Newsom tags in State Threat Assessment Center over Trump’s Iran nuclear comments

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Tuesday said he directed the State Threat Assessment Center to monitor for any possible threats to the Golden State after President Trump’s “invitation” for Iran to “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego.

“Donald Trump’s remarks were dangerous — if not treasonous — putting a target on two of our biggest cities and one of America’s largest naval hubs,” Newsom wrote on the social platform X . “I am directing the State Threat Assessment Center to actively monitor the situation in the event that foreign actors interpret the President’s remarks as an invitation to target California.”

Newsom and other officials from the state blasted the president for remarks he made during a rally in Grand Island, Neb., on Monday. Trump was defending his administration’s conflict with Iran when he suggested that if Tehran could “take out” the two southern California cities, it would be “a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.”

White House communications director Steven Cheung claimed shortly after that Trump “was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped” and accused the backlash of being a “media freakout.”

The White House’s Rapid Response X account also clapped back at the Los Angeles Times’s report that quoted the president, calling the outlet “buffoons.”

Newsom, who is weighing a 2028 presidential run , called Trump “deranged and dangerous” for making such a suggestion. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria (D) also lambasted Trump.

“San Diego is not collateral damage,” Gloria wrote on the social platform X . “We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’ Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”

At least one San Diego Republican, House candidate and former San Marcos, Calif., Mayor Jim Desmond, said on the social platform X that he served in the U.S. Navy to protect his countrymen, “not write off American cities as an acceptable price of war.”

“I vehemently disagree with President Trump’s comments,” Desmond continued. “America must stand up to Iran and defend our interests, but the first responsibility of our Commander in Chief is to protect the American people and our homeland … No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”

Bass has fought off suggestions made by the president to use the City of Angels as a battleground, including his notion of using Democratic-led cities as “training grounds’ for U.S. service members. The mayor accused Trump in October 2025 of wanting to use the military “against the American people.”

“You are talking about creating warfare within cities, and again, I will point out, there’s something these cities have in common,” she told CNN last year, referring to the city’s Democratic hierarchy.