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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

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      Protesters have a right to wear masks – despite Trump’s double standard | Jan-Werner Müller

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      Do protesters have a right to hide their faces? Donald Trump, who likes to show and see his own face as often as possible, clearly does not think so. One demand to universities has been that they outlaw masking at demonstrations; in response to protests in California, the US president demanded on social media that anyone wearing a mask be arrested immediately.Never mind the apparent double standard, as Ice agents refuse to take off face coverings and hide their name tags, defying any accountability; there is a widespread sense that standing by one’s identity is a crucial part of standing up to unjust power. In fact, that intuition is at the core of civil disobedience. But it is not plausible in our present moment; what’s more, there is a long countervailing tradition of validating citizens’ right to anonymity. As recently as the mid-1990s, it was affirmed by none other than the supreme court.Lawful protest is categorically different from civil disobedience, though much current commentary conflates them. In civil disobedience, citizens openly – or even, as Martin Luther King Jr put it, “lovingly” – break the law; they make themselves identifiable to the authorities and are willing to accept punishment (but hope that they will not be treated like ordinary criminals). This strategy serves multiple purposes: it demonstrates moral seriousness, it flags “highest respect for the law” in general (MLK again) and it counts on a majority coming to see the injustice these loving lawbreakers are flagging – and then change things.To be sure, the requirement to reveal one’s identity has not been accepted by all philosophers of civil disobedience: for some, what matters is that whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning were doing the right thing. Their identity was not crucial for the public to comprehend scandalous facts they revealed (in the end, at great personal cost).Past lawful protests, meanwhile, occurred in a different media context. The civil rights movement assumed that its messages about injustice would reach a majority of US citizens – as well as people of good will in Washington DC. After all, activists appealed above the heads of racist governors such as Alabama’s George Wallace to the federal government. Today, such assumptions are doubtful. As everyone knows, we no longer live in an age of three large TV networks, which, despite various failings, could be expected faithfully to transmit images of civil rights protesters being brutally treated by southern police. In our deeply distorted, often outright dysfunctional, media landscape, messages are either not transmitted at all (just watch Fox at moments that could be embarrassing for Trump); or they are reframed such that the original message is turned on its head (those peacefully protesting against lawlessness become the law-breakers).Beyond these risks, there is the by now clear and present danger of the Trump administration engaging in personal retribution and making examples of individuals – think of student detentions and deportations. Under such conditions, hiding one’s identity is an understandable act of caution, and such caution should not be criminalized. While democracies such as Canada also have anti-masking laws, these aim at rioters and those assembled unlawfully, not people exercising their right to free expression. We are clearly at a moment where protest is beginning to take courage – a point driven home to me when I politely asked some older women holding up posters outside the main gate at Princeton University whether I could take their picture. Several said that I should not show their faces.As in debates about privacy, someone sooner or later will say that anyone who has nothing to hide should not hide their face. But in an age of ubiquitous surveillance, now supplemented with rapidly advancing facial recognition technology, you do not know what will be done with evidence of your presence at a protest. We have a secret ballot because we do not want people to be intimidated, but also because we don’t want powerful people – not necessarily always the state; it could be the boss who does not like your vote for democratic socialism – to know about our stances.The supreme court saw this logic three decades ago. It defended the right to stay anonymous of an elderly lady handing out leaflets opposing a school tax levy in Ohio. The court reminded Americans that the authors of the Federalist papers had used pseudonyms; the justices declared anonymity a means “to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation”, going so far as to ennoble it as a “shield from the tyranny of the majority” (of course, today’s protesters are not standing against a real majority – what Trump and Miller are doing is precisely not popular).To be sure, when protest is meant directly to engage others, there is something not right about an asymmetry of the masked speaking to the unmasked: freedom of assembly, among other things, ensures that we can get into each other’s faces. Already in the 19th century, revolutionaries hoped that those manning barricades and soldiers would end up talking and fraternizing. Teargas – first used against barricades, even before deployment in war – renders that vision impossible. Today, what risks they take, and, specifically, how much they want to reveal to authorities and fellow citizens, should be up to individuals engaged in lawful protest.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University More

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      California files motion to block troops to LA as Trump-Newsom tensions escalate

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      The California governor filed an emergency request to block the Trump administration from using military forces to accompany federal immigration enforcement officers on raids throughout Los Angeles.The move by Gavin Newsom on Tuesday comes after Donald Trump ordered the deployment of 4,000 national guard members and 700 marines to LA following four days of protests driven by anger over the president’s stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws.The request comes a day after Newsom and the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s deployment of national guard troops as “unlawful”.Bonta said on Tuesday: “The president is looking for any pretense to place military forces on American streets to intimidate and quiet those who disagree with him.”Newsom said: “The federal government is now turning the military against American citizens. Sending trained warfighters on to the streets is unprecedented and threatens the very core of our democracy.”The fight in the courts comes as Los Angeles was bracing for new troop arrivals and tensions escalated between Newsom and Trump.On Tuesday night, hundreds of troops were transferred to the US’s second largest city over the objections of Democratic officials and despite concerns from local law enforcement.Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, said he expected the military would remain in the city for 60 days at a cost of at least $134m.The initial deployment of 300 national guard troops is expected to quickly expand to the full 4,000 that has been authorized by Trump, with an additional 700 marines who began arriving on Tuesday.The president said troops would remain until there was “no danger” and said he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act.“If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We’ll see,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.Newsom said the deployment “threatens the very core of our democracy”.“Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth have sought to bring military personnel and a ‘warrior culture’ to the streets of cities and towns where Americans work, go to school, and raise their families,” California’s filing in federal court said. “Now, they have turned their sights on California, with devastating consequences.”Bonta said on Monday that the state’s sovereignty was “trampled”.But Trump countered that his administration had “no choice” but to send in troops, and argued on Tuesday that his decision “stopped the violence”. The national guard is not believed to be involved in crowd control but is assigned to protect federal property.The deployment is strongly opposed by California Democrats – as well as every Democratic governor in the US. Alex Padilla, the California senator, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and the subsequent legal showdown between his state and the government “is absolutely a crisis of Trump’s own making”.View image in fullscreen“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,” Padilla said. “It’s exactly what Donald Trump wanted to do.”Padilla said the Los Angeles sheriff’s department had not been advised of the federalization 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 Defense isn’t sure what the mission is here”.“Los Angeles is no stranger to demonstrations and protests and rallies and marches,” Padilla added. “Local law enforcement knows how to handle this and has a rapport with the community and community leaders to be able to allow for that.”Jim McDonnell, the LA police chief, said on Monday that the department and its local partners have decades of experience responding to large-scale demonstrations and that they were confident in their ability to continue doing so.“The arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles, absent clear coordination, presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city,” he said.The US Northern Command, or Northcom, said in a statement on Monday that marines from the Second Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division “will seamlessly integrate” with forces “who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area”.Northcom added that the forces had been trained in de-escalation, crowd control and standing rules for the use of force – and that approximately 1,700 soldiers from the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, a California national guard unit, were already in the greater Los Angeles area.View image in fullscreenTrump and Newsom’s rift continued with ferocity on Tuesday.Trump, who has suggested Newsom should be arrested, said he spoke to Newsom by phone “a day ago” and told him: “He’s gotta do a better job.”“There was no call. Not even a voicemail,” Newsom responded on social media. “Americans should be alarmed that a president deploying marines on to our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”Hegseth testified before the House appropriations subcommittee on defense. The meeting was expected to focus on the nearly $1tn budget request for 2026, but Democrats were quick to question the defense secretary on the controversial move to deploy national guard and marines to LA.Under questioning from Peter Aguilar, US congressman for California’s 33rd district, Hegseth said national guard and federal forces had been sent into a “deteriorating situation with equipment and capabilities”.“We’re here to maintain the peace on behalf of law enforcement officers in Los Angeles, which Gavin Newsom won’t do,” he said.“What’s the justification for using the military for civilian law enforcement purposes in LA? Why are you sending war fighters to cities to interact with civilians?” Aguilar asked.“Every American citizen deserves to live in a community that’s safe, and Ice agents need to be able to do their job. They’re being attacked for doing their job, which is deporting illegal criminals. That shouldn’t happen in any city, Minneapolis or Los Angeles, and if they’re attacked, that’s lawless,” Hegseth replied.Betty McCollum, the top Democrat on the subcommittee, asked the secretary about the cost of the deployment, and what training and other duties the troops were missing because of their presence in Los Angeles.Hegseth said in response that Ice “has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country”.“The police chief said she was overwhelmed, so we helped.”It was not immediately clear to whom Hegseth was referring.Agencies contributed to this report More

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      Tuesday briefing: What Trump’s response to the LA protests could mean for US democracy

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      Late last week, Los Angeles was left stunned as droves of federal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers bore down on homes, businesses and neighbourhoods across the city in a series of immigration raids.The anti-ICE protests that followed were swift and furious, fuelled in part by the reported ill-treatment of some of the 118 people thought to have been detained, allegedly without judicial warrants. By Friday evening, thousands had taken to the streets in mostly peaceful protests before violence flared in points around the city, with protesters attacking police cars and blocking highways.Then came the response from the White House. President Donald Trump promised to crush the opposition on the LA streets, immediately and with military force, by using his powers to send 4,000 National Guard troops to the city.Yesterday, despite the protests dwindling and remaining largely peaceful, Trump continued to escalate the situation, branding the protesters “paid insurrectionists” with the administration ordering 700 marines into Los Angeles to support law enforcement in an exceptionally rare domestic deployment.California governor Gavin Newsom has called Trump’s response an “unmistakable step toward authoritarianism”, accusing him of intentionally causing chaos, terrorising communities and endangering democracy. Karen Bass, Los Angeles mayor, also warned that LA was being used by the Trump administration as a “test case for what happens when the federal government moves in and takes the authority away from the state or away from local government”.For today’s newsletter, I spoke with Philippe Sands, the renowned human rights lawyer, on what Trump’s response to the anti-immigration protests could mean for US democracy. That’s after the headlines.Five big stories

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      In depth: ‘A slow creep towards normalisation’View image in fullscreenThe speed at which Trump deployed National Guard troops to quell the protests is a sign of just how willing the administration is to flex its power to the absolute constitutional limits.According to Philippe Sands, none of us should be surprised by the tactics deployed. Throughout his career, Sands has documented and examined the methods used by authoritarian regimes and military dictatorships.Sands says that the scenes unfolding in Los Angeles should be seen as part of a wider drive to create a sense of emergency, but also to test the limits of the public’s imagination about what is acceptable and what must be resisted.“People start in one place but very quickly events like we’re seeing in Los Angeles can change the parameters of tolerance,” he says.What are the LA protests about?Protests broke out across Los Angeles on Friday after agents from ICE conducted a series of high-profile immigration raids, which were met with horror by many locals. LA’s city council released a statement that the city, which was “built by immigrants and thrives because of immigrants” would not “abide by fear tactics to support extreme political agendas that aim to stoke fear and spark discord in our community.”Across the weekend, thousands joined anti-ICE demonstrations, with violence flaring at points across the city as police cars were attacked and highways blocked. The authorities responded with teargas and rubber bullets.What was Trump’s response?On Saturday, Trump said he was deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to clamp down on the immigration protests, posting on Truth Social: “These radical left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will not be tolerated.” Yesterday plans were announced to send 700 marines to LA, with the administration saying they were there to support law enforcement efforts.In sending troops, Trump bypassed the authority of the state’s governor Gavin Newsom, who said that the deployment was “purposefully inflammatory”.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the images of truckloads of armed National Guard troops arriving in the city “akin to a declaration of war on all Californians”.How has Trump been able to deploy military personnel on to the streets of LA?It’s a central tenet of American democracy that the US military should not be used against its citizens. While the American constitution makes the president the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces, a set of constitutional and statutory legal constraints are intended to prevent the abuse of this exceptional power.However there are loopholes, which Trump has been open about his intention to exploit.First is the 18th-century Insurrection Act, which authorises the president to decide whether to use the military to engage in civilian law enforcement in certain situations. While he has labelled the protesters “insurrectionists”, Trump has stopped short of invoking the Insurrection Act in response to the protests in LA.Second is the National Guard. While the US president cannot command military forces against US citizens, he is in charge of the use of the National Guard in Washington DC and can request that other states provide additional guard troops to supplement deployments in emergencies.This weekend is not the first time the National Guard has been sent to Los Angeles. In 2020, troops used smoke canisters and rubber bullets to disperse Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters in Lafayette Square. In 1992, George HW Bush deployed thousands of troops to quell the riots after the police beating of Rodney King.Yet, significantly, this weekend is the first time since 1965 that a president has sent in the National Guard without being requested to do so by a state governor, something labelled an “outrageous overreach” by Newsom.Should this fuel fears Trump is driving the US towards authoritarianism?View image in fullscreenIn his first term as president, Trump was open about his desire to expand the powers of federal law enforcement and use the military to crush civil protest.Announcing the deployment of National Guard troops in 2020, Trump said: “If the city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residence, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” before reportedly advocating for BLM protesters to be shot.Sands is keen to stress we shouldn’t be jumping to hasty conclusions, “but it is obvious there are some warning signs that need to be taken seriously”.He draws parallel’s with Augusto Pinochet’s Plan Z, where the Chilean dictator concocted a narrative that leftist insurgents were planning a coup to justify violently suppressing dissent and attacking citizens. Now in the US, you have Trump talking about the “enemy within” to describe illegal immigrants and saying they are a threat to law and order. “It’s a very well-used playbook,” says Sands. “You use the power of your office to create a climate of fear, which then allows you to go further than you’d otherwise be able to do, to argue for exceptional circumstances.”At the same time, some say that in branding those protesting as a “mob” being paid to incite violence, the Trump administration is conflating resistance to his immigration policy with unlawful and dangerous behaviour that the administration claims state authorities can’t deal with. “You might say that what is going on in Los Angeles is a way of testing the limits of what the American people are willing to tolerate, whether in these circumstances they can stomach the sight of troops on the streets of a major American city,” says Sands.You only have to look at history to see how quickly such actions can become normalised, he adds. “It’s all part of this testing of the public’s capacity to absorb this alongside all the other stuff – banning books, taking people off the streets, deporting without due process. It is a slow creep that takes people past limits that were previously unimaginable.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIs this a turning point for US democracy?Sands says that although warning signs are there, the major difference between a case like Pinochet in Chile – the subject of his new book, 38 Londres Street – or other authoritarian regimes, is that so far the Trump administration has not limited – or not been able to limit – the role of the judiciary or the courts in holding the executive to account.“Judges and lawyers are being attacked, very publicly, but judges have not been removed from office and Congress has not curtailed the powers of the courts,” he says. “In the past it has been very clear that the role of the judges and the courts is the line that divides democracy and dictatorship. Authoritarian regimes such as the Pinochet dictatorship neutralised the courts almost immediately. In the US this hasn’t happened.”Sands says that Trump’s decision to bypass the state and directly deploy troops to LA will probably lead to a slew of legal challenges. Already the state of California has said it will sue the government accusing the US president of “unlawfully” federalizing the state’s national guard to quell the protests. “The courts and the judiciary’s powers have actually stood firm so far,” he says. “And on occasion we’ve seen the Trump administration blink and roll back when challenged.”However, he concedes that the jury is out on whether this will remain the case. “Judges in the United States are already under immense pressure,” Sands says. “President Trump’s administration seem to be pushing as far as they can, trying to create cracks and seeing how much they can bend that system.”As anti-ICE protests spread to other cities across the country, political, public and legal resistance that Trump will face in the coming days in LA could be crucial in determining just how resilient the checks and balances built into the US constitution are in face of the real onslaught that Trump 2.0 has unleashed.“There is a great deal at stake here,” says Sands. “Warts and all, since 1945 the United States has always seen itself as a beacon for the idea of the rule of law and constitutionalism. If it now descends into classic authoritarianism, the world will be very different.”What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

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      Chris Godfrey’s interview with Brad Dourif, who starred alongside Hollywood greats in many legendary movies (from Cuckoo’s Nest to Chucky) and became one of the most beloved of character actors of all time, is a great read. Annie

      From a darkly tender comedy about three siblings dodging social services (Just Act Normal) to a woman with terminal cancer chasing the perfect orgasm (Dying for Sex), this roundup of 2025’s the best TV is anything but predictable. Sundus
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Belgium raced to a three-goal lead inside half an hour, before Wales, rallied to equalise with the side ranked eighth in the world. A perfect Kevin De Bruyne cross in the 88th minute sealed the deal though, ending the match 4-3 and leaving Wales second in Group J in the World Cup qualifiers.Football | Tottenham have approached Brentford over appointing Thomas Frank as their new head coach. The Dane is the club’s No 1 target to replace Ange Postecoglou, who was sacked on Friday, and there is confidence that a deal will be struck in the next 48 hours.Rugby union | A leading executive at TNT Sports has dismissed the proposed R360 breakaway league as “delusional” while Premiership executives have played down the rebels’ threat, insisting rugby “doesn’t need pop-ups”.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian leads with “Labour pledges £14bn for nuclear to get UK off ‘fossil fuel rollercoaster’”. The Telegraph follows the same story with “£14 billion for nuclear to keep the lights on”.The Financial Times has “Reeves retreat restores winter fuel payments to pensioners”, while the Times reports “Millions escape winter fuel cuts”. The Mirror characterises the move as “Winter wonderful”, but the Mail calls the chancellor’s comments on the matter “Deluded”. The Sun follows the story too, under the headline “It was fuelish so say sorry!” and the i reports “Winter fuel U-turn gets warm welcome – but Labour MPs warn Reeves: don’t make same mistake on disability benefits”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenTrump, Musk and the end of a bromanceAndrew Roth details the explosive falling-out between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and what it tells us about the future of the US presidency.Cartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenAt 67, Jean Walters (pictured above) heard church bells drifting through her garden in Meltham, West Yorkshire. On a whim, she decided to learn how to ring them. What began as a curious hobby turned into a passion. Within a few years, Walters joined the Yorkshire bellringers’ association and marked her 80th birthday by ringing eight different patterns – one for each decade of her life.A former soprano and teacher who lost her singing voice, Walters found a new way to express herself through bellringing. She says the physical and mental challenge of bellringing leaves her feeling exhilarated. “Its another way of expressing my joy of living.”Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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      Trump sends thousands more troops to LA as mayor says city is being used as an ‘experiment’

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      The Trump administration was deploying roughly 4,000 national guard members in Los Angeles on Monday in response to protests over immigration raids, in an extraordinary mobilization of troops against US residents that California leaders have called “authoritarian”.Tensions between the federal government and the nation’s second-largest city dramatically escalated over the weekend as residents took to the streets to demonstrate against a series of brutal crackdowns on immigrant communities. Raids in the region have affected garment district workers, day laborers and restaurants, and the president of a major California union was arrested by federal agents while serving as a community observer during US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) arrests.Despite facing teargas and other munitions over the weekend, protesters continued to rally on Monday, and families of detained immigrants pleaded for their loved ones to be released.The Trump administration initially said 2,000 national guard members were being sent to LA, but California governor Gavin Newsom said late on Monday he was informed federal officials were sending an additional 2,000 troops, though he said only 300 had been deployed so far, with the remainder “sitting, unused, in federal buildings without orders”. Federal authorities also said the military would be sending roughly 700 marines, marking an exceptionally rare deployment targeting people domestically.Largely peaceful protests against Ice spread around the country on Monday, including in New York, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco, where hundreds of people gathered in the evening for a march through the city’s historically-Latino Mission district. In Austin, demonstrators marched outside an Ice processing center, chanting slogans such as “No more Ice” and holding up signs including “No human being is illegal”. In downtown Los Angeles, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held a demonstration calling for an end to Ice raids. Intermittent protests continued into the evening, as police used rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of several hundred people gathered near the federal building.Advocates also rallied in support of David Huerta, the president of SEIU California and SEIU-USWW, who was arrested on Friday and initially hospitalized. Huerta was charged with conspiracy to impede an officer, which could result in a six-year prison sentence, and released Monday, telling reporters: “This fight is ours, it’s our community’s, but it belongs to everyone. We all have to fight for them.”Tensions simmered as California filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging the federal deployment of the state national guard over Newsom’s objections. Meanwhile, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, earlier threatened to arrest Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, a move the governor said was “an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism”.Newsom dared the administration to follow through with the threats, prompting Trump to respond: “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great.”View image in fullscreenTrump, who congratulated the national guard troops for a “great job” before they had arrived in the city, said LA would have been “completely obliterated” without them.Homan claimed on Fox News that Ice “took a lot of bad people off the street”. He said, without providing specifics, that he had arrested gang members and people with serious criminal convictions, but also admitted that Ice was detaining immigrants without criminal records.Homan also told NBC News that more raids were coming, and Ice arrests continued across southern California on Monday.California’s lawsuit, filed late on Monday against Trump and Pete Hegseth, his defense secretary, said the president had “used a protest that local authorities had under control to make another unprecedented power-grab … at the cost of the sovereignty of the state of California and in disregard of the authority and role of the governor as commander-in-chief of the state’s national guard”.The suit, which seeks to block the defense department from deploying the state national guard, said there has been no “rebellion” or “insurrection” in LA. California also said that during raids, Ice agents “took actions that inflamed tensions and provoked protest” and “sparked panic”. California noted that Ice sealed off entire streets around targeted buildings, used unmarked armored vehicles with paramilitary gear, and did not coordinate with LA law enforcement officials.Rob Bonta, the California attorney general who filed the suit, said the president was “trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends”.Also on Monday, families targeted by the recent raids spoke out. Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, an immigrant rights group, held a press conference outside Ambiance Apparel, a garment district warehouse raided on Friday.One woman said she witnessed the raid where her father was “kidnapped by Ice”, adding: “What happened was not right. It was not legal. In this country, we all have the right to due process … I saw with my own eyes the pain of the families, crying, screaming, not knowing what to do.”Yurien Contreras said her family has had no communication with her father, Mario Romero, since he was taken: “I witnessed how they put my father in handcuffs, chained him from the waist and from his ankles.” Lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), found that immigrants apprehended in LA were initially detained in a basement of a federal building, alleging they were denied food, water or beds for more than 12 hours.View image in fullscreenMayor Bass has said that LA is a “proud city of immigrants” and has strongly condemned the raids, telling reporters on Monday evening that most people detained have been denied access to lawyers, with many “disappeared” to unknown locations. “I can’t emphasize enough the level of fear and terror that is in Angelenos,” she said, adding that she would not stand for the White House using LA as a “test case” for this kind of federal crackdown.Bass also condemned vandalism and said protesters would be arrested for “violent” acts. LAPD said on Monday that 29 people had been arrested on Saturday for “failure to disperse”, and that there were 21 additional arrests on Sunday on a range of charges, including looting, attempted murder with a molotov cocktail and assault on an officer.Civil rights activists criticized the militarized response of local law enforcement, including LAPD, which has a history of injuring protesters, sometimes leading to costly settlements. Several journalists were injured at the protests, with an Australian reporter on Sunday shot by a rubber bullet at close range while filming a segment.“When residents come together to make use of their first amendment rights, often LAPD responds with a show of force,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a legal support group, who was present at the protests. “When you show up in riot gear and paramilitary equipment, you inject into an already dynamic situation a volatile element that escalates things.”The LAPD said officers had fired more than 600 rubber bullets over the weekend. Thousands had protested on Sunday, rallying around city hall and a federal detention center, and at one point, taking over a freeway.Jim McDonnell, the chief of the LAPD, said when officers fire on protesters, they are using “target-specific munitions,” but added: “That’s not to say that it always hits the intended target.” He said he was “very concerned” about the footage of a journalist hit by a munition.Regarding the deployment of marines to the city, he said his department had not been formally notified, and said their arrival would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge”. Bass said the national guard troops were simply guarding two buildings: “They need Marines on top of it? I don’t understand.”Hegseth, meanwhile, said the marines were needed to “restore order” and “defend federal law enforcement officers”.Trump’s federalization of the guard troops is the first time an American president has used such power since the 1992 LA riots, when widespread violence broke out in reaction to the acquittal of four white police officers for brutally beating the Black motorist Rodney King. It also was the first deployment without the express request of the governor since 1965.Los Angeles county is home to 3.5 million immigrants, making up a third of the population. The demonstrations come as the White House has aggressively ramped up immigration enforcement with mass detentions in overcrowded facilities, a new travel ban, a major crackdown on international students and rushed deportations without due process.Perez, of the legal support group, noted how immigrants were deeply woven into the fabric of life in LA, making uprisings against raids inevitable: “When a city like this is the target of an immigration raid by an administration like this, you’re going to deal with a popular and massive outpouring of resistance.”Helen Livingston contributed reporting More

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      LA cleans up and protests some more after weekend of defiance against Trump

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      Outside the federal courthouse complex in downtown Los Angeles on Monday morning, two cleaners carrying bins on wheels looked uncertainly at the daunting task in front of them – long walls in several directions covered in spray-painted graffiti after a weekend of vigorous street protest.They donned black plastic gloves and reached for spray bottles and rolls of paper towels, but these seemed hardly adequate even for the black marble plinth bearing the name “Edward R Roybal Center and Federal Building” where they began. Indeed, the rest of the official writing on the plinth was illegible, defaced by three separate graffiti reading “Fuck Ice” and another saying “Dead Cops”.The City of Angels was in recovery and clean-up mode after a fraught, boisterous day of protest on Sunday against Donald Trump’s immigration roundups and his decision to activate the California national guard against the will of the state’s leaders.A mostly peaceful series of demonstrations were marred, as night fell, by more serious acts of vandalism and violence. Some people, who the LAPD chief later said were not affiliated with the protesters, tossed rocks and paving stones off freeway overpasses on to police cruisers and officers below and a line of Waymo driverless vehicles that had already been spray-painted were set on fire.On Monday morning, street cleaning vehicles were out in force on Alameda Street, on the east side of the federal courthouse complex, where the national guard was stationed on Sunday and where thousands of protesters converged, starting in the early afternoon. The sidewalk and the long block of Alameda flanked by the federal buildings were cordoned off to the public.The 101 freeway, which had been occupied by protesters the night before, was open to traffic again, but most of the downtown exits were sealed off by California highway patrol vehicles. A cleaning crew with a pressure washer was hard at work on the outside of the federal building on Los Angeles Street, which houses a passport office, a social security office and other key federal bureaucratic services.View image in fullscreenThe national guard, which played almost no role in policing the protests on Sunday, was once again nowhere to be seen. Federal authorities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were likewise noticeably absent.With much of the Los Angeles police department recovering from a long day and night, the streets were largely given over to representatives from neighboring police forces drafted in to help – from Pasadena, South Pasadena, Burbank, Vernon and other cities. South Pasadena had the job of guarding concrete blocks set up overnight on either side of LA city hall on Spring Street. Its officers also stood guard on the building’s western steps.Much of the city establishment – council members, local elected officials and union leaders – flocked, meanwhile, to a protest of their own in Grand Park, on a hill overlooking city hall, to demand the release of David Huerta, a leader of the Service Employees International Union who was arrested on Friday while monitoring an immigration raid and was expected in court for his first appearance on Monday afternoon.“David Herta is my brother,” the president of his union, April Verrett, told the crowd to rapturous applause and chanting. “What he would say is, use this moment!”The thousands in attendance blew horns and yelled in approval.Union volunteers acted as marshals for the event and kept a close eye on the perimeter to watch for troublemakers – there appeared to be none. A sole Los Angeles police helicopter hovered overhead, but otherwise law enforcement was entirely absent. More