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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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      Archive: CBS News, AP, ABC 7 Chicago, ABC News, FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, FOX 11 LA, NBC News, PBS Newshour
      Listen to Football Weekly
      Subscribe to the Guardian’s new narrative series Missing in the Amazon
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
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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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      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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      in US Politics

      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

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      US immigration officials raid California farms as Trump ramps up conflict

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      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 nighttime 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.Hilda Solis, an LA county supervisor, said Wednesday evening she was concerned about a “deeply disturbing incident” in the city’s Boyle Heights neighborhood involving two unmarked vehicles operated by 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, 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.Los Angeles police announced they arrested more than 200 people in the city’s downtown area on Tuesday, after crowds gathered in defiance of the overnight curfew in the neighborhood. The LAPD said it had carried out more than 400 arrests and detentions of protesters since Saturday.The crackdown came after California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, filed an emergency request to block the Trump administration from using military forces to accompany Ice officers on raids throughout LA.Trump has ordered the deployment of 4,000 national guard members and 700 marines to LA after days of protests driven by anger over aggressive Ice raids that have targeted garment workers, day labourers, car wash employees and members of immigrant communities.Across the country, NBC reported that Ice was preparing to deploy tactical units to several more cities run by Democratic leaders, citing two sources familiar with the plans, who named four of the cities as Seattle, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.On Wednesday, dozens of mayors from across the Los Angeles region banded together to demand that the Trump administration stop the stepped-up immigration raids that have spread fear across their cities.“I’m asking you, please listen to me, stop terrorizing our residents,” said Mayor Jessica Ancona of El Monte, who said she was hit by rubber bullets during a raid in her city.Speaking alongside the other mayors at a news conference, Bass said the raids spread fear at the behest of the White House.“We started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons, gang members, drug dealers. But when you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe,” she said. “You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”Newsom and the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, have alleged in a pair of lawsuits filed on Monday and Tuesday that Trump’s takeover of the state’s national guard, against the governor’s wishes, was unlawful. On Tuesday, a federal judge declined to immediately rule on California’s request for a restraining order and scheduled a hearing for Thursday.In a speech, Newsom condemned Trump for “indiscriminately targeting hard-working immigrant families” and militarising the streets of LA, recounting how in recent days Ice agents had grabbed people outside a Home Depot, detained a nine-months-pregnant US citizen, sent unmarked cars to schools, and arrested gardeners and seamstresses.“That’s just weakness masquerading as strength,” the governor said. “If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant based only on suspicion or skin colour, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”In past days, thousands of troops have been deployed to LA over the objections of Democratic officials and despite concerns from local law enforcement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUS military troops in the city do not have the authority to arrest people, but they are allowed to temporarily detain individuals until law enforcement agents arrest them, Maj Gen Scott Sherman, who is leading the deployment, said on Wednesday. National guard troops on the ground in Los Angeles have already done so, he said.View image in fullscreenThe 700 US marines who will be deployed are receiving training on civil disturbances and will not have live ammunition in their rifles while in the city, Sherman said.The Los Angeles county sheriff, Robert Luna, said on Wednesday, however, that federal troops do not have the power to arrest or detain: “So if they are out in the field, they may be there, but they are working in conjunction with federal authorities. It could be Ice, border patrol, there’s a whole host of acronym federal agencies that they’re working with.” Luna also said he was unaware whether Marines were already on the ground in the city, but that local law enforcement was trying to “improve communication” with the military.Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said he expected the military would remain in the city for 60 days at a cost of at least $134m.Trump defended the military deployment on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday morning, writing: “If our troops didn’t go into Los Angeles, it would be burning to the ground right now, just like so much of their housing burned to the ground. The great people of Los Angeles are very lucky that I made the decision to go in and help!!!”The deployment of the national guard and marines is strongly opposed by California Democrats, as well as by every Democratic governor in the US. Alex Padilla, a California senator, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that protests against Ice and the subsequent legal showdown between his state and the government was “absolutely a crisis of Trump’s own making”.He said: “There are a lot of people who are passionate about speaking up for fundamental rights and respecting due process, but the deployment of national guard only serves to escalate tensions and the situation. It’s exactly what Donald Trump wanted to do.”Padilla said the Los Angeles sheriff’s department had not been advised of the federalisation of the national guard. He said his office had pressed the Pentagon for a justification, and “as far as we’re told, the Department of Defence isn’t sure what the mission is here”.Meanwhile, officials in Los Angeles have sought to reassure the public that the situation in the city remains largely peaceful and calm. At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, Nathan Hochman, the district attorney of Los Angeles county, pointed out how images of unrest on television and social media have misled many Americans about the nature and scale of the mayhem.“If you only saw the social media and the media reports of what’s going on over the last five days, you would think that Los Angeles is on the brink of war,” Hochman said.“But let me put this in perspective for you. 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.“That means that 99.9% of people in Los Angeles city or generally Los Angeles county have not engaged in any protest at all,” he continued. “Now, amongst the people who have engaged in protest, we estimate that there are hundreds of people, let’s say maybe up to 400, to use rough percentages, who have engaged in this type of illegal activity.”“So what does that mean?” Hochman asked. “That means that 99.99% of people who live in Los Angeles … have not committed any illegal acts in connection with this protest whatsoever.”Lauren Gambino, Sam Levin, Lois Beckett, Joseph Gedeon and agencies contributed reporting 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