California governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday took a veiled dig at US President Donald Trump by sharing a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping interacting at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit 2025.
Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump are at loggerheads over the US President’s decision to deploy federal officers in Chicago to crack down on crime and illegal immigration, even as a top administration official vowed to send more personnel.
“But have no fear, Trump is sending the Guard to Chicago,” Newsom, a Democrat, posted on X, along with the video showing Modi and Putin holding hands as they walked towards Xi before the summit opened in China’s Tianjin.
The video also showed the three leaders standing shoulder to shoulder, sharing a laugh.
Xi is attempting to expand the scope of the SCO. He announced initial plans for a development bank run by the organisation, introduced a cooperation platform for green and energy industries and pledged $1.4 billion in loans over the next three years to the organisation’s members.
The Department of homeland security said last week that it has made 5,000 immigration arrests in the Los Angeles area since launching a sustained crackdown in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area on June 6.
Authorities are undeterred by a temporary court order prohibiting racial profiling in Los Angeles, which the administration has challenged before the Supreme Court.
Newsom’s post on X comes after homeland security secretary Kristi Noem told CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation’ that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Chicago and other parts of the country would be bolstered, but declined to provide details. Noem said Trump would make a decision to deploy National Guard troops.
On the same programme, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said Trump wanted to deploy troops so that he could halt or manipulate US midterm elections in 2026.
“He would like to stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections,” Pritzker said.
“He will just claim that there is some problem with an election, and then he is got troops on the ground that can take control,” he added.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson criticised Pritzker for not doing more to deal with crime.
“Chicago’s residents would be much safer if Pritzker actually did his job and addressed his crime problem instead of trying to be a Resistance Lib hero,” Jackson said in a statement.
Trump and top officials have said in the past week that Chicago would soon be a target for the Republican president’s efforts to tackle crime and illegal immigration. Trump, for years, has criticised crime in Chicago, a Democratic stronghold, although city figures show most categories of violent crime have dropped this year.
Earlier this month, Trump kicked off an aggressive public safety campaign in Washington, DC, deploying National Guard troops, flooding streets with federal officers, and federalising the city police department. The surge has generated political and community pushback in DC, a federal district where Trump wields exceptional power.