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      Why are people so triggered by the Mexican flag at the LA protests? | Daniel Peña

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      Republicans are using images of Ice protesters waving Mexican flags atop burning Waymo cars to foment fear among Americans. Like this photograph that Elon Musk tweeted on Sunday: a shirtless protester wielding the Tricolor atop a vandalized robotaxi as flames billow toward the weak sunlight backlighting the flag. His dark curls fall to his bare shoulders. He stares into the camera.Frankly, the image belongs in a museum.I understand my reaction is not the feeling Republicans hope to inspire in Americans broadly this week. Their messaging thus far about the protests against immigration raids in Latino communities has largely been alarmist – proof, they say, of an “invasion” of “illegal aliens”.“Look at all the foreign flags. Los Angeles is occupied territory,” said Stephen Miller on X. According to Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman and more moderate voice, the Mexican flags carried by protesters are “terrible … and feeding right into Donald Trump’s narrative”.“I just think that it would be much stronger if they were carrying American flags only,” he said on CNN this week.By this logic, Mexican flags are proof-positive that Mexican Americans are not really American; that we are somehow collaborating on a planned “invasion”; that we harbor secret loyalties to Mexico; that we’re here to displace white people and undermine the American way of life via some Plan de Aztlan. In short, none of this is true.View image in fullscreenIn front of Congress Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, cited the presence of “flags from foreign countries” in LA to legitimize supporting Trump’s deployment of the national guard. This unilateral invocation of Title 10 by the Trump administration, without the consent of the governor, is exceedingly aggressive. So is the deployment of 700 US marines to be used to crush American protest in an American city.The subtext here is that by many metrics, Americans’ patience for Ice and its antics is wearing thin, even as Ice’s deportation numbers are anemic compared with past administrations. The Trump administration realizes something has to change. Fanning outrage about a flag is both a legal pretext to pursue martial law and a diplomatic means of getting consent from the American populace to do unpopular things in the name of security.But what is it about the Mexican flag that triggers so many people?I’d argue that in the American context, the Mexican flag is not a nationalist symbol but something decentered from Mexico as a nation-state. Historically, it was a key banner of the Chicano movement, flown by supporters surrounding Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez during the California grape boycott in the 1960s. It flew alongside the United Farm Workers flag, the American flag and banners of the Virgen de Guadalupe as a means of fomenting cultural unity. It also served as a reminder of a fundamental truth: we are from here; we are also from there. We’re children of the in-between, or what the Tejana writer Gloria Anzaldúa referred to as nepantla in her seminal work Borderlands/La Frontera. Nepantla is simply Nahuatl for the liminal space between cultures, identities and worlds. To this end, we might think of the Mexican flag as a symbol of double-consciousness in the Mexican American psyche specifically. We understand our middleness, yet we also understand how America sees and defines us: Mexicans. We take that prejudice and transform it into power.It’s through this lens that I see the Mexican flag as just one banner among many, a remembrance of roots but also a shared experience between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants alike. Night after night, you can see captivating scenes with Mexican flags flying in the downtowns of Dallas and Houston and Atlanta and New York, as a solidarity grows between those explicitly targeted by Ice and those soon-to-be targeted by Ice. This is not hyperbole. Today, phenotype and politics are grounds enough for detention: in order for Ice to meet the Trump administration’s goal of 3,000 arrests a day, targets have increasingly included student protesters, tourists and even American citizens. The only rule is to meet the metric at all costs.Amid these burgeoning protests, the Mexican flag is a bold articulation: we are like you; you are like us. We have struggled and persist in this place together. See me and don’t be afraid; I see you and I am not afraid. To wield the flag amid a protest is to paint yourself a target, to take both your body and your future into your own hands. This is precisely why the marines have been called in. To intimidate these bodies. Or to destroy them.What Trump fails to realize is that the bones of Mexican people are the metadata of the land in California and indeed the rest of the country. Our place here is in the food, in the street names, in the name of Los Angeles itself.Already, I can hear some within my own community admonishing my defense of Mexican flags at American protests as treasonous or ungrateful or something along those lines. To them I might ask: why is it that the protesters’ allegiances are held to higher standards than an American president who seeks to turn the US armed forces against American citizens?From Republican leaders, ​you’ll never hear such questioning rhetoric surrounding other foreign flags that fly prominently in America. The Irish flag on St Patrick’s Day instantly comes to mind. As does the Israeli flag at both political and non-political events. And, of course, the Confederate flag, though white supremacists have explicitly stated goals of both overthrowing the US government and taking back US land. Heritage is the most commonly used defense. Though wouldn’t heritage apply to the Mexican flag as well?View image in fullscreenI’m reminded of James Baldwin when Mexicans Americans and Mexicans call for restraint from using Mexican imagery in US protests: “In Harlem,” Baldwin wrote, “… the Negro policemen are feared more than whites, for they have more to prove and fewer ways to prove it.” We think our respectability will protect us. But we know historically and empirically that has not been true. Respectability did not protect Japanese Americans from being interned. Nor did it protect Vietnamese veterans who fought alongside Americans in Vietnam from facing discrimination in the US. Nor did it protect Afghan translators from having their visas revoked.Our American bona fides are not the things that will save us now. Not in the era of detention metrics and collateral targeting and now the prospect of authoritarian violence.It should be said: I don’t go looking for these images. For my sins, having clicked on one, the algorithm floods me with them now. Protesters with Mexican flags getting a haircut in front of police. Protesters with Mexican flags forming a human chain. They just keep coming to me. But other images, too. Like one of a guy popping a wheelie past a ton of burning Waymo cars. I mean, come the fuck on – it’s cool. The thing that immediately jumps out to me is the frivolity of the image. A body perfectly in balance, perfectly in motion. It moves of its own volition. It is completely in command of its trajectory and space in the landscape.It is beyond the fascist impulse to live so beautifully as this. Luckily, it also is beyond the fascist ability to remove the memory of this body from the land. More

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      Why did Angelenos swiftly resist Ice raids? Look to LA’s deep immigrant roots

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      Nerves are frayed in Los Angeles, as the second largest city in the US is flooded with more than 2,000 federal troops tasked with protecting immigration enforcement officials after thousands of people hit the streets to protest against deportation raids.That this weekend’s immigration enforcement actions sparked a fierce response in LA will not come as a surprise to many Californians. LA’s immigrant roots, and its deep ties to neighboring Mexico, are central to the region’s identity.Long before it was part of the US, LA was Indigenous Tongva and Chumash land. It later came under Spanish and then Mexican rule. The name “California” itself comes from a Spanish novel, Las sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), and appeared on maps as early as 1541. But it wasn’t until 2 August 1769, that the Spaniard Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest accompanying the first European land expedition through California, described in his journal a “beautiful river from the north-west”. He named the river, which would later become the LA River, Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de la Porciúncula (Our Lady of the Angels of the Porciuncula). Twelve years later, in 1781, the settlement would emerge with the shortened and anglicized name of Los Angeles.After Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, Los Angeles – indeed the whole region– remained Mexican territory until it was ceded to the US in 1848 after the Mexican-American war. California became the 31st state in 1850, entering the Union as a free state.Today, one in three people of LA county’s more than 10 million residents are immigrants, and 1.6 million children in the region have at least one immigrant parent. They come from countries around the world. It’s common for Angelenos to have been born in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, China and Hong Kong – but also Russia, France, the UK and elsewhere.Their experiences are diverse, shaped by race, class, legal status, education, languages spoken and more. And they fill vital roles in the region’s economy. Immigrant workers make up 40% of the LA metro area’s workforce.View image in fullscreen“In Los Angeles – more than anywhere – the relationship between immigrant and non-immigrant is interdependent,” says LA city councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, the son of Mexican immigrants and street vendors.Soto-Martínez represents council district 13, which includes some of LA’s most diverse neighborhoods: Echo Park, Silver Lake, Koreatown, Thai Town, Historic Filipinotown and Little Armenia.“Angelenos know that it doesn’t matter where you are – if you’re eating at a restaurant, chances are your food is cooked by an immigrant,” Soto-Martínez said. “If you’re having work done on your house, it’s often an immigrant. Many nannies are immigrants. And if you go to the hospital, chances are you’re being treated by an immigrant.”View image in fullscreenLA has long celebrated its immigrant culture, and in recent years city leaders have worked to protect its immigrant population from the Trump administration’s deportation agenda. In 2023, ahead of a possible second Donald Trump term, LA declared itself a sanctuary city, barring local personnel and resources from being used in federal immigration enforcement. California, too, has passed a string of laws to protect immigrant workers – regardless of legal status – from retaliation, wage theft and other forms of exploitation.“We are a city of immigrants, and we have always embraced that,” Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, said in a press conference on Monday.With immigrants such a strong part of its culture, Friday’s arrest of 118 immigrants, and claims from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that many of them were criminals, has galled the community. The DHS’s website featured photos of 11 people arrested in the raids, with a headline that read: “ICE Captures Worst of the Worst Illegal Alien Criminals in Los Angeles Including Murderers, Sex Offenders, and Other Violent Criminals.”Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesperson for the non-profit Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (Chirla), says his organization has been in direct contact with many of the families of those arrested and has deployed legal counsel in multiple cases. So far, he says: “We’ve found no credible evidence to back homeland security’s claims. These were not targeted arrests. They weren’t based on judicial warrants. And the lie won’t survive for long.”The raids at workplaces – pushed by Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, and Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff – come amid a broader push by the administration to hasten arrests and increase deportations. Homan warned LA is likely to see more enforcement this month. And he’s also admitted that the agency has arrested people with no criminal records.Cabrera says given the situation, Angelenos are reacting with justified anger, hurt and civic determination. People in LA with power will stand up for their immigrant friends and family members, he argued.“Angelenos are good about ensuring their voices are heard,” he says. Still, he urges peaceful protest only. “If we give the government reasons to repress us, they will use their maximum power to do so.”Advocates and city leaders also warn that people everywhere should be chilled by what’s happening in the City of Angels.“I think we’re an experiment,” said Mayor Bass. “Because if you can do this to the nation’s second largest city, maybe the administration is hoping this will be a signal to everyone everywhere to fear them. Your federal government … can come in and take over.” More

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      LA protests: Los Angeles under curfew for second night with marines expected to be deployed – latest updates

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      US marines will join national guard troops on the streets of Los Angeles within two days, officials said on Wednesday, and would be authorized to detain anyone who interferes with immigration officers on raids or protesters who confront federal agents, reports Reuters.President Donald Trump ordered the deployments over the objections of California governor Gavin Newsom, causing a national debate about the use of the military on US soil and animating protests that have spread from Los Angeles to other major cities, including New York, Atlanta and Chicago.Los Angeles on Wednesday endured a sixth day of protests that have been largely peaceful but occasionally punctuated by violence, mostly contained to a few blocks of the city’s downtown area.The protests broke out last Friday in response to a series of immigration raids. Trump in turn called in the national guard on Saturday, then summoned the marines on Monday.“If I didn’t act quickly on that, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground right now,” said Trump at an event at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.According to Reuters, the US military said on Wednesday that a battalion of 700 marines had concluded training specific to the LA mission, including de-escalation and crowd control. They would join national guard under the authority of a federal law known as Title 10 within 48 hours, not to conduct civilian policing but to protect federal officers and property, the military said.“Title 10 forces may temporarily detain an individual in specific circumstances such as to stop an assault, to prevent harm to others, or to prevent interference with federal personnel performing their duties,” the northern command said.Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement:If any rioters attack Ice law enforcement officers, military personnel have the authority to temporarily detain them until law enforcement makes the arrest.”US army Maj Gen Scott Sherman, who commands the taskforce of marines and guardsmen, told reporters the marines will not carry live ammunition in their rifles, but they will carry live rounds.More on this story in a moment, but first here is a summary of the latest developments:

      A curfew came into effect for the second consecutive night in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, where police used horses and munitions to disperse protesters. Police declared the gathering near city hall unlawful shortly before the curfew, and began firing and charging at protesters shortly afterwards.

      Donald Trump was booed and cheered while attending the opening night of Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center, his first appearance there since becoming president and appointing himself chair.

      All 12 members of the prestigious Fulbright program’s board resigned in protest of what they describe as unprecedented political interference by the Trump administration, which has blocked scholarships for nearly 200 American academics.

      David Hogg will not run again for a vice-chair position at the Democratic National Committee, after members voted to void and re-do his election. The move ends months of internal turmoil over Hogg’s outside activism, particularly his vow to primary “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats.

      Los Angeles county district attorney Nathan Hochman said media and social media had grossly distorted the scale of protest violence. “There are 11 million people in this county; 4 million of which live in Los Angeles city. We estimate that there’s probably thousands of people who have engaged in legitimate protest, let’s say 4,000 people,” Hochman said.
      The US military said on Wednesday that a battalion of 700 Marines had concluded training specific to the LA mission, including de-escalation and crowd control.They would join National Guard under the authority of a federal law known as Title 10 within 48 hours, not to conduct civilian policing but to protect federal officers and property, the military said.“Title 10 forces may temporarily detain an individual in specific circumstances such as to stop an assault, to prevent harm to others, or to prevent interference with federal personnel performing their duties,” the Northern Command said.Three prominent Democratic US governors face a grilling on Thursday from a Republican-led US House of Representatives panel over immigration policy, as president Donald Trump steps up a crackdown on people living in the country illegally, Reuters reported.The governors of New York, Illinois and Minnesota are due to testify to the House Oversight Committee after days of protests in downtown Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s aggressive ramping up of arrests of migrants.Tensions escalated as Trump ordered the National Guard and Marines into California to provide additional security.Trump’s immigration crackdown has become a major political flashpoint between the White House and national Democrats. California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, seen as a contender for the party’s presidential nomination in 2028, in a Tuesday night video speech accused Trump of choosing “theatrics over public safety.”Minnesota’s Tim Walz, who ran unsuccessfully for vice-president last year; Illinois’ JB Pritzker, also seen a 2028 hopeful, and New York’s Kathy Hochul, walked a careful line in their prepared testimony for Thursday’s hearing, voicing support for immigration enforcement, if not Trump’s tactics.“If they are undocumented, we want them out of Illinois and out of our country,” Pritzker said.At the same time, Pritzker lashed out against “any violations of the law or abuses of power” and said, “Law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying people who have been in this country for years should have a path to citizenship.”Reuters/Ipsos polls show Trump getting more support for his handling of immigration than any other policy area.As federal agents rushed to arrest immigrants across Los Angeles, they confined detainees – including families with small children – in a stuffy office basement for days without sufficient food and water, according to immigration lawyers.One family with three children were held inside a Los Angeles-area administrative building for 48 hours after being arrested on Thursday immediately after an immigration court hearing, according to lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), which is providing non-profit legal services in the region.The children, the youngest of whom is three years old, were provided a bag of chips, a box of animal crackers and a mini carton of milk as their sole rations for a day. Agents told the family they did not have any water to provide during the family’s first day in detention; on the second day, all five were given a single bottle to share. The one fan in the room was pointed directly towards a guard, rather than towards the families in confinement, they told lawyers.“Because it was primarily men held in these facilities, they didn’t have separate quarters for families or for women,” said Yliana Johansen-Méndez, chief program officer at ImmDef. Clients explained that “eventually they set up a makeshift tent in an outside area to house the women and children. But clearly, there were no beds, no showers.”They have since been transferred to a “family detention” center in Dilley, Texas, a large-scale holding facility retrofitted to hold children with their parents that was reopened under the Trump administration. Lawyers, who had been largely blocked from communicating with immigrants arrested amid the ramped-up raids in LA, said family members were able to recount the ordeal only after they were moved out of state.Hilda Solis, an LA county supervisor, said on Wednesday evening she was concerned about a “deeply disturbing incident” in the city’s Boyle Heights neighborhood involving two unmarked vehicles operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents crashing in to a civilian car with two children inside and deploying teargas to apprehend an individual. She said she had also learned of an incident of Ice attempting to detain a member of the press.The nearly 5,000 US military personnel in the city now exceeds the number of US troops in both Iraq and Syria.The increasing raids come as Ice ramps up its efforts to meet a reported quota of 3,000 detentions a day set by Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff. The city has seen days of protest over Trump’s immigration crackdown and the subsequent military deployment.US immigration officials carried out further “enforcement activity” in California’s agricultural heartland and the Los Angeles area as the conflict between the state and Donald Trump’s administration intensified on Wednesday.Immigrant advocacy groups reported multiple actions across the state, where an estimated 255,700 farm workers are undocumented, and said agents pursued workers through blueberry fields and staged operations at agricultural facilities.The raids have been sharply criticized by advocacy groups and local officials, who said they were “outraged and heartbroken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) activities targeting immigrant families”.“When our workforce’s lives are in fear, the fields will go unharvested, the impact is felt not only at the local level, but it will also be felt at the national level,” said Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios, the mayor of Ventura, a coastal city just north of Los Angeles. “Everything will be affected and every American who is here and relies on the labor of these individuals will be affected.”Immigration activities have continued in the Los Angeles area as well, where officials say people have been detained outside Home Depots and in front of churches. Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, said the raids have created a deep sense of fear in the region and that the White House has provoked unrest. The night-time curfew she put in place this week will stay in place as long as needed, including while there are ongoing raids and a military presence in the city, Bass said at a press conference on Wednesday.Here is a Guardian graphic showing where the curfew in Los Angeles has been imposed.US marines will join national guard troops on the streets of Los Angeles within two days, officials said on Wednesday, and would be authorized to detain anyone who interferes with immigration officers on raids or protesters who confront federal agents, reports Reuters.President Donald Trump ordered the deployments over the objections of California governor Gavin Newsom, causing a national debate about the use of the military on US soil and animating protests that have spread from Los Angeles to other major cities, including New York, Atlanta and Chicago.Los Angeles on Wednesday endured a sixth day of protests that have been largely peaceful but occasionally punctuated by violence, mostly contained to a few blocks of the city’s downtown area.The protests broke out last Friday in response to a series of immigration raids. Trump in turn called in the national guard on Saturday, then summoned the marines on Monday.“If I didn’t act quickly on that, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground right now,” said Trump at an event at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.According to Reuters, the US military said on Wednesday that a battalion of 700 marines had concluded training specific to the LA mission, including de-escalation and crowd control. They would join national guard under the authority of a federal law known as Title 10 within 48 hours, not to conduct civilian policing but to protect federal officers and property, the military said.“Title 10 forces may temporarily detain an individual in specific circumstances such as to stop an assault, to prevent harm to others, or to prevent interference with federal personnel performing their duties,” the northern command said.Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement:If any rioters attack Ice law enforcement officers, military personnel have the authority to temporarily detain them until law enforcement makes the arrest.”US army Maj Gen Scott Sherman, who commands the taskforce of marines and guardsmen, told reporters the marines will not carry live ammunition in their rifles, but they will carry live rounds.More on this story in a moment, but first here is a summary of the latest developments:

      A curfew came into effect for the second consecutive night in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, where police used horses and munitions to disperse protesters. Police declared the gathering near city hall unlawful shortly before the curfew, and began firing and charging at protesters shortly afterwards.

      Donald Trump was booed and cheered while attending the opening night of Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center, his first appearance there since becoming president and appointing himself chair.

      All 12 members of the prestigious Fulbright program’s board resigned in protest of what they describe as unprecedented political interference by the Trump administration, which has blocked scholarships for nearly 200 American academics.

      David Hogg will not run again for a vice-chair position at the Democratic National Committee, after members voted to void and re-do his election. The move ends months of internal turmoil over Hogg’s outside activism, particularly his vow to primary “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats.

      Los Angeles county district attorney Nathan Hochman said media and social media had grossly distorted the scale of protest violence. “There are 11 million people in this county; 4 million of which live in Los Angeles city. We estimate that there’s probably thousands of people who have engaged in legitimate protest, let’s say 4,000 people,” Hochman said. More

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      Yes, protesting can help tyrants like Trump, with its scenes of disorder. But that’s no reason to stay at home | Zoe Williams

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      When Donald Trump was elected the first time round, the works of the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt flew off the shelves in the US. It wasn’t all good news – JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy was also enjoying a surge in popularity and Trump was, of course, still about to be president. But Arendt’s famous 1951 work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, was selling at 16 times its usual rate, which meant that by the time of the protests centred on the inauguration in January 2017, at least some of those people had read it.Arendt’s view of popular demonstrations was complicated. She wasn’t blind to the way authoritarian rulers use public protest as an excuse for a display of physical power, embodied in the police, which turns the state into an army against its people, altering that relationship. If it’s no longer government by consent, it’s rule by force, and they have the equipment. Yet “how many people here still believe”, she wrote of Germany in the 1930s, quoting the French activist David Rousset, “that a protest has even historic importance? This scepticism is the real masterpiece of the SS. Their great accomplishment. They have corrupted all human solidarity. Here the night has fallen on the future.” It’s an elegantly drawn lose-lose situation: if you lose the will to protest, you have been “morally murdered”, but if you don’t, you play into the tyrant’s hands.But the Women’s Marches of January 2017 didn’t spark police violence. Not a single arrest was made across the 2 million protesters gathered in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle. Commentators wondered whether this was due to the essentially peaceable nature of women and their allies, while academics drew comparisons with the hundreds of arrests made during the Ferguson uprising of 2014 (which, of course, happened under President Obama). “Tanks and rubber bullets versus pussy-hats and high-fives” was how one scholar, Abby Harrington, described the contrast, making the case convincingly that protesters were treated differently on essentially racist grounds. It would be wrong, and actually quite sexist, to say that the women weren’t considered worthy of violent suppression because they didn’t seem serious enough. It would be wrong, too, to say that they made no impact – they were enormous, dispersed across 408 places in the US, rallying by some estimates more than 4 million Americans, and spawning protests in solidarity across seven continents, including one in Antarctica.The demand was very broad and consequently pretty loose, however: protesters wanted “vibrant and diverse communities” recognised as “the strength of our country”. They wanted reproductive rights and tolerance and protection from violence; mutual respect; racial equality; gender equality; workers’ rights – it was a call for decency, to which the leader felt no need to respond, almost by definition, since he is not decent.The recent US protests were sparked last Friday at about 9am, as border patrol agents massed outside a Home Depot in Paramount, a predominantly Latino area in Los Angeles. An assembly member, José Luis Solache Jr, happened to be driving past, so stopped and posted the scenes, which looked chillingly militaristic even days before the arrival of the national guard. Protesters started to arrive, not in huge numbers but with a vast purpose – to prevent what looked like an immigration raid of people trying to do their jobs. It came on the back of the arrest of a senior union official in the Fashion District, and one father arrested in front of his eight-year-old son. The message, when border guards sweep a workplace or a courtroom where people are doing regular immigration check-ins, is quite plain: this isn’t about deporting hardened criminals.The protestrs’ demand was correlatively plain: don’t arrest our friends, neighbours or colleagues, when they pose no danger to anyone. Since then, 700 marines have been deployed to the city, and the number of national guards doubled to 4,000. The situation recalls Arendt’s later work, On Violence, in which she argues that power and violence are actually opposites – the state creates tinderbox situations when it has lost the expectation of public compliance. So if the protests were symbolic, they would be playing into the government’s hands: an abstract resistance creating justification for concrete suppression. But the protests are not symbolic – the alternative to protesting against a raid by border guards is to let the raid go ahead and lose those neighbours.The Russian-American columnist and author M Gessen cites a distinction made in political science between faith, where you believe that justice will simply prevail, and hope, where you observe and participate. Gessen wrote in the New York Times: “You can’t take action without hope, but you also can’t have hope without taking action.” Everyone has a line over which they’d be spurred to action – there’s no one who wouldn’t lie down in front of the government van if their child were kidnapped and put inside it by masked men. So the real art of the autocratic state is not just to weaken protective institutions, but also to foster the conditions of fear and hopelessness ahead of a critical mass finding its hard limit. It’s not clear, yet, whether the repression is a deliberate spectacle in order to create that fear, or whether, conversely, it’s the accidental creation of conditions that demand action.

      Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Boos, cheers and a heavy dose of irony as Trump takes in Les Mis against backdrop of LA protests

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      “Do you hear the people sing? / Singing the song of angry men? / It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!”When the rousing anthem of revolution filled the Kennedy Center on Wednesday night, Donald Trump may have had a Pavlovian response along the lines of “Get me Stephen Miller” or “Send in the marines”. We will never know.The tuxedo-clad US president had stood on a red carpet, accompanied by first lady Melania in a long black dress, promising a “golden era” for America before attending the musical Les Misérables, which translates as The Miserable Ones or The Wretched.The story of Les Mis is inspired by the June Rebellion, an 1832 insurrection by republicans against the authoritarianism of a newly established French king. No one is expecting a replay from Republicans in June 2025.Characters include Jean Valjean, who is imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread then seeks redemption, and Inspector Javert, who is obsessed with law and order and hunts Valjean without mercy. One reporter asked Trump whether he identifies more with Valjean or Javert.“Oh, that’s a tough one,” chuckled the wannabe strongman who sent troops to crush immigration protests in Los Angeles and is about to stage a tank parade on his birthday. “You better answer that one, honey,” he deflected to Melania. “I don’t know.”View image in fullscreenIt was Trump’s first production at the Kennedy Center, the performing arts complex where he pulled a Viktor Orbán and seized control in February. He pushed out the centre’s former chair, fired its longtime president and pledged to overhaul an institution that he criticized as too woke.But ticket sales have fallen since and some performers have cancelled shows. On Wednesday, as he took his seat, 78-year-old Trump was greeted with a high-octane mix of cheers and boos that stopped after a round of “USA” chants.Several drag queens in full regalia sat in the audience, presumably in response to Trump’s criticism of the venue for hosting drag shows. One person shouted “Viva Los Angeles!” as Trump stepped out of the presidential box at the intermission.The president’s appearance was meant to boost fundraising for the Kennedy Center and he said donors raised more than $10m. But Maga’s efforts to break into the thespian world went about as well as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.Red carpet arrivals for the show were a far cry from the glamour of Cannes, Hollywood or London’s West End. Instead of crowds of fans clamouring for autographs and selfies, Trump and his allies walked through an eerily deserted Hall of Nations and looked unsure whether to answer questions yelled by the media.Those who did revelled in cultural ignorance. First came Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager who has faced allegations of sexual harassment. He said: “What’s amazing is, out of all the years I’ve been in Washington DC, I’ve never been in this building.”View image in fullscreenJD Vance, the vice-president, walked the red carpet with wife Usha, now on the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, and denied that Trump had staged a “hostile takeover”. He then tweeted: “About to see Les Miserables with POTUS at the Kennedy Center. Me to Usha: so what’s this about? A barber who kills people? Usha; [hysterical laughter].”Accompanied by his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, Robert F Kennedy Jr recalled how his uncle, President John F Kennedy – whose giant bust looms in the atrium – used to say the Greeks were remembered for their architecture, sculpture, plays and poetry. “A civilisation ultimately is judged based upon its culture and its art. He wanted to make sure that American civilisation would be judged by that and President Trump shares that vision.”Trump spent last Saturday night with Mike Tyson watching people beat the hell out of each other behind a chain-link fence in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is quite possibly how American civilisation will actually be judged.Indeed, on his watch, the Kennedy Center no longer feels very Kennedy-esque. The atmosphere is different from the days when Democrats Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi glided in for the annual Kennedy Center Honors. Framed portraits of the Trumps and the Vances are mounted on a marble wall and, on Wednesday, were bathed in holy light. Washington is now a city under occupation.The president, who reportedly once derided “shithole countries” in Africa, walked in beneath national flags that include Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe and past the opera house stage door. His impromptu press conference was a surreal combination of theatre and geopolitics, veering from his favourite musicals one moment to the prospect of Middle East war the next.View image in fullscreen“I love Les Mis,” Trump said. “We’ve seen it many times. We love it. One of my favourites.” He was untroubled by reports that understudies may perform due to boycotts by cast members. “I couldn’t care less,” he said. “Honestly, I couldn’t. All I do is run the country well.”Then on Iran: “They can’t have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. We’re not going to allow that.”Then back to showbiz. Brian Glenn of Real America’s Voice, who is congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend, proclaimed: “Mr President, we’re making theatre great again, aren’t we tonight?… You’re bringing class back. The golden era of theatre!”Trump lapped it up as a cat does milk. “And we have a golden era here in the country,” he said. “We’re bringing the country back fast and I’m very proud to have helped Los Angeles survive. Los Angeles right now, if we didn’t do what we did, would be burning to the ground.”Glenn wasn’t done. “You’re a New Yorker. You’ve been to a million theatres. Do you remember your first theatre production that you attended?”Trump looked pensive, as if mulling over countless nights absorbing the works of Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Tom Stoppard, Tennessee Williams and August Wilson. “A long time ago,” he mused. “I would say maybe it was Cats.”Glenn put the same question to Melania, who had held Trump’s hand while maintaining a sphinx-like expression. She cited The Phantom of the Opera, which must have been music to the ears of man whose cultural hinterland runs the gamut from 1980 to 1989.But on the night that Maga stormed America’s citadel of culture, one man was nowhere to be seen. Elon Musk’s banishment continues despite his recent attempts to end his feud with the president. Perhaps the tech bro was out there somewhere in the gloomy streets of Washington, channelling Les Mis’s Éponine:On my own
      Pretending he’s beside me
      All alone
      I walk with him ‘til morning
      … Without me
      His world will go on turning
      A world that’s full of happiness
      That I have never known More

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      Trump news at a glance: government ‘dragnet’ widens as undocumented farm workers targeted in fresh raids

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      With limited access to immigrants in detention, US attorneys are scrambling to understand the scope of California’s immigration raids, and the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security has violated immigrants’ rights.Immigration lawyers have said some detainees – including families with small children – were held in a stuffy office basement for days without sufficient food and water.Elsewhere, US immigration officials carried out further “enforcement activity” in California’s agricultural heartland, with one advocacy group saying agents pursued workers through blueberry fields.The raids have sparked ongoing protests in Los Angeles and led to demonstrations in other cities across the country.Here are the key stories:US immigration officials raid California farms as Trump ramps up conflictAn estimated 255,700 farm workers are undocumented and the raids have been sharply criticized by advocacy groups and local officials, who said they were “outraged and heartbroken by Ice activities targeting immigrant families”.The increasing raids come as Ice ramps up its efforts to meet a reported quota of 3,000 detentions a day set by Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff.Read the full storyFamilies arrested in LA Ice raids held in basements with little food or water, lawyers sayThe children, the youngest of whom is three years old, were provided a bag of chips, a box of animal crackers and a mini carton of milk as their sole rations for a day. Agents told the family they did not have any water to provide during the family’s first day in detention; on the second day, all five were given a single bottle to share.The one fan in the room was pointed directly towards a guard, rather than towards the families in confinement, they told lawyers.Read the full storyWorld’s biggest TikTok star Khaby Lame leaves US after Ice agents detain him over visaThe world’s most followed TikToker, Khaby Lame, has left the US after being briefly detained by immigration agents for allegedly overstaying his visa. The Italian-Senegalese influencer is now one of the most high-profile people to be swept up in Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration.The social media star, whose legal name is Seringe Khabane Lame, was detained last Friday at an airport in Las Vegas. He was released the same day and has since left the US, a spokesperson for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) told the Guardian in a statement.Read the full storyTrump says China will face 55% tariffs as he endorses trade dealDonald Trump has endorsed the US-China trade deal struck in London that will ramp up supplies of rare earth minerals and magnets needed for the automotive industry, saying it will take total tariffs on Beijing to 55%.Acknowledging that his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, still needed to give his final approval on the terms agreed late on Tuesday night at Lancaster House, the US president disclosed the pact would also facilitate Chinese students’ access to US colleges.Read the full storyJudge rules Trump administration can no longer detain Mahmoud Khalil A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration can no longer detain Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil on the basis of federal claims that he is a threat to US foreign policy.In his order on Wednesday, Judge Michael E Farbiarz said that the ruling will come into effect at 9.30am on Friday, adding: “This is to allow the respondents to seek appellate review should they wish to.”Read the full storyMajor US climate website likely to be shut down after almost all staff firedA major US government website supporting public education on climate science looks likely to be shuttered after almost all of its staff were fired, the Guardian has learned.Climate.gov, the gateway website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa)’s Climate Program Office, will no longer publish new content, according to multiple former staff responsible for the site’s content whose contracts were recently terminated.Read the full storyPentagon launches review of US-UK-Australia security allianceThe Pentagon has launched a review of the Aukus submarine agreement to make sure it is aligned with Trump’s “America first” agenda, throwing the $240bn defense pact with Britain and Australia into doubt.The review may trigger more allied anxiety over the future of the trilateral alliance designed to counter China’s military rise.Read the full story EPA announces major rollbacks to power plant pollution limitsUS power plants will be allowed to pollute nearby communities and the wider world with more unhealthy air toxins and an unlimited amount of planet-heating gases under new regulatory rollbacks proposed by Donald Trump’s administration, experts warned.Read the full storyTrump plans to ‘phase out’ Fema after hurricane seasonPresident Donald Trump said on Tuesday he planned to start “phasing out” the Federal Emergency Management Agency after the hurricane season and that states would receive less federal aid to respond to natural disasters.Read the full storyMusk says he regrets some of his posts about TrumpElon Musk has expressed contrition for some of his tweets about Donald Trump last week, in an apparent effort to retreat from an explosive falling out that has threatened to damage the Tesla boss’s business interests.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Barely one-third of people polled across 24 countries say they have confidence in Donald Trump as a world leader, with most describing the US president as “arrogant” and “dangerous”, and relatively few as “honest”.

      Donald Trump’s administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending a UN conference next week on a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a US cable seen by Reuters.

      US prices continued to rise in May as companies and consumers grappled with Donald Trump’s tariffs. Annualized inflation ticked higher to 2.4% in May, up from 2.3% in April.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 10 June. More

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      The Guardian view on Trump and deportation protests: the king of confected emergencies | Editorial

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      Donald Trump will celebrate his birthday with a North Korean-style military parade costing tens of millions of dollars this weekend. He has gratefully accepted the early gift of the demonstrations, which have spread across the country, with more scheduled for Saturday. The president’s immigration crackdown spurred overwhelmingly peaceful protests in Los Angeles. Ordering in troops, over the governor’s head, then inflamed the situation and allowed the agent of chaos to portray himself as its nemesis once more.Mr Trump has diverted attention from his rift with Elon Musk, the stalling of his “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill, the court-ordered return of the wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego García and the impending impact of tariffs. But underlying the manufactured crisis is a deeper agenda: reigniting fear of undocumented migrants, delegitimising protest, and thus expanding his power. Migrant families, and those who have taken to the streets to support them, are portrayed as “animals” and the perpetrators of “invasion and third-world lawlessness” – requiring Mr Trump to amass more might to protect America.Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, rightly described this as an assault on democracy. As he noted, “authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.” Due process has been discarded. American citizens are among those being swept up in raids. Mr Trump has said that Mr Newsom himself should be arrested. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, calls the protesters “insurrectionists” – though his boss, of course, pardoned the actual insurrectionists of the January 6 Capitol attack.Mr Trump’s tactics are familiar in both the broad and narrow sense. In his book On Tyranny, published in 2017, the historian Timothy Snyder urged readers to listen for “dangerous words” such as “emergency” and reminded them that “the sudden disaster” requiring the suspension of freedoms “is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book”.Mr Trump drew a bleak portrait of American carnage in his inaugural speech and described himself as “the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy”. Since his re-election he has declared emergencies to push through tariffs, loosen energy regulations and ramp up deportations. His methods are transparent – and sometimes blocked by courts – yet still effective. For his supporters, each rock thrown, each billow of smoke, is fresh evidence of the menacing “other” encroaching upon their home.Yet if his methods are familiar, they are also going further. He has moved from xenophobia to echoing fascist tropes of migrants “poisoning the blood” and portrays an enemy within,suggesting that Mr Newsom and Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, are trying to aid “criminal invaders”. In his first term, Mr Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act (and, reportedly, said that troops should “just shoot” Black Lives Matter protesters). Gen Mark Milley and others are no longer present to hold him back. Alarmingly, he warns that any protests at his parade will face “very heavy force”.All those who stand against Mr Trump’s weaponised bigotry and hunger for untrammelled power must make it clear that they are defending the law and not defying it. Responsibly challenging the abuse and entrenchment of power is not only the right of citizens, but a duty. More

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      World’s biggest TikTok star Khaby Lame leaves US after Ice agents detain him over visa

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      The world’s most followed TikToker, Khaby Lame, has left the US after being briefly detained by immigration agents for allegedly overstaying his visa. The Italian-Senegalese influencer is now one of the most high-profile people to be swept up in Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration.The social media star, whose legal name is Seringe Khabane Lame, was detained last Friday at an airport in Las Vegas. He was released the same day and has since left the US, a spokesperson for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) told the Guardian in a statement.The spokesperson said Lame, had arrived in the US on 30 April and alleged that the influencer had “overstayed the terms of his visa”.Trump’s escalating crackdown on immigration continues to roil the country as agents intensify operations to carry out the US president’s hardline promises. In recent days, raids have triggered protests in Los Angeles and other cities amid concerns the focus has shifted to a broader sweep of people who are not US citizens, including some who have valid documentation such as green cards or visas.US immigration officials said that Lame, who is a Unicef goodwill ambassador and has a following of more than 162 million on TikTok, “has since departed the US”. He had been granted a voluntary departure, allowing him to avoid having a deportation order – which could have resulted in him being barred from the US for up to a decade – on his record.Bo Loudon, an 18-year-old who describes himself as a “pro-Trump influencer” on his website, claimed he had been the one to flag Lame’s case to officials.“I discovered that he was an illegal,” Loudon, who has also claimed to be the best friend of Trump’s son Barron, wrote on social media. “And I personally took action to have him deported.”Loudon repeated the claim in other posts, saying he had worked with immigration officials and the Department of Homeland Security to have Lame removed.According to the US visa waiver program, Italian citizens are allowed to travel to the US for business or tourism for stays of up to 90 days without a visa.Lame entered the US on 30 April, Ice said. A spokesperson from Ice told the Guardian that the information “provided is all the information we have available”.Lame did not reply to a request for comment from the Guardian, nor has he publicly commented on the incident.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLame, 25, began posting on TikTok after he lost his job working in a factory in Chivasso, a suburb of Turin, in the early days of the pandemic. He began racking up millions of followers, who revelled in his often-silent videos that offer humorous takedowns of online absurdity, alongside his trademark facial expressions.In 2022, he became the most followed creator on TikTok, catapulting him to international fame and landing him marketing deals with companies and a spot at events such as last month’s Met Gala in New York City.Lame, who was born in Senegal but has lived in Italy since he was a year old, was granted Italian citizenship in August 2022. More