DeSantis offers Florida's State Guard to California. No thanks, says Newsom
After the Trump administration sent Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to the protests against immigration enforcement, Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed adding another group to the mix: the Florida State Guard.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, declined DeSantis' offer.
'Given the guard were not needed in the first place, we declined Governor DeSantis' attempt to inflame an already chaotic situation made worse by his party's leader,' Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo told the Herald in an email.
A state guard, maintained in 23 states, is a state-trained, state-funded volunteer force meant to respond to 'man-made and natural disasters.' Florida's guard was inactive for around 75 years until DeSantis reactivated it in 2022. He sent it across state lines in 2024 to fortify the Texas border and again to aid North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
The Florida State Guard, which faced controversy for its militaristic training, was revived not just for emergencies, but also aiding law enforcement with riots and illegal immigration, according to its officials.
DeSantis' offer comes amid his criticism of California's efforts at controlling protesters while going toe-to-toe with Newsom on social media. Reports of vandalized businesses, damaged police cruisers, road shutdowns and looting this past week in downtown Los Angeles have spurred DeSantis' attacks, calling the protests 'disgraceful.'
'That would never fly in the state of Florida, not for one minute,' DeSantis said during a Tuesday press conference in Jacksonville. 'You would end up in the slammer very quickly.'
Florida has not seen any major ICE protests like the ones in Los Angeles. About 100 people gathered outside Tampa City Hall on Monday to protest ICE, according to The Tampa Bay Times. Last Thursday, several dozen Cuban detainees at Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade staged their own protest, lining up to form an 'SOS' sign. But no violence has been reported so far.
DeSantis also voiced his support for President Donald Trump's decision to send both the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles, which has generated a lawsuit from Newsom's office. DeSantis emphasized Florida's willingness to cooperate with ICE and the rest of the federal government, appearing to reference Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony as he said if local officials like sheriffs refuse to cooperate, they will be 'out of a job.'
Tony said during a county meeting in early June that he would not prioritize arresting undocumented immigrants who haven't committed crimes. On Monday, Attorney General James Uthmeier posted a letter on X reminding Tony that being uncooperative could result in his removal.
'All state and local law enforcement agencies are required to participate with ICE for immigration enforcement, and that's the only way you're ever going to do this and do this well,' DeSantis said.
As for the protesters themselves, DeSantis had a message for anyone in Florida looking to shut down streets like the protests in Los Angeles: 'don't even try.'
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Newsweek
7 minutes ago
- Newsweek
How Project 2025 Compares With Trump's Los Angeles Response
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. President Donald Trump's response to protests in Los Angeles is in keeping with suggestions put forth in Project 2025, a political commentator has said. Allison Gill, who worked at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, said on Wajahat Ali's the Left Hook Substack that the president's military response was "spelled out in Project 2025," a conservative policy dossier. She did not specify how. Newsweek has contacted the Heritage Foundation and Gill for comment by email. The Context Protests against immigration enforcement began in Los Angeles on Friday and have continued, with some isolated incidents of violence and looting. In response, Trump announced the deployment of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to restore order, without California Governor Gavin Newsom's consent. While the president has said the move was necessary to prevent the city from "burning to the ground" amid protests and riots, officials in California have accused Trump of exacerbating the situation in an "unprecedented power grab." A police officer firing a soft round near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on June 8. A police officer firing a soft round near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on June 8. AP Photo/Eric Thayer What To Know Gill, who served Trump a lawsuit in 2023 accusing him of conspiring to fire her from the Veterans Affairs Department during his first presidency, said sending in the Marines was "propaganda" because the protests were not severe enough to require them. Though she said Project 2025 predicted the president's response to the protests, she did not elaborate on how. Project 2025 is a 900-page document of policy proposals published by the Heritage Foundation think tank. It advocates limited government, border security and tough immigration laws among other conservative measures. The policy proposals have proved divisive, and the president's critics and supporters alike have debated their influence on him. While Project 2025 does not mention the Insurrection Act, a November 2023 report from The Washington Post, citing internal communications and a person involved in the conversations, said the Project 2025 group had drafted executive orders that would use the Insurrection Act to deploy the military domestically. Gill told Ali that she warned people of Trump's potential use of the military to curb protests before the presidential election. "We did everything that we could in leading up to the election in 2024 to tell everyone as loud as we can, they are planning to do this," she said, adding: "Saying he's going to call this an invasion. He's going to call this an insurrection. And he's going to use that to invoke emergency powers so that he can unleash the military on United States citizens and perhaps even suspend habeas corpus so that he can detain his political enemies without due process." "This is scary," Gill, who hosts the Mueller, She Wrote podcast, continued. "This is full-on fascism, full-on authoritarianism." "This is a test case for authoritarianism," Ali added. Before the 2024 presidential election, Democrats accused Trump of planning to implement Project 2025 if he won. While Trump initially called parts of the plan "ridiculous and abysmal," he told Time after his electoral victory that he disagreed with parts of it, but not all of it. He has since appointed a number of people linked to Project 2025 to White House positions. In an October interview with Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures, Trump indicated that he would use the National Guard or the military if there were disruptions from "radical left lunatics" on Election Day. What Does Project 2025 Say? Project 2025 advocates for improved defense infrastructure and for the Department of Homeland Security to "thoroughly enforce immigration laws." The document added that DHS should "provide states and localities with a limited federal emergency response and preparedness." However, it did not say whether this would occur in the context of protests. What Trump's Advisers Have Said Trump's advisers have previously spoken about the use of National Guard troops in other contexts. According to a February 2024 report in The Atlantic, Stephen Miller, now the White House deputy chief of staff, said that Trump—if returned to office—would take National Guard troops from sympathetic Republican-controlled states and use them in Democratic-run states whose governors refused to cooperate with their mass deportation policy. What People Are Saying President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday: "If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can't do their jobs, which everyone knows they can't, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!" Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday: "We will always protect the constitutional right for Angelenos to peacefully protest. However, violence, destruction and vandalism will not be tolerated in our city and those responsible will be held fully accountable." What Happens Next The anti-ICE protests, which have spread to other cities, are likely to continue. Newsom has called on the Trump administration to remove federal troops from Los Angeles.
CNN
25 minutes ago
- CNN
Why Trump's move toward using the military on US soil is so fraught
The country hangs on a hugely significant precipice, as President Donald Trump moves toward making good on his long-running suggestions of an extraordinary step: deploying the military on US soil. About 700 Marines have now been mobilized to join the National Guard in Los Angeles to deal with demonstrations over federal immigration raids, CNN reports. The Marines were previously on 'ready to deploy' status. (It is still unclear what their specific task will be once in Los Angeles, sources told CNN. And like the National Guard troops, they are prohibited from conducting law enforcement activity such as making arrests unless Trump invokes the Insurrection Act.) But to hear the White House tell it, this show of force is not just the right thing to do but also a political winner. Responding to a poll showing 54% of Americans approved of Trump's deportation program, White House spokesman Steven Cheung wrote on X Sunday, 'And the approval number will be even higher after the national guard was sent to LA to beat back the violence this weekend.' But whether the American people actually want this military activation isn't nearly so clear. In fact, they've rejected such things in the past. The administration may be making a huge gamble on the American people's tolerance for a heavy-handed federal response. And while Americans might not have much sympathy for the demonstrators in Los Angeles who engage in violence or for undocumented immigrants, recent surveys have shown they often say Trump goes too far in his attempts to address such problems. There is something of an analog for the current situation. It came in 2020 when federal law enforcement suddenly moved to clear Lafayette Square, near the White House, of racial justice demonstrators, resulting in violent scenes. This wasn't the military, but it was controversial – in part because Trump then walked across the square with military leaders for a photo-op. (Then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper also resisted Trump's suggestions of using active-duty military at the time.) The American people did not like what they saw. A USA Today/Ipsos poll conducted a week later showed 63% of Americans opposed the use of rubber bullets and tear gas that day. It also showed Americans opposed deploying military forces in other states by 10 points, 51-41%. Similarly a CNN poll conducted by SSRS at the time asked a broader question – whether it would be appropriate for a president to 'deploy the U.S. military in response to protests in the United States.' Americans said this would be 'inappropriate' by a wide margin, 60-36%. All of which suggest Americans are predisposed to viewing such actions skeptically. These numbers come with caveats, though. The CNN poll question is a great window into how this could be received. But it's possible people's views have shifted or could shift with circumstances, including the role the Marines end up playing in Los Angeles. Back in 2020, the racial justice protests were relatively popular, and people didn't view them as particularly violent. Americans sympathized with the cause, believing George Floyd had been murdered by police. It's too early to tell how people view the demonstrators in Los Angeles. And the plight of the undocumented immigrants whom the administration is trying to deport is probably less sympathetic than the racial justice protesters' cause. (Clear majorities generally support deporting undocumented immigrants, who are in this country without authorization.) But when it comes to the administration's immigration crackdown, Americans have also expressed nuanced feelings. And the poll the White House cited this weekend is a case in point. In the CBS News/YouGov survey, which was conducted before Saturday's protests broke out in Los Angeles, Americans said they approved of Trump's deportation program, 54-46%. They also liked its 'goals,' 55-45%. But that's not quite the same as saying they approved of the administration's actions, full stop. The same poll asked whether people liked 'the way you think [Trump] is going about' the deportations. And there, Americans actually disliked his approach by double-digits, 56-44%. While independents were about evenly split on Trump's deportation program, they disliked how he's gone about it by 30 points , 65-35%. This is a dichotomy we see in lots of polling of Trump's deportation actions. Americans like the idea of mass deportation, but not so much the implementation. They like the president a lot on securing the border. But they like him significantly less on 'immigration,' and they like him even less when 'deportation,' specifically, is invoked in the question. One possible reason: Americans see the administration moving haphazardly. That could most notably be the case with things like deporting the wrong people and actions that have been halted by the courts, including ones in which judges have said people haven't been given enough due process. It's possible that people could come to sympathize with the cause of the Los Angeles protesters – if not the violent ones – at least to some degree. While Americans generally favor mass deportation, those numbers decline significantly when you mention the prospect of deporting otherwise-law-abiding people with jobs and those who have been in this country for a long time. (For example, a recent Pew Research Center poll showed Americans opposed deporting undocumented immigrants who have jobs, 56-41%, and they opposed deporting the parents of US citizen children 60-37%.) But the raids that set off the protests have been directed at workplaces generally – not necessarily at criminals or gang members. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed at least five of the people arrested during Sunday immigration sweeps in Los Angeles had criminal convictions or were accused of crimes. Through it all, the administration has made a rather Machiavellian political calculation: that however much people dislike the means, their support for the ends will carry the day. Maybe people say they don't like the lack of due process the administration has provided – or the wrong people getting sent to a brutal Salvadoran prison – but how much do they really care if the end result is lots of deportations? Similarly, the administration could be making the calculation that scenes of violence in Los Angeles could marshal support for a previously unthinkable step of deploying the military domestically against protesters – something Americans opposed by 24 points just five years ago. So much depends on what the Marines end up doing in Los Angeles and whether Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to allow them to engage in policing activities. But the Trump administration has clearly gone too far for people before as part of their deportation efforts. And the one big crackdown on protesters we have seen in the Trump era didn't go well. This would appear pretty fraught – not just practically, but politically.
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Readers sound off on supporting reparations, Cuomo's leadership and the Gaza blockade
Manhattan: Re 'Tulsa's first-ever Black mayor proposes $100M trust to 'repair' impact of 1921 Race Massacre' (June 2): As the movement for reparations continues to rise nationally, it is heartening to see cities like Tulsa, Okla. and Mayor Monroe Nichols turn promises into policy. Gov. Hochul allocated resources for a statewide reparations study, while four NYC mayoral candidates publicly supported reparations at a forum organized last month by our coalition of more than 100 grassroots organizations and activists. Our recent survey done in collaboration with Liberation Ventures shows that 48% of New Yorkers support reparations, and 70% would be open to or supportive of a pro-reparations candidate. This political momentum reflects the reality that reparations are more popular than what many opponents would have you think. The median total wealth of white New Yorkers is $320,000, compared to $2,800 for Black New Yorkers. This is the result of generations of economic theft. With 2025 marking the 200th anniversary of Seneca Village — once home to the largest community of Black property owners in New York that was destroyed to build Central Park — the connection between historical harm and present inequity is undeniable. While the Trump administration whitewashes our history and tries to take away our civil rights, New York lawmakers must follow Tulsa's example and take concrete action by establishing reparations and funding what our communities need to heal and thrive. The time for repair is now. Trevor Smith Bronx: For Voicer June Lowe: Maybe I can help you straighten things out, however, facts are often lost on those in the throes of full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome. President Trump (TACO man, as you call him) did authorize the deployment of the National Guard leading up to Jan. 6. He did not sit on his hands. Presently in L.A., he also authorized the deployment — not 'unleashed' (your words) — of the National Guard to ensure the safety of ICE agents as they lawfully perform their duty, and to protect the LAPD as they are not allowed to defend themselves. The 'madness' has been caused by 'a constitutional crisis' that America suffered for the last four years under Joe Biden, or whoever was playing president. Joe Schulok Hicksville, L.I.: Create unrest in the streets and then send in the military to quell the so-called insurrection. This rule of thumb is on page one of the dictator's playbook. And to prove the point, ask yourself why the National Guard and the Marines weren't sent to South Central L.A. That's where most of the MS-13 criminals are. The answer is because Trump doesn't give a damn about illegals in America. He's just creating the narrative he wants. Also, with Marines in Los Angeles, what is it that we are now not paying attention to? Answer: his extremely destructive 'Big Beautiful Bill.' Steven Malinofsky North Branford, Conn.: This Saturday, June 14, is known as Flag Day. My suggestions for the day are to boycott the parade and hang your flags upside down. We must stop that madman's rampant romp over our Constitution. Stephen Syrotiak Forest Hills: With Trump's continued march into authoritarianism, we need a mayor who will be able to stand up to him. He is threatening our universities and our minority communities, and before long, he will have the National Guard patrolling our streets. Zohran Mamdani is too inexperienced to deal with Trump. We need Andrew Cuomo as mayor. He has proven that he knows how to deal with that tyrant. Libby Gurgis Brooklyn: I was puzzled by Voicer Bob Cavaliere's letter, so I went back in the chain of exchanges to figure it out. First, MAGA or not, dismissing Mamdani as 'low-intelligence' is the sort of insult I'd expect to hear from Trump. Mamdani must be pretty smart to close the gap from message candidate to practically touching Cuomo's numbers. As far as taxpayers being on the hook for the 'free stuff' most of us need badly, it's the very wealthy who barely contribute their fair share who need to make up the slack. As far as energy prices, it's Trump who's crushing us with his stand against cheap, clean energy. Con Ed should be ashamed to propose such a painful rate hike. The Public Service Commission must reject it. But as for gas bills, the NY HEAT Act would stop gas companies from their out-of-control pipeline building that does cost taxpayers money. Ella Ryan Mineola, L.I.: At the Italian consulate in 2011, I asked Mario Cuomo if Andrew was contemplating a run for the Rose Garden in 2016. 'We'll have to see what Hillary does,' he responded. The rest is history. Today, the end of Mayor Adams' shambolic reign is nigh. Cuomo is well-positioned to become New York City's 111th mayor. Governing Gotham isn't a stroll in Central Park, however, and Sheriff Andy may not be everybody's cup of cappuccino. Still, this hard-charging politico wielded power effectively, if pugnaciously, as governor. Though he lacked his father's Ciceronian oratory, Andrew presided over the state with a sinewy sense of purpose. He employed a vigorous New York brand of realpolitik in Albany. Ultimately, he should heed Marcus Aurelius: 'Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.' Rosario A. Iaconis Manhattan: Has anyone else noticed how much faster their commute is since using OMNY? Yeah, neither did I. Thomas Bower Brooklyn: About 10 years ago, our block had hardened daylighting enforced. We lost more parking spots, but if it was for safety, I was all about it. There were signs posted, unknown to people who don't live here, so they had a ticket blitz. If I had a chance, I would tell people there's a new sign. That's how I roll. Now Citi Bike wants to install bikes in that spot. The corner proposed is not near any other means of transportation. We are a random block with no traffic lights, so it's even hard at times to pull out of our driveways. That corner is hard to navigate by sight. We also have a bus going down the block, which is the last stop. Why would a last bus stop need Citi Bikes? Mariann Tepedino Flushing: Re 'Gaza a no-go for Greta' (June 10): Israel intercepted a Gaza-bound ship carrying a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid. The dozen passengers included the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. The ship operated under the auspices of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, an international campaign that opposes Israel's blockade of Gaza that Israel says is necessary to prevent weapons smuggling. The group said the activists had been 'kidnapped' by the Israeli military. The activists should be advised that before they will be allowed to distribute aid to Gaza, they must first convince Hamas to release the real kidnap victims — namely, the Israeli hostages hidden by Hamas from the outside world for more than 600 days. Theodore Sheskin Brooklyn: To Voicer Tal Barzilai: I would consider making amends to the Abenaki people whose land my ancestor lived on nearly 300 years ago, but I do not own land, nor are there Abenaki left in southern Maine to give it to. All I can do is speak out about colonialism in the present, of which Israel is a prime example. My ancestor was a flawed man, but unlike Zionists, he knew enough to behave himself on land that did not belong to him. His neighbors did not, and they wound up dead. Zionists, take note: Behave yourselves when you are a guest. You must play by their rules. No exceptions. Given the latest news about depraved Zionists murdering hungry Gazans, I believe that Israelis do not deserve to live there. So, I beg you not to go back to Israel, but I know you will insist, so I pray for your safety. Nick Smith Bronx: To Voicer Marc H. Lavietes: I would just like to say that the 'digital noise' and 'silly games' at Citi Field are there for the enjoyment of kids and adults alike. As for putting a competitive team on the field, I think the Mets have already done that, and quite well, actually! LGM! Mary Ann Guarneri
