California Democrats in Sacramento, along with their ego-inflated Democrat governor Gavin Newsom, can’t write rules of engagement for federal agents, but these boneheads keep doing it anyway.
Newsom signed 21 bills Tuesday and announced them as a defense of Californians against what his office called Orwellian federal immigration tactics. The package includes the nation’s first ban on shock gloves, new restrictions on flash-bang grenades and explosive breaching charges in immigration enforcement, and a 25 percent tax on private detention facilities.
Bill Essayli, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for California’s Central District, gave the short version: if you want to regulate federal agents, win a federal election. He said he’d advised DHS to disregard the shock-glove ban outright, and when Newsom’s press office touted the flash-bang restrictions, he asked whether the state planned to write the agents a ticket.
Governor, we’ve been through this already. If you want to regulate federal agents, you have to win a federal election. Until then, you have no jurisdiction.
Accordingly, I have advised DHS to disregard your bill attempting to ban safe and effective less-lethal tools that agents… https://t.co/zDqvn3j8Qx
— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) September 29, 2026
He later corrected his original post, adding a correction: “*de-escalate.”
The taunt is fun. The legal point under it is not close. Since McCulloch v. Maryland, states have been barred from regulating or taxing the instruments of the federal government in the performance of federal functions. A state cannot dictate what equipment a federal officer carries any more than it can set the FBI’s firearms policy or tell the Marshals Service which vehicles to buy. This isn’t a contested corner of constitutional law. It’s the part every first-year law student gets in the opening weeks.
California Democrats know this, which is the point. They initially passed a ban on federal agents wearing face coverings and watched a court stop it. It passed the so-called GTFO Act blacklisting former immigration officers from public employment, and that one is headed the same direction. Now it’s legislating the contents of a federal agent’s gear and tactics. The pattern isn’t a legal strategy; it’s a communications strategy with a legal bill attached, and the bill goes to California taxpayers who already fund the highest-cost government in America.
Notice the detention-center tax, too. A 25 percent levy on facilities holding federal detainees under federal contract is a direct attempt to price a federal function out of existence within state lines. That’s not novel regulation. That’s the doctrine’s textbook example of what a state may not do. And to be honest, I’m not sure that one survives federal judicial review, either.
As for the gloves themselves: they’re inert until an officer activates them, and their purpose is to end resistance during a detention without escalating to a prolonged physical struggle. Reasonable people can debate use-of-force policy, and Congress can fund or defund the purchase — Rep. Bennie Thompson’s letter to Secretary Mullin is the constitutionally appropriate way to object. Calling the device torture while ignoring what the alternative looks like when two people are wrestling on pavement is not.
The larger question is what a governor thinks he’s accomplishing. Every one of these bills will be enjoined, and every injunction will be cited by his own press office as proof of federal overreach, and the cycle will fund another round of ads for a presidential campaign that doesn’t formally exist yet.
Essayli’s response was the correct one, and it cost the taxpayers nothing. No jurisdiction. Proceed.
