California Congress members to question Hegseth about federal military deployment in L.A.
California Democrats plan to question Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday about the immigration raids that have roiled Los Angeles, the federal commandeering of the state's National Guard and the deployment of Marines in the region when he testifies before the House Armed Services Committee.
Several committee members said they received no advance notice about the federal immigration sweeps at workplaces and other locations that started Friday and that prompted large and at times fiery protests in downtown Los Angeles.
'That's going to change,' said Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange), when the committee questions Hegseth on Thursday morning.
'We need to de-escalate the situation,' Tran said in an interview. President Trump and his administration's moves, most recently deploying hundreds of Marines in Southern California, 'escalates the situation, sending in troops that shouldn't be there, that are trained to shoot and kill.'
Though largely peaceful, protests about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's actions have been punctuated by incidents of violence and lawlessness. As of Tuesday evening, several hundred people had been detained on suspicion of crimes or because of their immigration status.
After dissenters blocked the 101 Freeway, vandalized buildings in downtown Los Angeles and stole from businesses, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday imposed a curfew in the city's civic core from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Thursday's testimony before the House Armed Services Committee will be Hegseth's third appearance on Capitol Hill this week. He was questioned Tuesday by the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense and the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.
Both appearances were testy. On Wednesday, Hegseth insisted the deployment of Marines in Los Angeles was lawful but couldn't name the law under which it is allowed. On Tuesday, he was buffeted with questions about the 'chaos' in his tenure, his discussion of national secrets on a Signal group chat and the lack of information provided to elected leaders about Defense Department operations and budgets, including the cost of the federal deployment in Los Angeles.
'I want your plan!' Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) demanded. 'What is your plan for the future? Can we get that in writing and on paper so that we know where you're going? Because we don't have anything today. We have zip! Nada!'
Hegseth responded that the agency has the details and would provide them to members of Congress. The Pentagon posted a video clip of the back-and-forth on X that tagged the congresswoman and was titled 'WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING!'
Thursday's hearing is especially notable because the committee oversees the Pentagon budget. None of the Republican members of the committee are from California. More than a dozen who were asked to weigh in on the hearing didn't respond.
Republicans are expected to reflect the sentiments expressed by Trump, most recently on Wednesday when he took questions from reporters on the red carpet at the Kennedy Center shortly before attending a performance of 'Les Miserables' with First Lady Melania Trump.
'We are going to have law and order in our country,' he said. 'If I didn't act quickly on that, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground right now.'
'These are radical left lunatics that you're dealing with, and they're tough, they're smart, they're probably paid, many of them, as you know, they're professionals,' he added. 'When you see them chopping up concrete because the bricks got captured, they're chopping up concrete and they're using that as a weapon. That's pretty bad.'
Seven of the committee's members are Democrats from California, and they are expected to press Hegseth on the legal underpinnings of the deployment of federal forces in the state, the lack of notification or coordination with state and local officials and the conditions and future of residents swept up in the raids.
'The president's decision to deploy the National Guard and the U.S. Marines over the objections of California officials has escalated the situation, creating unnecessary chaos and putting public safety at risk,' said Rep. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce). 'As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I'm deeply concerned with the precedent this sets, and the apparent lack of protocol followed, and I will be seeking answers.'
Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara), a Mexican immigrant who served in the Marine Corps Reserve and is also a member of the committee, said Trump is doing what he does best.
'He likes to play arsonist and firefighter,' Carbajal said in an interview.
He argued Trump is using the raids to deflect attention from legislation that will harm the most vulnerable Americans while enriching the wealthy.
'There's a question of whether what he's doing is legal, regarding him and Hegseth sending in Marines. The governor and the mayor did not request the National Guard, let alone the Marines,' Carbajal said. 'This is likely a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of U.S. forces in the U.S.'
Carbajal also said he expects what has unfolded in Los Angeles in recent days to be replicated in communities nationwide, a concern raised by Bass and other Democrats on Wednesday.
As a former Marine, Carbajal added that he and his fellow veterans had no role to play domestically, barring crisis.
'We're not trained for this. There is no role for Marines on American soil unless rebellion is happening,' he said. 'This is so ridiculous. It says a lot about the administration and what it's willing to do to distract and create a more stressful, volatile environment.'
'Let's make it clear,' he added. 'We Democrats don't support any violent protests. But as a Marine, there is no place for the U.S. military on domestic soil under the guise and reasoning he's provided.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
With troops in Los Angeles, echoes of the Kent State massacre
Ohio National Guard members with gas masks and rifles advance toward Kent State University students during an anti-war protest on May 4, 1970. More than a dozen students were killed or injured when the guard opened fire. (.) This article was originally published by The Trace. Earlier in June, President Donald Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops and Marines to quell anti-deportation protests and secure federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles. The move, some historians say, harks back 55 years to May 4, 1970, when Ohio's Republican governor summoned the National Guard to deal with students demonstrating against the Vietnam War at Kent State University. Guard members were ordered to fire over the students' heads to disperse the crowd, but some couldn't hear because they were wearing gas masks. The troops fired at the students instead, killing four and wounding another nine. The shooting served as a cautionary tale about turning the military on civilians. 'Dispatching California National Guard troops against civilian protesters in Los Angeles chillingly echoes decisions and actions that led to the tragic Kent State shooting,' Brian VanDeMark, author of the book 'Kent State: An American Tragedy,' wrote this week for The Conversation. We asked VanDeMark, a history professor at the United States Naval Academy, more about the parallels between 1970 and today. His interview has been edited for length and clarity. After the Kent State shooting, it became taboo for presidents or governors to even consider authorizing military use of force against civilians. Is the shadow of Kent State looming over Los Angeles? VanDeMark: For young people today, 55 years ago seems like a very long time. For the generation that came of age during the '60s and were in college during that period, Kent State is a defining event, shaping their views of politics and the military. There are risks inherent in deploying the military to deal with crowds and protesters. At Kent State, the county prosecutor warned the governor that something terrible could happen if he didn't shut down the campus after the guard's arrival. The university's administration did not want the guard brought to campus because they understood how provocative that would be to student protesters who were very anti-war and anti-military. It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. The military is not trained or equipped to deal well with crowd control. It is taught to fight and kill, and to win wars. California Governor Gavin Newsom has said that deploying the guard to Los Angeles is inflammatory. What do you fear most about this new era of domestic military deployment? People's sense of history probably goes back five or 10 years rather than 40 or 50. That's regrettable. The people making these decisions — I can't unpack their motivation or perceptions — but I think their sense of history in terms of the dangers inherent in deploying U.S. troops to deal with street protests is itself a problem. There are parallels between Kent State and Los Angeles. There are protesters throwing bottles at police and setting fires. The Ohio governor called the Kent State protesters dissidents and un-American; President Trump has called the Los Angeles demonstrators insurrectionists, although he appears to have walked that back. What do you make of these similarities? The parallels are rather obvious. The general point I wish to make, without directing it at a particular individual, is that the choice of words used to describe a situation has consequences. Leaders have positions of responsibility and authority. They have a responsibility to try to keep the situation under control. Are officers today more apt to use rubber bullets and other so-called less-lethal rounds than in 1970? Even though these rounds do damage, they're less likely to kill. Could that save lives today? Most likely, yes. In 1970, the guard members at Kent State, all they had were tear gas canisters and assault rifles loaded with live ammunition. Lessons have been learned between 1970 and today, and I'm almost certain that the California National Guard is equipped with batons, plastic shields, and other tools that give them a range of options between doing nothing and killing someone. I've touched one of the bullets used at Kent State. It was five and a half inches long. You can imagine the catastrophic damage that can inflict on the human body. Those bullets will kill at 1,000 yards, so the likelihood that the military personnel in Los Angeles have live ammunition is very remote. Trump authorized the deployment of federal troops not only to Los Angeles but also to wherever protests are 'occurring or are likely to occur,' leading to speculation that the presence of troops will become permanent. Was that ever a consideration in the '60s and '70s, or are we in uncharted waters here? In the 1960s and early 1970s, presidents of both parties were very reluctant to deploy military forces against protests. Has that changed? Apparently it has. I personally believe that the military being used domestically against American citizens, or even people living here illegally, is not the answer. Generally speaking, force is not the answer. The application of force is inherently unpredictable. It's inherently uncontrollable. And very often the consequences of using it are terrible human suffering. Before the Kent State shooting, the assumption by most college-aged protesters was that there weren't physical consequences to engaging in protests. Kent State demonstrated otherwise. In Los Angeles, the governor, the mayor, and all responsible public officials have essentially said they will not tolerate violence or the destruction of property. I think that most of the protesters are peaceful. What concerns me is the small minority who are unaware of our history and don't understand the risks of being aggressive toward the authorities. In Los Angeles, we have not just the guard but also the Marines. Marines, as you mentioned, are trained to fight wars. What's the worst that could happen here? People could get killed. I don't know what's being done in terms of defining rules of engagement, but I assume that the Marines have explicitly been told not to load live ammunition in their weapons because that would risk violence and loss of life. I don't think that the guard or the Marines are particularly enthusiastic about having to apply coercive force against protesters. Their training in that regard is very limited, and their understanding of crowd psychology is probably very limited. The crowd psychology is inherently unpredictable and often nonlinear. If you don't have experience with crowds, you may end up making choices based on your lack of experience that are very regrettable. Some people are imploring the Marines and guard members to refuse the orders and stay home. You interviewed guard members who were at Kent State. Do you think the troops deployed to Los Angeles will come to regret it? Very often, and social science research has corroborated this, when authorities respond to protests and interact with protesters in a respectful fashion, that tends to have a calming effect on the protesters' behavior. But that's something learned through hard experience, and these Marines and guard members don't have that experience. The National Guard was deployed in Detroit in 1967; Washington, D.C. in 1968; Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992; and Minneapolis and other cities in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. Have the Marines ever been deployed? Or any other military branch? Yes. In 1992, in the wake of the Rodney King controversy, the California governor at the time, a Republican named Pete Wilson, asked President George H.W. Bush to deploy not only the guard but also the Marines to deal with street riots in Los Angeles. That's the last time it was done. And how did that go? I'm not an expert on this, but I assure you that the senior officers who commanded those Marines made it very clear that they were not to discharge their weapons without explicit permission from the officers themselves, and they were probably told not to load their weapons with live ammunition. In 1967, during the Detroit riots, the Michigan National Guard was called out to the streets of Detroit. When the ranking senior officer arrived, he ordered the soldiers to remove their bullets from their rifles. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Chart: Hundreds of gigawatts of clean energy at risk with GOP bill
See more from Canary Media's "Chart of the week' column. Amid rising power bills and surging energy demand, Republicans in Congress are set to undermine the country's primary source of new electricity — clean energy. The 'Big Beautiful Bill' passed in May by House Republicans and now being considered by the Senate would rapidly phase out key clean-energy tax credits, casting uncertainty over more than 600 gigawatts' worth of solar, battery, and wind projects slated to come online in 2028 or later, according to new analysis from research firm Cleanview. To be fair, the 600-GW figure is based on what's currently in the interconnection queue, and a good number of those projects won't get built regardless of the fate of the tax credits. (Projects often drop out of the queue for all kinds of reasons.) But if the bill kneecaps even a fraction of what's anticipated, it will have serious consequences for the U.S. energy system. For context, the entirety of the U.S. had a generating capacity of around 1,200 gigawatts at the end of 2023. The current version of the legislation would rapidly phase out federal tax credits that encourage clean energy development. As it stands, developers would be eligible for the tax credit only if their projects begin construction within 60 days of the bill's passage and if they come online before the end of 2028. That puts the 318 GW worth of projects planned to be completed in 2029 and later at explicit risk of losing their tax-credit eligibility. It also jeopardizes 2028 projects that either can't break ground with just two months' notice or which might hit snags that push their completion into 2029. That doesn't necessarily mean those projects would be cancelled, but it would scramble their economics, which were calculated under an entirely different set of policy assumptions. It's near certain that some would fall through. Many more would be delayed as developers hash out new financial terms — read: higher power prices that will be passed onto consumers. A slowdown in clean energy construction is the exact opposite of what the moment demands. These days, when a new energy project is built in the U.S., more than nine times out of 10 it is a solar, battery, or wind installation. That's not an exaggeration. In 2024, solar, batteries, and wind made up 93% of new energy resources. The year before that, it was 94%. Meanwhile, construction of new large-scale fossil-gas power plants is constrained by turbine shortages that are unlikely to ease in the near term. At the same time, electricity demand is surging and expected to climb even higher in coming years as the development of AI sets off a race to construct power-hungry data centers. If congressional Republicans pass a bill that stifles solar, batteries, and wind, study after study predicts the same outcome: higher energy bills — and more planet-warming emissions.
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Senate GOP's hard-liners are suddenly sounding softer on the megabill
The Senate's conservative hard-liners vowed to wage holy war against the 'big, beautiful bill.' Now they appear to be coming to Jesus. The recent rhetorical downshift from some of the loudest GOP critics of the pending megabill underscores the political reality for conservatives: As much as they want to rail publicly about the legislation and the need to address any number of pressing national emergencies in it, very few are willing to buck President Donald Trump on his biggest priority. None of them are ready to cave just yet. But the White House and their GOP colleagues increasingly believe that three senators in particular — Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida — are now on track to support the bill. Johnson, in particular, has softened his once-fierce criticism of the legislation in recent days. 'We all want to see President Trump succeed,' he said in a brief interview this week. 'Everybody is trying to help. That's why, if I seem to have been striking a more hopeful tone, it's because I am more hopeful.' Just a couple of weeks ago, Johnson was demanding near-unworkable levels of spending cuts and warning that the bill would drive the nation off a fiscal cliff. Then the Trump administration and members of Republican leadership went to work. Johnson made a pitch to Trump during a recent one-on-one phone call to let him work with administration officials on his deficit reduction plan. That led to a meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council. A person with knowledge of the meeting, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said afterward that the White House is 'optimistic that there's a path to getting Johnson to yes.' Trump also privately urged Johnson during a meeting with other Finance Committee Republicans last week to speak more positively about the bill. The callout came after Trump officials — and Trump himself — grew annoyed watching Johnson savage the bill on television. His message: You should be out there selling this bill proudly, he told Johnson, according to two White House officials granted anonymity to describe the meeting — arguing that even if he doesn't love every detail, there was plenty in the bill for Republicans to be proud of. 'When the president says, 'Ron, you've been so negative, that's just not even helpful,' I want to be helpful,' Johnson said, acknowledging Trump's message in the meeting and admitting he has 'downplayed what is good in the bill.' One of the White House officials summarized the approach to Johnson: 'Don't be negative to create leverage for yourself,' the person said. 'If you want to negotiate, like, we can negotiate in private. We're all reasonable people.' The hands-on efforts to win over Johnson are part of a larger effort to try to help the fiscal hawks find a soft landing — and at least the semblance of some concessions that will be able to hold up as wins in the end. That's played out in face-to-face meetings with administration officials, negotiations over pet provisions and discussions about how to continue the fight to cut budget deficits down the road. Being able to win over their deficit hawks would be a huge boon to Majority Leader John Thune, who has acknowledged that he's got one hard 'no' vote in Sen. Rand Paul, who firmly opposes the bill's debt-ceiling hike. Thune can only afford to lose three GOP senators, with Vance breaking a tie. That has given the fiscal hawks leverage, since the GOP leaders can't afford to lose all of them, and that's on top of the other potential headaches they have to navigate elsewhere in the conference. To hear the fiscal hawks tell it, they are sounding a more positive note about their ability to support the bill because the administration is starting to take their demands seriously. To help appease their holdouts, GOP leaders have tried to scrounge up additional savings beyond what is included in the House bill. 'I believe we'll get a deal done. I'm doing everything I can to represent my state,' Scott said in a brief interview. GOP leaders are working to assuage Lee by tucking one of his top priorities into the bill. The deregulatory proposal, known as the REINS Act, was initially expected to run afoul of Senate rules for the party-line reconciliation process, but leaders have been working to try to find a version that could pass muster. House conservatives, meanwhile, have grown increasingly worried that the Senate, with the blessing of their fiscal-hawk allies, will send back a bill that waters down some of their hard-fought victories. The House Freedom Caucus has laid out public demands, while its members have met privately with Lee, Scott and Johnson to strategize about additional spending reductions and maintaining their policy wins. The Senate hard-liners aren't ready to concede just yet. Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has promised Johnson he will advance a second reconciliation bill, giving conservatives another chance to enact cuts. But Johnson said that wouldn't be enough to get him on board. Instead he wants a 'forcing mechanism' to maintain a longer-term push to return to 2019 spending levels. He's letting the White House brainstorm other ideas and described himself as 'reasonably flexible.' Lee said in a statement he's 'been working with my colleagues and the White House to make the Big Bill Beautiful.' But added: 'It's not where it needs to be yet.' 'We need to sell federal land to help fix the housing crisis, terminate benefits that flow to illegals, end the Green New Scam, and get rid of the Medicaid provider tax. I want to see this effort cross the finish line, but we need to do more,' he added. Even as they continue to push, their colleagues see the signs of late softening — and aren't surprised whatsoever. 'They'll fold,' said a GOP colleague who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said that Republicans have 'made progress' with Johnson and 'I wouldn't count him out.' And two others, Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and John Kennedy (R-La.), said they expect Lee, Scott and Johnson to come around when the bill comes up for a final vote, even if they don't ultimately love every provision. 'They're very gettable,' Kennedy said. 'At some point people are just going to have to decide, is this good enough?' Rachael Bade and Meredith Lee Hill contributed reporting.
