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      Hundreds of US marines arrive in LA as large protests are planned across US

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      Federal troops continued to be on duty in the streets of Los Angeles on Friday after a series of court rulings, and more arrived, with large protests planned in California and across the country this weekend against the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration raids and a big military parade in Washington DC.About 200 US marines arrived in LA on Friday morning. This followed Donald Trump’s extraordinary decision to deploy national guard troops to LA last weekend, over the objections of the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. The marines were to take over protecting a federal building, US Army Maj Gen Scott Sherman, who commands the taskforce of marines and national guardsmen, said.The streets had been mostly calm overnight going into Friday morning, marking the seventh day of protests across various areas and the third day of an overnight curfew in a small part of the huge downtown area.Sporadic demonstrations have also taken place in cities including New York, Chicago, Seattle and Austin on several days in the last week against Trump’s pushing of his mass deportation agenda, undertaken by targeting undocumented communities in the US interior.And millions more are expected to turn out to protest on Saturday at roughly 2,000 sites nationwide in a demonstration dubbed “No Kings” against what critics see as Trump taking actions on the brink of authoritarianism.The mass protests are timed to coincide with the US president’s controversial military parade in Washington DC to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the formation of the US army, and coincidentally his 79th birthday.The protests in Los Angeles and subsequent deployment of California’s national guard by Trump, over the furious objections of Newsom, is a move that had not happened in the US in at least half a century, sparking a legal battle between the president and Newsom.Late on Thursday, a federal judge ruled that the federal deployment of troops by the president to aid in civilian US law enforcement in LA should be blocked. The administration swiftly appealed and a higher court paused the restraining order until Tuesday, when it will hear the case.Judge Charles Breyer’s ruling in Newsom v Trump stated that Trump had unlawfully bypassed congressionally mandated procedures.Newsom in an interview with the New York Times podcast on Thursday called Trump a “stone cold liar” for claiming he had discussed a federal deployment with the governor by telephone.Democrats and advocacy groups view Trump’s deployment as an abuse of power aimed at suppressing free speech and supporting aggressive anti-immigration policies.Trump’s use of the troops follows earlier, unfulfilled threats during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in his first administration, when he considered, but ultimately declined, to deploy federal troops and has since expressed regret about not cracking down more forcefully.The president has defended his decision to send troops to LA claiming without any evidence that the city would have been “obliterated” and “burned to the ground” had he not initiated the deployment.In Washington, Saturday’s parade is billed as a patriotic celebration, while critics argue it is more about Trump’s personal brand and ego than promoting national unity. Organizers of No Kings protests have avoided planning a demonstration in the nation’s capital, in an attempt to draw attention away from tanks, armored vehicles, troops and aircraft on display.“The flag doesn’t belong to President Trump. It belongs to us,” read a statement from the No Kings protest movement.The parade will culminate on Saturday evening with a procession of 6,600 soldiers, dozens of tanks, and a live broadcast message from an astronaut in space. Inspired by a Bastille Day parade Trump witnessed in France in 2017, but with strong echoes of the kind of regular displays under authoritarian regimes such as Russia, North Korea and China, the event is expected to cost up to $45m, sources told NBC News.Meanwhile, some members of the national guard troops deployed to Los Angeles and some of their family members have expressed discomfort with their mission, feeling it drags them into a politically charged domestic power struggle.“The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn’t the kind of national security we signed up for,” said Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative, which advocates for military families. “Families are scared not just for their loved ones’ safety, although that’s a big concern, but also for what their service is being used to justify.”Chris Purdy of the Chamberlain Network echoed those concerns: “Morale is not great, is the quote I keep hearing,” he said, citing multiple national guard members who contacted his organization.Amid the ongoing legal and political fallout, arrests have continued, although sporadic incidents of early looting have subsided. Jose Manuel Mojica, a 30-year-old father of four, was charged with assaulting a federal officer during a protest in Paramount, a community in southern Los Angeles County.And on Thursday, Alex Padilla, a Democratic US senator for California and vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration polices, was forcibly removed and handcuffed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Los Angeles.In video taken of the incident that has since gone viral on social media, Padilla is seen being restrained and removed from the room by Secret Service and FBI agents. He warned that if this was how he was dealt with it spoke ill for ordinary civilians being summarily arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).Most Republican national lawmakers criticized Padilla, although some Republican senators condemned his treatment, while Democrats overwhelmingly applauded his challenge to the administration and were appalled at his removal.Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles contributed reporting More

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      Seth Meyers on Trump’s falling approval rating: ‘Worth remembering that people don’t like this’

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      Late-night hosts spoke about how Donald Trump’s presidency is proving unpopular with Americans, looking at the cruelty of his deportation strategy and the response to protests in Los Angeles.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about Trump’s approval rating going down this past week and in particular he looked at how people are against his extreme immigration strategy.“People don’t even approve of Trump on immigration and that’s what people wanted him for,” he said.Meyers called his tactics “needlessly cruel” before speaking about his appearance at the Kennedy Center this week where he went to see a performance of Les Misérables.Trump was booed by many and Meyers said it was “like Darth Vader getting booed on the Death Star”.He said it was “worth remembering that people don’t like this stuff” and that while Trump might have promised to crack down on criminality, instead he has been “letting Stephen Miller run rampant” targeting everyday workers.Meyers called it a “wildly unpopular crackdown on innocent people living their lives” and Trump now trying to control the narrative showed how he is “terrified” of losing more support.Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert said that there was a possibility that thunderstorms might force Trump to cancel the military parade planned for the weekend.“You made God mad and now he’s shooting lightning at your birthday tanks,” Colbert joked.He added: “If he gets too wet, it all slides off and someone has to carry his face and his hair around in a bucket.”It’s proving to be an unpopular plan already with six in 10 Americans calling it a bad use of government money. “He’s already throwing a big military parade out in Los Angeles,” Colbert added.This weekend will also see planned pushback across the US dubbed the “No Kings” protests. Trump was asked if he saw himself as a king this week and he claimed that was not how he saw himself. “Why dost thou sons look so inbred?” Colbert quipped.He also spoke about Trump’s unpopular visit to the theatre and joked about his dumb responses to questions on the red carpet. “His brain is wet bread,” he said before joking that Trump probably believes Les Misérables is about a character called “Lester Misérables”.Trump has raged against drag performances at the Kennedy Center so some decked-out drag queens walked in to watch the show near Trump. “That is amazing except for anyone sitting behind them,” he said.Colbert also looked at the coverage of the Los Angeles protests, ridiculing a CNN segment that commented on the smell of weed during a peaceful demonstration. “They better call a Swat team and a taco truck,” he said.This week also saw the Trump administration target the use of any “improper ideology” at the National zoo. “All monkeys doing it in front of our preschoolers must be married,” Colbert said.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host joked about surviving the “post-apocalyptic hellscape” that is Los Angeles.He also brought up the “Maga-friendly” Kennedy Center and how Trump going to see Les Misérables was “like Kanye going to see Fiddler on the Roof”.He added: “Usually when Trump watches a staged rebellion, it’s Fox News’s coverage of the riots here in LA.”Kimmel joked that Trump was “putting out fires with his brain” given how calm things have really been in the city, and compared it with the January 6 riot where Trump and his followers called those involved “concerned citizens on a sightseeing tour”.He spoke about the the planned protests this weekend, saying: “I really hope that doesn’t put a damper on Trump’s big birthday parade.”This week also saw Trump admit in an interview to once playing the flute when he was younger. “I feel like I’d have the same reaction to a gorilla using a curling iron,” Kimmel said.In other news, Rand Paul’s refusal to support Trump’s bill that would increase the national debt also saw him disinvited from this year’s White House picnic, but after he told reporters, Trump claimed this wasn’t the case. “Trump thought RuPaul was trying to get in,” he joked. More

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      How would recent events in America appear if they happened elsewhere? | Moira Donegan

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      At times the gesture can seem like a cliche, but I like to imagine, for the sake of perspective, how political developments in the United States would be covered by the media if they were happening in any other country. I imagine that Thursday’s events in Los Angeles might be spoken of like this:A prominent opposition leader was attacked by regime security forces on Thursday in the presence of the national security tsar, as he voiced opposition to the federal military occupation of the US’s second-largest city following street demonstrations against the regime’s mass deportation efforts.Alex Padilla, a senator from California, was pushed against a wall, removed from the room, and then tackled to the ground and handcuffed, reportedly by Secret Service and FBI agents, at a press conference in LA by Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. He was trying to ask a question about the deployment of marines and national guard forces to LA in his capacity as Angelenos’ elected representative. Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, was later released; Noem, speaking to reporters after the incident, said both that she knew the senator and that agents tackled and detained him because neither she nor they knew who he was. In a video of the attack, Padilla can be heard identifying himself as a senator as Noem’s security forces begin to grab and shove him.Seconds later, after he has been pushed out of the room, Padilla can be heard yelling to the men attacking him: “Hands off!” The video cuts out after a man steps in front of the camera to block the shot, and tells the person filming, “there is no recording allowed here, per FBI rights,” something of an odd statement to make at a press conference. Several federal court decisions have upheld the right to record law enforcement.The violence toward a sitting senator is yet another escalation of the administration’s dramatic assertions of extra-constitutional authority, and another item in their ongoing assertion of the illegitimacy of dissent, even from elected leaders. In responding with violence toward the senator’s question, Noem, her security forces and by extension the Trump administration more broadly, are signaling that they will treat opposition, even from elected officials, as insubordination.They do not see senators as equals to be negotiated with or spoken to in good faith, because they do not believe that any of the people’s representatives – and certainly not a Democrat – has any authority that they need to respect. Padilla, like the people of Los Angeles and the people of the United States, was not treated by the Trump administration as a citizen, but as a subject.The attack on Padilla by security forces, and the viral video of him being tackled to the ground and handcuffed by armed men, has threatened to overshadow the content of Noem’s press conference, which underscored in rhetoric this same sense of absolute authority and contempt for dissent that the attack on the senator demonstrated with action.Noem was in Los Angeles to tout the administration’s military escalation against citizens there, who have taken to the streets as part of a growing protest movement against Trump’s mass deportation scheme, which has led to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (Ice) kidnapping of many Angelenos and left families, colleagues, neighbors and friends bereft of their beloved community members.The protests have been largely peaceful – Ice and police have initiated violence against some demonstrators – but the Trump administration has taken them as an opportunity to crush dissent with force. The deployment of the California national guard – in violation of a law that requires the administration to secure cooperation from the governor – and the transfer of 700 marines to the city has marked a new willingness of the Trump administration to use military force against citizens who oppose its policies.But to the Trump administration, the Americans who have taken to the streets to voice their opposition to Trump policies are no Americans at all. “We are not going away,” Noem said of the military occupation of Los Angeles. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists.” By this, she meant the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, and California governor, Gavin Newsom, who are not socialists but Democrats.The term – “liberate” – evokes the US’s imperialist adventures abroad, in which such rhetoric was used to provide rhetorical cover for the toppling of foreign regimes, many of them democratically elected. The people’s elected representatives – be it Newsom or Bass or Padilla – are not figures they need to be “liberated” from. That is, not unless you consider the only legitimate “people” to be Trump supporters, and the only legitimate governance to be Republican governance.Trump, as he expands his authoritarian ambitions and uses more and more violence to pursue them, has made his own will into the sum total of “the will of the people”. All those other people – the ones marching in the streets, and trying to stop the kidnappings of their neighbors – don’t count.A few hours after Noem’s goons attacked Padilla, a federal district court judge ordered the Trump administration to relinquish control over the California national guard, agreeing with California that the guard had been illegally seized when Trump assumed control of the armed units without Newsom’s consent. “That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George,” said district judge Charles Breyer in a hearing on the case earlier that day. “It’s not that the leader can simply say something and then it becomes it.”The judge was pointing to the constitutional order, to the rule of law, to the guarantees, once taken for granted, that the president has limits on his power. He gave the Trump administration about 18 hours to hand control of the national guard back to the state of California. It was not immediately clear whether they would comply. Hours later, an appeals court placed a temporary block on Breyer’s order, returning control of the California national guard to Trump. So much for us having a “law and order” president.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump’s insurrection routine: fuel violence, spawn chaos, shrug off the law | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s stages of insurrection have passed from trying to suppress one that didn’t exist, to creating one himself, to generating a local incident he falsely depicts as a national emergency. In every case, whether he inflates himself into the strongman putting down an insurrection or acts as the instigator-in-chief, his routine has been to foster violence, spawn chaos and show contempt for the law.In his first term, Trump reportedly asked the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump was agitated about protesters in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. On 1 June, Trump ordered the US Park police to clear the park. Some charged on horses into the crowd. Trump emerged after the teargas wafted away to walk through the park, ordering Milley to accompany him, and stood in front of St John’s Church on the other side to display a Bible upside down.Milley felt he had been badly used and exercised poor judgment in marching with Trump. “I should not have been there,” he said. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” A day later, the secretary of defense, Mark Esper, held a news conference to oppose publicly the use of the military for law enforcement and any invocation of the Insurrection Act. Trump was furious with Milley and Esper. He was determined to have a pliable military, generals and a secretary of defense to do his bidding, whatever it might be.Then, Trump staged an insurrection in a vain last attempt to prevent the ballots of the electoral college from being counted that would make Joe Biden the elected president. While Trump’s mob on 6 January chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” the vice-president hunkered down in the basement garage of the besieged Capitol, where he made the call for the national guard that Trump refused to give as he gleefully watched for hours on TV the followers he had organized and incited batter police and threaten the lives of members of the Congress.On the day of his inauguration to his second term, Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 insurrectionists convicted or charged in the 6 January attack. At least 600 were charged with assaulting or obstructing the police, at least 170 were charged with using a deadly weapon, and about 150 were charged with theft or destruction of government property. Trump granted commutations to 14 members of extremist militia groups convicted of or charged with seditious conspiracy to overthrow the US government.Now, Trump is toying with invoking the Insurrection Act to put down a supposed rebellion in Los Angeles. But his application of the act would be a belated attempt to cover his unlawful nationalization of the California national guard and deployment of marines to Los Angeles in response to a conflict that his administration has itself provoked.In late May, Stephen Miller, Trump’s fanatical deputy chief of staff in charge of his immigration policy, called a meeting of leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to berate them for failing to pile up the statistics he demanded of deported immigrants. Restraint and the law were to be cast aside in their new wave of raids, which hit a flashpoint in LA.“Federal agents make warrantless arrests,” reported the Wall Street Journal. “Masked agents take people into custody without identifying themselves. Plainclothes agents in at least a dozen cities have arrested migrants who showed up to their court hearings. And across the US, people suspected of being in the country illegally are disappearing into the federal detention system without notice to families or lawyers, according to attorneys, witnesses and officials.”Miller ordered Ice agents to target Home Depot, where construction workers, many of them immigrants, go to purchase materials. On 6 June, masked Ice agents swooped down on a store in LA, arresting more than 40 people. Meanwhile, Ice agents raided a garment factory of a company called Ambience Apparel and placed at least a dozen people in vans.Soon, there was a demonstration at the downtown federal building where they were detained. Several Waymo robotaxis were burned within a four-block area near the relatively sparsely populated downtown. But the LAPD appeared to have the situation quickly under control, until Trump unilaterally federalized the national guard, whose presence prompted further demonstrations. One contingent of soldiers was sent to guard the federal building miles away in Westwood, an upscale neighborhood by the UCLA campus, where they were nuisances to people going shopping and to restaurants. Trump declared he would send in 700 marines.On 10 June, the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, filed a complaint on behalf of the state seeking a restraining order in federal court against Trump and the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. “To put it bluntly,” it stated, “there is no invasion or rebellion in Los Angeles; there is civil unrest that is no different from episodes that regularly occur in communities throughout the country, and that is capable of being contained by state and local authorities working together.”“All of this was unlawful,” wrote Bonta of the administration’s actions. Trump’s use of the guard was in violation of the law that requires an order to be issued through the governor. Trump’s deployment of marines was “likewise unlawful”, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the US armed forces for civilian law enforcement. “These unlawful deployments have already proven to be a deeply inflammatory and unnecessary provocation, anathema to our laws limiting the use federal forces for law enforcement, rather than a means of restoring calm.”Ironically, the Posse Comitatus Act was instrumental in the demise of Reconstruction. US troops stationed in the south after the civil war were forbidden from enforcing the law to protect Black civil rights. The Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist organizations seized control of state governments, disenfranchised Black people and imposed Jim Crow segregation. In 1957, Dwight Eisenhower, then president, circumvented the Posse Comitatus Act by invoking the Insurrection Act; he used federal forces to implement the supreme court’s desegregation ruling in Brown v Board of Education to integrate Little Rock Central high school.As a further irony, Trump had been indicted by the special prosecutor Jack Smith under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 for his actions leading to the January 6 insurrection. Count four read: “From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”Trump evaded justice through a series of delaying actions by the conservative majority of the supreme court that culminated in its ruling for “absolute” presidential immunity for “official acts”. He was allowed to run out the clock and never held to account. If Trump’s trial had proceeded on the original charges as scheduled on 6 March 2024, he would have undoubtedly found guilty and eliminated as a presidential candidate.On 10 June, Trump appeared before soldiers at Fort Liberty in North Carolina in anticipation of the Washington military parade he ordered for 14 June, opportunistically using the 250th anniversary of the US army (really the continental army) to celebrate his 79th birthday, “a big day,” he said. “We want to show off a bit.”Soldiers of the 82nd airborne division were screened for attendance at Trump’s rally based on their political support and physical appearance. “If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don’t want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,” read a note sent by the command, according to Military.com. “No fat soldiers,” said one message.A pop-up store for 365 Campaign of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which sells Trump merchandise, was set up on the base for the Trump visit. Aside from the usual Maga gear, it sells T-shirts reading: “When I Die Don’t Let Me Vote Democrat”, “I’m Voting for the Convicted Felon”, and a false credit card that reads, “White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything”. Send in the marines, but first send them to the Maga merch store.In violation of longstanding military policy on discipline, the selected troops cheered Trump’s sneers and jeers. He announced he had renamed the fort to Fort Bragg, in honor of Braxton Bragg, a confederate general and large slaveowner notable for his defeats and bad temper and disliked by his officers. “Can you believe they changed that name in the last administration for a little bit?” he said.He told the troops that they were to fight a war within the US against “a foreign enemy”, “defending our republic itself”, in California, where there was “a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country”.Trump spontaneously invented a conspiracy theory on the spot. “The best money can buy, somebody is financing it,” he claimed, “and we’re going to find out through Pam Bondi and Department of Justice, who it is.”He complained to the soldiers that the election of 2020 was “rigged and stolen”. Then, he swiveled to talk about George Washington: “Has anybody heard of him?” Then, he attacked Biden, “never the sharpest bulb”, or perhaps the brightest knife. Twice, Trump said he would “liberate” Los Angeles, and promised that after that the Republican Congress would pass his “big, beautiful bill”, his budget stalled in the Senate. “They call it one big, beautiful bill. So, that’s good and that’s what it is.” And then he rambled about the JD Vance-Tim Walz vice-presidential debate, and how some “ladies”, “beautiful, wonderful women”, followed him to “138 rallies”, and on. Along the way, he praised his new chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Daniel Caine, who Trump insists on calling “Razin Caine”.The next day, 11 June, Caine appeared before the Senate appropriations committee, and was questioned by Hawaii’s Democratic senator, Brian Schatz, whether the events in LA show the US is “being invaded by a foreign nation”. “At this point in time,” replied the general, “I don’t see any foreign, state-sponsored folks invading.”As Caine was testifying, the Department of Homeland Security posted a cartoon of Uncle Sam hammering up a sign: “Help Your Country…And Yourself…” Then, in capital letters: “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS.” Which was followed by the telephone number for Ice.

      Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast More

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      Has Trump turned the US into a police state? – podcast

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      Trump keeps national guards in LA for now as appeals court puts brakes on ban

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      An appeals court has temporarily returned control of California’s national guard to Donald Trump, just hours after a federal judge ruled the president’s use of the guards to suppress protests in Los Angeles was illegal and banned it.The 9th US Circuit court of appeals order means Trump retains command of the guards for now and can continue to use them to respond to protests against his immigration crackdown. The court could later decide against his control.It’s a temporary victory for Trump in back-and-forth court decisions on who should control the security force, an issue that has pitted California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, against the president and angered Democrats, who see the deployment as an abuse of power.The three-judge panel that paused the ruling included two judges appointed by Trump in his first term. The other is a judge appointed by Joe Biden. The panel said it would hold a hearing on Tuesday to consider the merits of the order from District Judge Charles Breyer from earlier in the day.Breyer ruled the Guard deployment was illegal and both violated the 10th amendment and exceeded Trump’s statutory authority. The order applied only to the National Guard troops and not Marines who were also deployed to the LA protests. The judge said he would not rule on the Marines because they were not out on the streets yet.In issuing a temporary restraining order against Trump, Breyer found the president had failed to show there was a “rebellion” in Los Angeles that required him to federalize the guard and failed to comply with the procedural steps to notify the governor.“His actions were illegal – both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor,” Breyer wrote.The request for the injunction is part of a lawsuit filed by the state of California challenging Trump’s move to call up more than 4,000 national guard troops and about 700 active-duty marines based in Twentynine Palms, California, over Newsom’s objections.Beryer’s decision came after a hearing in federal district court in San Francisco where the justice department argued Trump had the sole and unreviewable power to decide whether there was a “rebellion” that needed federal intervention.Breyer rejected both arguments in his sweeping 36-page opinion, effectively rebuking the justice department for trying to suggest the conditions to take control of the guard had been met as long as Trump had decided himself that was the case.“The president’s discretion in what to do next does not mean that the president can unilaterally and without judicial review declare that a vacancy exists in order to fill it. That is classic ipse dixit,” Breyer wrote, adding that the definition of rebellion had clearly not been met.The temporary restraining order did not touch on Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, moving to deploy the marines, in large part because the justice department told the judge they were only being used to protect federal buildings and personnel.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUsing the military for protective purposes, Breyer suggested at the hearing, would not be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th-century law prohibiting the use of troops to engage in law enforcement activities on domestic soil.Trump has been suggesting the idea of deploying troops against Americans since his first term, when some Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 turned violent. He opted against doing so at the time, but has since expressed regret to advisers that he did not punish them more aggressively.Notably, during a campaign rally in 2023, Trump vowed to respond more forcefully if elected to a second term. “You’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in,” he said of the president’s usual role in deciding whether to send in the military. “The next time, I’m not waiting.”The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      Senator Alex Padilla forcibly removed from Kristi Noem’s LA press conference

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      Alex Padilla, a Democratic California senator and vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration polices, was forcibly removed and handcuffed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Los Angeles on Thursday.In video taken of the incident that has since gone viral on social media, Padilla is seen being restrained and removed from the room by Secret Service agents.“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla shouts, as he struggles to move past against the men pushing him back toward the exit.“Hands off!” Padilla says at least three times. Outside the room, he is pinned to the floor and placed in handcuffs.Emerging afterward, Padilla, the ranking member of the judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, said he and his colleagues had repeatedly asked DHS for more information on its “increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions” but had not received a response to his inquiries.“If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the DHS responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers, throughout the LA community and throughout California and throughout the country,” Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, told reporters. “We will hold this administration accountable.”The extraordinary scene stunned his Democratic colleagues from Capitol Hill to California, though his actions drew criticism from Republicans, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, who called for Padilla’s censure. It comes amid escalating tensions between California and the federal government, after Donald Trump deployed national guard troops and US Marines to LA to quell protests prompted by immigration raids, over the objections of the state’s governor and the city’s mayor.“I am shocked by how far we have descended in the first 140 days of this administration,” Adam Schiff, the junior senator from California said in a speech from the Senate floor shortly after viewing the video of the incident. “What is becoming of our democracy? Are there no limits to what this administration will do? Is there no line they will not cross?”In a statement, the DHS said the senator “chose disrespectful political theatre” and disrupted a live news conference. They falsely claimed that Padilla had failed to identify himself and believed he was an attacker when he “lunged toward” Noem as she delivered remarks.“Mr Padilla was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands,” the department said in a statement posted on X, adding that officers responded and “acted appropriately”.The deputy FBI director Dan Bongino accused Padilla of “not wearing a security pin” and said he “physically resisted law enforcement when confronted”.“Our FBI personnel acted completely appropriately while assisting Secret Service and we are grateful for their professionalism and service,” Bongino added.Noem was in Los Angeles to accompany federal agents on immigration operations in the area.Noem said Padilla’s approach “wasn’t appropriate” and that she wished he had reached out to her office before interrupting the event. Following the incident, she and the senator met for 15 minutes, according to DHS. Noem told reporters that they had a “great” and “productive” conversation and exchanged phone numbers.Democratic officials said they were stunned by what the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, described as the “manhandling” of a sitting US senator.The California governor, Gavin Newsom, called Padilla “one of the most decent people I know”, before adding: “This is outrageous, dictatorial, and shameful. Trump and his shock troops are out of control. This must end now.”Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, wrote on X that “watching this video sickened my stomach, the manhandling of a United States Senator, Senator Padilla. We need immediate answers to what the hell went on.”Jimmy Gomez, a California representative, wrote on X : “This isn’t just shocking, it’s a threat to the rule of law and democratic accountability. Sen Padilla is conducting oversight over the lawlessness of the Trump and the violations of the #RuleOfLaw. If this can happen to immigrant communities, it can happen to anyone.”Tina Smith, a Minnesota senator, said: “This is disgusting. If this is how they treat Alex Padilla, a United States Senator, how do you think they’ll treat you?”Norma Torres, a California representative, lambasted the treatment of Padilla in an impassioned video, writing: “Let’s call it what it is: a disgraceful abuse of power. Senator Alex Padilla was dragged and handcuffed out for daring to question Secretary Noem. This wasn’t a threat – it was dissent. They’re not keeping us safe – they’re silencing us.”The clash with Padilla comes just days after the Democratic representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey was indicted on federal charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers after a clash with law enforcement at a May protest outside a detention facility in Newark. Democrats have cast the charges as a politically motivated attempt by the Trump administration to intimidate the opposition.As he exited the floor of the House of Representatives, Johnson said the senator had been at fault, accusing him of “charging a cabinet secretary at a press conference” and calling his actions “wildly inappropriate”.“A sitting member of Congress should not act like that,” he said. “It is beneath a member of the Congress, it is beneath a US senator.”Johnson said he believes Padilla’s behavior “merits immediate attention” by Congress and “at a minimum, it rises to the level of a censure”. More

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      Newsom calls Trump a ‘stone cold liar’ as LA protests against Ice raids continue

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      Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, has called Donald Trump a “stone cold liar”, condemned the federal deployment of troops in Los Angeles as “theater” and “madness” and even questioned the president’s mental fitness, as protests over immigration raids in the city continue.Trump federalized 2,000 of California’s national guard on Saturday, with a US president acting over the objections of a state governor in this way for the first time in more than half a century. It followed the outbreak of protests over a series of sweeping immigration raids in the LA area, with Newsom criticizing Trump’s actions as illegal overreach, unconstitutional and “provocation”.Now US marines are being added to this force to back up arrests by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency, in tactics Newsom said have been used to “disappear” people unlawfully in these raids rather than confront the protesters who have destroyed property around an Ice facility in downtown Los Angeles.Newsom, a Democrat, said that Trump never raised with him the federalizing of the national guard before it occurred, when the two spoke by phone last Friday, despite the president’s claims to the contrary. “He lied, stone cold liar,” the governor told the New York Times podcast the Daily on Thursday morning in an interview.Of the subsequent rare commanding of the national guard troops by the president, rather than the governor, Newsom told the Daily: “It came completely out of left field.”The federalized national guard have been taken from their duties on the border and working in California’s forests to clear undergrowth to prevent wildfires and have had to be protected by police as protesters were specifically angry at them being deployed by the president, Newsom said.“That is how ridiculous this whole thing is,” he said. “This is theater, it’s madness, it’s unconstitutional, it’s immoral. It puts people’s lives at risk, these people are being used as pawns.”Newsom said that “looting is unacceptable” but that more than 1,600 police were dealing with the situation and his greater concern was the “thuggish behavior” of the Trump administration in ordering the military on to the streets of a US city. Several members of the federalized national guard have told friends and family they are deeply unhappy about the deployment.“This sends fear and chills up the spines of law-abiding citizens,” said Newsom, who has warned that other states and US democracy itself is under threat from the presidential overreach. “That is a red line crossed, it is a serious and profound moment in American history.”Newsom told local media that Trump’s age seemed to be affecting him.He claimed to the Times that the president can’t recall the phone conversation they had on Friday and that “he’s not all there”, echoing comments first made by the governor on Monday that Trump, who turns 79 on Saturday, is “incapable of even a train of thought” and that he has “lost it”.Trump has said that he wants to “liberate” Los Angeles from protesters and has escalated a feud with Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, by even suggesting the governor himself could be arrested. Los Angeles was calmer on Wednesday evening than at the weekend and the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, has emphasized in local appearances how small an area has been affected by any trouble, with a limited area under curfew and no looting experienced there overnight into Thursday.However, as protests continue, several hundred further arrests were made late on Wednesday.Newsom also said in the interview broadcast, published on Thursday, that his 15-year-old daughter came home from school crying at the prospect of him being arrested. “I said that doesn’t matter, what matters is the military on the streets,” he said. “I will handle that, I will be fine. I am worried about you, I’m worried about this country, I’m worried about everything we’ve taken for granted and fought so hard for disappearing overnight.”At a press conference on Thursday, Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, suggested without evidence that the protesters could be “funded” by “NGOs out there, unions, other individuals” and said Newsom had not returned her calls. Security guards forcibly removed Alex Padilla, a California senator, from the press conference as he attempted to ask Noem a question.In a statement after his removal, Padilla’s office said he was in Los Angeles “exercising his duty to perform congressional oversight of the federal government’s operations”.“He tried to ask the Secretary a question, and was forcibly removed by federal agents, forced to the ground and handcuffed. He is not currently detained, and we are working to get additional information,” the statement said.The protests have spread to other cities including New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Seattle and Spokane in Washington state, Austin and San Antonio in Texas. Meanwhile immigration “enforcement activity” has extended to California’s agricultural heartland, where many farm workers are undocumented people.Los Angeles area mayors on Wednesday called on the Trump administration with withdraw troops and stop the raids that have caused widespread fear in immigrant communities.“I’m asking you, please listen to me, stop terrorizing our residents,” said Jessica Ancona, the mayor of El Monte, who said she was struck by rubber bullets during a recent raid in the city.On Wednesday, Trump was both booed and cheered while attending a performance of Les Misérables in Washington at the Kennedy Center in the capital, which he took over after returning to the White House. Trump said that the actions in Los Angeles were necessary. “If I didn’t act quickly on that, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground right now,” Trump said. More