The following is a letter I have sent to Governor Gavin Newsome, the governor of my state of California.

Governor Newsom,

In 2025, you publicly floated the idea of withholding federal tax revenue if the federal government crossed certain lines—particularly if it used funding as a cudgel against California for political ends. At the time, that statement carried weight because it suggested something more than rhetoric. It implied resolve.

With what we are seeing now from ICE—especially with the murder of Alex Pretti—I’m compelled to ask the question, if not now, then when?

California is watching federal agents operate in ways that are increasingly aggressive, legally dubious, and morally indefensible. Raids conducted with little transparency. Communities living in perpetual fear. Local governments forced to clean up the social wreckage. At what point does this cross the threshold you yourself once identified?

You have a gift for sound bites, that’s for sure. And your communications team knows how to make them travel. But there is a growing sense that at some point the bluff is going to be called. Words only deter if they are backed by action. Otherwise, they become evidence of hesitation.

I’ll say this as plainly as I can: Los Angeles is a city shaped by deep histories—of policing, of state violence, of retaliation. What do you think happens if an ICE agent kills someone from one of LA’s many gangs? Not hypothetically in the abstract, but materially, on the ground. The fallout would not be contained to a press cycle. It would ripple outward, all throughout multiple diverse neighborhoods, through law enforcement, through already-fractured trust between the state and the people it governs.

I worry that there will come a moment when leaders look back and say, “We saw the trajectory. We named the danger. And we still waited.”

Leadership is not merely the ability to diagnose a crisis eloquently. It is the willingness to act before the worst-case scenario becomes the only remaining option. If the federal government is violating both the spirit and the letter of the law (and they are, right in front of us!), of constitutional governance, then the response cannot remain symbolic.

If you are ever going to act on the leverage you yourself have described, this is the moment that history will measure.

Respectfully,
Matthew J. Distefano

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