President Donald Trump announced that he will not send the National Guard into San Francisco this weekend, a plan that had been intended to address immigration and crime issues in the city.
The decision comes after conversations with local leaders and business figures who emphasized that the city was already making progress on its own.
Trump, speaking with reporters on Thursday at the White House, said he “got a great call from some incredible people,” referencing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and has decided against deploying the National Guard at this time.
“So we are holding off that surge, everybody. And we’re going to let them see if they can do it,” Trump explained, per the Associated Press.
Trump also posted on Truth Social to confirm that he was not going to deploy troops at this time, writing that he believes the federal government can be more effective, but a phone call from San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie helped change his mind.
“The Federal Government was preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California, on Saturday, but friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress. I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around. I told him I think he is making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove. I told him, ‘It’s an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let’s see how you do?’ The people of San Francisco have come together on fighting Crime, especially since we began to take charge of that very nasty subject. Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”
Lurie later confirmed that he spoke with the President to dissuade the use of the National Guard and said he kept his pitch simple.
“I told him the same thing I told our residents: San Francisco is on the rise,” Lurie said, per The New York Times. “We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to get drugs and drug dealers off our streets, but having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery.”
Moving forward, Trump said that he could still change his mind if leaving the city in charge “doesn’t work out,” but there are currently no plans to send the National Guard to San Francisco, per the AP.
This decision comes as the deployment of the National Guard remains one of the most controversial topics in recent memory, with Trump choosing to deploy the troops to various cities that are dealing with heavy crime.
Some major cities, such as Chicago and San Francisco, have resisted deploying the National Guard, while others, such as Louisiana, have welcomed the possibility, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
As reported by DX, Washington, D.C., was the first city to deploy the National Guard and has seen a sharp decline in crime.