This morning, the Lurie administration sent out an announcement that Mayor Daniel Lurie had spoken with President Trump and Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, and that federal troops would not be arriving in San Francisco for the time being.
The emailed statement from the Mayor’s office, sent hours before a press conference scheduled for today at noon, was laced with cautious optimism, with Lurie making it clear that he will continue to monitor the situation closely, and saying that the city remains prepared for any scenario.
As for president, he posted on Truth Social that his decision was also shaped by “Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great.” (Last week, Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, had asked the president to send troops to the city, before walking that request back.)
The news offered some measure of relief for a city set on edge by the mayor’s statement yesterday that a deployment of hundreds of federal agents was moving forward. This morning, Border Patrol agents and protestors clashed near the Coast Guard base in Alameda where the deployment was to be staged, a harbinger for what many feared we’d see on the streets of San Francisco.
Importantly, while Lurie said the threat facing San Francisco was held off for the time being, he said nothing about other Bay Area cities and towns, and whether or not they will be targeted. The mayor still didn’t mention the president by name, but he inched closer than ever, and left no mistake about who he spoke to.
“Late last night, I received a phone call from the President of the United States,” Lurie said. Mindful of the transactional real-estate developer now occupying the White House, Lurie’s appeal to Trump sounded like a sales pitch: “Visitors are coming back, buildings are getting leased and purchased, and workers are coming back to the office,” Lurie told Trump, according to the statement.
Lurie tossed in the city’s status as a technology center: “We appreciate that the president understands that we are the global hub for technology, and when San Francisco is strong, our country is strong,” Lurie said.
The mayor added that militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder its recovery.
“The president told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco,” he said. The mayor did venture to identify the secretary of Homeland Security by name. “Kristi Noem reaffirmed that direction in our conversation this morning.”
The mayor’s press conference is at noon today.
