America used to broadly support freedom. Not anymore.
Over America's long history, Americans have often hesitated to support foreign wars and international machinations. George Washington's Farewell Address warning against entangling alliances cast a long shadow. But from the nation's beginnings, Americans have usually known whom to root for — those who seek freedom — and whom to condemn — those who try to crush liberty.
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Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How viral images are shaping views of L.A.'s immigration showdown
As protesters and police officers clashed in the streets of Los Angeles, a parallel conflict raged on social media, as immigration advocates and President Donald Trump's allies raced to shape public opinion on the impacts of mass deportations on American life. The sprawling protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were captured from all angles by cellphones and body cameras and streamed in real time, giving a visceral immediacy to a conflict that led to more than 50 arrests and orders from the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. Amateur videographers and online creators shared some of the mayhem's most-talked-about videos and images, often devoid of context and aimed at different audiences. Clips showing officers firing less-lethal rounds at an Australian journalist or mounted police directing their horses to stride over a sitting man fueled outrage on one side, while those of self-driving Waymo cars on fire and protesters holding Mexican flags stoked the other. The protests have become the biggest spectacle yet of the months-long online war over deportations, as Trump allies work to convince Americans that the issue of undocumented immigration demands aggressive action. But immigrant families and advocates have also been winning attention, and seeking public support, through emotional clips of crying families grappling with removal orders, anti-ICE gatherings and young children in federal custody. The messaging war comes at a time of polarized public sentiment over Trump's immigration policies. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in April found that roughly half the country believed Trump's deportations had gone too far, while the other half thought his actions were about right or hadn't gone far enough. 'To advance your side of the story, you need a piece of content that the algorithm likes. You need something that really grabs people's attention by the throat and doesn't let it go,' said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern University's Khoury College of Computer Sciences. 'If you're on the pro-ICE side of this, you need to find visual images of these protests that look really scary, look really dangerous because that's what's going to draw human attention,' she added. But if 'you don't think that ICE should be taking moms away from their families and kids, you're going to have a video that starts with a crying child's face.' A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said Trump's digital strategists were following the president's lead by spotlighting images of destruction while insisting that he would always intervene in moments of unrest. The White House, which has said the ICE deportations are necessary to solve a national crisis, on Sunday posted an Instagram photo of Trump and a warning that looters and rioters would be given 'no mercy.' 'We're obviously following the president's direction. He is driving the message through his posts and his comments to the press,' the official said. 'We are definitely playing offense here. We are once again boxing the Democrats into the corner of defending criminal illegal aliens.' The unrest and its online propagation also heightened activity around projects like People Over Papers, a crowdsourced map for tracking the locations of ICE officers. Reports flooded in as the clashes continued, said Celeste, a project organizer in L.A. who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of government retribution. 'I haven't slept all weekend,' she said. She added, however, that she worried violent imagery from the ground could hurt the protesters' cause. She said she planned to start making Spanish-language videos for her 51,000 TikTok followers, explaining to skeptics that the violence isn't reflective of the protests, which she sees as necessary to counter ICE's agenda. The L.A. unrest followed weeks of online skirmishes over deportations, some of which have been touched off by the White House's strategy to lean into policy fights with bold and aggressive messaging. The White House last month posted a video that it said showed an 'EPIC takedown of 5 illegal aliens' outside a home improvement store and included an ICE hotline to solicit more tips. The clip, recorded by ICE agents' cameras, was liked 68,000 times but also drew criticism from commenters, who called it 'disturbing' and said this 'isn't a reality show.' After a similar ICE raid on Saturday outside a Home Depot in Paramount, a predominantly Latino suburb of L.A., witnesses sent out alerts on social media, and protesters raced to the scene. Within hours, the Trump administration called for the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to neutralize the unrest. On his Truth Social account a week earlier, Trump celebrated the Supreme Court clearing the way for the removal of some immigrants' legal protections by posting a photo of a jet-filled sky with the phrase, 'Let the Deportations Begin!' The White House has also posted stylized mug shots of unnamed immigrants it said were charged with heinous crimes. 'I love this version of the white house,' one commenter said, with a cry-laugh emoji. 'It feels like a movie every day with President Trump.' During the protests, the administration has worked with new-media figures and online influencers to promote its political points. Phil McGraw, the TV personality known as Dr. Phil who now runs the conservative media network Merit Street, posted an exclusive interview with border czar Tom Homan and embedded with ICE officers last week during L.A. raids, as the company's spokesperson first told CNN. Some top administration officials have worked to frame the protests in militaristic terms, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Saturday sharing a video of the protest and calling it 'an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.' Others, like Vice President JD Vance, have treated it as a chance for dark jokes. When posters on X said Vance could do the 'funniest thing ever' by deporting Derek Guy, a prominent menswear commentator who discussed how his family had been undocumented after fleeing Vietnam, the vice president on Monday posted a brief clip of Jack Nicholson nodding with a sinister grin. Some far-right influencers urged their followers to identify people caught on camera during the civil unrest. In one X post with more than 29,000 likes, the account End Wokeness shared a video of masked figures throwing rocks at police from an overpass and said, 'These are insurrectionists trying to kill cops. Make them famous.' In more left-leaning online spaces, some posters watching from the sidelines offered advice on how protesters could best position their cause to the rest of the world. On the r/ICE_raids subreddit, some posters urged L.A. protesters to stop carrying non-American flags. It's 'adding ammo to ICE's justification,' one poster said, attaching a screenshot of a Homeland Security post showing masked protesters with Mexican flags. Many accounts, knowingly or unknowingly, shared images that warped the reality of what was happening on the ground. An X account with 388,000 followers called US Homeland Security News, which is not affiliated with DHS but paid for one of X's 'verified' blue check marks, posted a photo of bricks that it said had been ordered to be 'used by Democrat militants against ICE agents and staff!! It's Civil War!!' The photo actually originated on the website of a Malaysian construction-supply company. The post has nevertheless been viewed more than 800,000 times. On Sunday night, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's X account tried to combat some of the misinformation directly, saying a viral video post being passed around as evidence of the day's chaos was actually five years old. Even before the L.A. protests, the increased attention on ICE activity had driven a rush of online organizing and real-world information gathering, with some people opposed to mass deportations tracking the movements of ICE officers with plans to foil or disrupt raids. In one viral TikTok post last week, a Minneapolis protester marching in a crowd outside the site of a rumored ICE raid said he had learned of it from Reddit, where a photo had been posted of Homeland Security Investigations officers outside a Mexican restaurant. The local sheriff's office later told news crews that the operation was not an immigration-enforcement case and that no arrests had been made. Some online creators treated the L.A. clashes as a prized opportunity for viral content. On Reddit, accounts with names like LiveNews_24H posted 'crazy footage' compilations of the unrest and said it looked like a 'war zone.' On YouTube, Damon Heller, who comments on police helicopter footage and scanner calls under the name Smoke N' Scan, streamed the clashes on Sunday for nearly 12 hours. Jeremy Lee Quinn, a photographer who shares protest footage to his social media followers, posted to Instagram on Saturday a video of protesters cheering from a bridge as officers tried to extinguish a burning police vehicle. Quinn, who also documented Black Lives Matter marches and the U.S. Capitol riots, said viewers on the left and right treat viral videos like weapons in their arsenal. Far-left viewers might take away from the videos ideas for militant tactics to use in future protests, he said, while far-right viewers will promote the videos to suggest the other side craves more violent crime. Either way, his material gets seen - including through reposts by groups such as the LibsOfReddit subreddit, which shares screenshots mocking liberal views on undocumented immigrants and transgender people. 'You end up with a far-right ecosystem that thrives on these viral moments,' Quinn said. As short-form video and social media platforms increasingly become many Americans' news sources of choice, experts worry they could also amp up the fear and outrage engendered by polarizing events. The fragmentation of social media and the attention-chasing machinery of its recommendation algorithms helps ensure that 'there are a lot of people talking past each other,' said Northeastern's Edelson, not seeing one another's content or 'even aware of the facts that are relevant to the other side.' Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said videos can play a uniquely forceful role in shaping people's reactions to current events because they 'encapsulate the emotion of the moment.' 'There's a heavy dose of misinformation,' he added. 'And, you know, people just end up getting angrier and angrier.' Related Content 'He's waging a war on us': As Trump escalates, Angelenos defend their city To save rhinos, conservationists are removing their horns Donald Trump and the art of the Oval Office confrontation
Yahoo
40 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘Paid insurrectionists': Amid unrest in L.A, Trump returns to an unsettling old favorite
Donald Trump was asked Tuesday whether he was prepared to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to protests in Los Angeles, and the president didn't rule out the possibility. Just as importantly, however, a reporter asked him how he would determine whether or not conditions warranted such a radical move. The Republican replied that he would 'take a look at what's happening,' which wasn't exactly reassuring. But before moving on, Trump blamed local unrest on 'paid insurrectionists.' He's been pushing the same line quite a bit in recent days. A day earlier, the president also told reporters: 'The people that are causing the problem are professional agitators.' Over the weekend, he also used his social media platform to complain about 'paid troublemakers' and 'paid insurrectionists.' If the line sounds familiar, it's not your imagination. As regular readers might recall, it was nearly nine years ago when Trump's 2016 candidacy inspired protests, at which point he assumed that the people involved couldn't possibly be sincere in their dislike of him. They were, he said at the time, 'paid agitators.' After he prevailed on Election Day 2016, there was related anti-Trump activism. Those involved, he said in November 2016, were 'paid protesters.' Months later, after his inauguration, the activism continued. Trump assured the public once more that these Americans deserved to be ignored — because, he assumed, they were 'paid protesters.' The following year, Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination inspired another round of progressive activism. The protesters, Trump insisted, were 'paid professionals.' Earlier this year, as congressional Republicans faced a public backlash, the president assured the public: 'Paid 'troublemakers' are attending Republican Town Hall Meetings.' For now, let's not dwell on the fact that Russia's Vladimir Putin has embraced the same tactic. Let's instead consider the unavoidable bottom line: For Trump and too many in his party, Americans who disagree with them are effectively an impossibility that can only be explained through corrupt schemes and illicit payments. Indeed, it's hardly a stretch to draw a straight line from 'paid protesters' rhetoric to election denialism: Americans who side with Trump and Republicans are real, while Americans who disagree must necessarily be seen as inauthentic. Whether the president is prepared to accept this or not, the fact remains that Americans who take to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with him don't need to be compensated: Their outrage is sincere. This post updates our related earlier coverage. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
What is No Kings day? See map of Florida, US protests. What you should know
As violent protests over the Trump administration's immigration crackdown continue in California, more than 1,800 demonstrations are planned for June 14 across the United States. The "No Kings day of action" is scheduled to take place nationwide Saturday, June 14, with more than 70 planned in Florida. The rallies will coincide with Flag Day, President Trump's 79th birthday and the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary celebration and military parade taking place in Washington, D.C. "No Kings is a national day of action and mass mobilization in response to the increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption of the Trump administration," according to The website also used the words protest, demonstration, march and rally to describe the events scheduled for June 14.. "They've defied our courts, deported Americans, disappeared people off the streets, attacked our civil rights, and slashed our services. The corruption has gone too. far. No thrones. No crowns. No kings. "We're standing together against the abuses of power, cruelty, and corruption. On June 14, we gather to remind President Trump and his enablers: America has No King!" "We're standing together against the abuses of power, cruelty, and corruption. On June 14, we gather to remind President Trump and his enablers: America has No King! "Our goal is to show that the people — the majority — are taking action to stop the corruption and power grab. Points highlighted by include: "He's using OUR tax dollars to pay for HIS party: President Trump's birthday celebration is expected to cost millions of our tax dollars, all while Republicans claim there's no money for Social Security, SNAP, or Medicaid. "We are united against kings: President Trump has already indicated that he's aiming for at least a third term, and now he's planning a self-aggrandizing military parade in D.C But the American people don't put up with kings. Together, we will mobilize in huge numbers to reject this corruption and abuse of power — it's in our DNA as a country. "They've gone too far: This is bigger than political disagreement. They've defied our courts, deported American citizens, disappeared people off the streets, and slashed our services — all while orchestrating a massive giveaway to their billionaire allies. Enough is enough. For anyone who thinks he's gone too far, this movement is for you." According to the No Kings website, more than 75 protests (including several in some cities) are planned across Florida as of June 10. Organizers were urged to "prioritize landmarks or other public sites with high-visibility, like state capitols or city halls, major parks, or in other high traffic outdoor areas in your community." ➤ Find an event near you Apalachicola Apopka Boca Raton Boynton Beach Bronson Casselberry Clermont Center Lake Park Clermont City Hall Clermont Town Cocoa Coral Springs Davenport Daytona Beach DeLand Delray Beach Ellenton Englewood Fort Lauderdale Fort Myers Fort Walton Beach Gainesville Hollywood Inverness Jacksonville Duval County Courthouse Beach Boulevard and Hodges Boulevard Key Largo Key West Kissimmee Lakeland Lake Mary Lake Worth Beach Largo Leesburg Marathon Miami Miami Beach Mount Dora Naples New Port Richey New Smyrna Beach Ocala Orlando Orange City Orange Park Palatka Palm Bay Palm Beach/Mar-a-Largo Palm Beach Gardens Palm Coast Palm Harbor Panama City Pensacola Ninth Avenue/Airport Boulevard The Graffiti Bridge Plant City Poinciana Port Charlotte Port St. Joe Port St. Lucie Riverview Sarasota University Parkway J.D. Hamel Park Sebastian Sebring Spring Hill St. Augustine St. Johns County St. Petersburg Tallahassee Tampa The Villages Venice Vero Beach West Palm Beach To see a map of registered No Kings protests across the U.S., go to Christy Walton, an American billionaire heiress, paid for No Kings ads in the New York Times to promote the No Kings protests, according to The 50501 Movement. "We are the people of the United States of America. The honor, dignity and integrity of our country are not for sale," the ad read. It's not the first time Walton has paid for an ad. In March, she paid for an ad, also in the New York Times and some local newspapers, urging Americans to engage in the political process. "Walton's ad, featuring an image of the Statue of Liberty, emphasizes values like working with international allies, defending against aggression, and respecting constitutional principles," according to lawyermonthly. "She invites readers to engage, ensuring their voices are heard as part of the democratic process." Walton is the widow of John T. Walton, who was one of the sons of the Walmart founder Sam Walton. On Truth Social, Trump said, "If I didn't 'SEND IN THE TROOPS' to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now, much like 25,000 houses burned to the ground in L.A. due to an incompetent Governor and Mayor." "If they spit, we will hit.' This is a statement from the President of the United States concerning the catastrophic Gavin Newscum (sic) inspired Riots going on in Los Angeles. The Insurrectionists have a tendency to spit in the face of the National Guardsmen/women, and others. These Patriots are told to accept this, it's just the way life runs. But not in the Trump Administration. "IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!" This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: No Kings day protests planned June 14. See map locations
