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History sometimes needs a push. In sending his immigration police to disrupt Los Angeles, US President Donald Trump recognizes this. He can now use the predictable backlash to seize more power.
Trumpâs administration already stands out historically for aggregating powers to itself that the US constitution explicitly vests in Congress. The constitution does empower the president to employ the army domestically, but only if he declares the nation to be in a state of insurrection, as Abraham Lincoln did in the 1860s. The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked without a state governorâs consent was by Lyndon Johnson in 1965 to protect civil rights marchers in Alabama.
On Sunday, Trump spoke about the insurrection ostensibly underway. At the time, the protesters in California numbered fewer than 200 â objecting to federal immigration agents rounding up allegedly undocumented immigrants. Trump, however, had already put Californiaâs national guard under his command so he could deploy them.
The president has repeatedly claimed that the agents are arresting convicted felons and gang members, although the numbers belie that claim. On Friday, agents swept through downtown Los Angelesâ fashion district, where the immigrant workforce is largely composed of seamstresses. On Saturday, they swarmed a Home Depot store in a Latino working-class suburb, targeting immigrant day laborers seeking construction jobs.
The resulting protest hardly constituted a riot. I covered the 1992 riot that rocked Los Angeles after the acquittal of police officers who had brutally beaten a Black man, Rodney King. That riot rolled on for the better part of a week, destroying hundreds of buildings and causing more than 50 deaths. Californiaâs governor ultimately deployed the stateâs national guard to help end it.
By contrast, the weekendâs initial protest was confined to one city block, there wasnât major damage to buildings, and there were just a few injuries, including a union leader and a British photographer. But history also needed a push, Trump seems to have concluded. So, he used it as a pretext to send in 2,000 national guard soldiers, over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who stated that Trump is âhoping for chaosâ.
If Trump had ordered his immigration enforcers to arrest some of the agricultural workers that abound in Republican-led southern states, it probably wouldnât have provoked much pushback. But Los Angeles is a city thatâs home to millions of immigrants and their children. Latinos and Asians constitute more than half of LA Countyâs nearly ten million residents. They are at the center of the economy, and deporting them destabilizes families, businesses, and the city at large.
Trump knows that. So does Stephen Miller, his policy tsar, who grew up in nearby Santa Monica. Itâs Miller who is directing Trumpâs war on immigrants, which he and his boss are now using to goad Californiaâs elected officials into defying them. Thatâs just what Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass are doing: Newsom is going to court seeking to halt Trumpâs deployment of the Guard. Bass, in urging protesters to be non-violent, reminded them that police are observing a 1979 order that forbids them from aiding deportation efforts.
By provoking a showdown with Californiaâs overwhelmingly Democratic elected officials, Trump plainly hopes to demonize them and mobilize his Maga legions to vote in next yearâs midterm elections. His political career has depended on ginning up sufficient rage among his followers that theyâll support even his most extreme actions. That now requires labeling immigration as an âinvasionâ and protests as an âinsurrectionist mobâ.
The administration chose to send its immigration enforcers to places sure to erupt at their sweeps, and then sent in the National Guard to guarantee that enraged Angelenos would expand their protests beyond the sites where the original arrests were made. They are now using those expanded protests to justify mobilizing the army, with Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, threatening to send active-duty Marines.
America has been here before. In the 1850s, the Southern-dominated federal government enacted the Fugitive Slave Act, compelling northerners to cooperate with slave hunters and federal troops trying to capture escaped slaves. Several northern states passed laws forbidding such recaptures, much as California and LA have passed laws forbidding their police from enforcing immigration laws.
The Fugitive Slave Act was among the factors that led to the US civil war. The current standoff seems unlikely to lead to outright conflict, but by imposing his xenophobic agenda in California, a region of the country deeply opposed to it, Trump risks bringing the nationâs temperature to a boiling point. The agent provocateur president appears determined to keep pushing history along.
The article above sheds light on the current situation in Los Angeles following President Trump’s decision to send immigration police to disrupt the city. The article highlights the historical context and implications of Trump’s actions, drawing parallels to past events in American history. It also discusses the potential consequences of Trump’s actions on the political landscape and societal tensions in California.
