US Marines have moved into Los Angeles, will protect federal building, official says
WASHINGTON, June 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Marines have moved into Los Angeles and will take over protecting the Wilshire federal building in the coming hours, the head of the military's efforts in the city said on Friday.
U.S. President Donald Trump can keep his deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles, according to a court ruling, as protests against immigration raids look set to enter their second week in the strongest backlash since his return to power in January.
The Trump administration has authorized 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to be deployed to Los Angeles to help protect federal property and personnel.
U.S. Army Major General Scott Sherman, who commands the task force of Marines and Guardsmen, said that about 200 Marines had moved into the city so far.
He added that neither the Marines nor the National Guard troops there had temporarily detained anyone yet.
"They have watched federal law enforcement arrest personnel as they were protecting, they have not had to detain anyone at this point," Sherman said.
The troops are authorized to detain people who pose a threat to federal personnel or property, but only until police can arrest them.
Trump could take a more far-reaching step by invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow troops to directly participate in civilian law enforcement.
During the 2020 wave of nationwide protests over racial injustice, more than 17,000 National Guard troops were activated by 23 states.
What is rare, however, is sending active-duty troops during times of civil disturbance.
Cities across the United States were bracing for more demonstrations especially on Saturday, when those also opposed to a weekend military parade in Washington marking the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary are expected to take to the streets.
The protests so far have been mostly peaceful, punctuated by incidents of violence, and restricted to a few city blocks.
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12 minutes ago
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Florida sheriff warns rioters 'we will kill you' as protests spread across US
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The Independent
16 minutes ago
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Why Starmer must stand up to Trump at crucial G7 summit
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Telegraph
23 minutes ago
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Mark Carney's conversion from eco warrior to oil and gas champion
Once considered the Bank of England's greenest-ever governor, Mark Carney has seemingly undergone a Damascene conversion. During his time at Threadneedle Street, he called on the world to leave 80pc of oil and gas in the ground. But now, as Canada's new prime minister, he wants to pump as much as he can to protect the country's economy from Donald Trump's trade war. Canada is going to become an energy powerhouse, Carney told reporters last week. And he didn't mean just in renewables. 'When I talk about being an energy superpower, I mean in both clean and conventional energies,' he said. 'And yes, that does mean oil and gas. 'It means using our oil and gas here in Canada to displace imports wherever possible, particularly from the United States. 'It makes no sense to be sending that money south of the border or across the ocean, so yes, it also means more oil and gas exports – without question.' These comments are remarkable given they come from a man who repeatedly called for an end to drilling during his tenure as Bank governor between 2013 and 2020. One such call came in a 2015 speech at Lloyds of London, when he described 80pc of the world's known fossil fuel reserves as 'unburnable'. He said: 'The catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors – imposing a cost on future generations that the current generation has no incentive to fix.' Given Carney's influence, his dramatic warnings inevitably shaped UK government decision-making at the time, as he championed the cause of net zero to a total of five different energy secretaries. Claire Perry, who served as Tory energy minister between 2017 and 2018, recalls: 'Mark had a huge impact on global climate issues. 'He created all the momentum around carbon markets and energy transition investment.' 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Immediately after succeeding Justin Trudeau as prime minister and winning Canada's election in April, he wasted no time in signing a directive cancelling Canada's existing carbon tax and confirming rebates for many of those who had paid it. He's now gone even further by pledging to build oil and gas pipelines, LNG export terminals, and to relax the emissions restrictions that have angered many of Canada's biggest fossil fuels producers. And his plans don't stop there. 'All this is not enough just to make Canada an energy superpower,' he said. 'It's not enough to build our full potential. 'It's not enough to truly get incomes growing across the country. We can do much more. We are going to be very, very ambitious. Build, big, build, bold.' Carney, who also previously ran the Bank of Canada, reconciles such ambitions with simultaneous pledges on green technologies that could theoretically reduce emissions, such as carbon capture and storage. But these will take years or decades to implement. According to experts, Carney's conversation has been driven by the economy, as oil and gas accounted for up to 7.5pc of the country's GDP in recent years. In 2023, crude oil exports alone were valued at $124bn, representing 16pc of Canada's total exports. That figure rises to 20pc if gas exports are included. What's more, Canada has about 171bn barrels of oil in recoverable reserves – far greater than America's 44bn. It means Canada can rely on oil for decades, whereas US production is expected to peak in the next few years. However, most of that oil and gas comes from one province, Alberta. That region alone holds billions of dollars, although its voters blame Carney's and Trudeau's Liberal party for climate restrictions that curbed economic growth. A recent opinion piece for Canada's Globe and Mail by Preston Manning, a retired politician who helped found Canada's conservative movement, warned that his 5m fellow Albertans had had enough of rule from Ottawa and were considering secession. Some go further. Alberta, they point out, shares a border with the US and perhaps has more in common with the likes of Texas than Toronto. These growing tensions have created a political opportunity for Alberta's conservative leaders. Independence referendum Less than 24 hours after Carney's election, Danielle Smith, Alberta's premier, introduced a bill to the province's legislature, making it much easier for a citizens' movement to trigger an independence referendum. The new rules slash the number of citizens' signatures required to trigger a referendum, from 600,000 to 177,000 and give petitioners 120 days to collect them rather than the previous 90. She has done so to pile pressure on Carney, handing him a list of nine energy-related federal laws she wants overhauled to unleash more drilling in Alberta. 'We cannot keep the over $9 trillion worth of oil wealth we have in the ground,' she said. 'Mark Carney has acknowledged that the federal government must address key policy barriers. 'That must include abandoning the unconstitutional oil and gas production cap, repealing the tanker ban, and scrapping Canada's net-zero power regulations. 'I believe in a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada, but we cannot persist with the status quo. I won't allow that status quo to continue.' Smith is also exploiting the tensions generated by Donald Trump, the US president, whose talk of making Canada the 51st state resonates with some Albertans. She sees her demands as a test of the scale of Carney's commitment to oil and gas: 'Given his past actions, I've asked myself what version of Mark Carney are we going to get. 'Will we get the pragmatic Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney? Or will we get the environmental extremist keep-it-in-the-ground Mark Carney? 'I don't know the answer yet. He's saying some of the right things, but we need to see meaningful action.' Such tensions have been around for a long time. What Canada's politicians say and do are often very different things, says Brendan Long, a leading energy analyst and Canadian, whose new book Energy Shocks, compares the politics of energy in the UK, US and Canada. He points out that Canada has a long history of electing prime ministers with stridently green manifestos who then preside over huge increases in oil and gas production. 'While previous premier Justin Trudeau had explicitly anti-fossil fuel agendas, domestic Canadian oil and gas production grew dramatically under his leadership,' he said. 'Today, Canada is ranked fourth in terms of global oil production at 5.8m barrels of oil per day and growing.' By contrast, Long points out that the UK is the only large global oil producer to have deliberately cut its production in recent years, signalling the long-standing net-zero legacy left by Carney. 'It means that while Canada's oil and gas industry is ramping up production under Carney, the UK remains aligned with the anti-oil and gas ideology he promoted when he was the governor of the Bank of England,' he says.
