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      Trump trade deal shows how vital China’s rare-earth metals are to US defense firms

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      The draft trade agreement with China announced by Donald Trump on Wednesday would ease concerns from top US military suppliers about rare-earth metals and magnets that, if cut off permanently, could hobble production of everything from smart bombs to fighter jets to submarines and other weapons in the US arsenal.While the deal has not yet been finalised, it may reassure major defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, the largest US user of samarium – a rare-earth metal used in military-grade magnets – whose supply is entirely controlled by China.The issue of China’s export restrictions on the metals and magnets was so important that Trump specifically mentioned them as part of his announcement of a broader trade agreement with China that would reduce US tariffs to 55% and Chinese tariffs to 10%.“Our deal with China is done, subject to final approval with President Xi and me,” Trump wrote. “Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China.”Rare earths are crucial to the production of F-35 fighter jets, Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear-powered submarines, Tomahawk missiles, radar systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and smart bombs, according to Gracelin Baskaran of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a thinktank.China in April imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements during the tough negotiations over Trump’s new tariffs. China also targeted the aerospace and defense industries by limiting 15 US entities with ties to the industry from receiving dual-use goods.“The United States is already on the back foot when it comes to manufacturing these defense technologies,” Baskaran said in an interview published by CSIS. “China is rapidly expanding its munitions production and acquiring advanced weapons systems and equipment at a pace five to six times faster than the United States. While China is preparing with a wartime mindset, the United States continues to operate under peacetime conditions.”Trump has amassed a team of foreign policy China hawks, including a number who have warned that the US should focus more on the pacing threat posed by China over the coming decades instead of current conflicts in Ukraine or the Middle East.“Even before the latest restrictions, the US defense industrial base struggled with limited capacity and lacked the ability to scale up production to meet defense technology demands,” she continued. “Further bans on critical minerals inputs will only widen the gap, enabling China to strengthen its military capabilities more quickly than the United States.”China and the US had agreed last month in Geneva to pause the implementation of sky-high tariffs that would have delivered a severe economic blow to manufacturers and consumers in the US, as well as exporters in China.But China maintained export licenses on rare-earth metals used by both defense producers and carmakers that threatened to upend global supply chains and imperil production in the US.In particular, China has a stranglehold on the production and export of samarium, a magnet used in combination with cobalt to provide highly durable magnets used to withstand the intense temperatures in military-grade tech. China produces the entire world’s supply of the rare-earth metal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn particular, the magnets are important for the production of guided missiles, satellite-guided “smart bombs”, and aircrafts, including fighter jets, according to Apex Magnets, a supplier.Those supplies of weapons have been depleted through deliveries of missiles and other ordnance to Ukraine and to the Israeli military. Pentagon planners and other officials in the administration of Joe Biden, regularly squared off over whether foreign weapons deliveries expose a US vulnerability in case it faced off with a major military power.In order to break the deadlock, secretary of state Marco Rubio also abruptly announced plans to cancel hundreds of thousands of visas for Chinese students in the US. While publicly that was said as a plan to root out Chinese spies in US higher education, Axios reported that the visa ban was also motivated by China’s obstinance on resuming rare earths exports.The breakthrough comes as Trump is planning to display US military prowess at a parade in Washington DC this weekend that has been seen as an attempt to flex American muscle and reinforce the US president’s bonafides as a supporter of the military.Trump in 2019 ordered the Pentagon to find new sources of procuring rare earth minerals, in particular samarium, because the US did not have the capacity to produce them domestically. The initiative was “essential to the national defense”, he said then. More

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      Trump administration urges other countries to skip UN conference on Israel-Gaza war

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      Donald Trump’s administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending a UN conference next week on a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a US cable seen by Reuters.The diplomatic demarche, sent on Tuesday, says countries that take “anti-Israel actions” following the conference will be viewed as acting in opposition to US foreign policy interests and could face diplomatic consequences from Washington.The demarche runs squarely against the diplomacy of two close allies, France and Saudi Arabia, who are co-hosting the gathering next week in New York that aims to lay out the parameters for a roadmap to a Palestinian state, while ensuring Israel’s security.“We are urging governments not to participate in the conference, which we view as counterproductive to ongoing, life-saving efforts to end the war in Gaza and free hostages,” read the cable.Emmanuel Macron has suggested France could recognise a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territories at the conference. French officials say they have been working to avoid a clash with the US, Israel’s staunchest major ally.“The United States opposes any steps that would unilaterally recognise a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies,” the cable read.The United States for decades backed a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians that would create a state for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel.Trump, in his first term, was relatively tepid in his approach to a two-state solution, a longtime pillar of US Middle East policy. The Republican president has given little sign of where he stands on the issue in his second term.But on Tuesday, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a long-time vocal supporter of Israel, said he did not think an independent Palestinian state remained a US foreign policy goal.“Unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state would effectively render Oct 7 Palestinian Independence Day,” the cable read, referring to when Palestinian Hamas militants carried out a cross-border attack from Gaza on Israel in 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.Hamas’ attack triggered Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza in which almost 55,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of the population of 2.3 million displaced and the enclave widely reduced to rubble.If Macron went ahead, France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities, would become the first Western heavyweight to recognise a Palestinian state.This could lend greater momentum to a movement hitherto dominated by smaller nations generally more critical of Israel.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMacron’s stance has shifted amid Israel’s intensified Gaza offensive and escalating violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and there is a growing sense of urgency in Paris to act now before the idea of a two-state solution vanishes forever.The US cable said Washington had worked tirelessly with Egypt and Qatar to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, free the hostages and end the conflict.“This conference undermines these delicate negotiations and emboldens Hamas at a time when the terrorist group has rejected proposals by the negotiators that Israel has accepted.”This week the UK, Australia and Canada were joined by other countries in placing sanctions on two Israeli far-right government ministers to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, to bring the Gaza war to an end.“The United States opposes the implied support of the conference for potential actions including boycotts and sanctions on Israel as well as other punitive measures,” the cable read.Israel has repeatedly criticised the conference, saying it rewards Hamas for the attack on Israel, and it has lobbied France against recognising a Palestinian state.“Nothing surprises me anymore, but I don’t see how many countries could step back on their participation,” said a European diplomat, who asked for anonymity due to the subject’s sensitivity. “This is bullying, and of a stupid type.“ More

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      World’s biggest TikTok star Khaby Lame leaves US after Ice agents detain him over visa

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      The world’s most followed TikToker, Khaby Lame, has left the US after being briefly detained by immigration agents for allegedly overstaying his visa. The Italian-Senegalese influencer is now one of the most high-profile people to be swept up in Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration.The social media star, whose legal name is Seringe Khabane Lame, was detained last Friday at an airport in Las Vegas. He was released the same day and has since left the US, a spokesperson for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) told the Guardian in a statement.The spokesperson said Lame, had arrived in the US on 30 April and alleged that the influencer had “overstayed the terms of his visa”.Trump’s escalating crackdown on immigration continues to roil the country as agents intensify operations to carry out the US president’s hardline promises. In recent days, raids have triggered protests in Los Angeles and other cities amid concerns the focus has shifted to a broader sweep of people who are not US citizens, including some who have valid documentation such as green cards or visas.US immigration officials said that Lame, who is a Unicef goodwill ambassador and has a following of more than 162 million on TikTok, “has since departed the US”. He had been granted a voluntary departure, allowing him to avoid having a deportation order – which could have resulted in him being barred from the US for up to a decade – on his record.Bo Loudon, an 18-year-old who describes himself as a “pro-Trump influencer” on his website, claimed he had been the one to flag Lame’s case to officials.“I discovered that he was an illegal,” Loudon, who has also claimed to be the best friend of Trump’s son Barron, wrote on social media. “And I personally took action to have him deported.”Loudon repeated the claim in other posts, saying he had worked with immigration officials and the Department of Homeland Security to have Lame removed.According to the US visa waiver program, Italian citizens are allowed to travel to the US for business or tourism for stays of up to 90 days without a visa.Lame entered the US on 30 April, Ice said. A spokesperson from Ice told the Guardian that the information “provided is all the information we have available”.Lame did not reply to a request for comment from the Guardian, nor has he publicly commented on the incident.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLame, 25, began posting on TikTok after he lost his job working in a factory in Chivasso, a suburb of Turin, in the early days of the pandemic. He began racking up millions of followers, who revelled in his often-silent videos that offer humorous takedowns of online absurdity, alongside his trademark facial expressions.In 2022, he became the most followed creator on TikTok, catapulting him to international fame and landing him marketing deals with companies and a spot at events such as last month’s Met Gala in New York City.Lame, who was born in Senegal but has lived in Italy since he was a year old, was granted Italian citizenship in August 2022. More

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      Majority of Canadians dislike US in face of trade policy and sovereignty threats

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      A majority of Canadians hold unfavourable views towards the US, their closest ally, as frustration over trade policy and threats to Canada’s sovereignty persist.Canada’s growing dislike of its closest trading partner mirrors a shared skepticism in other G7 countries, according to a new poll that finds that Americans like their allies far more than those nations approve of the US.The results come as Canadians maintain boycotts of American goods and avoid travel to the US in response to tariffs imposed by Donald Trump’s administration. But the results of the survey also show the challenge for Mark Carney as the Canadian prime minister seeks to ease tensions between the two economically entwined nations.According to the newly released study from the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans see the other G7 countries favourably. More than seven in 10 have positive views of Japan (77%), Canada (74%), Italy (74%) and the UK (70%).Those finds come as leaders from those nations prepare to meet in the Canadian province of Alberta later this week for the G7 summit.But those feelings of goodwill are not reciprocated.Populations in all of the G7 countries hold more skeptical views towards the US, with the largest decrease in favorability toward the US among G7 countries coming from Canada. Only one-third of Canadians (34%) think positively of their southern neighbour today, compared with 54% last year.Sixty-four percent of Canadians now hold unfavourable views of the US, and nearly 40% say they hold very unfavourable views of their neighbour, up from 15% who felt that way last year.Canadian wariness towards the US is also reflected in new travel data from Statistics Canada, which found return trips by air fell nearly 25% in May 2025 compared with the same month in 2024. Canadian-resident return trips by automobile dropped by nearly 40% – the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year declines.Carney crafted his successful federal election campaign around a patriotic defiance against Trump’s threats to the nation’s sovereignty. Carney also used his first post-election press conference to once again quash any idea Canada was interested in becoming the 51st US state, a proposal repeatedly floated by Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA positive meeting between the two leaders at the White House in May buoyed hopes among business leaders and diplomats the pair could break the impasse over tariffs. Those fears were dashed after Trump doubled tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.Earlier this week, Carney announced Canada would spend far more on its defence budget – a key ask of Trump – while at the same time underscoring his government’s pledge to reduce reliance on the US.“We stood shoulder to shoulder with the Americans throughout the cold war and in the decades that followed, as the United States played a dominant role on the world stage,” he said. “Today, that dominance is a thing of the past.” 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