Transcript: Read the speech of Gavin Newsom and criticizes Trump about protests

Gavin Newsom government of California gave a speech on Tuesday entitled “Democracy at a crossroads.” The following is a transcript of his comments such as online and on television channels:

I want to say a few words about the events of the past days.

Last weekend federal agents performed large -scale workplace attacks in and around Los Angeles. Those raids continue while I speak.

California is no stranger to enforcement of immigration. But instead of concentrating on immigrants without papers with serious criminal registers and people with definitive deportation orders, a strategy that both parties have long supported, this administration pushes massive deportations, without distinction on hard -working immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.

What is happening now is very different from everything we have seen before. On Saturday morning, when federal agents jumped out of an unmarked van in the vicinity of a parking space in front of the home depot, they started grabbing people. Intentional targeting of a heavy Latino -Buitenwijk. A similar scene also played out when a clothing company in the city center was attacked.

In other actions, an American citizen, nine months pregnant, was arrested; a 4-year-old girl, taken; families separated; Friends literally disappear.

In response, Angelinos came every day to exercise their constitutional right to freedom of expression and meeting to protest against the actions of their government. In turn, the state of California and the city and the county of Los Angeles sent our police officers to keep peace and with a few exceptions they were successful.

Like many states, California is no stranger to this kind of unrest. We manage it regularly, and with our own law enforcement. But this was different again.

What followed was the use of tear gas, flash-end-bang grenades, rubber bullets, federal agents who hold people and undermine their appropriate procedural rights.

Donald Trump, without consulting the leaders of California’s law enforcement, ordered 2,000 of the National Guard of our state to use on our streets, illegal and without reason.

This brutal abuse of power by a sitting president ignited a combustible situation, which endangers our people, our officers and even our national guard.

Then the downward spiral began. He doubled for his dangerous effort from the National Guard by allowing the flames to blow even harder. And the president, he did it on purpose. While the news spread across La, fear of family and friends raged. Protests started again.

At night a few dozen Lawbreakers became violent and destructive. They destroyed ownership. They tried to attack police officers. Many of you have seen video clips of cars burn on cable news.

If you encourage violence – I want to be clear about this – if you instruct violence or destroy our communities, you will be kept to be taken care of. That kind of criminal behavior will not be tolerated. Point.

More than 220 people have already been arrested. And we assess ties to build additional things and people are fully prosecuted.

Again, thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of the Angelenos who protested peacefully, this situation ended and was concentrated in just a few square blocks in the city center.

But that’s not what Donald Trump wanted. He again chose escalation, he chose more power. He chose theatrics above public safety. He federalized another 2,000 guards.

He has deployed more than 700 active American marines. These are men and women who are trained in foreign fights, not in domestic law enforcement. We honor their service. We honor their courage. But we don’t want our streets to be militarized by our own forces. Not in LA, not in California. Nowhere.

We see unmarked cars, unmarked cars at school parking places. Children afraid to attend their own graduation. Trump pulls a military dragnet over all of Los Angeles, far beyond his intended intention to simply go after violent and serious criminals. His agents arrest dishwashers, gardeners, day workers and seamstresses.

That is just weakness, weakness disguised as strength. The government of Donald Trump does not protect our communities. They traumatize our communities. And that seems to be the whole point.

California will continue to fight. We continue to fight on behalf of our people, all our people, also in the courts.

Yesterday we submitted a legal challenge with the reckless deployment of President Trump of American troops in a large American city. Today we wanted an Emergency Court to stop using the US Army to perform law enforcement activities in Los Angeles.

If some of us can be thrown away without an order from the street, can only be based on suspicion or skin color, then none of us is safe. Authoritarian regimes start by focusing on people who can defend themselves the least. But they don’t stop there.

Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it enables them to take more power and exercise even more control.

And by the way, Trump, he is not against lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. We need some more evidence than January 6.

I ask everyone: Take your time, think about this dangerous moment. A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution that maintains a uniform attack on American traditions.

This is a president who has dismissed government car dogs in just over 140 days that can hold him responsible for corruption and fraud. He has declared a war, a war against culture, about history, about science, about knowledge itself. Databases literally disappear.

He delegates news organizations and attacks the first amendment. And the threat to cheat on them. In the event of a threat, he dictates what universities can teach himself. He focuses on law firms and the judicial branch that forms the basis of an orderly and civil society. He calls for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than to be chosen in his own words. “

And we all know, this Saturday he orders our American heroes, the army of the United States, and forces them to set up a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just like other failed dictators have done in the past.

Look, this is not just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought the general authority to recommend the National Guard. He applies that order to every state in this nation.

This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it will clearly not end here. Other states are the next.

Democracy is the next.

Democracy is attacked just before our eyes, at the moment that we feared has arrived. He takes a demolition ball, a demolition ball to the historic project of our founders: three equivalent branches of independent government.

There are no more checks and balances. The congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has fully imposed that responsibility.

The rule of law has increasingly been given way to Don’s rule.

The founders did not live and died to see this kind of moment. It’s time for all of us to get up. Justice Brandeis, he said it best. In a democracy, the most important office – with all respect, Mr. President – is not the presidency, and it is certainly not a governor. The most important office is Office of Citizen.

At the moment we all have to get up and be called to account, a higher level of accountability. If you exercise your first change rights, please do it peacefully.

I know that many of you feel deep fear, stress and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that fear. What Donald Trump wants the most is your faithfulness, your silence, to be complicit at the moment.

Don’t give him.