As it happened: National Guard on ground at Los Angeles immigration protests
California National Guard arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday (US time),
deployed by President Donald Trump after two days of protests
by hundreds of demonstrators against immigration raids carried out as part of Trump's hardline policy.
It's the first time 55 years that a president has deployed a National Guard without a request by a state governor.
Look back at what happened during the day with RNZ's liveblog:
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RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Can California leave the United States? What you need to know about secession
Could California leave the United States? It's complicated. Photo: Unsplash Explainer - One of last year's big movies was Civil War , a gritty look at an America torn apart by conflict into separate territories. Fiction, right? But talk of seceding from the rest of the country is a very real hot topic in certain parts of California during the second presidential term of Donald Trump. When Trump ordered the National Guard and US Marines into Los Angeles to tackle protests over his administration's immigration crackdown , that talk became a roar in some circles. Some people said it was time for California - a frequently left-leaning, progressive state where Trump got only 38 percent of the vote in last year's election - to leave the United States of America entirely. But could California actually leave the US, which it's been part of for 175 years? Here's what you need to know about secession. The National Guard was called in by President Trump over Los Angeles protests. Photo: AFP / SPENCER PLATT Republican Trump and California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, have clashed for some time, but recent protests in Los Angeles over Trump's aggressive efforts to deport migrants have taken it to a new level . Trump ordered in the National Guard to quell protests - a task that is usually the responsibility of governors and has resulted in a lawsuit by Newsom and California against Trump's administration. Trump then upped the ante more by also deploying US Marines . He also appeared to endorse the unprecedented idea of having Newsom arrested if he defied Trump's orders. The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America. I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican this is a line we cannot cross as a nation — this is an unmistakable step toward… Since his inauguration in January for a second term as President, Trump has broadly expanded presidential powers and cracked down on dissent. Last week, CNN reported that Trump has looked at cancelling much of California's federal funding. However, Trump may be the President, but Newsom is still the twice-elected leader of America's most populated state with nearly 40 million people. California has economic muscle on its side. It's the fifth largest economy in the world with a GDP of nearly US$3.9 trillion as of 2023 - larger than India, the United Kingdom and France. If California did split away - and that's a very big if - it would instantly become one of the world's economic superpowers. Anger against Trump's immigration policies has fuelled protests. Photo: ROBYN BECK "No, the US Constitution does not provide for a state to peacefully secede," University of Otago international relations professor Robert Patman said. Still, clashes between the federal government and the rights of states have been a thread all through American history. The last - and only - time secession happened, there was a bloody Civil War. In the climax of a long-brewing conflict over the existence of legalised slavery of Black Americans, 11 states seceded from the rest of the country. The four-year struggle from 1861 to 1865 left nearly 700,000 Americans dead and remains the single deadliest war in the nation's history. There have always been secession and split movements brewing in parts of the United States. None of them have actually gotten very far. For instance, in California, for years there's been scattered talk of splitting the rural far north of the state and parts of southern Oregon into a new "State of Jefferson." In the heightened environment of the Trump years, talk of dividing up the country by political factions has grown louder. "Growing political polarisation between 'blue' and 'red' states in the US poses a significant threat to its stability and democratic institutions," Patman said. "The conditions that led to an attempted insurrection on 6 January 2021 in the US have not yet moderated and so further outbreaks of instability cannot be ruled out." Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called in 2023 for a "national divorce" between so-called red (Republican-leaning) and blue (Democrat) states. A 2021 poll by the University of Virginia Center for Politics found 52 percent of Trump voters and 41 percent of Biden voters at least somewhat agreed that they favoured blue and red states seceding from the union to form their own separate country. And in January, a poll conducted by YouGov for the pro-secession group the Independent California Institute found that 61 percent of Californians polled said California would be better off if it peacefully seceded. The American Civil War of 1861-1865 left at least 700,000 Americans dead. Photo: Bridgeman Images via AFP Pretty slim. California's own state constitution clearly says in Article III, Section 1 that "The State of California is an inseparable part of the United States of America, and the United States Constitution is the supreme law of the land." Meanwhile, the US Constitution has no mechanisms within it to allow secession at all. Back in 1869, shortly after the US Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Texas V. White that states do not actually have the right to unilaterally secede and that the union was "perpetual": "There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States." That precedent has pretty much remained ever since. Some say that could mean that all states might have to concede to one state's secession, or the Constitution itself would need to be amended, a long and complicated process. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a letter in 2010 , "If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede." It's theoretically possible a state could just declare itself independent and devil take the consequences, but again, last time that happened hundreds of thousands died in civil war. "The possibility of a second US Civil War is a serious concern, with surveys showing a significant number of Americans worrying about such a prospect," Patman said, noting that while the issues are quite different from the 1860s, many factors are fuelling division. "These include the rise of far-right extremism, growing economic inequality, cultural conflicts, and the divisive impact of the social media." California's flag has carried a 'Republic' tag since the state joined the union in 1850. Photo: Unsplash A movement called "CalExit" is hoping to put a measure on the ballot for California to vote on in November 2028 which would ask, "Should California leave the United States and become a free and independent country? CalExit organiser Marcus Ruiz Evans has been trying to get secession on the table for years. "Californians are aware they just don't think like Americans," he told RNZ's Saturday Morning in an interview in 2018 during Trump's first term. "You know, the average American is not sure if climate change is real, questions if immigration is a good idea, wants to have massive amounts of guns and hates any regulations against them and is generally distrustful of government." Organisers would need to get 546,000 signatures to put Ruiz Evans' latest measure on the ballot . To pass, 50 percent of registered voters must participate in the election and at least 55 percent of them would then have to say yes. That doesn't mean that CalExit then becomes a thing. Instead organisers say "it would constitute 'a vote of no confidence in the United States of America' and 'expression of the will of the people of California' to become an independent country, but would not change California's current government or relationship with the United States". If the ballot measure is approved, a 20-member commission would then evaluate the feasibility of California becoming an independent nation. However, there would be a long road to any actual change, and the courts might well put a stop to it. "Even if this [ballot measure] passes, there's virtually no way it can result in California leaving the union," David A. Carrillo, director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley Law School, told ABC News 10 . And civil war? That's not really likely either when the world is far more interconnected than it was in the 1860s. "Any internal conflict in the US would generate global shockwaves and thus there would be much greater international resistance and perhaps intervention to prevent another civil war occurring," Patman said. But still, secession talk isn't likely to go away anytime soon with America's politics seemingly stuck at a perpetual boiling point. "We think we've gotten to the point where it doesn't work," Ruiz Evans told CBS News recently. "There are people out there who will respond to California as a nation." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Trump administration reviewing Biden-era submarine pact with Australia, UK
By Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom US President Donald Trump. Photo: AFP / Brendan Smialowski US President Donald Trump's administration has launched a formal review of a defence pact worth hundreds of billions of dollars that former president Joe Biden made with Australia and the United Kingdom, a US defence official has told Reuters. The pact allows Australia to acquire conventionally armed nuclear submarines. The formal Pentagon-led review is likely to alarm Australia, which sees the submarines as critical to its own defence as tensions grow over China's expansive military buildup. It could also throw a wrench in Britain's defence planning. AUKUS is at the centre of a planned expansion of its submarine fleet. "We are reviewing AUKUS as part of ensuring that this initiative of the previous administration is aligned with the President's America First agenda," the official said of the review, which was first reported by Financial Times . "Any changes to the administration's approach for AUKUS will be communicated through official channels, when appropriate." AUKUS, formed in 2021 to address shared worries about China's growing power, is designed to allow Australia to acquire nuclear-powered attack submarines and other advanced weapons such as hypersonic missiles. Vocal sceptics of the AUKUS deal among Trump's senior policy officials include Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's top policy advisor. In a 2024 talk with Britain's Policy Exchange think-tank, Colby cautioned that US military submarines were a scarce, critical commodity, and that US industry could not produce enough of them to meet American demand. They would also be central to US military strategy in any confrontation with China centred in the First Island Chain, an area that runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas. The Virginia-class nuclear powered submarine USS Minnesota arrives at the US Naval Base Guam, on 26 November 2024. Photo: US Navy/ Justin Wolpert "My concern is why are we giving away this crown jewel asset when we most need it," Colby said. The Australian and UK embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The US National Security Council also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. AUKUS is Australia's biggest-ever defence project, with Canberra committing to spend A$368 billion ($NZ396 billion) over three decades on the programme, which includes billions of dollars of investment in the US production base. News of the US review comes hours after the British government announced plans to invest billions of pounds to upgrade its submarine industrial base, including at BAE Systems in Barrow and Rolls-Royce Submarines in Derby, to allow the increase in submarine production rate announced in Britain's Strategic Defence Review. Britain said this month it would build up to 12 next-generation attack submarines of the model intended to be jointly developed by the UK, US and Australia under AUKUS. Only six countries operate nuclear submarines: the US, the UK, Russia, China, France and India. AUKUS would add Australia to that club starting in 2032 with the US sale of Virginia-class submarines. Before that, the US and Britain would start forward rotations of their submarines in 2027 out of an Australian naval base in Western Australia. Later, Britain and Australia would design and build a new class of submarines, with US assistance, with the first delivery to the UK in the late 2030s and to Australia in the early 2040s. Although Australia has declined to say ahead of time whether it would send the submarines to join US forces in any conflict between the US and China, Colby noted Australia's historic alliance with Washington, including sending troops to Vietnam. "I think we can make a decent bet that Australia would be there with us in the event of a conflict," Colby said last year. Speaking in Congress on Tuesday, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said "we're having honest conversations with our allies." On Australia, Hegseth said: "We want to make sure those capabilities are part of how they use them with their submarines, but also how they integrate with us as allies." Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who signed a previous agreement to acquire French submarines that was shelved in favour of AUKUS, told CNBC last week it was "more likely than not that Australia will not end up with any submarines at all, but instead, simply provide a large base in Western Australia for the American Navy and maintenance facilities there". -Reuters
RNZ News
2 hours ago
- RNZ News
US-China trade deal 'welcome relief' for Kiwi exporters
Todd McClay at the Mystery Creek Fieldays yesterday. Photo: Monique Steele Agriculture Minister Todd McClay who also has Trade portfolio has welcomed news of [ a possible US-China trade deal]. US President Donald Trump says a deal with China is "done" after two days of high-level talks in London. The overnight announcement comes as the government welcomes the state of the country's agriculture sector. The Ministry of Primary Industries' Situation and Outlook report is projecting a double digit increase in New Zealand export revenues this year - though it warns about global uncertainty. It estimates New Zealand's agricultural export revenue could reach just under $60 billion by the end of June, up from a dip in 2023-4. Agriculture and Trade Minister Todd McClay told Morning Report if a US-China deal has been done it would be "good news". At an OECD trade ministers meeting in Paris last week he had met with the trade ministers of both China and the US. Both had then gone off for joint talks so some momentum had been building to try and find a solution to their tariffs impasse. If things calmed down for international trade it would bring "welcome relief" for exporters and result in some "sensible decision-making". McClay said the remarkable growth in primary exports was very positive. Dairy had enjoyed a solid season with a good supply of grass which had increased milk production. The meat sector was performing well and for the first time $5 billion worth of kiwifruit had been exported. Even the US market faced with tariff uncertainty was providing some opportunities for Kiwi exporters, citing the example of NZ King Salmon which has talked of increased sales at a higher price. Kiwi exporters were working hard to add value to their products, McClay said. One example was selling ready to eat burger patties to China which resulted in greater returns for farmers. "So we're seeing Kiwi exporters go for value, not competing on price anywhere as much as they used to." Photo: RNZ / Richard Tindiller A government-backed grass certification standard for dairy and meat exports had been launched at Mystery Creek Fieldays yesterday, McClay said. This would be highly desirable for markets in China, other parts of Asia and the Middle East, McClay said. "Grass fed now is increasingly wanted by consumers and they're willing to pay more." On sustainable products, Groundswell has been calling for New Zealand to exit the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. McClay said that was not going to happen mainly because it would make exports to many markets untenable. He believed Groundswell and others were worried about higher costs and lower production if they adopted sustainable measures. "We've been really clear - we think through technology and other things we can meet these obligations without putting farmers out of business." Alternatives to farmers going into the Emissions Trading Scheme were being worked on and would be announced soon. McClay said the requirement of reducing methane by 10 percent by 2030 was on track to be met. "So it shows farmers are willing to do it but we have to lean heavily into technology rather than just planting trees." A number of products, known as methane inhibitors , have been developed already although they might have to overcome consumer resistance. McClay said anything developed would have to go through rigorous scientific testing. There would be a range of solutions developed and farmers would decide which ones they wanted to pick up. "The overseas customers through the dairy company should be paying for this, not the New Zealand farmer."
