“The rule of law,” Newsom said, “has been replaced by the rule of Don.” Gavin Newsome

“If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe,” Newsom said. “Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”

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Neither did Newsom.

“I ask everyone: Take time, reflect on this perilous moment,” he said. “A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions.” Newsom ticked off the harms Trump has inflicted in his second term, from threatening to defund media organizations to waging “a war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself.”

“The rule of law,” Newsom said, “has been replaced by the rule of Don.”

After encouraging Americans “to stand up and be held to account,” Newsom said, " I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him.”

Like Trump, Newsom understands optics and how to seize a moment. But this time, the personal and political stakes are much greater. Newsom is now the face and voice of the Democrats’ anti-Trump fury.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/15/opinion/gavin-newsom-donald-trump-california-national-guard/  Renée Graham is a Boston Globe columnist.