The US president’s reversal was as capricious as his original plan. What if local billionaires had urged him to stick with it?

This story was published in collaboration with Mission Local.

The mayor of San Francisco said on Thursday that Donald Trump had simply called him – no go-betweens or consigliere required – and told him there would no longer be a deployment of federal agents or troops to the city.

Joe Eskenazi is an editor and columnist for Mission Local. Io Yeh Gilman and Xueer Lu contributed reporting