Lights. Camera. Occupation

California fights back against Donald Trump's manufactured show of force

We’re going Live today, Thursday, June 12, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, for a conversation with messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio. You can watch on your desktop at The Ink or on your phone or tablet with the Substack app.

This past Friday, June 6, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, in an attempt to fill White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s quota of 3,000 arrests per day, launched a series of raids on workplaces across Los Angeles.

In downtown Los Angeles’s Fashion District and at a Home Depot in Paramount, a suburb about 15 miles to the south, residents pushed back against the agents, protecting their communities, families, and friends. The police response — with heavily armored LAPD and federal forces using tear gas, flashbangs, and rubber bullets — sparked larger protests, which have been ongoing. Since the initial raids on Friday, hundreds of immigrant Angelenos have been detained by ICE (some have already been deported), hundreds more protestors have been arrested, and area residents and reporters have been shot by police.

At their height, the protests closed off several blocks and a few stretches of freeway around downtown — a tiny portion of the 500-square-mile metropolitan area. But the White House and its congressional and media allies spent the weekend spinning localized unrest into a portrait of a citywide “hellscape,” seeing in the presence of Mexican flags the signal of a foreign invasion, and turning a few incinerated robotaxis into a story that the city was on fire. Social media further distorted the reality of what was happening on the ground. That was, according to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, mostly peaceful protest — the kind of constitutionally protected expression by which “ordinary folks make change in this country.”

The sense of chaos was, wrote Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times, made for storytelling — meant to rally Trump’s followers and put liberals on the defensive in the interest of an expanding authoritarian crackdown.

Many people have speculated that the confrontation in Los Angeles will play into Trump’s hands, allowing him to pose as a champion of law and order bringing criminal mobs to heel. Maybe they’re right; Trump is a master demagogue with a gift for creating the scenes of conflict his supporters crave. We now know that Dr. Phil was on the ground with ICE during the raids that set off the Los Angeles unrest, filming a prime-time special. The administration appeared to want a spectacle.

Back in 2020, Senator Tom Cotton argued for bringing in the military to put down the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd. By the time he made the same argument this week — calling for an “overwhelming show of force,” purportedly to safeguard Californians — the mobilization had already gotten underway.

Donald Trump further escalated the situation by deploying military force, federalizing 4,000 members of California’s National Guard to “support” police and following up with a battalion of 700 Marines to back up the Guard — all over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Los Angeles Police Department, who announced repeatedly that they had the situation under control. As Tyler Kingkade and Suzanne Gamboa reported for NBC News:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom blamed anarchists and troublemakers for the fires and any violence, not peaceful protesters, but he said, “Donald Trump at the end of the day is the sponsor of these conditions.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement on X that “Trump didn’t inherit a crisis — he created one.”

By midweek, the occupying forces (who, reportedly, had never received the activation orders that would ensure they got paid) were confronting Los Angeles residents who were angry and frustrated not just at the ICE raids, but at the new military presence and what it represented. As Sonali Kolhatkar described the scene for Hammer & Hope:

A few blocks away, rage simmered amid the crowds gathered outside the Metropolitan Detention Center on Alameda. A boy of about 10 spray-painted “Fuck ICE” on the sidewalk within sight of a line of police officers. Nearly every government building in downtown Los Angeles is coated in graffiti denouncing ICE, LAPD, the National Guard, and, of course, President Donald Trump.

Around the corner from the detention center, National Guard forces flanked the entrance to 300 N. Los Angeles, a federal building also covered with spray-painted expletives. A middle-aged woman wearing a face mask and plastic goggles exhorted the uniformed men and women, yelling, “You’re a monster. Don’t do it anymore — you have a choice. You can get another job! Don’t be for a dictator, be for the people!”

The Los Angeles raids, the federalization of California’s National Guard, the threats to arrest both Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass, the arrest and indictment of SEIU president David Huerta, and the calling up of the Marines aren’t really about immigration enforcement or concern for Los Angeles at all. But none of it is a “distraction” — instead, as Jacob Knutson wrote for Democracy Docket, it’s part of Trump’s larger agenda of restricting constitutional rights to speech and assembly.

This is alarming in light of the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently alleging that speech can inhibit the execution of laws. It charged David Huerta, the president of one of the largest unions in the country, with conspiring to impede an officer — a felony — for protesting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at a private business June 6.

In the criminal complaint against Huerta, the DOJ claimed the labor leader attempted to “intimidate” officers by “banging” on a gate with his hands, taunting ICE officials for wearing masks and being near people screaming expletives.

And that, in turn, is part of a larger story about the kind of country Trump is trying to build. As Brennan Center president Michael Waldman wrote:

It’s clear that Trump wants to use this showdown to expand enforcement powers.

The week before he stages a strongman-style military parade along the National Mall — complete with tanks, missiles, and military aircraft — Trump has claimed the right to preemptively authorize deployment of the military all across America.

That should be chilling to most Americans, who have enjoyed a firm line between police and the military as an essential component of our democracy. The deployment of the military against civilians should only be used in the most extreme cases as a last resort. Otherwise, as Elizabeth Goitein notes, “an army turned inward can quickly become an instrument of tyranny.”

In yet another spectacle, Donald Trump, promoting the military parade planned for his birthday, delivered a political speech to members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne, the audience reportedly handpicked for party affiliation and because they looked the part. Author and former U.S. Navy War College professor Tom Nichols saw in the event not only a violation of presidential norms but of military duty and leadership:

Will any of these men say one word? Will any of them defend the Army and the other services from a would-be caudillo, a man who would probably be strutting around in a giant hat and a golden shoulder braid if he could get away with it? The top officers of the U.S. military wear eagles or stars on their shoulders that give them great privilege, as befits people who assume responsibility for the defense of the nation and the welfare of their troops. They command the power of life and death itself on the field of battle. But those ranks also carry immense responsibility. If they are truly Washington’s heirs, they should speak up—now—and stand with the first commander in chief against the rogue 47th.

The clearest summary of what’s happening? Perhaps this 2003 scene from Battlestar Galactica, which made the rounds during the Ferguson demonstrations in 2014 and was shared widely again this week.

While congressional Democrats were slow to make statements over the weekend, and the statements that emerged were a mixed bag, Democratic governors have come together to defend their constituents. And among them, it was ultimately Governor Newsom who most clearly rose to the occasion, somewhat unexpectedly given his recent courting of far-right figures and ideas as a podcaster. But as Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò put it, whatever the motivation, it’s effective — and necessary:

In a Tuesday evening speech, Newsom called out Donald Trump’s militarized response as a demonstration of “weakness masquerading as strength,” and his supposed opposition to lawlessness in the streets of Los Angeles as pure hypocrisy. “What more evidence do you need,” he asked, “than January 6?”

And he made it very clear that this is about turning the military into a weapon against all Americans:

Look, this isn’t just about protests in LA.

When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation.

This is about all of us. This is about you.

This weekend, as Trump’s military parade comes to Washington D.C., a nationwide day of action — “No Kings” — will bring Americans out for peaceful protest in thousands of rallies. There will be no rally in D.C., however. Organizers aren’t looking to escalate. And in any case, this isn’t about Trump, but the people.

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More conversations this week and next!

Join us this afternoon, Thursday, June 12, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, for a conversation with messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio about the Los Angeles protests and the upcoming No Kings nationwide rallies. On Monday, June 16, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, scholar of authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat returns. Then on Tuesday, June 17, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll have a musical conversation with musician, activist, and author Adam Met. And on Wednesday, June 18, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyhone Will Have Always Been Against This, will join our Book Club meeting.

To join and watch, download the Substack app (click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert once we’re live, and you can watch, chat, and even participate in the conversation during our Book Club meetings from your iOS or Android mobile device. If you’re using a computer, you can also watch (and ask questions in the text chat) on our homepage.

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Photo by David McNew/Getty Images