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    As Trump Debates Iran Action, the Meaning of ‘America First’ Is on the Line

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    As President Trump ponders involving the United States in Israel’s attacks on Iran, the G.O.P. faces a thorny question: What does “America first” really mean?A decade ago, President Trump electrified conservatives with his promises to get the United States out of foreign entanglements and to always put — say it with me — “America first.”As he weighs involving American planes and weaponry in Israel’s attacks on Iran, a brawl has broken out in the Republican Party over what “America first” really means.I wrote today about how a swath of Trump’s base is in an uproar over the president’s increasing openness to deploying U.S. warplanes — and perhaps even 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs — against Iran in an effort to help Israel finish off its nuclear program.“Everyone is finding out who are real America First/MAGA and who were fake and just said it bc it was popular,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on X over the weekend. She added, “Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA.”The anger extends well beyond Greene’s social-media account, to cable television and the podcast feeds of the likes of Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Candace Owens. They are passionately arguing that intervening in Iran would contravene Trump’s long-held promise to steer the nation out of, not into, foreign entanglements, and threaten to fracture his whole coalition.It’s a remarkable fight, and one that raises a bigger question about who is really the keeper of Trump’s political flame. Is it the non-interventionists who have been there from the start, or the Republican hawks — the Senator Lindsey Grahams of the world — who are now sticking by the president?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Independent Hospitality Coalition Gives L.A. Restaurants Hope

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      Last Tuesday, Valerie Gordon made an Instagram video about new signs she had posted around her small Los Angeles restaurant reading “Private: Employees Only.” She explained that they marked all nonpublic areas of the restaurant that would be off limits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a raid.The scale of the response to the post shocked her. Ms. Gordon estimated that it had already been viewed more than 500,000 times and shared widely across the Los Angeles restaurant industry.“What that showed to me is there is a need for this information, there is a deep need, and people don’t really know what to do,” Ms. Gordon said.But she had some help with the post. The guidance Ms. Gordon described came from the Independent Hospitality Coalition, a small, scrappy advocacy group which has emerged as an organizing hub for the Los Angeles restaurant industry.Founded during the pandemic, the I.H.C. is one of a number organizations, local and national, which are trying to bring together isolated, competing restaurant businesses. The coalition’s main mission is to help business cut through red tape like liquor permitting processes and promote more restaurant-friendly legislation at the state level. But in Los Angeles in the last five years, a rolling series of major disruptions — from the pandemic itself, to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 to the 2023 Hollywood strikes to the wildfires in January — has made operating a restaurant an uncertain proposition.And then came the ICE raids and the deployment of the National Guard.Eddie Navarrette, the executive director of the Independent Hospitality Coalition, said the years since Covid have brought successive upheavals to Los Angeles that have negatively affected restaurant business.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Shifts Deportation Focus, Pausing Raids on Farms, Hotels and Eateries

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      The abrupt pivot on an issue at the heart of Mr. Trump’s presidency suggested his broad immigration crackdown was hurting industries and constituencies he does not want to lose.The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance.The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign — an issue that is at the heart of his presidency — is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. It also came as Mr. Trump made a rare concession this week that his crackdown was hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses.The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “non criminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any other crime.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Here Are Some of the Southern California Immigration Raids From the Past Week

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      At least five carwashes across Los Angeles County and Orange County have been raided since Sunday, according to one labor group.Tension has been growing for months over the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to deport people who remain in the United States illegally.But the situation escalated in Los Angeles about a week ago. After protesters converged on immigration raids and demonstrated against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, President Trump deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops to the city.While the focus has turned to ensuing protests in downtown Los Angeles and the heavy military response — the call-up has since increased to 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines — ICE agents have continued immigration raids each day in Southern California.It is difficult to have a comprehensive picture of the ICE efforts because the agency does not issue a list of people who have been detained each day nor the locations where they were taken from, and authorities did not confirm the number of raids they conducted in California this week.But residents, immigrant rights groups and elected leaders have cobbled together accounts of ICE workplace raids that they describe as indiscriminate attempts to find anyone who might be undocumented.Protesters at a carwash in Culver City, Calif., on Wednesday. At least five carwashes across Los Angeles County and Orange County have been raided since Sunday.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Deployment of Troops to L.A. Protests Is a Do-Over of 2020

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      President Trump was talked out of deploying the military to crush the George Floyd protests in 2020. He always regretted it.In 2020, as racial justice protests swept through the country over the murder of George Floyd, President Trump was itching to deploy the military to crush the unrest. He was talked out of it by his top national security advisers, who feared that such a decision would be viewed as moving toward martial law.Five years later, as protests against his immigration policies began to swell in Los Angeles, Mr. Trump said he had learned his lesson.“I’ll never do that again,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday, about waiting to send in the National Guard in 2020. “If I see problems brewing,” he added, “I’m not going to wait two weeks.”With the Los Angeles protests, Mr. Trump has seized the chance to make up for his first-term regret.His decision to send in federal troops right away, taking the extraordinary step of deploying active-duty military to deal with domestic unrest, fits into the larger pattern of Mr. Trump operating without any significant pushback from the people around him in his second term.“He saw the military as his reactionary arm,” said Olivia Troye, a former homeland security official and aide to former Vice President Mike Pence. Ms. Troye said she witnessed multiple national security officials explain to Mr. Trump in 2020 that the military takes an oath to the Constitution — not Mr. Trump — and that it should not be turned against American citizens, even protesters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In L.A., the Divide Between Peace and Violence Is in the Eye of the Beholder

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      Los Angeles, a city marked by fiery and full-throated protests, adds a new chapter to that history. Alfonso Santoyo was marching through the streets of Los Angeles with a boisterous crowd on Wednesday protesting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Santoyo’s presence, and his voice, were his only weapons.“It’s upsetting how they’ve portrayed the community as criminals,” said Mr. Santoyo, a 43-year-old postal worker whose parents came to the U.S. from Mexico as undocumented immigrants but eventually gained legal status. “It’s just upsetting to see that. Because we know it’s not the case.”After an 8 p.m. curfew brought a ghostly quiet to much of downtown, a man in body armor stood in front of a building full of jewelry stores, smoking a cigarette down to the filter.The man, who declined to give his name, wore a handgun on his thigh and carried a rifle that fires plastic projectiles. He pointed to nearby stores and buildings in L.A.’s jewelry district that had been broken into days earlier. Much like the 2020 demonstrations against police violence, he said, there always seemed to be bad actors among the peaceful ones.Separating them out, he said, was pointless. He cited an Armenian proverb: “Wet wood and dry wood burn together.”In Los Angeles this week, many protesters have marched peacefully. Others have thrown objects at the police, set cars ablaze and looted stores and restaurants. Police have responded aggressively, intimidating protesters with earsplitting explosives and mounted patrols, hitting them with batons, deploying tear gas and firing foam projectiles and rubber bullets into crowds.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Which U.S. Cities Have Joined L.A. in Protesting Immigration Raids?

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      From small daytime gatherings to marches with thousands of people, protests condemning immigration enforcement operations have spread steadily across the United States. More are expected in the coming days.Some of the demonstrations were organized by local residents after being surprised by sudden immigration raids; others are part of planned efforts by organizations like the Service Employees International Union, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the 50501 Movement, a progressive political group.While the protests have been mostly calm, there have been several instances of violence and unrest. In Los Angeles, a few cars were set on fire and some people threw rocks and bottles at law enforcement. About 200 people were arrested on charges of failure to disperse after the curfew took effect downtown, according to a statement by the Los Angeles Police Department. And in Philadelphia, 15 people were arrested including one man who was charged with assaulting an officer during a confrontation between protesters and the police.Here are where some of the protests have happened.AtlantaOn Tuesday evening, a crowd of over 1,000 demonstrators gathered in the heavily Hispanic and Asian American enclave of Buford Highway in metropolitan Atlanta. The group dwindled quickly after police ordered people to disperse. Shortly afterward, law enforcement deployed chemical irritants and charged the remaining crowd with riot shields. A total of six people were arrested in the protests, according to the Brookhaven Police Department.Megan Varner/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Hits California Farms

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      Farmworkers hid in fields on Tuesday as word spread that ICE agents were conducting raids in California’s breadbasket, an activist said.As a community activist in California’s agricultural heartland, Hazel Davalos spends much of her day talking with migrant farm workers and volunteers. So as word spread Tuesday of immigration raids on the Central Coast and San Joaquin Valley, she heard accounts of some migrants hiding in the fields between rows of crops.Many could not leave the ranches where they work, said Ms. Davalos, executive director of Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, and others worried about being detained on their commute home. She knows of 40 workers who were detained Tuesday in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, she said.A video published by ABC News showed federal agents chasing a farmworker through the fields Tuesday in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles. Raids were also conducted at farms in Kern and Tulare counties, according to Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers union.A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson would not confirm that any of the reported raids took place, but said in a statement that work-site immigration enforcement “protects workers from exploitation and trafficking.”A crowd formed at the back gate of Ambiance Apparel in Los Angeles on Friday after federal immigration agents gathered at the company.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesThe Trump administration is ramping up its immigration crackdown, with a focus on workplaces with undocumented laborers, such as farms, restaurants and construction sites. Estimates show more than eight million undocumented immigrants work in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I Had an Affair With a Politician Who Denies Being Gay. Do I Keep His Secret?

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      Is what happened between us my story to tell?Many years ago, I had a brief relationship with another young man. We had sex once, and he wanted to continue but asked me to keep it secret because he was in politics. I was a hotheaded gay activist, and I refused on principle, ending the affair. He went on to become one of the most prominent politicians in his country. He was a single man for a long time, but when asked about his sexuality he denied being gay. He eventually married a woman and lives a putatively heterosexual life.I am a writer. Is what happened between us my story to tell, or is it his story to (still) hide? Is he entitled to privacy? Am I obligated to keep his name a secret even though I didn’t agree to do that at the time, and when asked to keep it quiet I refused? — Name WithheldFrom the Ethicist:Let’s start with the obvious questions: Why now, after all this time? What would you hope to gain from this disclosure? You say that this man is a prominent politician in “his country” (which is presumably not your own), but you don’t indicate that you think he’s a threat to the common good. Is what moves you a belated desire for recognition? A murky wish to be acknowledged in a story that has long since moved on without you — to insert yourself in someone else’s Wikipedia page?Sexual intimacy presupposes a measure of respect for the privacy of those involved. Would your brief encounter have occurred had you announced in advance that you felt free to publish the names of your sexual partners? And there’s an ethical weight that comes with holding in your hands another person’s private life, or an episode of it, anyway. You don’t know how he now thinks of his own sexuality, what his wife knows, how they’ve shaped their lives together or what accommodations have been made in the privacy of a life that has nothing to do with you anymore. Before you risk bruising another family, perhaps it’s worth closing your laptop and pausing to consider: Do you really have good reason to change course and stop honoring the intimacy of your youthful affair?Once a story like this reaches the media, especially social media, it can spiral far beyond your control. Depending on the political culture of his country, what begins as a personal anecdote can quickly turn into a public spectacle. The result could be more intrusive, more destructive and more lasting than you anticipate — for him, his family and for you. You can send a story out into the world, but you can’t call it home.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More