Tag: los angeles
In Los Angeles, We Don't Need The Marines To Bust A Few Hooligans

In Los Angeles, We Don't Need The Marines To Bust A Few Hooligans

I'm fine. Thanks for asking. Other than the endless and awful worries that come with caring for my daughter with long Covid, and the very real fear that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his boss will cut all the research programs that are the best and only hope for the millions (and there will be millions more) suffering from this now incurable disease, I'm OK. To tell the truth, I haven't seen a single protester, or any Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for that matter. The protests have not taken over the city. I've lived through riots. These aren't riots.

I know. You've seen the pictures of the burning Waymo taxicabs. All three of them. I've seen them too — on TV, literally hundreds of times. What does that prove? That there are hooligans who will take advantage of any situation that will possibly give them cover for wrongdoing? The hooligans should be arrested and punished. The LAPD is fully qualified to do that. We don't need the Marines or the National Guard to round up a handful of hooligans.

The Chief of the LAPD told the City Council on Tuesday that LAPD officers arrested 114 people at protests Monday night — 53 for allegedly failing to disperse and 15 on suspicion of looting. The potential looters were stopped. One person was arrested for alleged assault with a deadly weapon on an officer, and another was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. They will be punished. The LAPD arrested 27 people at protests on Saturday and 40 on Sunday.

The problem is not the protesters. They have every right to be protesting the wholesale roundup of people with brown skin who have committed no crimes. ICE doesn't like to release the numbers, for obvious reasons, but what's come out so far suggest that half the people ICE has detained were not subject to warrants for their arrests and have committed no crimes.

On Tuesday, the mayor of Los Angeles imposed a curfew on exactly one square mile of downtown LA in an effort to stop the hooligans who were looting. Downtown LA was quiet on Tuesday night. Los Angeles is a city of nearly 500 square miles. One-five hundredth of the city was under a curfew, hardly reason to send in an invading military force, which Trump has done.

And there is certainly no reason to attack the organizers of the peaceful protests, which is what Republican grandstanders are doing. On Wednesday, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley threatened an investigation of one of our city's most respected immigrant organizations, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which he accused of "bankrolling the unrest." Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee of Crime and Counterterrorism, wrote to the leader of the group that they should "cease and desist any further involvement in the organization, funding, or promotion of these unlawful activities."

What he called, but didn't identify, as "credible reporting now suggests that your organization has provided logistical support and financial resources to individuals engaged in these disruptive actions. Let me be clear: bankrolling civil unrest is not protected speech. It is aiding and abetting criminal conduct."

No, it's not. Organizing and supporting peaceful protests against mass, untargeted roundups and the misuse of the military is fully protected by the First Amendment.

Trump wants race riots. He wants people to be terrorized. He wants to exercise absolute authority. The protests will continue, and they will spread. Trump railed against the rapists and murderers he claimed were invading our country. He promised to remove them. Fine. Now that he's president, he can't find enough of them to fulfill his quotas. So instead, he is going after law-abiding neighbors with force and without due process. He has triggered this unrest, and it is his fault. The organizers of the protests in Los Angeles are doing everything they can to ensure that the protests are peaceful and lawful. The same cannot be said of Trump and his minions.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Fox Fantasizes About Migrant 'Insurrection' To Justify Tyrannical Response

Fox Fantasizes About Migrant 'Insurrection' To Justify Tyrannical Response

Fox News’ depiction of the protests that began in and around Los Angeles over the weekend is a grim fantasy — but one that encourages President Donald Trump to realize his vision of U.S. troops crushing left-wing dissent.

Prime-time host Jesse Watters laid out his network’s dominant narrative in a Monday night monologue.

“Democrats are causing mayhem in their cities, so when Trump restores order, they can label him a dictator and stir up even more hatred and violence against him,” Watters alleged. “They're burning their own cities just to prove to their bloodthirsty base that they're fighting Trump in the streets, burning their own cities for power.”

None of this is true. The LA immigration protests are an organic response to Trump’s dramatic escalation of immigration enforcement. Democratic politicians have vocally opposed the riots that have sometimes accompanied those protests. That rioting, while deplorable, has not engulfed the city. But Trump has used it as a pretext to deploy U.S. troops for the confrontation with protesters he has long sought.

It is a core function of the government to maintain order on the streets and enforce the laws. That is properly the responsibility of officials like Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who have condemned the rioting, attacks on law enforcement, and destruction of property that at times have occurred amid the protests and called for legal accountability for perpetrators.

By suggesting that those officials are instead actively supporting riots, while inflating the extent of those riots, Fox is creating a justification for Trump to step in. And given Trump’s drive to dominate his perceived enemies and his glorification of state violence, that could end very badly.

Immigration protests are an organic response to Trump’s escalation of enforcement

The Wall Street Journalpublished on Tuesday an extensive investigation of what it termed “The White House Marching Orders That Sparked the L.A. Migrant Crackdown.”

The story details how White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — disappointed by a pace of daily deportations that was below what the Biden administration attained last year — instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens” at targets like Home Depot and 7-Eleven.

According to the Journal, “ICE agents appeared to follow Miller’s tip and conducted an immigration sweep Friday at the Home Depot in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Westlake in Los Angeles, helping set off a weekend of protests around Los Angeles County, including at the federal detention center in the city’s downtown.”

The story also provides this summary of the extraordinary tactics the Trump administration has used to try to increase its deportation numbers:

Federal agents make warrantless arrests. Masked agents take people into custody without identifying themselves. Plainclothes agents in at least a dozen cities have arrested migrants who showed up to their court hearings. And across the U.S., people suspected of being in the country illegally are disappearing into the federal detention system without notice to families or lawyers, according to attorneys, witnesses and officials.

Trump won the 2024 presidential election while promising an agenda of mass deportation. But the naked cruelty and questionable legality of these policies will inevitably spur dissent, and some who oppose them will exercise their First Amendment rights to speak out against them, including at public protests.

Democratic politicians don't support rioting that sometimes accompanied those protests

The civic core of Los Angeles has seen unacceptable levels of violence over the past several days. As the Los Angeles Times reported, “Protests have devolved into clashes with police and made-for-TV scenes of chaos: Waymo taxis on fire. Vandals defacing city buildings with anti-police graffiti. Masked men lobbing chunks of concrete at California Highway Patrol officers keeping protesters off the 101 Freeway.”

That rioting, according to LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, was caused not by “the people that we see here in the day who are out there legitimately exercising their First Amendment rights,” but “by masked ‘anarchists’ who he said were bent on exploiting the state of unrest to vandalize property and attack police.”

Fox propagandists like Watters, echoing Trump administration officials, have suggested that Democrats could instantly make the rioting stop but are refusing to do so because they support the violence.

They don’t offer evidence for this Democratic support for rioting. Democratic leaders have rightfully and repeatedly condemned the violence targeting law enforcement and destruction of property as anathema, as a simple perusal of their X accounts reveals. In addition to denouncing such tactics on their merits, they frequently point out that rioting plays into Trump’s hands.

Newsom’s messages to the public over the last few days have included:

Bass has likewise said:

Their statements are not anomalous. Sen. Alex Padilla’s (D-CA) “message to the people in LA” is “keep speaking out and protest peacefully.” His colleague Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) posted, “Los Angeles — violence is never the answer. Assaulting law enforcement is never ok.” Other caucus members who are as ideologically diverse as Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are on the same page, calling for peaceful protest while condemning violence. Indeed, the lack of support for rioting has led to condemnations of the Democratic Party from the left.

No one in a position of authority in the Democratic Party is following the path that Trump and his supporters at Fox took after the January 6 insurrection by making excuses for rioting and paving the way to pardon the offenders.

These riots, while deplorable, have not engulfed the city

Right-wing pundits have suggested that journalists are minimizing the violence by pointing out that the protests are occurring in a tiny fraction of a massive city where the vast majority of residents are unaffected by any violence that has occurred. But the scope of the problem really does matter in determining the appropriate government response.

Trump claimed on Sunday that Los Angeles “has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals” and that action is needed “to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots.” On Monday, an official Defense Department social media account reported that “Los Angeles is burning, and local leaders are refusing to respond.”

The more extensive the destruction, the more justification there is for federal action.

In 1992, for example, President George H.W. Bush deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to days of widespread rioting following the acquittal of the police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King. Time reported of the LA riots:

Over the course of several days, more than 60 people died, while another 2,000 were injured. More than 1,000 buildings were defaced, leading to damages that amounted to some $1 billion.

Bush called up the National Guard under the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the President to deploy the typically state-controlled military force in certain situations involving invasions or insurrections, on the third day of the riots.

“What followed Wednesday's jury verdict in the Rodney King case was a tragic series of events for the city of Los Angeles: Nearly 4,000 fires, staggering property damage, hundreds of injuries, and the senseless deaths of over 30 people,” Bush said in an address at the time. He went on to announce the commitment of thousands of additional troops to the city “to help restore order” at the behest of the governor and mayor, and the federalization of the National Guard.

The violence against law enforcement and property damage that has occurred since Friday is unacceptable, and the governor and mayor are right to try to control the chaos. It’s also not on the scale of the Rodney King riots, happening over what amounts to a handful of city blocks, as these graphics from The New York Times show.

But Trump has responded in unprecedented fashion. He has federalized and deployed roughly 4,000 soldiers of the California National Guard, an order the state called “unlawful” and that Newsom said came without the president “conferring with the state.”

He also deployed 700 U.S. Marines, which “are typically not trained or equipped to deal with civil disturbances,” as retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré toldTask and Purpose. Absent clear coordination, the arrival of those forces “presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us tasked with safeguarding this city,” according to McDonnell.

Trump is determined to get an escalation

The president has been described as a fascist by those who served at the highest levels of his first administration, including his former White House chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, as well as by Gen. Mark Milley, who served under him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He promised on the campaign trail to “root out the communist, Marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” and floated using the National Guard or even the military against “the enemy from within,” which he described as “radical left lunatics.”

He reportedly considered invoking the Insurrection Act during the 2020 civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd, was rebuffed by Esper and Milley, and said that he regretted not “immediately” sending in the military.

He has selected more pliant defense officials for his second term, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox host who supported the domestic deployment of the military and is known for defending U.S. service members who had been accused and convicted of war crimes.

Trump has praised the Chinese government’s murderous response to student protesters at Tiananmen Square, saying it showed “the power of strength,” and has repeatedly urged law enforcement officers to use rougher, more brutal tactics in dealing with those they apprehend.

And the president does not appear to observe a distinction between peaceful protest and violent riot — if the perpetrators aren’t his supporters, it’s all insurrection to him.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

'No Kings Day': Americans Defending Democracy -- And Health Care

'No Kings Day': Americans Defending Democracy -- And Health Care

I’ve spent much of the past few days mulling the significance of the Trump regime sending National Guard troops into Los Angeles. Gov. Gavin Newsom did not ask for them. Mayor Karen Bass did not ask for them. The tens of thousands of city and state police available to Newsom and Bass were more than adequate to curtail the vandalism perpetrated by some demonstrators during the weekend’s protests against the large-scale ICE raids in the city.

Trump’s action has only one precedent in recent history. In March 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the National Guard into Alabama against the wishes of Gov. George Wallace. LBJ felt compelled to act to protect civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, who had been viciously attacked and beaten the previous week by state and local police.

Richard Nixon didn’t order the National Guard onto the campuses of Kent State and Jackson State during protests against the Vietnam War in the spring of 1970, which resulted in the deaths of six students. Ohio’s Gov. James Rhodes and Mississippi’s Gov. William Winter were responsible for those unnecessary and ultimately tragic actions.

Trump’s order — unjustified, lawless, a gross violation of California’s rights — raises the serious question, as much as anything that he has done to date, of whether we still live in a free country. On a number of fronts, the Supreme Court has allowed his flagrantly illegal actions to proceed unimpeded despite lower courts ruling them either illegal or unconstitutional. Congress lays supine.

The checks and balances envisioned by this country’s founders are no longer operative. They are not providing the basic protections on which freedom depends, which includes above all the government adhering to the rule of law and our elected leaders upholding the Constitution they swore to defend.

Yesterday morning, Newsom promised to sue the federal government. He raised the specter of witholding federal taxes should Trump follow through on his threat to withold government payments to the state (which would be a net plus for California like most heavily blue states, which send more to the federal government than they receive in return).

Those of us who live in major urban areas with large immigrant populations worry that our cities and our states may become the next targets of large-scale ICE raids, which will inevitably provoke a reaction from justifiably outraged young protesters. Let’s not forget that urban economies (as well as many rural agricultural and meat-processing areas) are heavily dependent on the 11 million undocumented workers the Trump regime wants to deport.

Even if a narrow majority of the general public (about 55 percent) back stricter enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws, a far larger majority backs adherence to the rule of law. A Pew Research Center poll in April found 78 percent of Americans wanted the Trump administration to follow federal court rulings, which included 91 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans. The overall number rises to 88 percent for Supreme Court rulings.

This coming Saturday, while Trump holds a Soviet-style military parade in downtown Washington, there will be mass protests across the country. People will be carrying banners declaring “No More Kings.” I’ve volunteered to be a marshall to help assure that no misguided demonstrators or agents provocateurs provide a pretext for police action. I encourage all my readers to take part.

But protests are not enough. Only an engaged citizenry can defeat the reactionary forces here at home that threaten the values that truly made America great: equality, fairness, compassion, and equal justice before laws that everyone, including the president of the United States, adheres to.

Health care on the line

With that thought in mind, I hope that you will take time over the next few weeks to let your Senators know that you oppose the vicious cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The Congressional Budget Office last week predicted just those sections alone will result in around 15 million people losing health insurance over the next decade.

Let’s put that number in perspective. There are currently around 28 million uninsured in the U.S. or about eight percent of the population, which is down from 17 oercent when Barack Obama took office in 2009. The 2010 Affordable Care Act, for all its flaws (which I won’t go into here), was tremendously successful in achieving its main goal of reducing the U.S. uninsured rate. Add 15 million more people to the ranks of the uninsured and that rate will soar back to at least 12 percent.

Who will pay for the costs of those people when they show up in the emergency room needing health care that they can’t pay for? You and your employers, who will wind up paying higher rates for private health insurance to pay for the cost of hospitals’ and physicians’ uncompensated care.

Rural hospitals, which are heavily dependent on Medicaid funding, will get hurt the most because states where most of those hospitals are located cannot afford to make up for the cutbacks in federal support. The destitute elderly in nursing homes will also suffer as their staffs get cut due to the proposed law’s ending of the Biden administration’s minimum staffing rule.

And to what end? The work requirements that Republicans claim are merely aimed at getting shirkers off the rolls is a smoke screen to hide the bill’s true intent: To keep alive unnecessary tax breaks for the most well-off people in this country. That $4 trillion-plus giveaway is so large that even after making massive cuts in health care and other domestic spending, it will still increase the federal deficit by over $2 trillion over the next decade.

Merrill Goozner is a former editor of Modern Healthcare, where he writes a weekly column. He is a former reporter for The Chicago Tribune and professor of business journalism at New York University. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Gooz News.

Donald Trump

Humiliated Trump Seeks To Deflect Attention With Los Angeles Provocation

What is our moral responsibility as citizens of the United States when the President of the United States moves to deploy thousands of American soldiers against us?

Trump signed a memo on Friday night ordering 2,000 members of the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles County after federal immigration agents in riot gear squared off with hundreds of protesters for a second consecutive day.

Trump’s action is extreme although technically legal. Title 10 of the United States Code allows a president to federalize the National Guard units of states to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” In a presidential memo, Trump said, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

Why is he doing it, and why now?

Because Trump can’t stand to be humiliated — as he has been in the last two weeks. By senate Republicans refusal to quickly enact his so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. By Xi Jinping’s refusal to back down on trade (and restrict shipments of China’s rare earths, which American industry depends on). By Putin’s refusal to end the war in Ukraine. By the federal courts pushing back against his immigration policy. And, now, by insults and smears from the richest person in the world, who has a larger social media following than does Trump.

So what does Trump do when he’s humiliated? He deflects public attention. Like any bully, he tries to find another way to display his power — especially over people whom he doesn’t consider “his” people.

He has despised California since the 2016 election when the state overwhelmingly voted against him.

And what better Ground Zero for him to try out his police state than Los Angeles — a city teaming with immigrants, with Hollywood celebrities who demonize him, and wealthy moguls who despise him?

He is calling out the National Guard to provoke violence. As California governor Gavin Newsom said, “that move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”

Exactly. Trump wants to escalate tensions. He wants a replay of the violence that occurred in the wake of the George Floyd murder — riots, mayhem, and destruction that allow him to escalate his police state further — imposing curfews, closing down parts of Los Angeles, perhaps seeking to subdue the entire state. And beyond.

Please do not give him this. Don’t fall into his trap.

We cannot be silent in the face of Trump’s dictatorial move. But we must not succumb to violence.

What is needed is peaceful civil disobedience. Americans locking arms to protect those who need protection. Americans sitting in the way of armored cars. Americans singing and chanting in the face of the Americans whom Trump is drafting into his handmade civil war.

Americans who do not attempt to strike back, but who do what many of us did during the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements — peacefully but unambiguously reject tyranny.

A humiliated Trump is the most dangerous Trump. But he will overreach. He already has. And this overreach will ultimately be his undoing.

As long as we keep our heads.

May we look back on this hellish time and feel proud of what we did.

Be strong. Be safe. Hug your loved ones.

Robert Reich is a former secretary of labor and professor of public policy at University of California-Berkeley, who served in four presidential administrations of both parties. He is the author of several books and currently writes daily commentary on Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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