Trump to deploy National Guard in LA amid protests over immigration raids
President Donald Trump is deploying 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles after a second day of clashes between hundreds of protesters and federal immigration authorities in riot gear.
Confrontations broke out on Saturday near a Home Depot in the heavily Latino city of Paramount, south of Los Angeles, where federal agents were preparing at a Department of Homeland Security office nearby.
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Agents unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls, and protesters hurled rocks and cement at Border Patrol vehicles. Smoke wafted from small piles of burning refuse in the streets.
Tensions were high after a series of sweeps by immigration authorities the previous day, including in LA's fashion district and at a Home Depot, as the week-long tally of immigrant arrests in the city climbed past 100. A prominent union leader was arrested while protesting and accused of impeding law enforcement.
Law enforcement in riot gear during a protest in Compton, California(Ethan Swope/AP)
Despite objections from California governor Gavin Newsom, the White House announced Mr Trump would deploy the Guard to 'address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester'. It is not clear when the troops will arrive.
Mr Newsom, a Democrat, said in a post on the social platform X the move is 'purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions'. He later said the federal government wants a spectacle and urged people not to give them one by becoming violent.
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In a signal of the administration's aggressive approach, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to deploy the US military.
'If violence continues, active-duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized – they are on high alert,' Mr Hegseth said on X.
Mr Trump's order came after clashes in Paramount and neighbouring Compton, where a car was set on fire. Protests continued into the evening in Paramount, with several hundred demonstrators gathered near a doughnut shop, and authorities holding up barbed wire to keep the crowd back.
Police detain a man during a protest in Paramount (Eric Thayer/AP)
Crowds also gathered again outside federal buildings in central Los Angeles, including a detention centre, where local police declared an unlawful assembly and began to arrest people.
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Earlier in Paramount, immigration officers faced off with demonstrators at the entrance to a business park, across from the back of a Home Depot. They set off fireworks and pulled shopping carts into the street, broke up cinder blocks and pelted a procession of Border Patrol vans as they departed and careened down a boulevard.
US Attorney Bill Essayli said federal agents made more arrests of people with deportation orders on Saturday, but none were at the Home Depot. The Department of Homeland Security has a building next door and agents were staging there as they prepared to carry out operations, he said on Fox11 Los Angeles. He did not say how many people were arrested Saturday or where.
Paramount mayor Peggy Lemons told multiple news outlets that community members showed up in response because people are fearful about activity by immigration agents.
'When you handle things the way that this appears to be handled, it's not a surprise that chaos would follow,' she said.
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Some demonstrators jeered at officers while recording the events on smartphones.
'ICE out of Paramount. We see you for what you are,' a woman said through a megaphone. 'You are not welcome here.'
More than a dozen people were arrested and accused of impeding immigration agents, Mr Essayli posted on X, including the names and mug shots of some of those arrested. He did not say where they were protesting.
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The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
An ex-cop murderer and rapist broke free from prison in Arkansas. Those whose lives he shattered are ‘appalled'
The former rural Arkansas police chief Grant Hardin had earned the epithet 'devil in the Ozarks' because of the 2017 murder and separate 1997 rape to which he ultimately admitted. Then came his recent escape from prison by disguising himself as a guard and taking cover in the surrounding wilderness. Much of the US was gripped by Hardin's brazen 25 May breakout, a riveting epilogue of sorts, unfolding in real time, to the 2023 documentary whose title gave him his evocative nickname. In a criminal complaint filed after Hardin managed to flee Arkansas's Calico Rock prison by impersonating a facility corrections officer, investigators asserted that he had 'extensive knowledge' of the surrounding Ozark mountains region, had possibly been 'hiding in caves or rugged terrain' there, and may even have fled the state. It would turn out that he would be caught late on Friday afternoon less than 2 miles (3km) from the prison he had escaped from, his identity confirmed through fingerprints, according to authorities. Spectacular as those details may be to casual observers, Hardin's 13-day dash for freedom terrified those whose lives were shattered by his crimes – and those who worked to bring someone they once mistook as a fellow law enforcer to justice. A local police chief whose department had a hand in securing Hardin's plea of guilty to raping a local schoolteacher has said the survivor in the case – who has chosen to publicly identify herself as Amy Harrison – was 'appalled, concerned and disappointed', according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper. 'She had the opportunity to let her guard down and live her life, and we're back to the pre-conviction days,' Hayes Minor, the police chief of Rogers, Arkansas, said to the Democrat-Gazette, before Hardin was re-apprehended. Cheryl Tillman, the mayor of Gateway, Arkansas, the town of about 450 residents where Hardin spent five months as police chief before his imprisonment, told the same outlet that news of the breakout had 'brought back all the memories' of how the fugitive had fatally shot her brother, James Appleton. 'He's just an evil man,' Tillman reportedly said of Hardin, adding that she had initially been hesitant to even go to work upon learning of the breakout. 'He is no good for society.' After Hardin's recapture, the Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, issued a triumphant statement on X, saying state residents could 'breathe a sigh of relief'. But that was only after they had been unnerved by admonitions from law enforcement to lock their houses as well as cars – and to report anything suspicious to authorities. As Minor put it: 'It's appalling to me that we're even having to discuss this.' Hardin, 56, began his career in law enforcement working for police in the Arkansas cities of Fayetteville, Huntsville and Eureka Springs from 1990 to 1996. Each of those communities sits in the densely forested Ozarks, the mountainous and rural region that is mostly in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri, and is popular with lovers of the outdoors. Hardin's tenure at every one of those agencies ended prematurely. Fayetteville fired him for not completing his training, the local news outlet KFSM-TV reported. He reportedly resigned from Huntsville due to personal reasons. And he quit his post at Eureka Springs after being caught lying on a police report, according to what the chief there told KFSM. Then, from 2009 to 2010 and 2013 to 2014, Hardin served two terms as a constable in Benton county, within whose limits sit the headquarters of retail giant Walmart. Constables generally respond to low-level offenses, though they also serve legal documents such as restraining orders, whereas municipal police typically do not. Finally, in January 2016, officials in the tiny Benton county town of Gateway hired him as the chief of their single-officer police force. But Hardin resigned within five months after officials recommended that he be relieved of duty over 'the way that he was treating the citizens here in Gateway', Tillman, who was a member of the town council at the time, was quoted as saying by CNN. CNN added that, as Tillman saw it, Hardin didn't react well to criticism 'and was quick to anger'. 'He was very hard to get along with,' Tillman, Gateway's mayor since 2023, also reportedly said. 'You never knew what he was going to do.' According to authorities, on 23 February 2017, Hardin – then employed as a correctional officer at a lockup in Fayetteville – and Appleton were sitting in the latter's parked pickup truck. Hardin reportedly ended that encounter by shooting and killing Appleton, the brother of Tillman, whose husband, Andrew, was Gateway's mayor at the time. A witness later informed police that he had seen Hardin – someone he had known his whole life – in a white car behind Appleton's truck. That man described hearing a loud bang as he drove past the two vehicles, and said he looked back and saw the 59-year-old Appleton's body after he had been shot in the head. Prosecutors charged Hardin with capital murder, which in Arkansas can carry life imprisonment or the death penalty. He chose to plead guilty – albeit to the reduced charge of first-degree murder – in October 2017. Hardin did not provide a motive for murdering Appleton, a Gateway water department employee who was a father and grandfather. But he offered an apology to Appleton's family, and his attorney maintained that Hardin 'understood his actions had destroyed two families: His and Appleton's', the Democrat-Gazette reported at the time. The judge presiding over the case, Robin Green, sentenced Hardin to 30 years in prison. 'Many of us, including myself, are puzzled by this senseless killing,' she said. State officials collected a genetic sample from Hardin after he pleaded guilty to murdering Appleton. Investigators subsequently determined that that sample linked him to what was then Amy Harrison's unsolved 1997 rape case in the Benton county city of Rogers. Authorities said Harrison had been attacked shortly after arriving at the elementary school where she taught to work alone in the morning. She had gone to use the restroom in the teachers' lounge, and after she emerged, she was confronted with a man holding a gun. He made her go back into the bathroom, raped her and fled. Harrison called police and reported that her rapist had been shoeless, though he had worn a stocking cap and sunglasses. She said he took her underwear and was careful to not touch any surfaces. Yet he had left semen on her leg, which she wiped on to her sweatshirt and T-shirt. That turned out to be the genetic sample with which authorities eventually identified Hardin as Harrison's assailant. In February 2019, he pleaded guilty to raping Harrison, and Green sentenced him to another 50 years in prison – leaving Hardin to face the reality that he would be about 84 before he was eligible for parole, as the Democrat-Gazette reported. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Harrison addressed Hardin on the day the already convicted murderer was sentenced for raping her. 'I know there was nothing I did to make this happen,' Harrison said as some people in Green's courtroom wept. 'I could not have done anything differently, and I definitely did not deserve to be raped. I was just choosing to do the next right thing in my life when you bumped into me.' According to the Democrat-Gazette, she added: 'I am going to use my free will to overcome the evil you did to me. I am going to walk out of this building with my family and friends and enjoy the fresh air before I go home. 'I hope that my story is an encouragement to all survivors who fight for justice.' Green asked Hardin whether he knew Harrison – whose husband was a Rogers police officer – or he targeted her at random. Hardin said the rape had been a crime of opportunity. Given the chance to address Harrison, Hardin reportedly remarked: 'I just want to say I hate my old life and hope one day you will be able to forgive me. 'I'm sorry.' About four years after Harrison and Hardin spoke in court at his sentencing, the convicted rapist and murderer was the subject of the true-crime documentary Devil in the Ozarks. Roughly two years after that film came out, Hardin was completing his punishment at Arkansas's Calico Rock prison when he slipped into clothes meant to make him look like a corrections officer. He approached an actual corrections officer stationed at a security gate, who fell for Hardin's ruse, opened up and let him saunter out, according to a sworn statement filed in court. Rand Champion, spokesperson for the Arkansas state prison system, has since said that someone should have checked Hardin's identity before he was allowed to leave the Calico Rock facility. Champion said that the lack of verification was a 'lapse' that's being investigated. A frantic, multiagency search for Hardin ensued and went deep into a second week, seizing headlines across the US alongside an unrelated, similarly dramatic 10-man jailbreak in New Orleans. In the Hardin case, search crews were aided by bloodhounds, officers on horsebacks, aerial drones and helicopters. The FBI and US marshals offered $25,000 for information leading to Hardin's recapture. Arkansas prison officials released a photo to the public showing what the fugitive may have looked like after weeks on the run. There were a couple of potential but unconfirmed sightings publicized in central Arkansas and southern Missouri. Finally, on Friday, tracking dogs picked up Hardin's scent. Arkansas law enforcement officials and US border patrol agents collared him near a creek about 1.5 miles north of the Calico Rock prison. They confirmed they had the right man through fingerprints, as KFSM reported. Cheryl Tillman told KSFM she was grateful no one had been hurt while Hardin was on the lam, and she praised those who again had successfully gone after the ex-Gateway police chief. The Arkansas corrections board chair, Benny Magness, echoed Tillman's sentiments, saying he appreciated all that had been done so that 'the community could feel safe'. Nonetheless, in a letter addressed to Magness prior to Friday, Arkansas legislators said Hardin's escape from Calico Rock was chilling because of a number of factors. 'Given Hardin's background as a former law enforcement officer and his history of working for multiple law enforcement agencies, it is evident that he possesses knowledge and skills that enabled him to exploit weaknesses in our security protocols,' said the letter from Howard Beaty and Matt McKee, Republican members of the state house and senate, respectively. 'His manipulation of the system by wearing a disguise resembling a uniform is disturbing and speaks to a broader system failure.' The Associated Press contributed reporting
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
From friends to foes: how Trump turned on the Federalist Society
The world's attention last week was gripped by Donald Trump's abrupt fallout with the tech tycoon Elon Musk. Yet at the same time, and with the help of a rather unflattering epithet, the president has also stoked a rift between his Maga royal court and the conservative legal movement whose judges and lawyers have been crucial in pulling the US judiciary to the right. The word was 'sleazebag', which Trump deployed as part of a lengthy broadside on Truth Social, his social media platform. The targets of his wrath were the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal organization, and Leonard Leo, a lawyer associated with the group who has, in recent years, branched out to become one of the most powerful rightwing kingmakers in the US. In his post, Trump said that during his first term 'it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real 'sleazebag' named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions. He openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court – I hope that is not so, and don't believe it is!' Founded in 1982, the Federalist Society is an important player in the conservative movement. Many conservative lawyers, judges, law students and law clerks are members of the group, attend its events or run in its general orbit. Republican presidents use its recommendations to pick judges for vacant judicial seats. In the days following Trump's Truth Social harangue, people in the conservative legal world, which is centered in Washington DC but spans law schools and judge's chambers across the country, are wondering what this rift portends. Is this a classic Trump tantrum that will soon blow over? Or does it speak to a larger schism, with even the famously conservative Federalist Society not rightwing enough – or fanatically loyal enough – to satisfy Trump? 'I don't think this will blow over,' Stuart Gerson, a conservative attorney and a former acting US attorney general, said. 'Because it's not an event. It's a condition … He thinks judges are his judges, and they're there to support his policies, rather than the oath that they take [to the constitution].' In recent months, Trump has been stymied repeatedly by court rulings by federal judges. His rage has been particularly acute when the judges are ones whom he or other Republican presidents appointed. The Maga world has turned aggressively against Amy Coney Barrett, for example, after the supreme court justice voted contrary to the Trump line in several key cases. The immediate cause of Trump's recent outburst was a ruling by the US court of international trade against his sweeping tariffs on foreign goods. In this case, his anger appears to have had less to do with the judges than with the fact that a group of conservative lawyers and academics, including one who co-chairs the board of the Federalist Society, had filed a brief in the case challenging his tariffs. Trump is probably also aware that the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), an anti-regulation, pro-free market legal group affiliated with Leo and the billionaire Charles Koch, has sued, separately, to stop the tariffs. John Vecchione, an attorney at the NCLA, noted that the Federalist Society is a broad tent, with conservative jurists of many different inclinations and factions, including free marketeers and libertarians who do not subscribe to Trump's economic nationalism. Members often disagree with each other or find themselves on different sides of a case. This February, a federal prosecutor affiliated with the group, Danielle Sassoon, resigned after she said the Trump administration tried to pressure her to drop a case. The 'real question', Vecchione said, is what diehard Maga lawyers closest to Trump are telling him. 'Are they trying to form a new organization? Or are they trying to do to the Federalist Society what they've done to the House Republican caucus, for instance … where nobody wants to go up against Trump on anything?' he said. 'I think that some of the people around Trump believe that any right-coded organization has to do his bidding.' A newer legal organization, the Article III Project (A3P), appears to have captured Trump's ear in his second term. The organization was founded by Mike Davis, a rabidly pro-Trump lawyer, and seems to be positioning itself as a Maga alternative to the Federalist Society. On its website, A3P claims to have 'helped confirm' three supreme court justices, 55 federal circuit judges and 13 federal appellate judges. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Davis recently asserted in the Hill that the Federalist Society 'abandoned' Trump during his various recent legal travails. 'And not only did they abandon him – they had several [Federalist Society] leaders who participated in the lawfare and threw gas on the fire,' Davis said. Although Leo was a 'a close ally' of Trump during his first term, the Wall Street Journal reported, Trump and Leo 'haven't spoken in five years'. Leo has responded to Trump's outburst delicately. In a short statement, he said he was 'very grateful for President Trump transforming the federal courts, and it was a privilege being involved', adding that the reshaping of the federal bench would be 'President Trump's most important legacy'. Yet this Tuesday, a lengthy piece in the Wall Street Journal – pointedly titled 'This Conservative Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You, After Getting Dumped by Trump' – argued that Leo is 'unbounded by the pressures of re-election or dependence on outside money', and is the 'rare conservative, who, after being cast out of Trump's inner circle, remains free to pursue his own vision of what will make America great again'. In 2021, a Chicago billionaire gave Leo a $1.6bn political donation, thought to be the largest such donation in US history. As a result, Leo has an almost unprecedented power in terms of dark-money influence. The article also noted that much of Leo's focus has shifted to the entertainment industry, where he is funding big-budget television series and films that channel conservative values. Vecchione thinks that Trump's tendency to surround himself with sycophants and loyalists will work against him. 'If you have a lawyer who only tells you what makes you happy, and only does what you say to do, you don't have a good lawyer,' Vecchione said. 'That's not a good way to get lawyers. Not a good way to get judges, either.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Trump's ‘triumph': Newt Gringrich selective spins in new book praising president
Over 280 pages, Newt Gingrich, House speaker turned Republican presidential hopeful turned prolific author of historical (and critics would say political) fantasy, goes all out to flatter the man in the Oval Office. 'President Trump's reelection was the triumph of a man and a movement,' Gingrich writes. 'Each needed the other if America was to be saved.' More to the point, perhaps, a second Trump term enabled a second ambassadorial gig for Callista Gingrich, Newt's third wife. Emissary to the Vatican in Trump's first term, she is on her way to being envoy to Switzerland. Newt also slobbers over Elon Musk: the world's richest person turned chainsaw-wielding enemy of the federal government, turned embittered Trumpworld exile. 'Musk is in many ways the Christopher Columbus of our time,' Gingrich writes. Gingrich might have been better advised to compare Musk to Tony Stark, alter ego of Iron Man. The Gingrich family brokerage account may be talking, too. A recent filing by Callista Gingrich with the office of government ethics reveals between $1m and $5m in Tesla stock. Then again, Musk has emerged bruised, literally sporting a black eye. According to the New York Times, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire ingested ketamine and other drugs while wreaking havoc and ruining lives as a special government employee. Not that special, either: Musk's so-called 'department of government efficiency' failed to significantly reduce government spending. Musk arrived in DC vowing to slash $2tn, then left $1.86tn short of the mark. 'Was it all bullshit?' Trump openly asked. Musk quickly returned the favor. Mincing no words, he branded Trump's beloved 'big, beautiful bill' a 'disgusting abomination'. Quickie political tomes, ripe for airport bookstands, are dashed out fast by design. Apparently, Gingrich didn't bet on Musk's lame exit or his trashing Trump. Like most such books, Trump's Triumph contains score-settling, too. Gingrich has plenty outstanding. Nearly 40 years ago, as the Republican House whip, he clashed with George HW Bush, hammering the 41st president for breaking his pledge of 'no new taxes'. Later, in 2012, Gingrich badly lost the Republican nomination to Mitt Romney. During that run, news of profligacy exploded. The Gingriches maintained a credit line between $500,000 and $1m at Tiffany's, the New York jeweler. Barack Obama 'would have Newt for breakfast … at Tiffany's', a Romney spokesperson said. If Trump's Triumph is any guide, Gingrich has failed, or never tried, to conquer his resentment of such establishment figures. 'We were for fundamental change within the GOP and had taken on the Gerald Ford-Bush family-Mitt Romney accommodationist wing of the Republican party,' he crows, of the Trump takeover. But unpaid debts linger. Literally. In a 2014 filing with the Federal Election Commission, Newt 2012 debts exceed $4.652m. More than a decade later, the campaign's latest filing puts the figure at $4.637m. Debt be damned. Gingrich would rather claim credit. 'Early on,' he writes, Trump 'decisively sided with the legacies of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and, frankly, myself'. There is faux nostalgia, too: 'In the fall of 1996, President Bill Clinton and I were planning major bipartisan reforms for Medicare and Social Security. The Monica Lewinsky scandal exploded and destroyed everything … Neither of us could have possibly ignored or downplayed it without facing severe political consequences.' For the record, Gingrich led an impeachment that failed. After details of his own affair emerged, he left Congress. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion 'I'm willing to lead but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals,' he complained of his Republican colleagues. Trump's Triumph does not discuss how, in 1988, Gingrich filed an ethics complaint against Jim Wright, then Democratic speaker who resigned rather than face the music. The wheel turned. In 1997, the House ethics committee recommended Gingrich be reprimanded, and he was fined $300,000. The House adopted the ethics report by a vote of 395-28, making him the first speaker so admonished. Nowadays, Gingrich is more eager to stay on the right side of the powers that be. But he and Trump are not always on the same page. Differences emerge on Iran and immigration. In 2012, Gingrich received $20m in campaign donations from Sheldon Adelson, the late casino magnate who wanted to nuke Tehran. Gingrich still wants regime change. 'We need a strategy that helps the Iranian people take their own country back from a dictatorship that has trapped, imprisoned, and impoverished them,' he writes. 'We still have no strategy except accommodation and diplomacy with a regime we assume is unchangeable. This must change.' Trump has other ideas. 'I would like to see Iran be very successful,' he said last October. 'The only thing is, they can't have a nuclear weapon.' In office, he pursues a nuclear deal – to replace the one he trashed first time round. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has increased its stockpile of highly enriched uranium by half since February. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Gingrich chivvies Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff: 'There's a real danger of the Trump envoys being talked into a pretty foolish deal that's not enforceable.' On immigration, Gingrich praises the legal kind as a 'powerful source of economic and technological growth'. Legal immigrants, he writes, help 'make America wealthier and more technologically advanced'. In the real world, the Trump administration works to restrict foreign students. True to form, Gingrich also tries to go big, gazing back toward Rome and the American revolution. He's a historian by training, after all. 'The Founding Fathers sought to protect freedom by inventing a machine so complex and divided against itself that no dictator could force it to work quickly,' Gingrich writes. Yet he opposes anyone standing in Trump's path, as many courts are doing. 'I think in Trump's sense, he really does believe God wants him to make America great again,' Gingrich writes. 'And if that means you take on Harvard, or you take on the courts, or you take on the bureaucracy or whatever, that's what he's going to do.' The divine right of Trump? Caesar will approve. Trump's Triumph is published in the US by Hachette
