This terrifying week in California had a high point after all, and I wrote about it at New York:

In the second Trump administration, Democrats have had trouble finding a focal point for their opposition to the 47th president’s riotous agenda. It’s significant that the most galvanizing moments for congressional Democrats have been the scattered and uncoordinated signage they displayed during Trump’s address to Congress in March and a 26-hour filibuster by Senator Cory Booker in April. Neither provided much in the way of clear and sustainable leadership. Grassroots protest activities have ramped up significantly since January as Team Trump began violating constitutional norms and threatening key public services almost hourly; the “Hands Off” protests in April were impressive. But the net effect is reflected in the contrast between next weekend’s massive show of military force in Washington to celebrate Trump’s birthday and the diffuse “No Kings” events around the country aiming to counteract it. The opposition needs a singular voice among the many voices of protest.

Trump’s assault on Los Angeles and California may have provided such a focal point in the unlikely figure of Gavin Newsom. Longtime observers of the two-term governor, former San Francisco mayor, and veteran chaser of spotlights know him to be a man who sees a future president of the United States in his bathroom mirror each morning. But despite his obvious brains and policy chops, he’s never quite overcome his reputation as someone whose ambition isn’t matched by the political skills needed to achieve them, a problem displayed most graphically when he provoked a 2021 recall election by violating his own pandemic rules to attend a party for a lobbyist at one of the most exclusive restaurants in the world.

Most recently, California’s budget problems have forced Newsom to reverse his state’s long march toward expansion of health care and other progressive initiatives. A month ago, he looked a lot like a former political star beginning to fade from sight.

All that was changed by the Trump administration’s decision to go nuclear on California with respect to a broad range of policy disputes. Even as the president threatened to eliminate all federal assistance to the state to punish it for its alleged “wokeness” and incompetence, ICE launched widespread raids in and near the heavily Latino city of Los Angeles, and then Trump poured gasoline on small protest fires by federalizing National Guard units and deploying U.S. Marines. For all the world, it looked like the federal government was declaring war on the Golden State and its governor, whom it threatened to arrest and jail.

Now Newsom is rising to the occasion, delivering the best opposition speech of Trump’s second term. In a Tuesday evening address, Newsom said that the president sending the military to Los Angeles is just the first step in a broader move toward authoritarianism.

“California may be first, but it clearly won’t end here,” Newsom said. “Other states are next. Democracy is next … the moment we’ve feared has arrived,” he added.

Newsom’s speech, carefully scripted and telepromptered (a practice he normally disdains) and broadcast nationally through multiple social-media outlets, was notable for its simple and calmly expressed indictment of the administration’s conduct in Los Angeles and its defense of the besieged city and state. He made a point of denouncing violence by protesters and accepting the need for immigration enforcement that properly targets dangerous criminals, while accusing the president of deliberately creating an unnecessary crisis in order to inflate his own power. Newsom said:

“We’re seeing unmarked cars, unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids afraid of attending their own graduation. Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.

“That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities. They are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point.”

Then the governor pivoted to the national implications:

“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. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.

“Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control. …

“[T]his isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. he made that order apply to every state in this nation.

“This is about all of us. This is about you.”

Newsom provided a subtle but unmistakable contrast with those who have responded to Trump’s provocations and power grabs by seeking compromises, making concessions, or changing the subject, as CNN observed:

“Newsom, people familiar with his thinking say, wants California to hold the line after some universities and law firms facing White House pressure reached concession deals with the administration.

“’What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty. Your silence. To be complicit in this moment,’ Newsom said in remarks released Tuesday evening. ‘Do not give into him.’”

It’s possible Trump’s war on California won’t be front of mind in a week or a month, but it’s more likely he and his allies will continue to demonize a state that Trump mocks for its struggles with wildfires and a metropolis that DHS secretary Kristi Noem calls “a city of criminals.” Every day this continues, with or without the deployment of troops or more terror tactics from ICE, Trump makes the California governor nationally relevant and potentially presidential. And nobody has spent more time preparing for this moment than Gavin Newsom.