Trump uses LA protests to redirect dissent from policy failures to the ‘enemy within'
Donald Trump walked out to a thunderous standing ovation as Kid Rock's 'American Bad Ass' boomed from the sound system. He watched martial artists slug it out behind a chain-link fence. A female champion let the US president try on her gold belt. It was a night of machismo, spectacle and violence.
Shortly before he joined an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday night, Trump had signed an order deploying 2,000 national guard troops to Los Angeles, where protests sparked by sweeping immigration raids led to clashes between authorities and demonstrators.
The White House said Trump was sending in the guardsmen to 'address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester' in California. Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said the move was 'purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions'. Experts said it was the first time in 60 years that a president has activated a state's national guard – a reserve military – without a request from its governor.
Critics also saw it as an authoritarian flex by a strongman president who has relentlessly trampled norms and burst through guardrails. Since returning to office in January, Trump has sought to crush dissent at cultural institutions, law firms, media companies and universities. Many believed it was only a matter of time before he took the fight to the streets.
The protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids present him with an antagonist that can be used as a focal point for anger, hatred and fear, ensuring that dissent is redirected away from the government and toward 'an enemy within'. Trump is the master of distraction and, with the help of lurid rightwing media clips, wants to divert attention from policy failures and his ugly feud with Elon Musk.
Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator, tweeted: 'Important to remember that Trump isn't trying to heal or keep the peace. He is looking to inflame and divide. His movement doesn't believe in democracy or protest – and if they get a chance to end the rule of law they will take it. None of this is on the level.'
As with much else in his scorched earth second term, Trump advertised this in advance. Last October he told Fox News: 'I always say, we have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.'
He added: 'We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can't let that happen.'
There are echoes of 2020 when Trump used national guard troops in Washington to quell Black Lives Matter protests that arose after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officers. The troops fired teargas to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square near the White House to allow Trump to stage a photo-op at a church.
The former defense secretary Mark Esper later revealed that Trump asked about the protesters: 'Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?'
Trump and his rightwing allies have been busy rewriting the history of 2020 as a flashpoint when rioters brought carnage to US cities. Yet their narrative omits Trump's conspicuous failure to active the national guard in response to his supporters' attempt to overturn his election defeat by laying siege to the US Capitol on January 6 2021.
Cory Booker, a Democratic senator for New Jersey, told NBC's Meet the Press programme on Sunday: 'We are now at a point where we have a president who sat back and did nothing as people stormed our Capitol, viciously beat police, and then when those people – who viciously beat police and led to some of their deaths, therefore cop killers – were convicted by juries, he then pardoned them all.
'So for him to be talking to anybody right now about responsible law enforcement to protect people is hypocritical at best.'
Now California – a Democrat-dominated state regularly invoked by Trump and his allies as a hive of 'wokeness' and immigration lawlessness – is the ideal target for Trump to whip up the fervor and resentments of his base. The government is deploying the national guard 'not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle,' Newsom wrote on social media. 'Don't give them one.'
In a sign of how much has changed from his first term, there are no Mark Espers to push back this time. Instead the current defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, threatened to involve regular military forces, writing that active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton were on high alert and would also be mobilized 'if violence continues'.
And Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and architect of Trump's draconian immigration crackdown, posted messages such as 'We will take back America' and 'Insurrection' – the latter raising the spectre of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, one of the most powerful emergency powers at the disposal of a president.
The 18th-century wartime law would allow Trump to deploy the military on US soil against civilian protests, evoking parallels with autocratic regimes around the world that declare martial law. Again, the president has teed up a preview: on Saturday tanks will roll on the streets of Washington for a parade to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the US army.
It also happens to be Trump's birthday.
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The Guardian
25 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘We're not afraid of you': LA protesters, enraged by Trump, flood the streets
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The protesters did not hesitate to walk right up to the heavily armed me. 'We're not afraid of you!' one organiser with a bullhorn, John Parker, yelled. One of the many banners on display read: 'National Guard LOL.' Every building and wall in the immediate vicinity was covered in profane graffiti, the most common being 'Fuck ICE', 'LAPD can suck it' and 'Kill all cops.' Shortly after noon, the guardsmen, flanked by armed officers with Department of Homeland Security insignia, fired teargas into the growing crowd so a caravan of DHS and Border Patrol vehicles could push its way through. People backed off briefly and donned masks, only to come back in larger numbers within a few minutes. That was the extent of the national guard's involvement. Within a couple of hours, the crowd had swollen to several thousand, as marchers from earlier protests – one in Boyle Heights, east of downtown, and the other at city hall – moved on the federal complex from different directions, spilling so broadly into the surrounding streets that it brought traffic to a standstill. Several drivers caught in the snarl-up honked enthusiastically to show their support. At first, the Los Angeles police department issued orders to disperse and threatened to arrest anyone who did not comply. Dozens of patrol cars tore through downtown, forming a barricade just north of the protest and slowly pushing the crowd in the opposite direction. LAPD riot officers sprinted down the sidewalks and fired several rounds of flash-bangs, which alarmed the crowd but did not appear to harm anyone. Soon, the LAPD patrol cars had – whether by design or by accident – hemmed the national guardsmen into their staging area, making it impossible for them to make their own attempt at crowd control even if they had wanted to. The crowd, meanwhile, had split into two, with one group clustered so thickly along Alameda and Temple Streets that the police soon gave up on attempting to move them further. The other group sprinted down freeway off-ramps leading to the 101 freeway, bringing traffic on the major artery to a standstill. Police fired round after round of flash-bangs in an attempt to push the protesters back up the off-ramps. Thick clusters of onlookers gathered on the bridges above the action, shouting 'shame, shame!' at the police as well as profanity-laced slogans – in English and Spanish – directed at Trump and his immigration enforcement efforts. Unlike the national guardsmen, the LAPD appeared reluctant to resort to teargas. Unlike the county sheriff's department, who shot a news photographer in the leg on Saturday with a so-called 'less lethal' round, the city police also shied away from more drastic crowd control measures. California leaders including the governor Gavin Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass have accused Trump of compounding the problems caused by his immigration raids by taking the unorthodox step of requisitioning the state national guard. By mid-afternoon Newsom was urging the president to rescind the order. 'We didn't have a problem until Trump got involved,' Newsom said. 'This is a serious breach of state sovereignty – inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they're actually needed.' Some of those frustrations showed on the street, as LAPD officers – even as they appeared determined not to inflame the crowds further – had to endure loud insults and a flurry of empty plastic water bottles thrown whenever they made an attempt to take control of the crowd. In isolated incidents, LAPD riot officers manhandled or arrested protesters who threw fists at them or beat on police cars. At one point, a black police cruiser moved through the crowd at high speed and was reported to have injured a bicyclist knocked to the ground. There were isolated episodes of vandalism – graffiti sprayed on buildings and vehicles, a Waymo driverless car seen with a smashed windshield, one protester who damaged the side mirror of a parked car he passed. But the vast majority of protesters seemed determined to vent their anger through slogans and placards only. 'People experiencing oppression are expressing their first amendment rights,' said a protest organiser who wanted to be identified only as Angelica R for fear of government reprisals 'This is not the making of a dictatorship,' she said of Trump's immigration crackdowns. 'This is the description of a dictatorship.' It was not clear what plan, if any, the national guard had going into Sunday. Newsom said about 300 guardsmen had deployed to the LA area – far short of the 2,000 requisitioned by the president. As the day began, two dozen of them appeared to news crews outside the federal complex as though intent only on posing for photographs. They had the visors of their helmets up, and many wore shades, even though the day started out cloudy. Mayor Bass, speaking to the Los Angeles Times, accused them of 'posturing'. Maxine Waters, the veteran congresswoman from south LA, taunted them by asking: 'Who are you going to shoot?' It was only as the crowds grew thicker that they donned riot shields and turned to face the street, not the television cameras. The size of the protests appeared to take everyone by surprise. LAPD squad cars tore towards city hall at one point, only to spin in circles and head back to the federal complex moments later. One protest organiser outside the Metropolitan detention center yelled at one point: 'This is only a distraction! We need to go to city hall!' But as soon as people started heeding her call, they ran into a sea of several thousand protesters moving in the opposite direction.
The Guardian
31 minutes ago
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Los Angeles protesters demonstrate against Ice raids
US national guard troops and LA police clashed with demonstrators on Sunday, as teargas and pepper spray were used to disperse the crowds who had been protesting against the raids by immigration authorities which began Friday afternoon
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38 minutes ago
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Trans military colonel issues defiant message after being booted from post as Trump ban takes effect
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Fram detailed the day she came out in 2016, telling a story of how her teammates responded to the announcement by shaking her hand and, one by one, saying: 'It's an honor to serve with you.' She also spoke about a similar experience last week, when she announced at a joint staff meeting that she was leaving and that she no longer met 'the current standard for military excellence and readiness.' 'A room full of senior leaders, admirals and generals, walked over to me and the scene from 2016 repeated. They offered those same words, now tinged with the sadness of past tense: 'It's been an honor to serve with you',' she said. She added that she walked away with tears in her eyes because Fram felt that it had been her honor all along. 'It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve this nation and defend the freedoms and opportunities we have as Americans. My wildest dreams came true wearing this uniform.' In the past six months, Fram had been posting photos of her fellow transgender troops on Instagram listing their accomplishment with the tagline: 'Happens to Be Trans.' Fram told Stars and Stripes that, most recently, her work had been focused on 'defining the future capabilities that we're going to need to win wars far into the future.' She added that her Instagram post was an attempt to speak on behalf of her fellow transgender soldiers. 'It is almost a duty and an obligation to speak on their behalf because it is my privilege to do so and to hopefully represent transgender service members well that do not have the privilege that comes along with the rank and the experience that I do,' she said. 'If I don't speak for them and they are unable to speak for themselves, who will speak for them?' In early May, the Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump 's ban on troops with gender dysphoria can stand. The Supreme Court's ruling lifts a lower court's decision to pause Trump's policy, which the administration called 'dramatic and facially unfair.' The order allows the Department of Defense to continue removing transgender service members from the military and denying enlistment while lawsuits continue in the lower courts.. On January 20, President Trump signed an executive order ordering Hegseth to enact a ban on 'individuals with gender dysphoria' serving in the U.S. military. District Judge Benjamin Settle in Washington state ruled that the ban violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection and barred the government from enforcing Trump's policy. The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit but it was rejected, prompting them to appeal to the Supreme Court. Trump's lawyers argued that the ruling was 'contrary to military readiness and the Nation's interests.' The liberal justices - Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson - would have decided against Trump, they indicated in the filing, but the Supreme Court ruling was not signed. The ruling was an emergency appeal prompting an unusually swift ruling from the Supreme Court justices, although they can rule on the merits of the case at a later date. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt celebrated the news in a statement. 'Another MASSIVE victory in the Supreme Court!' she wrote. 'President Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth are restoring a military that is focused on readiness and lethality – not DEI or woke gender ideology.' The ban enacted by the Department of Defense on February 26 detailed that 'the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.' The level challenge to the order was filed by Commander Emily Shilling, together with six other current transgender service members and one transgender person who wants to join the military. Schilling appeared at the LGBT Community Center dinner on April 10 to be honored for the legal fight against the president and his administration. 'I swore an oath to support and defend the onstitution,' Schilling said. 'That oath requires obedience to lawful orders. But when an order undermines the very principles I swore to uphold, I have the responsibility to challenge it.' Shortly after he was inaugurated in 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order overturning Trump's initial ban on service of transgender individuals in the military. After Trump was inaugurated he ordered the ban to be reinstated. Trump and Hegseth view the extra care required for transgender service members to be a distraction to military readiness. In February, Hegseth ordered a pause on gender-transitioning medical procedures for active duty service members. 'Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members are paused,' his memo said.
