Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Monday that he will order about 360 members of the National Guard to be removed from California's southern border. This comes only one day before he's set to deliver his first State of the State address as governor.
Excerpts from his State of the State speech have been released, and Newsom is planned to say that the National Guard troops are not taking part in the White House "political theater". Instead, he's expected to announce that they will "refocus on the real threats facing our state."
“The Border ‘emergency’ is a manufactured crisis,” Newsom is expected to say Tuesday. “This is our answer to the White House: No more division, xenophobia or nativism.”
Newsom’s latest order is part of a long immigration battle between the state of California and the federal government.
"Tolerance for illegal immigration is not compassionate — it is cruel,” President Trump said in his State of the Union address last week.
But Newson isn't the first governor to pull troops from the southern border. Last week, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico also pulled most of the troops from her state's border.
Read more about Gov. Gavin Newsom's plans for the border on the Los Angeles Times.