LA protests live: Trump launches fresh attack on Gavin Newsom

Times

4 hours ago

President Trump has blamed 'insurrectionists' for the turmoil in Los Angeles after sending in the National Guard to quell the protests.
'The people that are causing the problem are professional agitators, they're insurrectionists, they're bad people,' Trump told reporters as he disembarked from Marine One on the south lawn of the White House.
He did not respond to a question on whether he would invoke the Insurrection Act, the 1807 law that gives the president the authority to deploy the US military on home soil to suppress civil disorder.
Trump took another swipe at Gavin Newsom, remarking that the California governor was doing a 'terrible job'.
'I like Gavin Newsom, he's a nice guy but he's grossly incompetent. Everybody knows it,' the president said.
President Trump has insisted he made a 'great decision' in deploying the National Guard to tackle the Los Angeles protests, claiming the city faced total destruction if he had not intervened.
'If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated,' Trump posted on Truth Social in his first public comments on the crisis on Monday.
The president again attacked Gavin Newsom, the California governor, and Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, who have accused the White House of inflaming the situation and seizing on the pretext to send in troops.
Trump added: '[They] should be saying, 'THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR.'
'Instead, they choose to lie to the People of California and America by saying that we weren't needed, and that these are 'peaceful protests.''
Protests descended into violence in Los Angeles over the weekend as police faced off with demonstrators decrying workplace raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
California state and local officials, who are mainly Democrats, accused President Trump of inflaming initially small-scale demonstrations by mounting a federal response, including the deployment of the National Guard.
Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, requested Trump remove the Guard members, calling their deployment a 'serious breach of state sovereignty'.
• Read in full: Five things to know about the LA protests
The Mexican president has condemned the immigration protests in Los Angeles but stopped short of calling for an end to demonstrations.
Speaking at her morning press conference, Claudia Sheinbaum said: 'It must be clear: we condemn violence wherever it comes from.' She added that the Mexican community should 'act peacefully and not fall for provocations'.
Speaking alongside Sheinbaum, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, the Mexican foreign secretary, said at least 42 Mexicans were being held in detention centres after the recent immigration raids in Los Angeles and four had been deported.
Waymo has suspended services in downtown Los Angeles after several of its self-driving 'robotaxis' were torched by protesters at the weekend.
At least five Waymo vehicles have been pictured in flames and covered in graffiti since the clashes erupted in protest at federal immigration raids. The taxi company, that is owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, has said it will continue to operate in other parts of Los Angeles.
Waymo's driverless taxis have faced a guerrilla campaign by angry LA residents after charging stations for the vehicles appeared in residential areas earlier this year.
Frustrated by the incessant beeping the vehicles make as they reverse at all times of day and night, some vigilante homeowners have fought back, launching a campaign of peaceful sabotage against the charging stations.
• Read about LA's guerrilla war against robot taxis in full here
The mayor of Los Angeles has said she is not concerned about being arrested after the suggestion was made by President Trump's 'border tsar'.
Karen Bass told CNN that she 'can't imagine a situation where I am going to interfere with federal agents'.
She added that it was 'inappropriate' for Tom Homan to make the suggestion at the weekend that she and Gavin Newsom, the California governor, could be arrested if they impeded efforts to quell the protests.
Bass said Trump's decision to send in the National Guard was 'an escalation that didn't have to happen' and played down the extent of the protests, insisting that they were confined to a few streets in downtown Los Angeles.
A top LA official has urged protesters to do their part to keep the peace before a fourth day of probable unrest.
'Don't feed into this narrative that we don't care, that we're going to hurt each other and hurt our city. We don't want that to happen. Definitely we want to have calm,' Hilda Solis, the chair pro tempore of the Los Angeles County board of supervisors, told CNN on Monday morning. She said the emergency situation seen on Sunday night 'has been lifted' and Angelenos appeared to be returning to work as normal today.
Several protest events have been scheduled for Monday after the overnight unrest came to a standstill.
At 9am local time (5pm BST), a news conference is set to be held by the advocacy group, Mujeres En Acción, in LA's fashion district, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducted raids on Friday.
A student walkout against the raids and the National Guard deployment is expected to begin at 11am in schools across the county.
At noon, the American Civil Liberties Union is slated to lead a 'peaceful protest' downtown.
The Los Angeles Unified School District will meet at 3pm to discuss ICE activity on campuses after Superintendent Alberto M Carvalho condemned the raids for causing 'unnecessary fear, confusion and trauma for our students and families'.
Elon Musk has been supportive of President Trump's move to send in the National Guard to Los Angeles in a series of posts on X.
The billionaire owner of X has shared posts from Trump and JD Vance, the vice-president, sharply defending the administration's decision on Sunday.
In the latest signal of a tentative truce after last week's public fallout with Trump, Musk shared a screenshot of a post by the president on his Truth Social platform which called for Gavin Newsom, the California governor, and Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, to 'apologise' for doing an 'absolutely horrible job'.
The post also called the protesters, who are opposing Trump's immigration enforcement agenda, 'troublemakers and insurrectionists'.
The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has defended the agency, insisting that his officers were acting within the law.
'People need to stop calling ICE terrorists and criminal and racist, because they're enforcing the laws enacted by Congress, signed by a president,' Tom Homan told MSNBC. 'They're not making us up, they're trying to make [America] safer, one illegal criminal at a time.'
He backed President Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard, brushing off the California governor Gavin Newsom's criticism and maintaining that the troops were deployed to 'protect life and property', adding: 'I was on the ground, Governor Newsom wasn't.'
Homan defended ICE's tactics, claiming the agency would use 'every tool available'.
'It's not about raiding schools, raiding hospitals … There's no sanctuary for public safety threats or national security threats,' he said.
Gavin Newsom has said that President Trump's decision to send in the National Guard to tackle protests 'will allow him to go into any state and do the same thing'.
The California governor told the YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen that 'the people's lives are at risk' and reiterated his threat to challenge the deployment in court.
He added: 'The reputation of this country is at stake. Great American cities and states … this is a preview of things to come, this isn't about LA per se.'
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The White House has hit back at Gavin Newsom, claiming the California governor was 'too weak' to protect Los Angeles and 'did nothing' as the clashes erupted.
'Federal law enforcement officers were attacked by violent radicals and illegal criminals waving foreign flags because Governor Newsom was too weak to protect the city,' the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, tweeted in response to Newsom's post on X.
Newsom's inaction forced President Trump to intervene and send in the National Guard, Leavitt said, adding: 'President Trump has stepped in to maintain law and order and protect federal buildings.'
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President Trump's head of border enforcement has said there have been no discussions about arresting Gavin Newsom, who challenged him to do so.
Tom Homan was challenged by the California governor on Sunday to arrest him over his response to the protests in Los Angeles in an interview with MSNBC. Homan had earlier declined to rule out arresting Newson if he impeded federal efforts to address the protests.
Homan told Fox News there 'was no discussion about arresting Newson' but added that 'no one's above the law'.
The protests in Los Angeles, an overwhelmingly Democratic-voting city in a blue state, are perhaps the most volatile expression of opposition to Trump in his second term so far. But how popular is his administration in the country at large?
According to an aggregation of polls by The Times data team, Trump's approval rating sits at 45 per cent, marginally higher compared with his first term but about 10 percentage points below that of Joe Biden in the equivalent period of his presidency. Some 52 per cent of Americans disapprove of Trump's performance in office.
• Trump approval rating 2025: tracking the opinion polls
On the issue of immigration, which has driven the LA protests, a majority of Americans support his programme to deport immigrants illegally in the US, according to a YouGov poll for CBS taken before the protests. Some 54 per cent of respondents approved of the policy, against 46 per cent opposed.
Some of those who attended protests in Los Angeles on Sunday said they were doing so on behalf of family members who were immigrants and scared.
Hannah Navarro, 29, a receptionist from the Boyle Heights neighbourhood, held a 'Melt ICE' sign and said some of her relatives were afraid to leave their homes due to immigration agency raids on workplaces.
'We're fighting so our families can come out of hiding,' she told the Wall Street Journal.
Jocelyn Pimentel, 28, an Orange County resident, attended a demonstration with her 72-year-old grandmother, who was visiting from Puebla, Mexico.
They were protesting on behalf of immediate family members who weren't in the US legally, she said, adding that immigrants needed better rights and pathways to citizenship.
A Californian city has ended what it calls a 'divisive' agreement with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to house federal immigration detainees in its police department facility.
Noting that law enforcement in Glendale had not engaged in federal immigration operations, officials said the city consistently ranked as one of the safest in the country and the police department was highly trusted by residents.
'At this time it is in our best interest to not allow that trust to be undermined,' officials said in a statement Sunday.
Authorities for the city in Los Angeles County added that the move was to protect residents' safety and not politically motivated.
'Despite the transparency and safeguards the city has upheld, the city recognises that public perception of the ICE contract — no matter how limited or carefully managed, no matter the good — has become divisive,' according to the statement.
President Trump has rekindled his rivalry with Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, by deploying 2,000 soldiers to Los Angeles.
Newsom has established California as a bastion of liberal resistance to Trump's presidency and set aside $50 million this year to 'Trump-proof' California, promising to mount legal challenges to White House overreach.
Trump has responded furiously to Newsom's truculence, having previously scrapped with him over the Covid pandemic, the border with Mexico and wildfires in Los Angeles.
• Read in full: 'Trump is deploying soldiers because he wants a spectacle'
China's consulate in Los Angeles has advised its citizens in the area to strengthen personal security as unrest continues in America's second-biggest city.
'Chinese citizens in the region [should] strengthen personal security measures, stay away from gatherings, crowded areas or places with poor public security and avoid going out at night or travelling alone,' the consulate said in a statement.
Chinese citizens should also 'closely monitor official announcements' and 'raise their safety awareness', it added.
On Saturday Mexico's consulate in the city posted contact details for citizens requiring advice on the immigration raids.
A contingent of US Marines is on standby to be deployed in Los Angeles if the protests continue to escalate. Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said on Saturday evening that he might choose to send active-duty Marines from Camp Pendleton, south of LA, 'if violence continues'.
The California governor, Gavin Newsom, who had already criticised President Trump's deployment of National Guard reservists to the city, dismissed Hegseth's suggestion. 'The secretary of defense is now threatening to deploy active-duty Marines on American soil against its own citizens. This is deranged behaviour,' Newsom posted on X.
Earlier protests in Los Angeles, a sprawling city of four million people, were centred on Sunday around several blocks downtown. It was the third and most intense day of largely peaceful demonstrations against Trump's immigration crackdown in the region, and some sporadic violence.
But the arrival of about 300 National Guard troops prompted anger and fear among many residents. The guard was deployed specifically to protect federal buildings, including the downtown detention centre where protesters concentrated.
The protests began on Friday after it emerged Immigration Customs Enforcement agents were carrying out raids in the Westlake district as well as in Paramount, south of LA, where the population is more than 82 per cent Hispanic.
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Elon Musk posted a photograph of a protester standing on a damaged car in Los Angeles, waving a Mexican flag. 'This is not ok,' the world's richest man wrote on X, the social media platform he owns.
Musk was an adviser to Trump before the two began exchanging insults in public last week. Musk denounced the president's sweeping tax and spending bill as a 'disgusting abomination', prompting an exchange of social media acrimony between the pair.
Trump said on Saturday that his relationship with the billionaire donor was over and warned there would be 'serious consequences' if Musk decided to fund Democrats running against Republicans before votes on the tax and spending bill.
A heavy police presence remains in and around Los Angeles City Hall.
Several blocks surrounding the building, which is lit up and flanked by trees, were closed off by lines of armed troops as they diverted away traffic.
More than a dozen Los Angeles police department cars were parked in front of an adjacent building, some with their front windows smashed from earlier confrontations.
Clusters of people in masks loitered nearby on street corners but none showed any desire to engage with officers.
An Australian television reporter has been shot in the leg by a Los Angeles police officer while broadcasting the protests.
Channel 9's US correspondent, Lauren Tomasi, grimaced after she was hit in the leg with a rubber bullet after filming a live cross on the riots in downtown LA.
The video shows a police officer taking aim and shooting at the journalist, as police were trying to move protesters back. Tomasi could be heard saying 'I'm alright'.
The incident has been condemned by the Australian Green senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who has urged the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to raise the incident with President Trump.
'US authorities shooting an Australian journalist is simply shocking,' she said. 'It is completely unacceptable and must be called out.'
The Democratic governor of California previously mocked Trump for posting a congratulatory message to the National Guard on social media before troops had arrived in Los Angeles.
Gavin Newsom had repeatedly insisted the state authorities had the situation under control and told MSNBC that Trump never suggested deploying the Guard during a phone call on Friday, calling the president a 'stone cold liar'.
The admonishments did not deter the administration. 'It's a bald-faced lie for Newsom to claim there was no problem in Los Angeles before President Trump got involved,' Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said.
Protesters set a bin on fire and pushed it into the centre of a main road to the north of downtown Los Angeles.
Within a matter of minutes a long line of police cars came racing around the corner, escorting two fire trucks to extinguish the blaze.
Dozens of police stood watch as the firemen set to work while a group of protesters chanted further down in the street. 'Move aside,' one policewoman told me.
Most of the unrest has given way to small, isolated episodes like this. There are still dozens of demonstrators roaming the streets — and the occasional loud bang — but the night appears to be calming down.
A man accused of assaulting a federal officer at an immigration protest on Saturday has been added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted list, with a $50,000 bounty on his arrest.
After three days of public disorder in Los Angeles, the FBI is seeking the public's help in identifying a man who allegedly threw rocks at law enforcement property, injuring a federal officer and damaging government vehicles.
A reward has been offered for information leading to his arrest.
In San Francisco a demonstration called to show solidarity with the protests in Los Angeles also turned violent on Sunday, resulting in at least 60 arrests.
The demonstration in downtown San Francisco started at about 6pm near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office but quickly developed into a standoff between demonstrators and police dressed in riot gear.
Three police officers were injured, one of whom was hospitalised, according to the San Fransico Police Department.
The Democrat mayor, Daniel Lurie, said in a post on X: 'Everyone in this country has a right to make their voice heard peacefully … But we will never tolerate violent and destructive behaviour.
'Violence directed at law enforcement or public servants is never acceptable.'
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The streets of Chinatown, a usually bustling neighbourhood, are deserted. But one private security guard, who gave his name as Salazar, has been instructed by his bosses to continue with his late-night patrols.
He has been tasked with monitoring several properties in Chinatown and deterring protesters, despite reports of looting.
Salazar, 24, is armed with nothing but a taser and is set to work until 7am local time, alongside just one other security guard.
'I'm feeling pretty nervous about the night ahead,' he said. 'I've been told that if people start looting I shouldn't get involved.'
When asked what he made of the protests, he said: 'I can't choose sides.'
Multiple people have been struck in the face with the non-lethal ammunition being used by police, one protester has claimed.
'They shouldn't be firing that high,' says Joshua, 20, who lives close to Paramount, one of the first neighbourhoods to experience unrest. 'I don't mind about being hit in the legs, but not the face.'
He showed a so-called 'sponge bullet' he had recovered from an earlier confrontation. It was a 40mm hard foam projectile that police typically used to disperse crowds without causing serious harm.
Police were advised not to fire this ammunition at the head, neck, face, eyes, or spine, unless an officer or another person is under attack.
However, Joshua alleged the 'cops are being reckless' when using them.
The Los Angeles mayor has blamed the increasingly aggressive protests on Trump's decision to deploy the Guard, calling it a move designed to enflame tensions.
Karen Bass urged protesters not to 'engage in violence and chaos', adding on X: 'Don't give the administration what they want.'
'What we're seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration,' she said at a press conference on Sunday afternoon. 'This is about another agenda, this isn't about public safety.'
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It is midnight in Los Angeles and masked protesters are continuing to congregate around the northern edge of the downtown area, despite police orders to leave.
Multiple helicopters circle above as demonstrators linger in groups in the street.
Police are using flash bangs and tear gas to move the groups away from downtown LA and into Chinatown, which is located to the north. Some of the protestors appear to be responding with fireworks as loud booms echo throughout the neighbourhood.
'I'm here to fight facism, bro,' says one 28-year-old woman called Katrina, as she wraps the top of her head in a Palestinian keffiyeh to further conceal her face. 'I'm staying out all night long.'
Earlier officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had carried out raids on workplaces suspected of employing illegal immigrants, rounding up and arresting hundreds of foreign nationals.
There have been at least 118 arrests by ICE agents in the last week in Los Angeles.
The Department of Homeland Security estimated there were 2.6 million undocumented migrants in California, the largest number of any state.
President Trump's ban on travel to the United States by citizens from 12 mainly African and Middle Eastern countries took effect Monday amid rising tension over the president's escalating campaign of immigration enforcement.
The proclamation, which Trump signed last week, applies to citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
It also imposes heightened restrictions on people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela who are outside the US and do not hold a valid visa.
A British photographer required emergency surgery after being hit by a non-lethal bullet fired during the protests in Los Angeles.
Nick Stern was documenting a stand-off between anti Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protesters and police outside a Home Depot in Paramount when a 14mm round known as a 'sponge bullet' hit him in the thigh.
He has now undergone an operation and is recovering at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.
'I had a press ID round my neck, a large camera, a video camera … I was making a point of making myself visible as media,' he told The Times.
'Then I felt this horrific shooting pain impacting my leg. I felt down immediately and felt this large lump … then I blacked out'
• Read in full: British photographer, 60, shot by police
Protesters had torched and vandalised cars on Sunday night as police attempted to keep them away from the National Guard troops.
At least three self-driving Waymo cars were burned, with two others damaged as protesters roamed around a limited area in downtown Los Angeles.
Traffic was halted on a freeway for over an hour as scores of people thronged the roadway.
The LAPD established containment lines some distance from federal buildings, stopping contact between demonstrators and armed National Guardsmen from the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
The California governor accused President Trump of 'putting fuel on the fire' by deploying the National Guard.
Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said the state would file a lawsuit over the 'illegal, immoral and unconstitutional' deployment.
'Donald Trump has created the conditions you've seen on your TV tonight,' he told MSNBC.
'He's exacerbated the conditions … ever since he announced he was taking over the National Guard. We're going to test that theory with a lawsuit tomorrow.'
President Trump said that the LA police chief, Jim McDonnell, should use National Guard 'right now'.
'Jim McDonnell, the highly respected LAPD Chief, just stated that the protesters are getting very much more aggressive, and that he would 'have to reassess the situation,' as it pertains to bringing in the troops,' the president wrote on his Truth Social platform.
'He should, RIGHT NOW!!! Don't let these thugs get away with this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!'
The Los Angeles police chief, Jim McDonnell, said officers were 'overwhelmed' by the protesters who stayed on after an initial peaceful demonstration. He said they included regular agitators who show up at demonstrations to cause trouble.
Several dozen people were arrested throughout the weekend. At least one suspect was detained Sunday for throwing a Molotov cocktail at police, and another for ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers.
Protestors faced off with members of the National Guard outside the Metropolitan Detention Centre in downtown Los Angeles, throwing chunks of concrete, rocks, electric scooters and fireworks at police from behind a makeshift barrier that spanned the width of a street.
Police responded with tear gas and other measures, declaring an unlawful assembly — a precursor to officers moving in and making arrests.
The president said troops sent to Los Angeles would ensure 'very strong law and order,' while appearing to leave the door open to deploying soldiers in other cities.
'You have violent people and we are not going to let them get away with it,' President Trump told reporters on Sunday. 'I think you're going to see some very strong law and order.'
Thousands of protesters took to the streets in response to President Trump's extraordinary deployment of the National Guard, blocking off a major freeway and setting self-driving cars on fire as law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs to control the crowd in Los Angeles.
Trump, who became the first American leader in 60 years to deploy the National Guard on United States soil without a request for aid from a state governor, called up 2,000 soldiers, with about 300 so far deployed to America's second-largest city in a show of executive might.