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Donald Trump rarely has kind words for Democrats, especially those who stand in his way. But on Thursday the president offered something unfamiliar: a compliment.
As federal immigration agents mobilized at a US Coast Guard base in the Bay Area, Trump credited San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, for “very nicely” persuading him to stand down from a planned “surge” of federal law enforcement into the city.
“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,” Trump wrote, without hurling an epithet or nickname. “I told him, ‘It’s an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let’s see how you do?’”
During a news conference at city hall on Thursday, Lurie said it was the president who initiated the conversation: “He picked up the phone and called me.”
Trump conveyed “clearly” that he was calling off the deployment of federal troops, Lurie added, assuring reporters that the president had “asked nothing of me” in return.
It was not Lurie’s assurances alone. According to Trump, “friends of mine who live in the area” called to vouch for the “substantial progress” San Francisco had made since Lurie took the helm in January. Trump specifically cited “great people” such as Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce who ignited a firestorm when he suggested the president should send national guard troops to his native San Francisco before apologizing and backtracking, as well as Jensen Huang, the president and chief executive of Nvidia.
“They want to give it a ‘shot’,” Trump added. “Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”
Lurie, the 48-year-old heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, swept into city hall promising a reset for a city that had struggled with both real challenges post-pandemic – an empty downtown, an enduring homelessness emergency, an addiction crisis, repeated reports of corruption – and a caricatured portrayal by Trump and his rightwing allies as a city awash in decay and crime. The California governor’s office said earlier this month that San Francisco saw a 45% decrease in homicides and 40% drop in robberies from 2019 to 2025. The city is on track to have the lowest number of homicides in more than 70 years, according to a recent San Francisco Chronicle analysis.
Lurie’s victory over incumbent London Breed last November was widely viewed as a rebuke of San Francisco’s political status quo, and a test of whether Lurie’s brand as a political outsider and centrist pragmatist could help the city overcome its woes – and the perception that it was worse off than it was.
Yet looming over Lurie’s early months in office were questions over how the newly minted mayor would fare in a showdown with a mercurial president who has made his antagonism towards the city clear for years. It’s a calculation every Democratic mayor and blue state governor was making as Trump threatened a widening federal crackdown on major US cities.
At a moment when Democrats across the country are yearning for a confrontational foil to Trump, Lurie stuck to a “heads down” approach, insisting his top priority was keeping residents safe. Lurie rarely, if ever, refers to the president by name, and even when criticizing the administration, he avoids attacking Trump in personal terms. It is a stark contrast to Gavin Newsom, the California governor (and a former San Francisco mayor), who has emerged as a leading figure in the anti-Trump resistance and pillories the president daily on social media.
In recent days, as tensions rose and Trump signaled he was prepared to send troops into San Francisco, Lurie carried on, boosting the “greatest city in the world”. He was firm that the city opposed a federal deployment, but refrained from criticizing the president directly. The mayor kept residents informed with a series of video messages in a direct-to-camera style that he’s become known for, promising to protect the city’s immigrant communities and urging residents to protest peacefully. “While we cannot control the federal government, here in San Francisco,” he said earlier this week, “we define who we are.”
The ties he has forged with Silicon Valley’s prominent tech leaders, as part of his mission to keep tech companies in San Francisco, appeared to have helped defuse the situation, at least for now.
At the press conference on Thursday, Lurie said he welcomed the city’s “continued partnership” with federal authorities to tackle drugs and crime. He touted the city’s progress, noting that crime was down – violent crime particularly. The city had added police officers, workers were returning to the office, and downtown buildings were being leased and purchased, Lurie said he impressed on the builder turned president. The mayor’s message, too, was clear: “San Francisco’s comeback is real.”
Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who represents San Francisco, said Lurie had “demonstrated exceptional leadership in his steadfast commitment to the safety and wellbeing of San Franciscans”.
“I salute Mayor Lurie for standing up for our City and reinforcing San Francisco’s strength, optimism and recovery,” she said on X.
Trump’s sudden reversal surprised local leaders and advocates, as protests against the federal intervention amassed at the Coast Guard base in Alameda on Thursday morning.
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Yet much remained unclear – whether Trump was calling off the anticipated national guard deployment or a ramped-up immigration enforcement effort, or whether he might send troops elsewhere in the Bay Area. The president has mentioned Oakland as another possible target – and, as ever, reserved the right to change his mind. Unlike Lurie, Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, received no such call from the president, but said she was ready to “engage with anyone, at any level of government, to protect Oakland residents”.
Newsom, who has made a sport of publicly clashing with Trump, seized on Trump’s decision to call off the deployment as proof of the president’s capriciousness. “Trump has finally, for once, listened to reason – and heard what we have been saying from the beginning,” he wrote on X. Speaking later at an event in San Jose, the governor warned residents not to take Trump at his word. “Business leaders made the phone call to Donald Trump – now we know who he listens to,” he said, adding: “If you think this story just ended – that it’s got a period or exclamation point – you know better.”
At his press conference, Lurie said he could only repeat what the president told him during their call.
“Our city remains prepared for any scenario,” he said. “We have a plan in place that can be activated at any moment.”
Outside San Francisco’s city hall on Thursday afternoon, local leaders and organizers were grappling with the whiplash.
“At this time, do not know which federal agencies are being called off. We don’t know if that’s the national guard. We don’t know if it’s ICE, if it’s border patrol,” said Jackie Fielder, the San Francisco city supervisor representing parts of the city’s Mission neighborhood. She said any federal agents deputized to help Trump “carry out his mass deportation plans” were “absolutely not welcome in San Francisco”.
Rights groups and community activists have urged Lurie and other city officials to take bolder steps to defend immigrants, some calling for a state of emergency if a federal deployment takes place, a designation that could help quickly boost resources for targeted communities. Others have called on Lurie to establish “safe zones” that federal agents can’t enter and declare an eviction moratorium, since raids and fears of ICE enforcement can force people to hide out and miss work.
Even as Trump boasted of his own restraint, Lurie’s instinct was the opposite: deflect attention and carry on. Asked whether his approach could serve as a model for other Democratic mayors, Lurie demurred, suggesting the question was better left to the political chattering class.
“Every day I’m focused on San Francisco,” he said. “Heads down. How do we keep our city safe?”
Maanvi Singh in San Francisco and Sam Levin in Los Angeles contributed reporting
