuming that he's just creating a paper trail for when things inevitably escalate. If this is all he's got, though, it's pretty weak.

The best Newsom is going to be able to do is pull trump onto his podcast and "have a conversation with him" where he makes more steps to the right to hopefully nab some more "principled Republican" voters.

This is an example of somebody in a position of power fighting back. He may be a shitbag in general, but he is fighting back.

I don't remember the law or EO that made it so, but sometime after September 11th the President was granted the power to take command of the National Guard. That's not what the Constitution says? Throw it on the pile.

In practical terms, in any given situation where both are giving conflicting or even antagonistic orders, do you listen to the governor of your state or the President of the United States?

I don’t understand how Newsom can’t just order the CA national guard to not follow unlawfully given orders

That would mean confronting Trump directly, and Newsom is a coward who doesn't really expect the Nat Guard to follow his orders over Trump's.

Doesn’t the insurrection act allow the US president to take control of the national guard, even without a governor’s consent?

Hence the reason Trump keeps calling protestors “insurrectionists.”

(Not that I agree with Trump’s bullshit)

Hell, deploy state guard to protect protestors.

When fascists said "states rights", they actually meant "localized tyranny". As in, the ability for them to impose their tyranny on whatever size jurisdiction they currently held.

Anyone who isn't a neoliberal cuck warned they would seize the opportunity to impose their beliefs on the whole country, or the entire planet, the moment the option became available to them, because they are criminally corrupt, sociopathic authoritarian megalomaniacs, and always have been.

The national guard is the state's militia.

He's giving Trump an off-ramp before escalation. Most politicians are better at politics than Trump is, they don't go straight to the nuclear option.

The command structure allows the president to issue those orders. The president's justification for issuing those orders is illegal; the orders themselves are not.

The command structure also constitutionally empowers Newsom to fire the commissioned and non-commissioned officers of the California National Guard, effectively disbanding their units.

I'm betting that California has some emergency provision allowing the governor to deputize these individuals into the California State Police.

I think Trump has done enough here to actually get himself convicted by the senate.