Tuesday briefing: What Trump's response to the LA protests could mean for US democracy

Yahoo

a day ago

Late last week, Los Angeles was left stunned as droves of federal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers bore down on homes, businesses and neighbourhoods across the city in a series of immigration raids.
The anti-ICE protests that followed were swift and furious, fuelled in part by the reported ill-treatment of some of the 118 people thought to have been detained, allegedly without judicial warrants. By Friday evening, thousands had taken to the streets in mostly peaceful protests before violence flared in points around the city, with protesters attacking police cars and blocking highways.
Then came the response from the White House. President Donald Trump promised to crush the opposition on the LA streets, immediately and with military force, by using his powers to send 4,000 National Guard troops to the city.
Yesterday, despite the protests dwindling and remaining largely peaceful, Trump continued to escalate the situation, branding the protesters 'paid insurrectionists' with the administration ordering 700 marines into Los Angeles to support law enforcement in an exceptionally rare domestic deployment.
California governor Gavin Newsom has called Trump's response an 'unmistakable step toward authoritarianism', accusing him of intentionally causing chaos, terrorising communities and endangering democracy. Karen Bass, Los Angeles mayor, also warned that LA was being used by the Trump administration as a 'test case for what happens when the federal government moves in and takes the authority away from the state or away from local government'.
For today's newsletter, I spoke with Philippe Sands, the renowned human rights lawyer, on what Trump's response to the anti-immigration protests could mean for US democracy. That's after the headlines.
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The speed at which Trump deployed National Guard troops to quell the protests is a sign of just how willing the administration is to flex its power to the absolute constitutional limits.
According to Philippe Sands, none of us should be surprised by the tactics deployed. Throughout his career, Sands has documented and examined the methods used by authoritarian regimes and military dictatorships.
Sands says that the scenes unfolding in Los Angeles should be seen as part of a wider drive to create a sense of emergency, but also to test the limits of the public's imagination about what is acceptable and what must be resisted.
'People start in one place but very quickly events like we're seeing in Los Angeles can change the parameters of tolerance,' he says.
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What are the LA protests about?
Protests broke out across Los Angeles on Friday after agents from ICE conducted a series of high-profile immigration raids, which were met with horror by many locals. LA's city council released a statement that the city, which was 'built by immigrants and thrives because of immigrants' would not 'abide by fear tactics to support extreme political agendas that aim to stoke fear and spark discord in our community.'
Across the weekend, thousands joined anti-ICE demonstrations, with violence flaring at points across the city as police cars were attacked and highways blocked. The authorities responded with teargas and rubber bullets.
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What was Trump's response?
On Saturday, Trump said he was deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to clamp down on the immigration protests, posting on Truth Social: 'These radical left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will not be tolerated.' Yesterday plans were announced to send 700 marines to LA, with the administration saying they were there to support law enforcement efforts.
In sending troops, Trump bypassed the authority of the state's governor Gavin Newsom, who said that the deployment was 'purposefully inflammatory'.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the images of truckloads of armed National Guard troops arriving in the city 'akin to a declaration of war on all Californians'.
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How has Trump been able to deploy military personnel on to the streets of LA?
It's a central tenet of American democracy that the US military should not be used against its citizens. While the American constitution makes the president the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces, a set of constitutional and statutory legal constraints are intended to prevent the abuse of this exceptional power.
However there are loopholes, which Trump has been open about his intention to exploit.
First is the 18th-century Insurrection Act, which authorises the president to decide whether to use the military to engage in civilian law enforcement in certain situations. While he has labelled the protesters 'insurrectionists', Trump has stopped short of invoking the Insurrection Act in response to the protests in LA.
Second is the National Guard. While the US president cannot command military forces against US citizens, he is in charge of the use of the National Guard in Washington DC and can request that other states provide additional guard troops to supplement deployments in emergencies.
This weekend is not the first time the National Guard has been sent to Los Angeles. In 2020, troops used smoke canisters and rubber bullets to disperse Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters in Lafayette Square. In 1992, George HW Bush deployed thousands of troops to quell the riots after the police beating of Rodney King.
Yet, significantly, this weekend is the first time since 1965 that a president has sent in the National Guard without being requested to do so by a state governor, something labelled an 'outrageous overreach' by Newsom.
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Should this fuel fears Trump is driving the US towards authoritarianism?
In his first term as president, Trump was open about his desire to expand the powers of federal law enforcement and use the military to crush civil protest.
Announcing the deployment of National Guard troops in 2020, Trump said: 'If the city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residence, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,' before reportedly advocating for BLM protesters to be shot.
Sands is keen to stress we shouldn't be jumping to hasty conclusions, 'but it is obvious there are some warning signs that need to be taken seriously'.
He draws parallel's with Augusto Pinochet's Plan Z, where the Chilean dictator concocted a narrative that leftist insurgents were planning a coup to justify violently suppressing dissent and attacking citizens. Now in the US, you have Trump talking about the 'enemy within' to describe illegal immigrants and saying they are a threat to law and order. 'It's a very well-used playbook,' says Sands. 'You use the power of your office to create a climate of fear, which then allows you to go further than you'd otherwise be able to do, to argue for exceptional circumstances.'
At the same time, some say that in branding those protesting as a 'mob' being paid to incite violence, the Trump administration is conflating resistance to his immigration policy with unlawful and dangerous behaviour that the administration claims state authorities can't deal with. 'You might say that what is going on in Los Angeles is a way of testing the limits of what the American people are willing to tolerate, whether in these circumstances they can stomach the sight of troops on the streets of a major American city,' says Sands.
You only have to look at history to see how quickly such actions can become normalised, he adds. 'It's all part of this testing of the public's capacity to absorb this alongside all the other stuff – banning books, taking people off the streets, deporting without due process. It is a slow creep that takes people past limits that were previously unimaginable.'
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Is this a turning point for US democracy?
Sands says that although warning signs are there, the major difference between a case like Pinochet in Chile – the subject of his new book, 38 Londres Street – or other authoritarian regimes, is that so far the Trump administration has not limited – or not been able to limit – the role of the judiciary or the courts in holding the executive to account.
'Judges and lawyers are being attacked, very publicly, but judges have not been removed from office and Congress has not curtailed the powers of the courts,' he says. 'In the past it has been very clear that the role of the judges and the courts is the line that divides democracy and dictatorship. Authoritarian regimes such as the Pinochet dictatorship neutralised the courts almost immediately. In the US this hasn't happened.'
Sands says that Trump's decision to bypass the state and directly deploy troops to LA will probably lead to a slew of legal challenges. Already the state of California has said it will sue the government accusing the US president of 'unlawfully' federalizing the state's national guard to quell the protests. 'The courts and the judiciary's powers have actually stood firm so far,' he says. 'And on occasion we've seen the Trump administration blink and roll back when challenged.'
However, he concedes that the jury is out on whether this will remain the case. 'Judges in the United States are already under immense pressure,' Sands says. 'President Trump's administration seem to be pushing as far as they can, trying to create cracks and seeing how much they can bend that system.'
As anti-ICE protests spread to other cities across the country, political, public and legal resistance that Trump will face in the coming days in LA could be crucial in determining just how resilient the checks and balances built into the US constitution are in face of the real onslaught that Trump 2.0 has unleashed.
'There is a great deal at stake here,' says Sands. 'Warts and all, since 1945 the United States has always seen itself as a beacon for the idea of the rule of law and constitutionalism. If it now descends into classic authoritarianism, the world will be very different.'
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