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      As military is deployed to LA, rightwing media decry protesters as ‘invaders’

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      There were unsavory scenes in Los Angeles over the weekend, as police used teargas and “less-lethal munitions” on thousands of people gathered to protest against the arrest of undocumented immigrants.The events playing out on rightwing TV channels and in the conservative podcasting realm were almost as miserable, as excitable media figures decried protesters as “invaders”, called for both the mass arrest of elected officials and the invocation of a two-century old laws and used the chaos to push racist conspiracy theories.It came as the Trump administration said the military will remain on the ground in LA for two months, after Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. About 700 US marines deployed to the US’s second largest city on Tuesday, after LA’s police chief effectively said their presence would complicate law enforcement’s efforts.The clamor for arrests mainly focused on Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, as rightwing media followed the lead of the US president, who first made the suggestion over the weekend. Trump didn’t seem to know under what law Newsom should be arrested, and the conservative commentariat wasn’t sure either. Still, it didn’t stop them crying for the California governor to be placed in handcuffs.Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, claimed Newsom “should be arrested for obstructing US immigration law”, even as Tom Homan, the border czar, said Newsom hadn’t done anything to warrant detention. Wayne Root, a host on the rightwing channel Real America TV, suggested Newsom should be charged with “treason” and be detained at Guantánamo Bay while he awaits trial. “Be sure he showers with MS-13,” Root added, a take that, even for the rightwing media cesspool, was particularly macabre.But the right wasn’t just calling for the caging of Newsom. Some wanted Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, to be arrested too, including Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist adviser-turned-podcast host.“Right there, LAPD,” Bannon announced on Monday, apparently under the impression that the entire LA police force was listening to his War Room show.“The mayor is involved in this and having the stand down [sic]. She ought to be arrested today. Immediately.”Bannon went on to call for “hard actions,” whatever they are, adding: “Not even question we’re on the side of the righteous.”The bad takes were everywhere. Chris Plante, a host at rightwing TV channel Newsmax, said on air: “The Democrats are just – I mean, at what point are they declared to be a terrorist organization – with all of the affiliations and all the violence and the shootings and the fire-bombings and the targeting Jews and on and on?”Laura Ingraham, who often seems to be trying just a bit too hard to be offensive, went further. On her Fox News show she accused Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas, the former secretary of homeland security, of having “opened the border” and given “benefits to 10 million illegal aliens”.“The goal was to resettle America with new people in order to transform it completely in ways that you really can’t do at the ballot box, at least when you’re that radical,” Ingraham said.She was referring, not very subtly, to the concept of “great replacement”, a racist conspiracy theory that falsely claims there is an ongoing effort by liberals to replace white populations in current white-majority countries. It’s a concept that started on fringe websites before making its way to Fox News.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOthers were upset by more prosaic matters, including the sight of people at the protests flying flags other than the stars and stripes. It really set off Charlie Kirk, with the influential rightwing declaring that the US has “a parasitic relationship with Mexico, and we have for quite some time”.He added: “If you loved the promise of America, you wouldn’t wave a Mexican flag when American police tried to remove criminals. This should be a wake-up call. If you did not realize it before, guess what? Pat Buchanan and President Trump were right. We are a conquered country that has been invaded by a force in certain areas.”Kirk is uniquely placed to comment on such matters. His Turning Point USA organization sent 80 busloads of people to Washington on the day that hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, and Kirk has celebrated Trump’s mass pardon of people who attacked police officers that day.When it came to the treatment of people protesting in LA, however, Kirk was of a different mind, as he called for US troops to be used in policing US civilians.“Los Angeles does not feel like a protest, what’s happening there. It’s an entire city that’s declaring open rebellion to American sovereignty and authority,” he said. “We must be unafraid to declare the Insurrection Act of 1807.” 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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      Trump’s war on Harvard was decades in the making. This letter proves it | Bernard Harcourt

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      On the shelf in my library, I have an autographed copy of a book written by a former Republican congressman from New York, John LeBoutillier, titled Harvard Hates America: The Odyssey of a Born-Again American. It was published in 1978, two years before LeBoutillier was elected to Congress – and decades before the Trump administration’s assault on the institution. But its message is familiar in 2025.The book is a scathing criticism of Harvard University, in large part over its supposed left-leaning professors who allegedly indoctrinate their undergraduates. Its thrust is straightforward: Harvard is America’s problem.Today, the blueprint for Donald Trump’s attack on Harvard, Columbia and other liberal arts colleges and universities can be found in another text: Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, a guide to rightwing government reform published in April 2023 by the Heritage Foundation – over a year before any encampments went up on Columbia’s campus. But the Republican ambition to subjugate Harvard and Columbia traces further back, at least to the 1970s, when it became apparent that college-educated voters favored the Democratic party.My copy of Harvard Hates America is autographed and dedicated to two constituents. And I recently stumbled on something tucked into the fold: a letter that LeBoutillier enclosed to the recipients of his gift. On House of Representatives stationery, LeBoutillier wrote:
      Long after I had graduated from Harvard and was a freshman member of Congress, I realized just how terrible some of the people educating our young are; they are not only liberals, but they use their “power” over their students to preach an anti-American leftist point of view. And this is not confined to Harvard. Indeed, this is a disease spreading throughout the academic world.
      I believe that this politicalization of education threatens this country. And, coupled with a bias so obviously evident in the media, makes it difficult for we conservatives to get our message across.
      Well, I’m going to continue to fight for our point of view and our principles.
      Enjoy the book.
      LeBoutillier was not alone in these sentiments. In a taped conversation with Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig Jr in the Oval Office on 14 December 1972, President Richard Nixon attacked university professors, claiming they were the enemy. His rhetoric was characteristically colorful: “The professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. Write that on the blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”Conservatives like the journalist Irving Kristol, the philosopher Allan Bloom, and Ronald Reagan’s education secretary, William Bennett, would perpetuate the criticisms of supposedly left-leaning universities in the 1980s. And there is a straight line from those attacks in the 1970s and 80s to the Trump administration.View image in fullscreenIn a speech titled “The universities are the enemy” and delivered at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, on 2 November 2021, JD Vance declared: “I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” Vance would then add, quoting Nixon: “There is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40 to 50 years ago. He said, and I quote, ‘The professors are the enemy.’”The Heritage Foundation picked up the baton in a 43-page chapter on education in the Project 2025 text. Remarkably, the Trump administration’s continuing assault on Harvard, Columbia and other universities is unfolding line-by-line, chapter and verse, from that script.So, right after a federal judge in Boston blocked the Department of Homeland Security from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, announced that the administration intended to revoke the visas of Chinese students, especially those with ties to the Chinese Communist party. On page 355 of its Mandate for Leadership, Project 2025 calls for “Confronting the Chinese Communist Party’s Influence on Higher Education.”At a press conference in the Oval Office on 30 May 2025, Trump attacked Harvard and said he would redirect the school’s grants to vocational education. “I’d like to see the money go to trade schools,” Trump said. The remark, again, came straight out of the Project 2025 playbook, which states on pages 15-16 and 319 that the federal government should prioritize “trade schools” and “career schools” over the “woke-dominated system” of universities.The Trump administration demanded that Columbia’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies program be placed “under academic receivership”. Again, straight out of the playbook. Project 2025 calls on page 356 for “wind[ing] down so-called ‘area studies’ programs at universities”.Trump signed executive orders on inauguration day banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and “gender ideology” at institutions such as universities that receive federal funding. Again, textbook material. Project 2025 argued on page 322, regarding educational institutions, that “enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory”.In fact, the first line of the chapter on education in Project 2025 says it all: “The federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist behind the attack on critical race theory and gender studies, has openly described the Republican attack on universities as a “counter-revolution” planned well before the campus protests. The Republican offensive traces back at least to the rise of the Black Lives Matter and abolition movements in the wake of the police killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, George Floyd and others. “It’s a revolution against revolution,” Rufo admitted, adding: “I think that actually we are a counter-radical force in American life that, paradoxically, has to use what many see as radical techniques.”And what the Trump administration has accomplished with its ongoing assault on Harvard and Columbia is the “prototype” of that wider counter-revolution. Rufo is explicit about this. “If you take Columbia University as really the first trial of this strategy, we’ve seen an enormous payoff,” he said. “I’d like to see that prototype industrialized and applied to all of the universities as a sector.”Given this history tracing back to the 1970s, it is puzzling why people continue to believe that the Republicans are trying to reform the universities to address antisemitism. It should be clear that their actions are instead part of a decades-long effort to humble universities for political reasons, namely to counter the trend that college-educated people tend to vote Democratic. Nixon was frank about this. That’s what made professors the enemy.On top of that, of course, there is profit and political economy. At the press conference last week, Trump admitted why he wants to shift education funding to trade schools.Encouraged by billionaire Elon Musk at his side, Trump said: “I’d like to see trade schools set up, because you could take $5bn plus hundreds of billions more, which is what is spent [on research universities], and you could have the greatest trade school system anywhere in the world. And that’s what we need to build his rockets and robots and things that he’s doing” – pointing to Musk.Trump could not have been more explicit. “We probably found our pot of gold,” Trump adds, “and that is what has been wasted at places like Harvard.”The Trump administration has seen some successes in its counter-revolution against higher education. So far, the lower federal courts have run interference. But there have been major casualties already, especially in the funding of sciences and medical research, academic integrity and autonomy, and area studies. Faculty governance at some universities has also been diminished, at some universities decimated.Anyone who is genuinely interested in understanding what the Trump administration is up to and to anticipate its next moves should return to books like Harvard Hates America and then read Project 2025’s chapter on education. It clearly explains the past four months and predicts the future – one in which the federal government will sacrifice liberal arts colleges and universities to the benefit of trade schools, faith-based institutions and military academies.The path ahead also includes, in all likelihood, eliminating the American Bar Association as an accrediting system (page 359), as well as the other actors in the “federal accreditation cartel” (pages 320 and 355); terminating the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (page 354), phasing out income-driven repayment plans (page 337), and privatizing student loans (page 340); allocating at least 40% of federal funding of education “to international business programs that teach about free markets and economics” (page 356); and a host of other radical proposals.It is time now to be honest about the decades-long history of the Republican assault on higher education. Too many of the university leaders who are negotiating with the Trump administration about campus protest are naive at best and fail to grasp the stakes of the ongoing counterrevolution – or complicit at worst. In the process, they are undermining their universities and violating their fiduciary duties to their constituents – students, alumni, faculty and staff. By capitulating based on a pretext, a feint in military terms, those leaders have sacrificed the integrity of the research enterprise and the autonomy of the academy.Liberal arts colleges and universities are a gem in the US, envied by people around the world. Their strength lies in fostering critical thought, creativity and inventiveness throughout the humanities, social sciences, and natural and applied sciences. A liberal arts education, at its best, cultivates critical thinking that challenges society’s strengths and weaknesses, and asks how to make the world more just with more freedom for everyone. Those are the true aims of higher education.

      Bernard E Harcourt is a professor of law and political science at Columbia University in New York City and a directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author most recently of “A Modern Counterrevolution” in The Ideas Letter More

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      Trump news at a glance: Gavin Newsom declares ‘democracy is under assault’ in blistering attack on president

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      The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has declared that “democracy is under assault” in a blistering evening address in which he accused Donald Trump of “pulling a military dragnet” across Los Angeles.On another day of mass protests over immigration raids and the federal deployment of military forces to the state, Newsom said Trump’s immigration crackdown had gone well beyond arresting criminals and that “dishwashers, gardeners, day labourers and seamstresses” are among those being detained.In an extraordinary ratcheting of tensions with the White House, Newsom recounted how in recent days Ice agents had grabbed people outside a Home Depot, detained a nine-months pregnant US citizen and sent unmarked cars to schools.He said Trump’s decision to deploy the California national guard without his support as governor should be a warning to other states.“California may be first – but it clearly won’t end here,” Newsom said.Here’s our round-up of key Trump administration stories of the day:Los Angeles mayor sets curfew as Newsom intensifies criticism of Trump The city of Los Angeles is instituting a curfew for a one-square mile area of downtown, where demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) have continued.The mayor, Karen Bass, announced the 10-hour curfew after the police department said it had carried out more than 300 arrests of protesters in the last two days. The city’s crackdown came after Gavin Newsom filed an emergency lawsuit to block the Trump administration from using military forces to accompany Ice officers on raids throughout Los Angeles.Read the full storyProtests spread across US as anger grows over Trump’s immigration crackdownProtests against the Trump administration’s newly intensified immigration raids, centered on Los Angeles, spread across the country on Tuesday with demonstrations in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Omaha and Seattle.Read the full storyTrump’s mobilization of troops in LA to cost Americans at least $134m, Hegseth saysDonald Trump’s decision to mobilise the US marines and national guard troops to Los Angeles is expected to cost taxpayers at least $134m and continue for a minimum of 60 days, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, told lawmakers during a House hearing on Tuesday.A total of 2,700 military personnel – 700 marines and 2,000 national guard troops – were dispatched to the city on Monday in a move that state leaders have publicly opposed.Read the full storyMike Johnson suggests Newsom should be ‘tarred and feathered’The Republican US House speaker, Mike Johnson, advocated for a brutal form of vigilante justice to be performed on the California governor, Gavin Newsom, saying he should be “tarred and feathered” for his opposition to immigration enforcement actions.This came after the Louisiana congressman declined to say if Newsom and other California officials should be arrested – as Trump and his “border czar”, Tom Homan, have recently floated – for allegedly impeding federal deportations.Read the full storyMexico president denies encouraging LA protests Mexico’s president has rejected an unfounded allegation by a senior US official that she encouraged demonstrations against immigration raids in Los Angeles, saying it was “absolutely false”.Claudia Sheinbaum responded on social media after Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, accused her of “encouraging violent protests”.Read the full storyTrump’s speech at Fort Bragg contained lies and conspiracy theories about LADonald Trump reiterated a slew of falsehoods and misleading statements about the tensions in the US’s second-largest city in an address to troops at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina.In the speech, the president spread conspiracy theories, maligned California’s Democratic leaders and misleadingly portrayed protesters as part of a “foreign invasion”.Read the full storyTrump administration to cut all USAID overseas rolesThe Trump administration will eliminate all USAID (United States Agency for International Development) overseas positions worldwide by 30 September in a dramatic restructuring of remaining US foreign aid operations.In a Tuesday state department cable obtained by the Guardian, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, ordered the abolishment of the agency’s entire international workforce, transferring control of foreign assistance programs directly to the state department.Read the full storyUS not pursuing goal of independent Palestinian stateMike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, has said the US is no longer pursuing the goal of an independent Palestinian state, marking what analysts describe as the most explicit abandonment yet of a cornerstone of American Middle East diplomacy.Read the full storyUS to put four prisoners to death this weekFour executions are scheduled across the US, marking a sharp increase in killings as Donald Trump has pushed to revive the death penalty despite growing concerns about states’ methods.Executions are set to take place in Alabama, Florida and South Carolina. A fourth, scheduled in Oklahoma, has been temporarily blocked by a judge, but the state’s attorney general is challenging the ruling.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The Smithsonian Institution has rebuffed Trump’s attempt to fire the director of its National Portrait Gallery in a direct challenge to the president.

      Mark Green, the Republican chair of the homeland security committee, announced that he will retire from Congress once the House votes again on Trump’s tax bill.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 9 June 2025. More

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      Protests across US as anger grows over Trump’s immigration crackdown

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      Protests against the Trump administration’s newly intensified immigration raids, centered on Los Angeles, spread across the country on Tuesday, with demonstrations in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Omaha and Seattle.Thousands attended a protest against the federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in New York City’s Foley Square.Some protesters held signs reading “Ice out of New York” and others chanted “Why are you in riot gear? I don’t see no riot here.”Shirley, a 29-year-old protester, condemned the Trump administration for targeting workers, which she called antithetical to the country’s essence.“I come from immigrant parents,” she said, with a large Mexican flag draped across her back. “It’s infuriating to see that this particular government is going into labor fields, taking people from construction sites, into industry, plants, into farms, and taking away what is the backbone of this country.“So I’m here today to remind everybody that the United States started as an immigrant country, and it’s a nation of immigrants, and I just want to make sure that I’m here for those who can’t be here today.”Councilmember Shahana Hanif of Brooklyn spoke before the large crowd in Foley Square. She criticized the Trump administration and New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, for the crackdown on immigrants.“Mayor Adams has made it clear that he doesn’t care about working class people,” she said. “He does not care about any one of us. He is collaborating with Trump to use tactics. He’s complicit.”She also expressed her desire to keep New York a sanctuary city, and called for more protections for international students.“Stop the attacks and assaults on our students!” she yelled, and was met with cheers from the crowd.Thousands also gathered outside an immigration court in Chicago, and then marched through downtown streets, drumming and chanting, “No more deportations!”View image in fullscreenAt one point, a car drove through the marchers, narrowly missing the anti-Ice protesters, according to WGN TV News, which broadcast video of the incident.In metro Atlanta, hundreds of people marched along Buford Highway in solidarity with Los Angeles, local 11 Alive News reported.Protesters marched in Omaha on Tuesday, chanting “Chinga la migra” (a Spanish phrase that roughly translates to the slogan “Fuck Ice” on placards waved by the marchers) after about 80 people were reportedly arrested in an immigration raid on a meat-packing plant.In Seattle, a small crowd of about 50 protesters gathered outside the Henry M Jackson federal building in downtown Seattle to show solidarity with protesters in Los Angeles, the Seattle Times reported.After a rally, the protesters barricaded driveways with e-bikes and e-scooters to block homeland security vehicles thought to be transporting detained immigrants.Large rallies also took place in Dallas and Austin on Monday, and up to 1,800 protests are planned nationwide on Saturday, to coincide with the military parade Donald Trump is throwing on his birthday in the nation’s capital. More

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      American carnage revisited as Trump plays president of permanent emergency

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      Donald Trump was hundreds of miles away from the White House on Tuesday, visiting one the country’s most venerable military bases, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, partly to big-up Saturday’s forthcoming celebration of America’s armed might in Washington – a parade spectacular ostensibly held in honor of the US armed forces’ birthday. But also his own.With a new setting came the chance for a new theme. Instead the president chose an old one – American carnage.It was the same discordant melody he had gone off on in his memorably dark first inauguration speech of January 2017, prompting George W Bush – who has kept an otherwise sphinx-like silence on things Trumpian in recent years – to murmur that it was “some weird shit”.Given the martial setting, it would have been worthier, though unquestionably duller, to hum a tune of virtue and valor.But with Los Angeles, long his favourite city whipping boy, in the spotlight – by dint of his having dispatched 4,000 national guards troops there on dubious pretext to confront protesters against his immigration roundups – there was never a chance of that.Confrontation on the streets of what is sometimes called Tinseltown but is more noted by the president’s Maga followers as the capital of “woke” handed Trump the chance to adopt his most favoured posture – the president of permanent emergency.Having used economic emergency powers to adopt, against all sound advice, tariffs, and other legislation designed to be applied only in wartime to unleash the furies on undocumented migrants, he now had the perfect setting to expound on the extraordinary measures he planned to take against domestic unrest.“I want to say a few words about the situation in Los Angeles, California,” he told his audience of uniformed active servicemen. Context and setting, you understood, was everything here.What were once considered policing matters would require, not to put too fine a point on it, military solutions. “The police in LA, who are very good, but they weren’t aggressive, like our soldiers. Our soldiers really were aggressive,” he said.Weird shit indeed.View image in fullscreenThe national guard and active Marine Corps deployments in LA, he strongly hinted, would not be the last.“I will be calling you early, as I see this happening,” he said, expanding his horizons to other settings, taking the opportunity to target Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota – running mate of Kamala Harris, Trump’s defeated Democratic opponent in last year’s presidential election.“Because, you know, in theory,” he said, warming – revealingly – to his theme, “I guess you could say a governor could call, but they don’t call. They let their city burn, like in Minneapolis.”Walz, Trump went, had refused to deploy the national guard in Minneapolis after violence flared in the city amid protests in 2020 following the murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin.“I called the guard and I saved it, but I wish I would have called it the first day,” he said.In fact, local media reports say records confirm that it was Walz who called in the national guard. But no matter, Trump had made his intent clear.The US military – buoyed with its new $1tn budget announced in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill” and a pay rise announced in his speech – had a new enemy, and it lay inside America’s borders.Those troops on duty on the streets of Los Angeles were setting the template others could honorably follow.“Not only are these service members defending the honor of citizens of California, they’re also defending our republic itself,” he said. “And they are heroes. They’re fighting for us. They’re stopping an invasion, just like you’d stop an invasion. The big difference is, most of the time when you stop an invasion, they’re wearing a uniform. In many ways. It’s tougher when they’re not wearing a uniform, because you don’t know exactly who they are.”For Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, and Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, there was some ominous “enemy within” language of the type Trump resorted to on last year’s campaign trail.“They’re incompetent, and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists,” he said. “They’re engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”It was a tour of Trump’s darkest horizons – all the bleaker for being leavened with a comical parting serenade.As he exited the stage, the PA boomed out his favorite anthem, the Village People’s YMCA. The president drew the biggest cheer of the day from the watching troops by playful indulging in his trademark little dance, culled from distant memories of late nights at Studio 54. Then he waddled off stage, like some aging dystopian disco king. More

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      US ambassador to Israel says US no longer pursuing goal of independent Palestinian state

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      Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has said that the US is no longer pursuing the goal of an independent Palestinian state, marking what analysts describe as the most explicit abandonment yet of a cornerstone of US Middle East diplomacy.Asked during an interview with Bloomberg News if a Palestinian state remains a goal of US policy, he replied: “I don’t think so.”The former Arkansas governor chosen by Donald Trump as his envoy to Israel went further by suggesting that any future Palestinian entity could be carved out of “a Muslim country” rather than requiring Israel to cede territory.“Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” Huckabee was quoted as saying. Those probably won’t happen “in our lifetime”, he told the news agency.When pressed on Palestinian aspirations in the West Bank, where 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, Huckabee employed Israeli government terminology, asking: “Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?”Trump, in his first term, was relatively tepid in his approach to a two-state solution, a longtime pillar of US Middle East policy, and he has given little sign of where he stands on the issue in his second term.The state department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Middle East analysts said the comments made explicit a shift that has been broadly expected.“This is not at all surprising given what we’ve seen in the last four-plus months, including the administration’s open support for expelling the population of Gaza, the legitimization of Israeli settlement and annexation policies,” said Khaled Elgindy, a scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and former adviser to Palestinian negotiators.“This is an administration that is committed to Palestinian erasure, both physical and political,” Elgindy said. “The signs were there even in the first Trump term, which nominally supported a Palestinian ‘state’ that was shorn of all sovereignty and under permanent Israeli control. At least now they’ve abandoned the pretense.”Yousef Munayyer, head of Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center Washington DC, said Huckabee was merely articulating what US policy has long demonstrated in practice. “Mike Huckabee is saying out loud what US actions have been saying for decades and across different administrations,” he said. “Whatever commitments have been made in statements about a Palestinian state over time, US policy has never matched those stated commitments and only undercut them.”The ambassador’s position has deep roots in his evangelical Christian beliefs and longstanding support for Israeli settlement expansion. During his 2008 presidential campaign, Huckabee said: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian.” In a 2017 visit to the occupied West Bank, he rejected the concept of Israeli occupation entirely.“I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” said Huckabee at the time. “There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”What distinguishes Huckabee, Munayyer argued, has been his willingness to be explicit about objectives that previous officials had kept veiled. “What makes Huckabee unique is that he is shameless enough to admit out loud the goal of erasing the Palestinian people.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe analysts add that Huckabee’s explicit rejection of Palestinian statehood, which comes as the war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced most of the territory’s more than 2 million residents, would also create diplomatic complications for US allies.“This will put European and Arab states in a bind, since they are still strongly committed to two states but have always deferred to Washington,” Elgindy said.Hours after Huckabee’s comments were reported, the US imposed sanctions on a leading Palestinian human rights organization, Addameer, as well as five charity groups in the Middle East and Europe, claiming that they support Palestinian militants.The US treasury department alleged that Addameer, which provides legal services to Palestinians detained by Israel or the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, “has long supported and is affiliated” with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a militant group classified as a terrorist organization by the US and EU.Israel raided the West Bank offices of Addameer and other groups in 2022 over their alleged PFLP links. The United Nations condemned that raid at the time, saying that Israeli authorities had not presented to the UN any credible evidence to justify their declarations.The Guardian later reported that a classified CIA report showed the agency had been unable to find any evidence to support Israel’s description of the group as a “terrorist organization”. 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