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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 is waging war against his own citizens in Los Angeles | Judith Levine

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      On Monday, the Pentagon sent 700 active-duty marines to Los Angeles and doubled the number of national guard troops deployed there to 4,000, to quell protests Donald Trump said on Sunday were already “under control”, “still simmering … but not very much”.The same day, the US president used the word “insurrectionists” to describe demonstrators against the unprecedentedly large and fierce immigration deportation raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) that started on Friday in that city. The remark echoed his long-held desire to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which would authorize him to send the military anywhere in the country to put down dissent.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, sued the Trump administration, arguing that it is unconstitutional to use the armed forces inside the US, except in the most extreme situations.Put another way, the government is not allowed to wage war against its own citizens. But this is what it is doing.In its first months in office, the Trump administration enacted what could be called soft authoritarianism: rhetorical glorification of white masculinity and derision of frailty and difference; intimidation of liberal democratic institutions – universities, law firms, the press, and the arts; weaponization of the judicial system against Trump’s perceived foes.Laced through this non-violent aggression are real violence and reward for violence toward selective populations: the denial of life-saving medical care for transgender people and pregnant women in distress, in deference to the “personhood” of their fetuses; the pardon of the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol and killed officers on 6 January 2021. And most prominent, the kidnap, deportation without due process, and rendition of immigrants to foreign gulags.But in the last week or so, a second phase has begun unfolding: the literal weaponization of the government to contain dissent. It is no hyperbole to call this, and the less visible mechanisms that reinforce it, fascism.This weekend in Los Angeles, protests broke out over Ice raids across the city, especially at workplaces including a clothing warehouse and Home Depot, where migrants muster for day labor. The raids were aimed at meeting an unattainable quota of 3,000 arrests a day. In this diverse city, which immigrants are rebuilding after the devastating fires, the outrage Ice provoked was inevitable.Some of the resistance was not peaceful – objects were thrown at cars, for instance – but the LA police got matters in hand. Still, over the objections of Newsom and LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, Trump deployed 300 national guard troops to the scene. They carried long guns and shields and fired “less-lethal munitions”, including flash-bangs, teargas and rubber bullets into the crowds; they also wielded their batons.At the same time as repressing citizens’ free speech, Ice is preventing elected officials from fulfilling their responsibility to oversee federal detention facilities in their jurisdictions. On Sunday, two US representatives from New York were denied entry to the federal building in downtown Manhattan where about 100 immigrants had been kept for days in small, short-term holding cells, some sleeping on bathroom floors. A month earlier, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, was arrested outside a federal detention center for attempting to do the same thing.Speaking on Friday with NBC News, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, would not rule out arresting Newsom or Bass if they interfered with the deportation raids. “I’ll say it about anybody,” he proclaimed. “You cross that line, it’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It is a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.”Homan later walked back his threat to arrest Newsom, who had dared him to do so. Trump expressed no reservations. “I think it’s great,” he told the press.Like every authoritarian regime, this one justifies doing its “job” as a defense of public safety necessitated by lawlessness. “Despite what you may be hearing, the record checks show that we arrested illegal aliens with criminal histories including CHILD CRUELTY, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, DRUG TRAFFICKING, ASSAULT, ROBBERY, HUMAN SMUGGLING,” Homan posted on X. Did they? Ice always says it is arresting only criminals, but it conflates undocumented status with criminality. Yes, it is a felony to conceal or harbor an “alien” – but giving sanctuary, as churches have long done, was rarely penalized until now. Being in the US without documentation, meanwhile, is not a crime. It is a civil, administrative offence.Nor is it a crime to peacefully resist the government’s torment of one’s family and neighbors. “Our officers and agents continued to enforce immigration law in LA, despite the violent protesters,” Homan continued. Some news outlets have called the protests “riots”, a characterization that local observers, including the governor, the mayor and radio host Charlamagne the God, reject. They counter that the demonstrations were loud, angry and almost entirely nonviolent before the national guard arrived to escalate the tension.This sequence of events is not accidental. On Facebook, Katherine Franke, a tenured Columbia law school professor who was forced to resign after defending student protesters against the war on Gaza, recounted a recent conversation with “a prominent Democratic attorney general”. Asked where things were going, he predicted, on “good information”, Franke paraphrased, that in May or June the federal government would intensify the crackdowns to provoke resistance, “then use that provocation as a justification for declaring martial law”. The declaration, she continued, could free the administration not just to deploy troops but also to suspend elections or the writ of habeas corpus.Trump seems to be affirming these predictions. “We’re gonna have troops everywhere,” he told reporters. “If we see danger to our country and to our citizens [the response] will be very, very strong.” He nattered on about protesters spitting on police. “They spit, we hit,” said the poet-president, looking pleased with himself.While manufacturing peril, authoritarian regimes seek to manufacture consent, as Noam Chomsky put it – or, better, enthusiasm – for the exercise of their power. To do so, they stage mass rituals of adulation and spectacular displays of the military might at the beloved leader’s command. On the US army’s official Facebook page, the ad campaign for the 14 June military parade celebrating the army’s and Trump’s simultaneous birthdays is unceasing. Repeatedly refreshed is a video of him at his desk. “I am thrilled to invite everyone to an unforgettable celebration, one like you’ve never seen before,” he reads woodenly. “This is your army. This is your country. This is America250,” says the quietly awed narrator of another video. The first eight seconds of the one-minute spot feature Trump.But enthusiasm is not easily won, and trying to compel obedience through force creates backlash. Better to attain anticipatory consent through fear. This is where surveillance comes in. To complement the FBI, the National Security Agency and myriad state-level snitching mechanisms for everything from abortion to teaching Black history, the administration has, perhaps unintentionally, created a sophisticated spying apparatus at the so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.The Heritage Foundation wrote the plan to reduce the administrative state to the size of a supply closet; thus, Doge was born. But Trump never cared about waste, fraud and abuse (he believes in them all). For him, the aim was to build a force of unswervingly loyal apparatchiks. In fact, as the Washington Post reports, the department is now scrambling to rehire federal employees. It turns out that things the government does, such as process tax filings and fly weather balloons, need people who know how to do them.But Doge is not obsolete. Now that the supreme court has turned over the nation’s personal data to Big Balls and the boys, and AI is connecting every dataset with every other dataset, it may have a more useful function: coordinating the surveillance state. Homeland security is already spidering through IRS data to locate undocumented immigrants through their tax filings ($96.7bn in federal, state and local taxes in 2024).While the shock troops do the dirty work and the marching bands inspire the masses, Doge may expand from enforcing fealty in the federal workforce to exacting it from everyone. Violence, propaganda and surveillance: the triumvirate makes fascism.

      Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist, and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism 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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      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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      Trump’s mobilization of troops in LA to cost Americans at least $134m, Hegseth says

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      Donald Trump’s decision to mobilize 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, intensifying a federal presence that both Gavin Newsom, the California governor, and Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, have publicly opposed.“The current cost estimate for the deployment is $134m, which is largely just the cost of travel, housing and food,” said Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, special assistant to the secretary of defense, during a House subcommittee meeting.“We stated very publicly that it’s 60 days because we want to ensure that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we’re not going anywhere,” Hegseth added.During a hearing of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Pentagon that was meant to discuss Trump’s proposed budget, Hegseth defended Trump’s decision to deploy marines and national guard troops, telling lawmakers that the mobilization was necessary to assist with deportations and control rioters he claimed were in the country illegally.Democrats used the opportunity to press Hegseth, a former Fox News host who was one of the most controversial of Trump’s cabinet nominees, on the legality and cost of mobilizing military forces against civilians who last week began protesting arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants by Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (Ice).“What’s the justification for using the military for civilian law enforcement purposes in LA, and why are you sending war fighters to cities to interact with civilians?” asked the California Democratic congressman Pete Aguilar.“Every American citizen deserves to be 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,” Hegseth replied.The Los Angeles police department chief of police, Jim McDonnell, said on Monday that the arrival of military forces complicated efforts to de-escalate tensions on the ground. “The possible 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,” McDonnell said in a statement.The protests erupted late last week following immigration raids that led to the arrests of more than 40 individuals. Demonstrations intensified over the weekend, with crowds blocking highways and setting fire to vehicles. Police have responded with teargas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades.Trump’s decision to send troops without state consent has resulted in Democrats accusing the administration of federal overreach. California officials have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that the federal mobilization violates state sovereignty.Trump again defended the mobilization on Tuesday, stating the troops will remain in place “until there’s no danger”. He reiterated his stance that sending troops was necessary to prevent a “horrible situation”.Trump also told reporters in the Oval Office that he had last spoken to Newsom “a day ago” about the protests in LA, but Newsom denied these claims, saying: “there was no call. Not even a voicemail,” in a social media post.“Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to,” Newsom wrote on X.During Tuesday’s hearing, Aguilar noted that the federal law Trump cited to bypass the governor allows such a decision to be made only in response to “invasion by a foreign nation, rebellion or dangerous rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States or [if] the president is unable … with regular forces to execute the laws of the United States”. He asked: “Which authority is triggered here to justify the use?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I don’t know. You just read it yourself so people can listen themselves, but it sounds like all three to me,” Hegseth shot back, before alleging that demonstrators engaging in violence were in the country illegally.“If you’ve got millions of illegals you don’t know where they’re coming from, they’re waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers and law enforcement officers, that’s a problem.”The Minnesota Democratic congresswoman Betty McCollum asked Hegseth why it was necessary to deploy marines to LA when no such step was taken when Minneapolis experienced days of rioting following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.The secretary responded by attacking how the state’s governor, Tim Walz, handled the unrest, then said marines were being sent to LA because of comments made by its police chief. “The police chief said she was overwhelmed, so we helped,” Hegseth said.It was not immediately clear to whom Hegseth was referring.Democrats have criticized Hegseth repeatedly in recent months, particularly after he fired air force Gen Charles Q Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and later after he was revealed as one of the top Trump administration officials who discussed plans to bomb Yemen in a leaked group chat containing a reporter.But many Democrats, as well as all Republicans, avoided those topics in the hearing, instead asking Hegseth for details about his budgetary needs and his views on the military capabilities of foreign rivals such as Russia and China. The secretary is scheduled to be back at the Capitol on Wednesday for a hearing before a Senate appropriations subcommittee. More

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      Misinformation about LA Ice protests swirls online: ‘Catnip for rightwing agitators’

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      Since protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles began, false and misleading claims about the ongoing demonstrations have spread on text-based social networks. Outright lies posted directly to social media mixed with misinformation spread through established channels by the White House as Donald Trump dramatically escalated federal intervention. The stream of undifferentiated real and fake information has painted a picture of the city that forks from reality.Parts of Los Angeles have seen major protests over the past four days against intensified immigration raids by the US president’s administration. On Saturday, dramatic photos from downtown Los Angeles showed cars set aflame amid confrontations with law enforcement. Many posts promoted the perception that mayhem and violence had overtaken the entirety of Los Angeles, even though confrontations with law enforcement and vandalism remained confined to a small part of the sprawling city. Trump has deployed 2,000 members of the national guard to the city without requesting consent from California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, which provoked the state to sue for an alleged violation of sovereignty. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has also ordered the US military to deploy approximately 700 marines to the city.Amid the street-level and legal conflicts, misinformation is proliferating. Though lies have long played a part in civil and military conflicts, social media often acts as an accelerant, with facts failing to spread as quickly as their counterparts, a dynamic that has played out with the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, a devastating hurricane in North Carolina and the coronavirus pandemic.Among the most egregious examples were conservative and pro-Russian accounts circulating a video of Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, from before the protests with the claim that she incited and supported the protests, which have featured Mexican flags, according to the misinformation watchdog Newsguard. The misleading posts – made on Twitter/X by the conservative commentator Benny Johnson on pro-Trump sites such as WLTReport.com or Russian state-owned sites such as Rg.ru – have received millions of views, according to the organization. Sheinbaum in fact told reporters on 9 June: “We do not agree with violent actions as a form of protest … We call on the Mexican community to act pacifically.”A post about bricks stirs a mixture of real and fake newsConspiratorial conservatives are grasping at familiar bogeymen. A post to X on Saturday claiming that “Soros-funded organizations” had dropped off pallets of bricks near Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities received more than 9,500 retweets and was viewed more than 800,000 times. The Democratic mega-donor George Soros appears as a consistent specter in rightwing conspiracy theories, and the post likewise attributed the supply drop to LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, and California governor, Gavin Newsom.“It’s Civil War!!” the post read.The photo of stacked bricks originates from a Malaysian construction supply company, and the hoax about bricks being supplied to protesters has spread repeatedly since the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the US. X users appended a “community note” fact-checking the tweet. X’s native AI chatbot, Grok, also provided fact-checks when prompted to evaluate the veracity of the post.In response to the hoax photo, some X users replied with links to real footage from the protests that showed protesters hammering at concrete bollards, mixing false and true and reducing clarity around what was happening in reality. The independent journalist who posted the footage claimed the protesters were using the material as projectiles against police, though the footage did not show such actions.The Social Media Lab, a research unit out of Toronto Metropolitan University, posted on Bluesky: “These days, it feels like every time there’s a protest, the old clickbaity ‘pallets of bricks’ hoax shows up right on cue. You know the one, photos or videos of bricks supposedly left out to encourage rioting. It’s catnip for right-wing agitators and grifters.”Trump and the White House muddy the watersTrump himself has fed the narrative that the protests are inauthentic and larger than they really are, fueled by outside agitators without legitimate interest in local matters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists,” Trump posted to Truth Social, which was screenshotted and reposted to X by Elon Musk. Others in the administration have made similar points on social media.A reporter for the Los Angeles Times pointed out that the White House put out a statement about a particular Mexican national being arrested for allegedly assaulting an officer “during the riots”. In fact, Customs and Border Protection agents stopped him before the protests began.Sowing misleading information, reaping distrustTrump has increased the number of Ice raids across the country, which has stoked fears of deportations across Los Angeles, heavily populated with immigrants to the US. Per the Social Media Lab, anti-Ice posts also spread misinformation. One post on Bluesky, marked “Breaking”, claimed that federal agents had just arrived at an LA elementary school and tried to question first-graders. In fact, the event occurred two months ago. Researchers called the post “rage-farming to push merch”.The conspiratorial website InfoWars put out a broadcast on X titled: Watch Live: LA ICE Riots Spread To Major Cities Nationwide As Democrat Summer Of Rage Arrives, which attracted more than 40,000 simultaneous listeners when viewed by the Guardian on Tuesday morning. Though protests against deportations have occurred in other cities, the same level of chaos as seen in Los Angeles has not. A broadcast on X by the news outlet Reuters, Los Angeles after fourth night of immigration protests, had drawn just 13,000 viewers at the same time.The proliferation of misinformation degrades X’s utility as a news source, though Musk continually tweets that it is the top news app in this country or that, most recently Qatar, a minor distinction. Old photos and videos mix with new and sow doubt in legitimate reporting. Since purchasing Twitter and renaming it X in late 2022, Musk has dismantled many of the company’s own initiatives for combatting the proliferation of lies, though he has promoted the user-generated fact-checking feature, “community notes”. During the 2024 US presidential election in particular, the X CEO himself became a hub for the spread of false information, say researchers. In his dozens of posts per day, he posted and reposted incorrect or misleading claims that reached about 2bn views, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. More

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      ‘The language of authoritarianism’: how Trump and allies cast LA as a lawless city needing military intervention

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      Donald Trump and his allies turned to a familiar script over the weekend, casting the sprawling city of Los Angeles in shades of fire and brimstone, a hub of dangerous lawlessness that required urgent military intervention in order to be contained.“Looking really bad in L.A.,” Trump posted on Truth Social in the very early hours of Monday morning. “BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”But contrary to the Trump administration’s characterization of an entire city in tumult, the demonstrations were actually confined to very small areas and life generally went on as usual across much of the city.Protests began on Friday outside the federal building in downtown LA following reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents were conducting raids nearby. The protests later spread to the cities of Paramount and Compton in response to reported and rumored raids there too, and demonstrators faced off with local and state authorities armed with “less-lethal munitions” and tear gas.By Sunday, despite objections from local officials, Trump made the unusual move of asserting control over California’s national guard and deployed 300 soldiers to support Ice (nearly 2,000 troops were mobilized in total).As a pretext to this action, the Trump administration had characterized the protests as a broader threat to the nation. On X, White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called LA “occupied territory”. “We’ve been saying for years this is a fight to save civilization. Anyone with eyes can see that now.”Trump posted on Truth Social: “A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations – But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve.”FBI director, Kash Patel, wrote on X that LA was “under siege by marauding criminals”.Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University and scholar on fascist and authoritarian movements, says the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration is “an authoritarian trick”.“You create a sense of existential fear that social anarchy is spreading, that criminal gangs are taking over. This is the language of authoritarianism all over the world,” said Ben-Ghiat.“What is the only recourse to violent mobs and agitators? Using all the force of the state. Thus we have the vision of the national guard, armed to the teeth. It’s like a war zone. That’s on purpose, it’s habituating Americans to see those armed forces as being in combat on the streets of American cities.”Ben-Ghiat pointed specifically to a post on X by defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.“The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil,” Hegseth wrote. “A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK.”Ben-Ghiat said Hegseth employed “the classic authoritarian thing, of setting up an excuse, which is that the internal enemy, illegal criminal aliens, is working together with an external enemy, the cartels and foreign terrorists, and using that to go after a third party, of protesters, regular people, who came out to show solidarity”.In his post, Hegseth added that active duty marines at Camp Pendleton were on “high alert” and would also be mobilized “if violence continues. On Monday, the Pentagon said it had mobilized approximately 700 marines. CNN reported that the government was still ironing out “rules of engagement” for encountering protesters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe protests turned violent when federal immigration authorities used flash bang grenades and tear gas against demonstrators, per reporting in the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times. Over the weekend, fiery and chaotic scenes played out in downtown LA, Compton and Paramount. Dozens of people were arrested for an array of crimes, including an alleged tossing of a molotov cocktail towards Iceofficers. Protesters shut down a freeway, several self-driving vehicles were torched and dumpsters were set alight, and there were scattered reports of looting.Still, as mayor Karen Bass noted on CNN on Monday, on “a few streets downtown, it looks horrible”, but there was “not citywide civil unrest”.Local officials said that the addition of troops, who were seen standing shoulder to shoulder on Sunday holding wooden bats, long guns and shields, to the already fraught situation only made things worse. Bass described the decision to involve the national guard as a “chaotic escalation”; Governor Gavin Newsom called it “inflammatory”.Newsom said on Monday that he will sue the Trump administration; attorney general Rob Bonta later previewed that lawsuit by telling the public that the Trump administration “trampled” on the states sovereignty by bypassing the governor.“This was not inevitable,” Bonta said of the demonstrations that built over the weekend following immigration raids across LA, adding: “There was no risk of rebellion, no threat of foreign invasion, no inability for the federal government to enforce federal laws.”The inclusion of the national guard functioned as a show of force against a powerful blue state that Trump – and his allies – have cast as an existential threat to the rest of America, in part on account of its “sanctuary status”, meaning local officials don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.“Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States,” Stephen Miller wrote on X.As Trump and his allies fomented chaos on the streets, Maga-world personalities and some Republican officials added to the mayhem by sharing misinformation online. Senator Ted Cruz and Infowars’s Alex Jones reshared a video, originally posted by conservative commentator James Woods, of a burning LAPD car during a protest in 2020, claiming it was from the current LA unrest.Prominent accounts also shared a video from last year of a flash mob attack on a convenience store clerk, claiming that violent protesters were currently assaulting a small business owner. An account called US Homeland Security News, which has almost 400,000 followers, posted an image of a stack of bricks with the caption: “Alert: Soros funded organizations have ordered hundreds of pallets of bricks to be placed near ICE facilities to be used by Democrat militants against ICE agents and staff!! It’s Civil War!!” The image, which was also used to spread false information about Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, was taken at a building supply company in Malaysia.Trump has also repeatedly suggested that some of the individuals involved in the protest were “paid”, invoking a popular rightwing conspiracy about dark money bankrolling liberal causes.This, too, is another tactic out of the authoritarian playbook, according to Ben-Ghiat.“If there are any protests against the autocrat, you have to discredit them by saying they are crisis actors, they are foreign infiltrators,” Ben-Ghiat said. “You have to discredit them in the public eye.”Officials in LA are bracing for further protests. The Los Angeles police department received backup from at least a dozen police forces in southern California, according to the Los Angeles Times. California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said on Monday that he thinks it’s “highly likely” that all 2,000 of the national guard soldiers who were mobilized will be deployed to LA.The weekend’s unrest also casts a potential shadow over Trump’s military parade slated for this Thursday in Washington DC. Opponents of that event are organizing protests across the US under the banner of “No Kings”. More

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      Los Angeles protests: California governor says marines ‘not political pawns’ as Donald Trump deploys more National Guard troops – live

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      The governor of California has said US marines are “not political pawns”, as Trump vows to send the elite soldiers in to LA.Gavin Newsom posted on X: “U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country — defending democracy. They are not political pawns.“The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend.“It’s a blatant abuse of power”, Newsom added. “We will sue to stop this.” The state of California has lodged suit against the Trump administration.An association of Korean Americans in Los Angeles has criticised Donald Trump Jr., the son of the U.S. president, for “reckless” comments on social media and urged him not to exploit a riot that devastated their community 33 years ago.The Korean American Federation of Los Angeles also said an operation by the U.S. administration to round up suspected undocumented immigrants lacked “due legal procedures”.Donald Trump Jr. posted a photograph of a man with a rifle on a rooftop on X with a message: “Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again!” referring to actions by the Korean American community during the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles.The federation in separate statements expressed concern over the developments in Los Angeles over the last week and said their businesses were seriously affected by the crackdown and arrests.“While the unrest has not yet subsided, Donald Trump Jr. … showed the recklessness of posting a post on X on Sunday, June 8, mocking the current unrest by mentioning the ‘Rooftop Korean’ from the LA riots 33 years ago,” it said in a statement on Monday Los Angeles time.“As the eldest son of the current president and an influencer with approximately 15 million followers, his actions could pose a huge risk in these icy times, and we strongly urge the past trauma of the Korean people be never, ever exploited for any purpose.”Hundreds of deputies have been mobilised in Los Angeles County as law enforcement try to respond to widespread protests, the state governor Gavin Newsom’s office has said.The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, in coordination with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), has formally requested mutual aid assistance from law enforcement agencies within and outside of Los Angeles County to support LAPD.It has approved the mobilisation of 20 deputies from San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department; 83 deputies from Orange County Sheriff’s Department; 32 deputies from Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department; 44 deputies from Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and 80 officers from municipal police agencies within Los Angeles CountyTo bring further support to the region, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has already provided more than 200 deputies to support the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).The protests so far have resulted in a few dozen arrests and some property damage.“What is happening effects every American, everyone who wants to live free, regardless of how long their family has lived here,” said Marzita Cerrato, 42, a first-generation immigrant whose parents are from Mexico and Honduras.Protests also sprung up in at least nine other US cities overnight, including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, according to local news outlets.In Austin, Texas, police fired nonlethal munitions and detained several people as they clashed with a crowd of several hundred protesters.US officials said the marines were being deployed to protect federal property and personnel, including immigration agents. A convoy of 10 to 15 buses with blacked-out windows and escorted by sheriff’s vehicles, left the base at Twentynine Palms in the desert east of Los Angeles late Monday and headed toward the city, stopping around 1am (9am BST) at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, about 20 miles (35 km) south of downtown Los Angeles.Despite their presence, there has been limited engagement so far between the Guard and protesters while local law enforcement implements crowd control.Homeland Security said its Immigration and Customs Enforcement division had arrested 2,000 immigration offenders per day in recent days, far above the 311 daily average in fiscal year 2024 under former President Joe Biden.“We conducted more operations today than we did the day before and tomorrow we are going to double those efforts again,” Noem told Fox News’ “Hannity.” “The more that they protest and commit acts of violence against law enforcement officers, the harder ICE is going to come after them.”Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass opposed the clampdown, telling MSNBC: “This is a city of immigrants.”Other protests took shape overnight across LA County. Outside a clothing warehouse, relatives of detained workers demanded at a news conference that their loved ones be released.The family of Jacob Vasquez, 35, who was detained Friday at the warehouse, where he worked, said they had yet to receive any information about him.“Jacob is a family man and the sole breadwinner of his household,” Vasquez’s brother, Gabriel, told the crowd. He asked that his last name not be used, fearing being targeted by authorities.Los Angeles police chief Jim McDonnell said in a statement he was confident in the police department’s ability to handle large-scale demonstrations and that the Marines’ arrival without coordinating with the police department would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge” for them.Monday’s demonstrations were far less raucous, with thousands peacefully attending a rally at City Hall and hundreds protesting outside a federal complex that includes a detention center where some immigrants are being held after workplace raids across the city.Australia’s prime minister on Tuesday denounced the “horrific” shooting of a rubber bullet at an Australian television reporter covering unrest in Los Angeles.Australian 9News reporter Lauren Tomasi was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet on Sunday while reporting on live television. Her employer said she was sore but unharmed.“She is going ok. She is pretty resilient, I have got to say, but that footage was horrific,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters after speaking to Tomasi.Albanese said the reporter could reasonably have expected not to be “targeted” with a rubber bullet while doing her job in Los Angeles. The footage showed she was “clearly identified” as a member of the media, with “no ambiguity”, he said.“We don’t find it acceptable that it occurred, and we think the role of the media is particularly important.”Albanese said his government had raised the incident with the US administration but he would not comment on any future discussion with US President Donald Trump.The governor of California has said US marines are “not political pawns”, as Trump vows to send the elite soldiers in to LA.Gavin Newsom posted on X: “U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country — defending democracy. They are not political pawns.“The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend.“It’s a blatant abuse of power”, Newsom added. “We will sue to stop this.” The state of California has lodged suit against the Trump administration.Grammy Award-winning rapper Doechii used her acceptance speech at the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards to sharply criticise Trump’s handling of the protests.Collecting the award for best female hip-hop artist, she accused the president of “creating fear and chaos” in his response to demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, which sparked days of protest across the city.“I do want to address what’s happening right now, outside the building,” she said.“These are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities. In the name of law and order, Trump is using military forces to stop a protest, and I want you all to consider what kind of government it appears to be, when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us.”Remarkable images have emerged from last night’s protests in Los Angeles as Trump’s administration vowed to intensify immigration raids.The Los Angeles District Attorney has said the county does not need the national guard and the marines, saying there are “more than enough” local police to deal with rioting.Nathan J. Hochman said: “We in Los Angeles county have tens of thousands of police officers, whether they are with the LA police department, the LA sherriff’s department, or there are 45 other law enforcement agencies in LA county.“We have more than enough law enforcement officers to deal with the civil unrest thats occurred so far”, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.“It doesn’t mean that the federal government can’t protect federal facilities with either the national guard or, if they choose, additional soldiers – that’s their choice.“But as far as the civil unrest in LA, that is something that, though obviously very significant, it is something we are taking extremely seriously and we are able to deal with.“We do not need the additional forces that the national guard and the marines present”, he added. “Unless the civil unrest gets farther out of control – and that could happen – we are not at the point where local law enforcement is beyond its means to deal with the situation.”Good morning, Donald Trump has deployed more National Guard troops and marines to Los Angeles as protests in the city go into their fourth day. Here is what has happened overnight:

      California said the deployment of the National Guard by Republican President Trump’s administration was illegal and violated the state’s sovereignty and federal law, according to a court filing of its lawsuit against the US government.

      The US military is to temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to LA until more National Guard troops can arrive, marking another escalation in Trump’s response to street protests over his aggressive immigration policies. Marines were expected to reach Los Angeles on Monday night (LA time) or Tuesday morning.

      Even as protests against raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stretched into a fourth day Monday in LA, city workers began a cleanup of graffiti and other weekend damage across the city.

      The Trump administration vowed to intensify migrant raids, with US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pledging to carry out even more operations to round up suspected immigration violators, extending a crackdown that provoked the protests. More