On Monday, President Donald Trump took questions from reporters, where he ramped up his threats to send the National Guard to cities including Chicago and Baltimore after having done so in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.
Over the weekend, he threatened to cut off funding for the rebuilding of the Key Bridge if Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Wes Moore did not allow the National Guard into Charm City. Trump said that “African-American ladies ... beautiful ladies” encouraged him to send the guard into Chicago.
Unsurprisingly, Illinois’ Gov. JB Pritzker pushed back, saying Illinois “has at this time received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention.”
“Do not come to Chicago,’ Pritzker warned Trump.
But while Trump’s targeting of blue cities crosses the line from bullying Democratic officials to being authoritarian, despite his insistence he is not a dictator, the president might learn that this will only embolden governors and prime them to be his successors in the White House.
As Inside Washington has written in the past month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom saw his fortunes change largely after Trump targeted Los Angeles by sending in the National Guard without his consent and Marines into the state. Newsom responded by suing Trump.
When Trump pressured Republican-led Texas to redraw its congressional map, Newsom went to his state’s legislature to pass a ballot initiative to allow for a redraw of California’s map in kind as a one-time break from the state’s bipartisan redistricting committee.
The results are now in showing that Newsom’s gambits have paid off in the eyes of Democratic voters. Last week, the University of California Berkley’s Institute for Governmental Studies released a poll showing that 51 percent of Californians approve of his performance and 43 percent disapprove. By comparison, in late April, he was at a dead even with 46 percent of Californians approving and disapproving of him.
Newsom has never been a particularly strong electoral performer. In fact, in 2022, when he sought re-election, he underperformed Joe Biden’s 2020 performance. That essentially killed any chance of Newsom running in 2024.
But now, it’s fairly clear Democrats in his home state responded well to his fighting. Among Democratic voters as a whole, the Republican pollster Echelon Insights found that his favorability ticked up by three points and he now trails only Kamala Harris when asked who should be the party’s nominee.
Another example comes in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. Like Newsom, she underperformed Biden in 2022 after she assumed the governor’s office when Andrew Cuomo resigned. During last year’s Democratic National Convention, Nancy Pelosi essentially blamed Hochul’s underperformance in New York in 2022 for Democrats losing the House of Representatives.
Her polling was not that great either. In January, a Siena College poll showd 39 percent of New Yorkers had a favorable opinion of her and 47 percent had an unfavorable opinion. In New York City, 42 percent of residents had a favorable opinion of her and 41 percent had an unfavorable opinion.
Since then, she has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration. When Trump attempted to kill congestion pricing in New York City, she has responded in court. When masked federal officers put New York City Comptroller Brad Lander in handcuffs, Hochul showed up to ensure his safety.
New Yorkers seemed to positively respond. In a recent Siena College poll, 42 percent of New Yorkers have a favorable opinion of her and 50 percent of residents of New York City do.
She’s also made fighting Trump a staple of her re-election campaign. On Monday, she dropped a campaign ad depicting her clashes with Trump.
All of that likely means that Democratic governors probably wish that Trump would pick on them too. On Monday, Trump said that Moore told him “sir, you’re the greatest president of my lifetime.”
Moore had a simple response on X.
He tweeted: “lol. Keep telling yourself that, Mr. President.”
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