The president had been waiting for this made-for-TV clash that allows the administration to \u2018manufacture\u2019 a crisis<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donald Trump is targeting Los Angeles, the biggest city in deep-blue California \u2013 a sprawling metropolis shaped by immigrant communities that the president described on Tuesday as a \u201ctrash heap\u201d \u2013 with a show of force many years in the making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After his first term, Trump expressed regret for not taking a more heavy-handed approach to the 2020 protests over George Floyd\u2019s murder by police. So when demonstrations against his immigration crackdown erupted last week in Los Angeles, he turned to the playbook he wished he had used then \u2013 federalizing the national guard and deploying hundreds of US marines to confront what Democratic officials insist was a manageable situation, escalated by a president who the state\u2019s governor, Gavin Newsom<\/a>, has warned is increasingly behaving like a \u201cdictator\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s the made-for-TV clash Trump has been waiting for: visually gripping scenes of unrest in a Democratic-run city furious over his administration\u2019s mass deportation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cChaos is exactly what Trump wanted, and now California<\/a> is left to clean up the mess,\u201d Newsom said on Twitter\/X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump has said<\/a> he \u201cwould have brought in the military immediately\u201d if he could redo 2020. And, former defense secretary Mark Esper told NPR in 2022<\/a>, Trump asked if protesters could be shot. \u201cCan\u2019t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?\u201d Trump asked, according to Esper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The showdown in Los Angeles brings together longtime overlapping goals of the Trump regime: bringing state and local officials to heel; trying to tap as many resources as possible for his deportation program; and going after protesters who speak or act against him, all while stretching the boundaries of legality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sending troops into an American city to stifle largely peaceful protests is a \u201ctest case\u201d that, depending on how it plays out in Los Angeles, could be a strategy the administration replicates in other cities, said Sarah Mehta, the deputy director of government affairs at the ACLU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t an isolated incident,\u201d she said. \u201cI think what we\u2019re seeing in Los Angeles is this culmination of several weeks of incredibly aggressive immigration policing, the federal government asking the military to get further involved in immigration enforcement, including the transportation of unaccompanied children and attention and riot control, and then on top of that, again, these really targeted attacks against cities and states that are not going along with Trump\u2019s aggressive deportation regime.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, said her city was being used as a proving ground for how the federal government might exert its authority over other local governments that resist the president\u2019s agenda. \u201cI feel like we are part of an experiment that we did not ask to be a part of,\u201d she said, speaking at a press conference in downtown Los Angeles on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Trump sows chaos in the streets, the mayor said, the city\u2019s immigrant communities were gripped by a \u201clevel of fear and terror\u201d over the administration\u2019s escalating enforcement efforts, with some undocumented workers staying home and mixed-status families afraid to attend<\/a> school graduation ceremonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In January, Trump returned to power with what he says is a popular mandate to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history. Amid growing frustration<\/a> over the pace of removals, the White House is turning to increasingly forceful tactics, including stepped up raids on workplaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Friday, scattered protests broke out in response to a series of immigration sweeps<\/a>, in some instances by federal agents wearing tactical gear, at businesses across the Los Angeles area.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Newsom and Bass said local and state law enforcement were fully capable of handling the demonstrations, but as images of cars on fire and clashes with police spread online, the Trump administration<\/a> ignored the state\u2019s wishes and brought in the national guard \u2013 an extraordinary move that state officials said brought even more protesters into the street over the weekend. Then on Monday, a day of larger, mostly peaceful protests, Trump ordered additional national guard troops and hundreds of US marines to the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean and safe again,\u201d Trump vowed, in a speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democratic cities, in particular, have long drawn Trump\u2019s ire. On the campaign trail, he frequently pointed to liberal cities, painting them as hellscapes devoid of capable leadership that would be better run with him in White House. Speaking in Iowa in 2023, Trump said he would use federal troops to \u201cget crime out of our cities\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe next time I\u2019m not waiting [for local approval]. We don\u2019t have to wait any longer. We got to get crime out of our cities,\u201d Trump said<\/a>. He, and the conservative allies behind Project 2025, have pushed for<\/a> withholding federal funds from states and cities that don\u2019t aid federal immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democrats expected him<\/a> to make good on these threats. In August 2024, the New York Times reported<\/a> that Trump\u2019s allies spent the four years between his presidencies finding legal justifications for using the military in these situations, often in the immigration context, but sometimes against protesters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a statement provided to the Guardian, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: \u201cPresident Trump has rightfully highlighted how poorly Democrat cities are run \u2013 including emboldening criminals, providing sanctuary to criminal illegal aliens, and putting Americans at risk. In LA, illegal aliens and violent criminal protesters spent the last several days attacking law enforcement, waving foreign flags, lighting cars on fire, and unleashing a state of outright anarchy. Anyone downplaying this behavior, or describing it as a \u2018manageable situation\u2019, is either an idiot or a propagandist for the Democrat party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n California, the biggest blue state in the country, has long been Trump\u2019s favorite foil. On issue after issue \u2013 from climate to immigration to education \u2013 Trump cast the state as a hellscape \u201cruined\u201d by \u201cradical left\u201d lunacy. In defending his national guard deployment, Trump decried Los Angeles a \u201conce great American City\u201d that \u201chas been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Newsom and attorney general Rob Bonta on Monday sued Trump<\/a> over what they said was an \u201cunlawful\u201d deployment of the national guard over the governor\u2019s objections. Bonta noted that it was the state\u2019s 24th legal action against the Trump administration in 20 weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democrats say the timing of his crackdown on Los Angeles was no coincidence. Trump had just endured a days-long stretch of bad news: his political partnership with Elon Musk imploded<\/a>, the US government returned a Maryland man wrongly deported after weeks of insisting they would not bring him back and the president\u2019s \u201cbig, beautiful bill\u201d stalled on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat\u2019s happening in Los Angeles is straight out of the Trump playbook,\u201d California senator Alex Padilla said<\/a>, \u201cmanufacture a crisis and provoke violence to distract from terrible headlines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since January, Trump\u2019s administration has targeted universities and college students on visas who had participated in pro-Palestinian activism. The crackdown comes as states have advanced<\/a> a host of anti-protest bills in the last few years to expand criminal punishments for protesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Monday, Trump called for Newsom\u2019s arrest \u2013 a move the governor called an \u201cunmistakable step toward authoritarianism\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor,\u201d Newsom said after Trump\u2019s threat of arrest. \u201cThis is a line we cannot cross as a nation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump was unable to identify a crime he thought Newsom had committed. House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested<\/a> Newsom should be \u201ctarred and feathered\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump administration has already gone after several elected officials who resist his administration\u2019s crackdown. On Tuesday, congresswoman LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, was indicted on federal charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers after a clash with law enforcement at a May protest outside of a detention facility in Newark. During the incident, the city\u2019s mayor, Ras Baraka, was arrested, though charges against him were dropped. And a Wisconsin judge was indicted<\/a> by a federal grand jury for allegedly helping a man evade immigration agents seeking his arrest in her courthouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stephen Miller, the hardline architect of Trump\u2019s immigration agenda, used a simple term to describe the protests last week: \u201cinsurrection\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Miller, who was raised in the seaside city of Santa Monica on Los Angeles\u2019s west side, called his home state \u201cthe largest sanctuary state in America\u201d, underscoring its status as a trial balloon for other communities. He has described the militarized response in Los Angeles as a \u201cfight to save civilization\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen the rioters swarmed, you handed over your streets, willingly,\u201d he retorted to Newsom on Monday. \u201cYou still refuse to arrest and prosecute the arsonists, seditionists and insurrectionists. This Administration is fighting to save the city and the citizens you have left to struggle and suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump, who notably pardoned all those who were convicted for their roles in the insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021, has been debating whether to invoke the Insurrection Act, the 18th-century law that would give him the power to activate the military or national guard to quell rebellion or unrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n