There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> One fights the enemies of the state
"At stake is a fundamental component of the framework of US constitutional democracy. It begins with the principle, enshrined in law, that military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law.
Most fundamentally, the founders of the American republic understood very clearly that concentrated military power, loyal to a single man, could be used to achieve total control by that person. And they had a historical example in mind: Rome — a republic governed by the people and the Senate — was transformed into an empire ruled by an emperor as a result of the Roman army being turned against its citizens."
Well I hate to disparage a large group of people, but how often have you spoken to an American who understands this type of social-legal history of the country, and values it?
Although I know quite a lot of (what I consider) well-educated Americans, it is also the only country from which I regularly meet the type of person who doesn't care at all about how society works (also, technology, history, art, etc).
You'll probably find that HN-person is the kind of person who values this kind of argument, but HN-world is quite small.
On multiple occasions, I've met Americans who simply care about might-makes-right. It's skin-deep, as soon as you ask them why they support this or that policy, it's because they are powerful and the rest of the world is not. I've literally met Americans who thought their tax money allowed them to summon troops, more than once. (This ended up backfiring as it turns out, they did not know how to get US Marines to arrive, big shocker.)
The same kind of thinking seems to be prevalent internally. You can trample the law, because you can. You see it even in ordinary US-made popular media. What happens what a character gets in trouble with the law? Well, then of course it depends on who has the most money to hire the best lawyers.
In the current case, I suspect the government will just do whatever it wants and there will be no legal reckoning.
kpw94 · 42m ago
> military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law.
serious question: are Countries such as Italy, France etc not a democracy?
All of them are, verbatim from wikipedia, "a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population.". Ditto for spain Guardia Civil, and many of the countries listed in that same wiki page: Algeria, Netherlands, Poland, Argentina, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Chile, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, ...
Gendarmerie are simply policemen with a military status which give them some duty (like I think they cannot strike) and some benefits (earlier retirement) but they are still really a police force in reality. I don't think it would look good to send actual army to fight citizens, and I don't think the army would appreciate it either (it might have been done already, no idea)
closewith · 6m ago
That is not universally true. A Gendarmerie is literally a military force with law enforcement duties and many are exactly that.
In the Netherlands, the Royal Marechaussee are literal soldiers who perform military police duties and also many civilian policing duties, but all of them are soldiers first.
eldgfipo · 11m ago
As a French, I'd argue we're a flawed democracy. Shame on us when we compare ourselves to Scandinavian countries.
JumpCrisscross · 38m ago
> serious question: are Countries such as Italy, France etc not a democracy?
They are, but not in the the "framework of US constitutional democracy." A system for which we have more evidence of stability than either of Italy or France's modern republics. (Note, too, les gendarmes' heritage: imperial France. Also, gendarmes aren't usually deployed overseas. They are, in a sense, more similar to the FBI than the U.S. Marines.)
psalaun · 1h ago
(I've the feeling that during civil uprising in dictatorship or democracy, the police tends to serve and protect the hand that feeds them, rather than the oppressed people.)
fractallyte · 42m ago
You should provide the source: Commander William Adama of Battlestar Galactica, speaking to President Laura Roslin:
It's also, notably, a legacy of Reconstruction. Put another way, we're dismantling infrastructure built to prevent civil war.
leereeves · 2m ago
Quite the opposite. It was passed because of the backlash against Reconstruction and it marked the end of the use of federal troops to control the South.
timewizard · 19m ago
There's an entire division of the military that is literally police. They serve a similar function to their civilian counterparts. There's also intelligence and logistics units.
Larrikin · 1h ago
If illegal immigration is such a problem, why not fine businesses 5x salary for using the labor, for as long as it was used? There are a lot of systems in place to verify working status at this point. It eliminates any incentive to hire this cheaper labor willing to work for lower wages.
The people coming will be coming for a variety of reasons but it won't be to take the jobs of the uneducated Americans
seanmcdirmid · 1h ago
This is what Canada mostly does and it’s super effective, the problem is that the people who employ illegal immigrants: farmers, construction contractors, hotel owners, etc…belong to the same party pushing against illegal immigration, they would basically be punishing themselves, so it isn’t going to happen.
kubb · 5m ago
The Republican party is incentivized both to have illegal immigration, and to fight against illegal immigration.
They act accordingly to those incentives.
Gigachad · 1h ago
Because this is more about a display of force than actually solving a problem.
King-Aaron · 1h ago
They want a reason to remove the current Californian government, as well as manufacturing a reason to enact emergency powers which can 'help' Trump push for a third term. They have been discussing this since before the election.
gamblor956 · 1h ago
The e-verify system has been in place since 1996, and does exactly that: verify legal status of workers. It's required for federal contractors, but only about half of states require its use (it used to be more but some states like CA have actually passed laws banning its use).
b33j0r · 19m ago
I worked for a company that verified I9’s and provided an eVerify integration for employers. I can’t explain what problem it solved.
It was a multi-million dollar if-statement that copied the expertise of the relevant law into a permanently legacy expert system.
Doing anything besides that would be illegal. But that also means there is no cross-referencing or vendor enforcement of fraud.
It did things like check if some tax-related status code was valid for the indicated home country of emigration. It didn’t do things like check against a national database for an SSN.
It basically punished people for filling out forms incorrectly or not being able to scan a document.
We didn’t get new regulations every quarter or ever. I dunno what the point was.
Edit: the everify step technically used personally identifiable information to contact a national database.
I guess my gripe is that I didn’t see how it could prevent fraud in any way a normal HR person wouldn’t have caught if it were to be caught. It’s a duplication of a process everyone was already doing.
ty6853 · 1h ago
It verifies the legal status of the documents submitted. Does little beyond encouraging identity theft of USCs that end up with unexpected tax liabilities.
kimixa · 21m ago
But the estimated number of "illegal" workers is so much larger than the number of people whose identity is stolen on tax returns each year I'd suggest that the issue isn't so much with the tools already available, so much at people aren't using those tools.
Even if we had a perfect e-verify system that magically guaranteed the result was accurate, it probably wouldn't make a difference. Not while it's use is "optional" in states like Texas.
motorest · 43m ago
> If illegal immigration is such a problem, why not fine businesses 5x salary for using the labor, for as long as it was used?
The Nazis leveraged hatred towards minorities as a wedge to force their totalitarian control over Germany's state and society. They built up a ficticious enemy within, they inflamed society against that enemy, and proceeded to promise they would eliminate that enemy if the were granted total control over everyone and everything.
It's no coincidence that Trump is targeting California to fabricate a crisis and rapidly escalate the issue he created himself, specially how he forced the unjustified and illegal deployment of national guard and the armed forces. The goal is clearly not illegal aliens standing next to Home Depots. The goal is to force a scenario where loyalists in the armed forces target any opposition. It's no coincidence Trump has been threatening the governor of California with prison for the crime of "running for elections" at the time he's announcing deploying armed forces in California without authorization or legal standing and against the will of the governor of California.
timewizard · 14m ago
> they inflamed society against that enemy
They blamed them for pre-existing social problems. I feel the important context was that the government had to be significantly dysfunctional for the Nazi party to even exist.
4ggr0 · 2m ago
Would you describe the US government as functional?
xivzgrev · 1h ago
Shh! We can’t do that! You’d piss off the republican donors. Not to mention the American public when their grocery bill significantly increases.
No, it’s much better to go harass people who aren’t in republican circles. Us vs them. Round up some illegals, make some examples, stick it to the democrats (who loosened the borders and are complicit). Trump is strong, and finally cracking down on all of this illegal nonsense, hoo rah!!
It’s all theater, that’s what Trump is - a darn good showman. Some illegals will get deported, eventually some of his core will see him as the thug he is. We just need to ensure democrats have a viable candidate lined up…ideally a white southern man. Clearly the push to elect a woman isn’t working at this time - we’ve tried it twice and Americans vote Trump instead.
jeffreygoesto · 46m ago
This. And two santas.
netfortius · 23m ago
> "we've tried it twice and Americans vote Trump instead"
I had a really good chuckle on this one. You may it sound like those ("we") who tried (and not only once) are not Americans.
Joking aside: these (voting Trump, and/or ready to shoot and even kill fellow countrymen) are ALL Americans. None of them were brought and installed by Stalin's tanks, when he purged half of Europe, post WWII, and forced migrated his mujiks all over, while moving local populations to Siberia. So - ought to eat American [own] "food" now, and probably for some time to come.
jaoane · 43m ago
Because they do so illegally? This solution you present is so disingenuous that I wonder if it was made in good faith at all.
venj · 29m ago
Many countries do it, with random controls such as statistics checks (like revenue vs employees count, compared to similar businesses) and random visits.
This does not eliminate illegal labor completely but significantly reduces it.
Qwertious · 25m ago
How is it being illegal relevant? Everything cops arrest people for is (theoretically) illegal.
If you're implying that employers of illegal immigration are hard to find, it's really not. Any farmer who receives subsidies (which is most of them) has to submit all sorts of paper trails, and if they have both no employees and no fancy farm-automation equipment, then it's pretty easy to check if they have illegal immigrants.
Hell, a single surveillance drone during harvest season could do 90% of your work. Work you're already doing if you're looking for illegal immigrants. "Gee I have no idea why a bunch of illegal immigrants harvested all my fruit for free", yeah pull the other one.
hackyhacky · 31m ago
First, the word you are looking for is "disingenuous."
Second, I disagree. It's important to disincentivize both the supply and demand. Right now, employees of illegal immigrants suffer no negative consequences when caught... so they keep in doing it. Which means that these mass deportations are purely performative, and the next wave of immigrants will get the same jobs.
ExoticPearTree · 1h ago
LA is actively supporting illegal immigrants.
If you want something like this to work, federal agents need to do it.
thomasingalls · 31m ago
Even this supreme court has said the way in which ice is "doing the work" that they're doing isn't constitutional. As in, the way in which "federal agents need to do it" is being done right now is literally illegal. Hence, protests. This isn't rocket science
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> If you want something like this to work, federal agents need to do it
Doing the arrests? Sure. Intimidating protesters for partisan messaging while desecrating the honour of our armed forces? No.
DidYaWipe · 1h ago
What is "this" and how do you define "work?"
And if illegals are such a problem, why do the Republicans toady up to the corporations that perpetuate and profit from it?
csours · 1h ago
Ahead of time, and from the inside, it looks and sounds like 'restoring proper order'.
Afterwards, and from the outside, it looks and sounds like ... well read some history about attempts to 'restore proper order'. The outcome and progression is entirely and sadly predictable.
It's been about 80 years since WWII. Are we doomed to repeat this on an 80 year cycle, when the last generation who went through this passes from the scene?
RangerScience · 22m ago
Yes. AFAIK, this is exactly the (theoretical) cause for the "doomed to repeat it" effect of "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" - the death of the last generation who remembers it from the previous iteration.
So - maybe not doomed to an 80 year cycle, as life expectancy changes, and/or as cultural memory changes due to more/better records.
But in broad strokes... yes.
notepad0x90 · 1h ago
Politics aside, LA just can't seem to catch a break. Floods last year, fires earlier this year and now this.
That said, what the current administration is doing is almost like they're following a manual other countries followed on their road to nationalistic decline and all the right people in places of power seem to know this. I wonder if they're ready for it? My observation is that the previous administration had four years to pass laws and measures based on trump's first four years and they didn't, which tells me there is really no stopping what is to come.
The planned decline of America won't be like other countries because of post-WW2 "super power" repositioning of country and it's critical role in global trade, communications and finance. All of humanity might suffer, at least that's my fear.
On the other hand, I like to think that if things turn sour and gruesome very fast, the American public might react to that well enough to make a u-turn.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> LA just can't seem to catch a break. Floods last year, fires earlier this year and now this
I'm in LA right now. If I didn't read the news I wouldn't know anything is up.
hparadiz · 1h ago
Living in LA is so great. The only thing I regret in my life is not getting here sooner.
peterbecich · 33m ago
GOP and Dems have been nearly evenly matched for years in Congress now. There was no prospect of dramatic legal overhaul i.m.o., let alone any new Constitutional amendments.
This is also not how Congress works as meant to work - deadlocked yes, but not a deadlock driven by partisanship.
Republicans get primaried for supporting Dems.
This creates the reality which is sold in their information and news networks. Dems always have bad bills, and see - no Republican is supporting it.
marcus_holmes · 22m ago
> The planned decline of America won't be like other countries because of post-WW2 "super power" repositioning of country and it's critical role in global trade, communications and finance. All of humanity might suffer, at least that's my fear.
Yeah, the decline of the British Empire is starting to look sedate and well-managed compared to this.
I'm sure because the USA was there to pick up any slack that Britain dropped, in a way that China is not doing with the USA.
whyenot · 2h ago
I wish Kevin Drum were still here. I often didn't agree with his politics, but his blog posts were always insightful, and I wonder what he would say about our current situation.
bix6 · 4h ago
This is terrifying and unconscionable. Hard to believe this is the USA today. I don’t really see this de-escalating given the ongoing rhetoric but I hope I’m wrong.
Scuds · 2h ago
there's a reason why people remember kent state.
ty6853 · 2h ago
The real danger of Kent State is it teaches in for a penny, in for a pound.
lurk2 · 2h ago
What reason is that?
lossolo · 3h ago
It's a salami tactic, that's how democracies are turning into autocracies, slice by slice. This is something new to you, but people who experienced this firsthand see what's going on in the US as an obvious road to autocratic rule. Then another Rubicon will be crossed, and another, one by one, little steps, until someday you will find yourself in a totally different country after all the steps converge into a different political system.
dachris · 2h ago
That, or the fast road to dictatorship. Escalate until you declare martial law, never to be revoked. The end.
The Ghorman massacre in the recently aired season 2 of Star Wars Andor is the playbook version of this.
I don't think the US is there yet, but the direction seems about right. As you say, step by step.
Andor was great. I really enjoyed it. It's the AI robots you should really worry about.
intended · 20m ago
Yes, you also always have some superficially similar event to reassure people that this has happened before.
It’s usually too much for people to contemplate that things are going to end.
Or worse, it’s bad faith, and it’s shared to lull people into accepting the change.
One of the clear things is that the right side of the political sphere is no longer constrained to narratives that have accurate correspondence to reality.
Even if this blows over, there will be something else, and then something else - and some superficially plausible rationale that contradicts previous positions.
And people who’ve seen this before will point it out - but people in the hall of mirrors will be stuck dealing with whatever is being reflected around them.
It’s genuinely cognitively hard to reason past such things, especially if reasoning past them is done alone - because then you are now stuck feeling like you are outside of your group - worse, you might have to join the people you were angry with.
This is one reason it takes a long time (months, years) to travel this distance - you can’t mentally switch allegiances and world views in a moment. There’s too many interconnected beliefs, actions - neurons.
But for people who’ve seen this before, it’s pretty clear cut.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> In the LA riots of 1992 there was also the national guard and the military
The Governor requested federal help. Legally different.
Larrikin · 1h ago
Did the President during the LA protest of the beating of an unarmed person ever say they wanted to be a dictator?
I edited this post because riots implies they weren't burning down their own neighborhoods because they didn't actually own anything there and had not been prevented from owning anything. Certain groups love to post the actually affected Korean store owners, but it's a gross one minority group was pitted against another to prove racism was ok in retrospect to cause the conflict.
HdS84 · 1h ago
I studied political sciences twenty years ago - even then it was established consensus that presidential democracies are vulnerable to authoritarian takeover. The position has too much power, is easily abused and there are not enough checks on that position. The US escaped that problem for a long time due to strong cultural norms - but you abolished them (i.e. gatekeeping the presidential nominees and replacing that with a televised drama) and working checks (but again, now party in congress and president march in lockstep).
FPTP and gerrymandering just exacerbate that problem and entrench a very unhealthy "the winner takes it all without need for compromise" culture.
You need electoral reform post haste - but I do not seed even a start to that discussion, so I think you are hosed. Might not be Dictator Trump, but maybe Vance or some other guy who succeeds in this game.
And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't. The democrats are too slow to recognize the problem and even if they eventually do, there are no majorities to change the system. And finally: Democracy needs at least two parties - democrats cannot be expected to keep branches of the government forever. You need a sane and democratic second party. Republicans ain't it - but the current system gives them success, so why change?!
ty6853 · 1h ago
We escaped them because the tenth amendment and judiciary constrained federal powers in non war time to activity summing up to like 2% of the GDP and they needed an amendment to do anything outside of a little box. POTUS was fairly low stakes office in peace time, lower stakes to most than their governor and state legislators.
We tossed that all aside in the 1930s via threatening to pack the Supreme court. Federal powers are now everything because interstate commerce is now everything and without a functional 10A and with delegation to executive agencies POTUS approaches God level.
YZF · 1h ago
I don't even remember who the president was. I'd have to look it up. And in 2050 you won't remember who Trump was. At least that's where my money is right now. There is no way Trump is turning into a dictator, for one thing he's too old. Is there any precedence to a 78 year old turning into a dictator for life? (I mean I'm not as young as I used to be and dictator is probably not in my future either).
EDIT: It was US President George H. W. Bush ...
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> no way Trump is turning into a dictator, for one thing he's too old. Is there any precedence to a 78 year old turning into a dictator for life
I agree that Trump is unlikely to turn into a dictator. But Caesar wasn't Rome's last dictator. And he wasn't the first to march on Rome.
Precedents are being set. Regardless of your views on illegal immigration, what's going on should be concerning because eventually someone with strong views you don't agree with will be in power, and if they can just arrest members of Congress, openly defy courts, ship ideological opponents to Guantanamo and send Marines into states they don't like, we're all going to be poorer for it. (If this shit stands, I'd argue the next Democrat in the White House should go FDR on the system.)
amazingman · 1h ago
I'll really worry about both, thank you.
billfor · 1h ago
George Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots. At least 4000....
dragonwriter · 48m ago
> George Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots.
Governor Wilson called up the National Guard, actually; subsequently, at Governor Wilson's request, and coordinating planning with both the Governor and Mayor Bradley of LA, President Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Guard, and called up the Marines, and deployed the federal and federalized forces (including, also, federal law enforcement) in close cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement to restore order.
That is very different from the situation presently.
runlevel1 · 56m ago
Because the governor requested federal assistance.
MaxHoppersGhost · 3h ago
They're not being deployed to run down protesters, they're deploying to protect federal personnel and federal property only.
fnordpiglet · 1h ago
To be fair they’re not even doing that. They’re holed up without food or beds because there was no plan while the LAPD manages the protests and riots triggered by the federal troop deployment. It’s literally designed to inflame tensions, and it’s the direct cause of everything that’s going on. I feel bad for those troops being used as a pawn in a political TV stunt.
The national guard and the marines are not trained in crowd control. They are trained in combat situations. They have no role to play here, at best they just make people angry, at worse could perpetuate a massacre.
ty6853 · 1h ago
I've never been in the military but I was in a civil war. Let me explain what a few days holed up does to a bunch of young dudes with automatic weapons: it makes them eager for an exciting break from the monotony.
darksaints · 1h ago
The same exact lie was said about Tiananmen Square.
mock-possum · 2h ago
What if the threat to federal personnel comes from people trying to protect themselves from being run down by federal property?
You think any individual marine will follow their conscience and step in if they see an abuse of power by authority?
ivape · 3h ago
It’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on.
motorest · 2h ago
> It’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on.
From an outsider's view, everything looks so performative and fabricated to be consumed by a tv target audience. I mean, if there is so much illegal immigration in the US, is it the most effective use of resources to target a TV cliche that would gather a residual number of people?
hparadiz · 1h ago
They hate poor people. The wealthy undocumented people are sitting at home in their legal son or daughter's house watching the kids without a care in the world. The ones getting caught up in this are the ones that can't lay low for a while.
intended · 11m ago
Nope.
They is doing lots and lots of heavy lifting here. At the same time things are very confusing, because it seems like your fellow American is out for blood in a manner that shows no humanity.
Your fellow American on the right is plugged into a Matrix that traffics in its own narratives and can now freely manufacture or amplify its own fringe facts and narratives.
They are actually fighting very hard for the soul of america - as they see it. Virtuous efforts to stop the villainy and stupidity of the venomous yet weak liberals, leftists and democrats.
There’s a system in place to manufacture narratives, the closest analogy would be wrestling - except the President doesn’t treat it as fiction, he acts as if it’s real.
And since you can make and sell narratives incredibly quickly, while facts and analysis are days of effort - well, you have a structural change to the market place of ideas.
It happens everywhere in democracies now. See Brexit - entirely predictable. Yet completely unable to “sell” the known and clear problems to a majority of the citizenry.
Same with tariffs.
There’s a floor to people’s capability in navigating our current information environments - and partisan groups of experts are happy to use it to their advantage.
The problem began empirically with conservative positions, but the efficacy of the technique has now created its own political force.
motorest · 1h ago
> They hate poor people.
The image the Trump administration conveys goes way beyond targeted hate. They appear to be replaying the Nazi playbook of persecuting minorities as a strategy to wedge in totalitarian control over a nation and society. Illegal immigrants just so happen to be the path of least resistance in the US.
monster_truck · 2h ago
I've often felt the same way as an insider. It's beyond a parody of itself.
k1t · 1h ago
Presumably it's just this meeting, filtering down the ranks:
So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.
Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the U.S., according to people familiar with the meeting.
Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.
Miller is an excellent, quick witted entertainment and speech writer in his own way. What's astonishing is using what is essentially an entertainer for high level strategy.
motorest · 38m ago
> What's astonishing is using what is essentially an entertainer for high level strategy.
I think this makes it even scarier. This means the goal is clearly not establishing sound policy, but to output propaganda that is designed to be easily consumed by TV audiences. It is beyond reality because it is not designed to make sense, it is designed to make sense to TV consumers by feeding on the context they get from their TV tropes. The Mexicans hanging around in Home Depots is a TV cliche that's recognized by people living wel beyond any Home Depot.
fakedang · 52m ago
Tbf this entire administration is a circus full of entertainers from the top down. It's like these guys are taking notes from a Mexican soap opera, ironically.
DidYaWipe · 1h ago
That's just one of many problems with this whole lie.
The best is Trump crowing about historically low unemployment numbers, and then peddling hysteria about illegals "taking American jobs." None of his degenerate followers care that this argument is stupid, and calls them stupid.
Now it's been papered over with other excuses, like the mythical "fentanyl" that's pouring in from Canada.
King-Aaron · 1h ago
They raided a school during their graduation ceremony to haul away parents of children receiving their graduations.
zippyman55 · 2h ago
Only three people seeking work outside HD. Hope they raise their salary demands.
curtisblaine · 1h ago
I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying ICE should deport on.. merit basis? Leave the hardest working immigrants be and deport the lazy ones?
runlevel1 · 40m ago
Trump repeatedly said the administration would be targeting 'violent criminals and rapists', 'gang members', and 'heinous monsters' first.
So, you know, maybe they could try to do what they said they'd do for once?
lipowitz · 5m ago
The US is obsessed with precedence so doing something correctly once would ruin their exemption.
labster · 1h ago
You have to target the immigrants who work hard, just so we can eventually prove Trump right when he says all of the immigrants are lazy and take our welfare entitlements. The remainder will be poorer, that’s just math.
Whether it’s good public policy is neither here nor there, so long as our Leader is right.
EGreg · 3h ago
What happened to all those safe active denial systems?
> modifications or misuse by an operator could nevertheless turn the ADS into a more damaging weapon which could potentially violate international conventions on warfare
Safe? When manned by actors known to shoot journalists in the head with “less lethal” weapons?
dragonwriter · 32m ago
Some passages from your source:
ADS operators would be exposed to more than the standard maximum permissible exposure (MPE) limits for RF energy, and military use requires an exception to these exposure limits
According to Wired, the ADS has been rejected for fielding in Iraq due to Pentagon fears that it would be regarded as an instrument of torture
Seems to have problems on both ends.
leereeves · 1h ago
It's terrifying, certainly.
One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said "you had people who were...attacking police officers, deputy sheriffs and causing a lot of destruction."
The 101 Freeway shut down Sunday evening two times due to protesters on an overpass throwing rocks, debris, and firecrackers at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles.
Footage on Sunday from the CBS News Los Angeles helicopter showed that multiple windows of the police headquarters had been shattered as well.
I can't overstate how absolutely separate this is from reality. Yes there are protests, largely peaceful and in a tremendously small part of Los Angeles. In fact, in terms of sheer size, its less than half the size, in sq miles, of the fires in January.
Rocks / debris came after tear gas.
The news has been startling in its mis-coverage.
exodust · 37m ago
> I can't overstate...
Your effort to overstate might have derailed your own reality.
Don't know about you, but I could never throw a brick at anyone. I couldn't and wouldn't put a mask on and head out with the intent to burn cars, throw rocks, loot, and cause criminal damage. That is the opposite of "largely peaceful."
The LAPD chief stated it's "out of control." Your attempt to imply tear gas was used on peaceful protesters doesn't fit the evidence. Many of the rioters are highly organised with supply runs of masks, fireworks and projectiles. I'm not sure what your agenda is but "accuracy" doesn't seem to be it.
thinkingemote · 5m ago
The protests usually are very well attended organised and peaceful. The organisers of the protests want people to go home afterwards and most do.
But some people hang around after it's ended and then the sun goes down and the protest is actually over and the police try to get people to leave. Then it's a people Vs police confrontation that may escalate. Then it's a riot. Usually these deescalate and the police have training in how to do that.
It's not the protests that is violent it's what happens after the protest finishes. Riots by definition are out of control!
Some protestors would claim that the violence is orchestrated by the police. There has been some evidence of that in some places of the world. Mostly it's a riot of violent people, criminals, kids usually, who are thrilled by the violence and chaos and hatred. Mob mentality creates a mob.
RangerScience · 6m ago
AFAIK, I would not read much into the possession and use of gas masks - the bake-sale anarchist medics are pretty well organized and equipped.
There's a lot of people in LA with the skills and equipment to rapidly organize like this; got to see it in person during the Occupy protests, when a tiny village popped up around City Hall - complete with power and internet infrastructure; medical, porta-potties, meals, workshops and seminars... it was pretty impressive!
It's also worth noting the insanity that is July 4th in Los Angeles, so there being a lot of fireworks is uhhh... really, really not weird for LA? We usually get increasing amounts (in size and frequency) of illegal firework "shows" all throughout June.
Lastly - there's also a big difference between "out of our [LADP's] control" and "out of control" - that's (AFAIK) actually the norm for effective protests. A large protest that's under the LAPD's control is generally a "demonstration" instead (see the women's marches).
marcus_holmes · 10m ago
I don't know about you, but I could never fire tear gas at peaceful protestors exercising their right to peacefully protest.
esseph · 1h ago
What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?
Once the state sets its eyes on enemies, it doesn't stop adding to that list.
Use of the tools and techniques in place right now will continue to be used, and against "legal" citizens.
I worry how we turn the corner. I don't like what history says.
curtisblaine · 1h ago
> What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?
This was always a well-understood risk though.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line
So less violence towards law enforcement and insurrection than January 6th. Action the President endorsed in January by issuing pardons.
Honestly, if a Democrat were to match Trump's energy, they'd be promising pardons to protesters who damaged ICE property or torched a Trump property. They're not. In part because they're rudderless. But also because they're still gripped by the notion that we're not in the midst of a coup.
gamblor956 · 1h ago
LAPD on Sunday night live with NBC 4 Los Angeles confirmed that most of the Sunday night looters were arrested. They also confirmed that most of the looters were part of a retail-theft gang attempting to use the protests as cover, and that at least one of the looters was actually a far-right-wing activist (unsuccessfully) attempting to stage a false flag operation to justify the use of military force.
JumpCrisscross · 18m ago
> LAPD on Sunday night live with NBC 4 Los Angeles confirmed that most of the Sunday night looters were arrested
I trust this is true. But the comment would be stronger with a source.
defrost · 9m ago
A combined 42 arrests were made by the Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the LAPD said early Monday. Alleged crimes included attempted murder, looting, arson, failure to disperse, assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and other offenses.
is one source, others may have more or less detail. It supports arrests being made wrt looting, not the assertion that most of the looters were arrested.
vasco · 4h ago
I'm not american but I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too. Funny that if it's so bad to deploy them, why is it OK to deploy them in other countries?
dylan604 · 3h ago
Their job is to be deployed internationally and specifically not to be deployed domestically. That's why it's so appalling.
rixed · 2h ago
It's also appealing each time they are deployed internationally, but to "others".
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
Yes. The American President is supposed to look out for Americans. First. That's what Trump was elected to do. Not trash out economy at the global and local levels.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too
The governor of Louisiana requested federal help. Legally very different.
xp84 · 10m ago
Most people here in CA who aren’t Democrats believe that Newsom is a partisan hack and that he and his policies are completely ineffective at keeping Californians safe from dangerous criminals, so his lack of requesting help is mostly being viewed as his typical “agenda over reality” orientation.
bolster8505 · 3h ago
Being deployed to help in a disaster is very different from being deployed to quell protests.
MaxHoppersGhost · 3h ago
They're not being deployed to quell protests they're being deployed to guard federal buildings from protesters.
margalabargala · 3h ago
That's not really relevant to the disaster remediation point.
They are being deployed on American soil for their force projection.
vkou · 33m ago
How will any outside observe be able to tell the difference between them 'guarding federal buildings' and them being deployed to attack political enemies of the regime?
Will a useful idiot throwing a rock at a federal building be sufficient casus belli for the latter?
aceazzameen · 3h ago
[flagged]
MaxHoppersGhost · 2h ago
ICE agents are deporting people here illegally. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
unsnap_biceps · 2h ago
The deportation isn't the problem. It's how they're being done. Due process is core to our democracy and must be respected and followed, regardless of who. Court orders are being ignored.
I have zero problem with deporting people that are here illegally. I have plenty of problems with how it's currently being done.
curtisblaine · 1h ago
> Court orders are being ignored
Can you expand on this? If you are referring to the AEA, as far as I know that’s not what is being used in LA.
sapphicsnail · 21m ago
Kinda seems like they're randomly grabbing people and shipping them to Mexico right now. Their MO so far has been to round up people, including people who are here legally, and deport them without due process.
ICE is deporting folks before due process - a right guaranteed to all persons on US soil by amendment to the US Constitution. That is against the laws of the USA.
fuzzfactor · 35m ago
>ICE agents are deporting people here illegally.
Well in a Freudian way this statement could be interpreted to exactly mean that what ICE is doing is illegal.
4MOAisgoodenuf · 2h ago
The Gestapo simply detained people who were breaking the law.
No comments yet
Rodeoclash · 2h ago
Yes, the classic "if it's legal, it's moral" position. It was also legal to turn in Anne Frank.
fnordpiglet · 1h ago
I would note they aren’t guilty of a crime - it’s a civil infraction. “Illegal” is a pejorative used to imply criminality, being an undocumented immigrant is not in fact criminal or a crime.
The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions. They do not declare themselves, do not present their civil warrant, do not produce identification, and subsequently frequently do not follow laws, regulation, or the constitutional requirements of due process.
There is no reason that their neighbors, family, and friends need to be happy with what’s happening. They are afforded protection in our society to be angry and disclaim the government without fear of persecution or prosecution. When they’re then persecuted and prosecuted for doing that, people are pissed by the injustice. Then when their governments responsible is to fly in the military, you should expect an explosive situation.
Indeed it seems pretty clear the explosive situation was premeditated and planned - using armored vehicles and riot armored police to invade immigrant neighborhoods and abduct service workers and day laborers in broad daylight when a simple standard ICE operation was clearly designed to provoke strong response in those neighborhoods. Everything after that has been pretty deductively arrived at to create this precise situation. Even the language of insurrection and rebellion - laughably absurd claims for even a riot - which hadn’t happened until the national guard were deployed - are carefully chosen words to provide pretext for what comes next.
I desperate miss the states rights individual freedoms libertarian leaning republicans. They would never have done these things.
antonvs · 35m ago
> The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions.
Also that they’re going after many people who are actually attempting to comply with the law, because those are the easiest to find. Meanwhile tens of millions of undocumented immigrants are still here, and the lesson they’re being taught is don’t trust the legal process, stay under the radar. In the end the Trump administration is unlikely to make a large dent in the undocumented population - they certainly haven’t so far. It’s mostly theater. They’ll just end up discovering how unintended consequences work.
aceazzameen · 2h ago
This tells me a lot about you. You purposefully ignore the "how."
gamblor956 · 1h ago
ICE agents are also deporting a lot of people here legally. Just last week: they attempted to deport and ban the wife of a U.S. soldier visiting her husband on leave with a valid tourist visa ; several U.S. citizens working for at the Westlake Home Depot despite being shown proof of citizenship; a U.S. Marshall of Mexican descent who was born in the country to legal residents.
That doesn't include the hundreds of students legally here on student visas.
And of course, if ICE is going to deport people in the country illegally: it's well establish by now that Musk and Melania violated the terms of their nonresident visas when they first came to the U.S., rendering their U.S. citizenship null and void (Musk worked in violation of his student visa; Melania both worked in violation of her tourist visa and overstayed her visa by several years; if she hadn't married Trump she would have been deported and banned from the U.S. for 10 years).
andrewshadura · 2h ago
Freedom of movement is a basic human right.
lurk2 · 1h ago
Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Note that this affords the freedom to relocate within, leave, and return to one’s country, not the freedom to enter into other countries in violation of their immigration laws.
billfor · 59m ago
They have been used in the past to quell protests (in LA), by Bush the senior in 1992. Actually he sent in more than the current number.
ty6853 · 2h ago
Lol at Katrina the police and guard were going door to door confiscating arms of occupied homes in blatant violation of the second amendment. There is a video if a guardsman bragging about something to the effect 'hoping he doesn't have to smoke someone coming around a corner."
As it turns out when you send a force trained only to kill and subjugate, that's what they do. A few guardsman stood down but most did not.
rascul · 1h ago
National guard are also trained to assist in disaster relief and humanitarian efforts. They did a lot of that after Katrina.
fnordpiglet · 1h ago
The marines were deployed in New Orleans to help in hospitals, distribute food and water, and specialists in search and rescue. That is a very different context.
bix6 · 3h ago
National Guard and Army Corps of Engineers are often deployed in disasters to help. This is the opposite and the governor of California specifically did not request this so Trump usurped his authority.
hunglee2 · 1h ago
The irony is that one of the main rails upon which the MAGA train rides is States rights. But then, Trump was always going to be a rule breaker, not least to his own supporters, in the end all that will be left will be absolute fealty to the chief
jxjnskkzxxhx · 1h ago
> The irony is that one of the main rails upon which the MAGA train rides is States rights.
No it's not. They just like slavery. If it was about states rights they wouldn't support sending in the military.
What I find shocking about comments like yours is the reminder that propaganda works. Someone in the republican party decided "guys, advocating for slavery openly doesn't go over well, let's tell them it's actually about states rights", and loads of people actually believed it.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
Does Newsom have the right to defederalize the National Guard? Put another way, who is currently the supreme commander of the California National Guard?
vkou · 31m ago
The only states rights they care about is the rights of their states when they control their legislatures.
There's no need to give legitimacy to the lie.
ringeryless · 52m ago
Someone please tell me what an agent of Putin would be doing that Trump is not doing.
All actions point to MAGA being an operation to destroy or degrade the USA.
It is rather obviously in it's ironic name as well.
5th column pretends to be an ultrapatriot, ah yes, The Manchurian Candidate
rwyinuse · 10m ago
It's funny how so many Americans claim having loose gunrights is necessary to guarantee a free state, and protection against a federal army. Now same people have elected a government that really tries its best to turn that free state into an authoritarian dictatorship, using American military as its tool.
We'll see how far Project 2025 will go within Trump's term. I'm not optimistic.
kmarc · 1h ago
As a Hungarian, told my friends in November: "the election results, Project 2025, the newly elected president, etc... is the same old story we have already seen with Orban 10+y ago. But don't worry, the US has a much better established democracy, shit can't really go as wrong as in Eastern-Europe"
Well, I'm not so sure about that last part anymore.
barrenko · 1h ago
I used to think that the quote "Elections have consequences." is much much more benign.
orwin · 6h ago
Your protests are tame: no fireworks, a few tyre fire lasting like a hour, no BF60s. On the org side, no water to kill tear gas grenades (I had a friend who used a Canadian lacrosse stick with a remote picker to send the package back, but most people use water buckets), no barbecue food or temporary toilets, some street docs but clearly not well organised, no muscle to keep the youngest/wildest from taking it too far (in my city it's often union dockers with the task, works wonders). Also, sunglasses or ski masks help not loosing eyes to flashballs aimed at the crowd.
Yet it's clear your police isn't trained for deascalation (or at all tbh), and have no idea of how a mobile defense works (that's a doctrinal issue, not an individual issue).
Kinda liked the 'shame, shame' chant though, very good idea, keep it up!
Aurornis · 4h ago
> Your protests are tame: no fireworks, a few tyre fire lasting like a hour, no BF60s
Tame is good.
The administration wants the protests to turn into a flashpoint so they can send in more military control.
Lighting things on fire and launching fireworks is enough to create the tipping point. Don't encourage this stuff.
It does make a big difference in the fight for hearts and minds.
The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors. The worst possible thing for a protest movement to do is scaring the masses, since then they will flock to the state for "protection" and give the state carte blanche to get the situation under control.
tdeck · 2h ago
I think people greatly overestimate the importance of respectability and majority approval in mass protest movements. The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
For all the work that MLK and his coalition did to practice nonviolence and to appear respectable, they were always disliked by the majority of the public. Being liked by the public is not a prerequisite to getting results. If you focus too much on respectibility, the impact of what you can do decreases until it hits YouGov petition levels.
bawolff · 1h ago
I think there is a world of difference between being "annoying" or not "respectable" and being threatening.
Being annoying can be quite beneficial to a protest. It brings attention and forces people to think about you. There is a point after which it turns people off, and becomes a net negative, but you usually have to be very annoying for that to happen.
Being scary is entirely different thing though. When people are afraid they tend to become closed off to new ideas, and look to strong leaders. You absolutely don't want that in a protest.
> The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
I think the ultimate point of a protest is to reach the ordinary people who aren't part of a movement. Movements succede and fail not by how much they convince the die hard supporters, but by how much they convinced average uninvolved people.
tdeck · 49m ago
My challenge to you is to take a successful movement from the past and really look into whether people were afraid of that movement. You might be surprised at what you find. People were effectively fearmongering about every movement.
rocqua · 1h ago
Nonviolent protest doesn't need to be respectable. It needs the moral high ground. That means you need to goad the enforcement to use violence against you.
This doesn't just work by getting the public on your side. It works by showing that you are not repressed by fear. Fear is how facists rule, so showing others they don't need to fear, that they can decide not to fear, that is the real threat to authority.
That means they will abuse you to make others fear. When that happens, you need it to trigger outrage as widely as possible.
motorest · 3h ago
> The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors.
The problem with your opinion is that it leaves out the fact that one side is deeply involved in ensuring this escalation takes place, either in fact or in appearance only.
So regardless of what protestors are doing, or even who infiltrated protests to inflame and escalate events, the Trump administration is hell bent on having these protests escalate.
rocqua · 1h ago
That's great for the non Trump side!
If the 'theory of change' is we will protest peacefully, get the authorities to violently surpress us to get wide sympathy and show the wider world how horrible the government is. Then you want a trigger happy authority, so that the disproportionate response is as disproportionate as possible.
lmao you posted moments before me! Leaving mine for posterity but everyone upvote this one instead.
rocqua · 1h ago
Isn't it going to take a tipping point to get republicans to impeach Trump, or at least reign him in?
And if Trump isn't reigned in, it seems to me the US will backslide into authoritarian (light) facism.
So a tipping point is required. ideally you engineer it to more likely tip the right way. But doing nothing because otherwise it might reinforce the status quo, will guarantee the status quo.
Horribly, this means one of the best possible outcomes is an unprovoked massacre by these Marines, ordered by Trump.
Thanks! So it's a German road flare. No way I would have found that.
viraptor · 2h ago
> no water to kill tear gas grenades
I've seen a number of people on social media thanking others for neutralising tear gas, so it's definitely happening. Maybe just not evenly distributed.
unethical_ban · 4h ago
We need more like you to teach how to do this right.
I tell my friends that we need to look to Hong Kong and France in case the protests move to Texas.
giardini · 4h ago
In Texas, if you drop rocks on someone or destroy their property, they are, in many instances, free to use deadly force to stop you.
Such "protests" would be much rarer and shorter in Texas.
MaxHoppersGhost · 3h ago
This is the reason these protests are/were actually peaceful in Texas.
vkou · 3h ago
And if someone starts shooting you with less-lethal bullets for no good reason, do you have the right to use deadly force to stop them?
brewdad · 3h ago
Yes. They are “less lethal” not “non lethal”.
No comments yet
unethical_ban · 3h ago
You'd have police shoot into a crowd of people because rocks got thrown?
edit: I got throttled, as is the case on HN when things get "active". Here is my response to koolba:
---
At a head? Sure.
Do I think police can get rough and "in it" with civilians without live fire and without the use of the US Military? Yes.
Do I think, when a sufficient bloc of a city rebels against its law enforcement, then maybe the law enforcement should reconsider what they're enforcing? Also yes.
I disagree with the premise that the State is always right and that their monopoly on violence is absolute.
We celebrate the US revolution and revolutions across the world when governments act illegally and against the will of the people, violating civil rights.
I would not support firing into a crowd of people because of minor property damage.
koolba · 3h ago
Don’t you think a properly sized rock thrown at someone’s head is assault with a deadly weapon?
avidiax · 3h ago
So you are saying, some people in the crowd throw rocks, therefore, innocent people in the crowd should also die?
So you are saying, guy throws rock. Now he has no rock. He should be shot despite having no rock?
So you are saying, police riot gear is useless against rocks?
Spooky23 · 3h ago
Folks of a certain ilk fantasize that sort of thing.
Def worth watching with people and sharing. Very inspiring <3
razster · 4h ago
You can find a lot of videos on Youtube. Duckduckgo seems to produce more results for guides.
wellthisisgreat · 1h ago
any ex-marines here? how would they actually take to the orders that everyone's worried about? "no questions asked"?
mrj · 48m ago
Yeah. So.. a big chunk of the Marine Corps are hard-right Trump supporters but not nearly all. The Marines are different in that the leadership is steeped in the history and tradition of the Corps from the start of bootcamp. They will know they can be punished for following illegal orders, and they will already know about the last time Marines were called into LA.
In the end, it will come down to SNCOs and NCOs to make the decision because the Marines try to push down "battlefield" decisions to as close to the action as possible. Of any service, I expect your average Marine to be able to make independent decisions in the moment. That may or may not be a good thing.
WarOnPrivacy · 8h ago
Reminder that the authority under which the the US military is deployed against US citizens was intended to be used in exceptional (extreme) circumstances - ostensibly because no other options would suffice.
The Insurrection Act authorizes the president to deploy
military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion
or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations.
The statute implements Congress’s authority under the Constitution
to "provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of
the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."
It is the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act,
under which federal military forces are generally barred
from participating in civilian law enforcement activities.
This is the heaviest hammer in the toolbox. Deploying it against citizens he doesn't like because he resents their message is a historical display of bad character and is profoundly unethical in a way that the harshest adjectives struggle to reflect.
pyuser583 · 3h ago
I read somewhere reliable Trump is not invoking the Insurrection Act.
I’d cite my source, but can’t find it. I also can’t find anything saying he is invoking it.
Do you have any specific source?
Edit: I’ve found several sources that make
It clear the Insurrection Act had not been invoked.
Then that makes this move illegal. Impeach him now.
pyuser583 · 2h ago
I have no knowledge of this area of law, but responsible press are saying he can deploy NG and Marines to defend federal property and employees without anything special.
cwsx · 1h ago
Third time's the charm!
RajT88 · 3h ago
We tried that. Nothing has changed since then - if anything he has consolidated more power.
Republicans would have to lose a lot of seats for it to happen. Or, Trump would do something beyond the pale for the GOP. Hard to imagine what would make them change their minds on it. Probably not thousands of dead protesters.
plandis · 3h ago
According to the military release [1]:
> Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.
It seems like Trump has not invoked the insurrection act but instead it’s all under a different federal law. Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor, has a write up [2] on Title 10 vs the Insurrection Act and some possible concerns. He posted this about the National guard but given the military release states they are being deployed to assist the nation guard under title 10 it still seems relevant. To quote the TL;DR of his post:
> The TL;DR here is that Trump has not (yet) invoked the Insurrection Act, which means that the 2000 additional troops that will soon be brought to bear will not be allowed to engage in ordinary law enforcement activities without violating a different law—the Posse Comitatus Act. All that these troops will be able to do is provide a form of force protection and other logistical support for ICE personnel. Whether that, in turn, leads to further escalation is the bigger issue (and, indeed, may be the very purpose of their deployment). But at least as I’m writing this, we’re not there yet.
What can a soldier do to protect federal property or personel that is not law enforcement? Manual labor to throw up barriers seems to be the only option. Anything else requires violence, which only law enforcement can do legally I thought. Unless perhaps they intend to 'use self defense'. But intent kinda defeats self defense.
vjvjvjvjghv · 4h ago
That’s the usual dictator and wannabe dictator playbook. Cause a problem, declare a national emergency and from there take over. The military is an excellent tool for that.
(Although you'd think 2000 National Guard troops would be enough without the 700 Marines)
woodruffw · 8h ago
I don't think it's about the numbers at all -- he's seeing whether anybody will stop him from nakedly violating posse comitatus[1].
The President can of course dispatch the military for domestic law enforcement, but to do so he needs to establish a legal exception, like the Insurrection Act. That hasn't happened yet.
He does not have to care anymore. He realised he will not be prosecuted - the supreme court gave him king status after all, and all prosecution before failed to have consequences - so he can do whatever he wants. As you said, he checks if there is anyone who will stop him, which at this point would be an armed revolution or a coup d'État by the military.
The USA is a dictatorship now, the trump cult has won. Let's hope it crumbles fast.
mac3n · 8h ago
he's hoping for a Kent State replay, using troops that aren't trained for police duty
crmd · 8h ago
I worry that, rather than de-escalation, one of the White House’s explicit goals here is to stage manage a Kent State-like demonstration of state force against left-wing activists that spreads to other cities. I sincerely hope I’m cynically wrong here.
JKCalhoun · 3h ago
And the optics of Kent State worked so well for the administration.
Kind of like shooting reporters with rubber bullets.
i80and · 59m ago
The majority of non-city dwellers I know are now so propagandized against cities that I think they would be neutral to outright supportive of a kill order.
This is a dire situation and I'm not sure how this country crawls back out of this authoritarian slide, but we've got to somehow.
brewdad · 3h ago
About 35% of the country supported what the National Guard did at Kent State. Deplorable is being far too kind to these people.
JKCalhoun · 3h ago
Not sure it would be a good idea to shoot US citizens for the 35% approval.
(But to your point, anything >0% is pretty horrible.)
lotsofpulp · 3h ago
That is enough to win elections.
sanderjd · 2h ago
... no it isn't. If you have 35% support but everyone else is opposed, that's not enough to win elections.
anigbrowl · 1h ago
It demonstrably is, because of gerrymandering, electoral college, turnout manipulation etc.
>In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote and 65.3% (or 154 million people) voted according to new voting and registration tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Moreover, due to the electoral college and Senate and gerrymandering of House districts, the majority is hardly needed for attain power. I bet that even in other societies, throughout time, roughly a third of the population will not react to what one of the other thirds is doing (even if they claim they don't approve in polls).
anigbrowl · 1h ago
That was a very different time, as you must be aware. We did not have anything like the same polarization or the accelerating effect of the internet coupled with all-out information warfare across a 24-7 news cycle. I could go on for 1000 words about how different society is from 60 years ago.
spacemadness · 6h ago
It’s been pretty obvious from their behavior and rhetoric since the beginning. It’s not cynicism.
perihelions · 8h ago
You're not cynical; it's his plain, revealed character. He's been openly fantasizing about soldiers shooting protestors for years. He's asked his own defense secretary if he could do it for him,
Maybe TACO wants another Kent State, but that’s not how this will go down. The hippies didn’t want to go to war, it was kinda their whole thing. It’s not a pacifist mood out there. At all. Unarmed dudes are out there chasing Jan 6 terrorists in Temu tacticool gear, practically daring them to shoot.
I think the analogy will be more akin to Bloody Sunday, a hideous massacre denounced across the globe that sparks a 25 year long insurgency against an illegitimate monarch, the occupation, and the loyalist WASP paramilitaries who kept disappearing Catholic minorities. Yeah… if you don’t think those old world sectarian hatreds don’t still fester under the surface, you’re not paying attention.
Imagine if the Provos had FPV drones, ransomware as a service, and 3D printed rocket launchers. The future is gonna suck.
1oooqooq · 3h ago
Back then we called it the Kent State Massacre
edit: and remember, it was a net positive for conservatives in the end.
lenerdenator · 4h ago
Elections have consequences. Keep that in mind with your next "protest vote".
Y'know, if we even get to vote again.
EDIT:
Downvote all you want. It doesn't make me wrong. It was blatantly apparent that a second Trump administration would end up this way. Anyone who told you that Harris would be anything remotely similar was lying.
We're not even six whole months in. It's going to get worse.
toast0 · 2h ago
Where a vote is cast matters. You can cast a protest vote for president in states like California or Idaho. You probably shouldn't cast a protest vote in a state that doesn't have such a regular electoral margin. There is often room for influence down ballot as well.
b33j0r · 2h ago
Gotcha, but. The whole point of a protest vote is to influence other people. Doesn’t that influence cross precinct boundaries these days?
The only effect of any protest vote is to tell your friends. Hasan had a lot of friends. Arab communities in Michigan had a lot of friends. Never-never Trumpers had a lot of friends.
I personally believe that a personal political strategy should have a conscientious goal, cognizant of the effects of its action.
There’s no separate moral universe where you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side.
toast0 · 2h ago
I was under the impression that the intent of a protest vote was to make a statement that the voter does not like the options presented.
A voter should weigh the value of their statement vs the value of voting for the lesser evil. In a state like mine, where the results of the next three presidential elections could be predicted with accuracy today, a statement seems to have more value to me; if I lived in a battleground state, it would be different. I have often voted in presidential primaries where the candidate was already selected; again, I value my vote for the lesser evil much less than a statement.
mindslight · 1h ago
> you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side
Harris was an authoritarian, but not an autocrat. People got sick of ever-growing bureaucratic authoritarianism, but made the mistake of thinking the problem was the bureaucracy rather than the authoritarianism. So now the bureaucracy has been smashed and we are left with autocratic authoritarianism.
protocolture · 2h ago
Protest votes are stupid, but even stupider is chanting vote harder when clearly you aren't able to vote your way out of the death spiral.
Its been comical watching broken systems fall over themselves to accommodate trump while people pretend that they just need to vote for people who will maintain the broken systems instead of abusing them.
If you didnt spend the last 12 years tearing down your broken system and replacing it, you support all this bs. Eventually someone was going to get past the election, into the cockpit of the machine and press all these fucking buttons.
Not only did americans vote for the chimpanzee twice, they never got rid of all the buttons.
"Elections have consequences" you guys are meant to be the demonstration of how an armed populace responds to tyranny. But until I see you guys actually do anything about it, its just proof that more american values are completely worthless.
Enjoy the fall.
WatchDog · 3h ago
I'm not American, thus I had no vote in the election, nor do I like Trump for a number of reasons.
However, enforcement of immigration laws has been one of the biggest parts of his election platform, if not the central part(build the wall, etc).
I imagine his voters are happy to see some action being taken.
The protestors could really do with some better optics, destroying property and waving foreign flags is just going to increase approval for military action.
If the protestors had instead marched peacefully with American flags, it would have been a much better PR win.
motorest · 2h ago
> However, enforcement of immigration laws has been one of the biggest parts of his election platform, if not the central part(build the wall, etc).
If you pay attention, you will notice that immigration policies have nothing to do with what's happening in the US, and at most they are a pretext.
The Trump administration is rounding up and transfering people, including US citizens, to prisons in third world countries they have no connection with. They are doing this without due process or legal basis. They have attacked and threatened judges who can and did opposed these actions. Lately the Trump administration is even threatening elected officials, including governors, with imprisonment.
Now you are witnessing the Trump administration illegally mobilizing both a state's national guard and the armed forces against its own citizens.
At one point anyone has to ask themselves if this is really about immigration at all.
anon84873628 · 3h ago
I'm so tired of hearing this type of thing. "If the protesters would simply protest correctly, then I would respect them."
News flash. The opposition is always going to say something like this to set an impossible bar for the protestors. This type of thinking undermines all protests, protects the status quo, and basically boils down to victim blaming.
Not to mention you can always have false flag operatives undermining a movement.
sanderjd · 2h ago
And yet, we can all choose what kinds of protests we do and don't support and respect.
It's true that the opposition will say that even the best most peaceful protest is bad. But sometimes people broadly will agree with them, and other times they won't, and that depends on what's actually going on.
jddj · 2m ago
> that depends on what's actually going on
This is a pre- post-truth line of thought.
b33j0r · 2h ago
“I mean, they’re fine to express their protest as long as I don’t have to hear about it.”
speakfreely · 2h ago
Do you really think MLK Jr. didn't want to punch those cops in the face that were beating people at his marches? But he had emotional IQ, discipline, and effective organization. The current crop lacks all of that and the results are showing it.
anigbrowl · 1h ago
Go look at news coverage from the period, he was denounced as an agent of chaos and blamed for riots all the time. Read history, not the anodyne postcard version of it.
vkou · 3h ago
> However, enforcement of immigration laws has been one of the biggest parts of his election platform
Then this would be a great time for him to start following them.
Many of his actions this year have been in violation of immigration laws. Incredibly brazen violation of them, in fact.
bmandale · 3h ago
What good is a "PR win"? Nobody would have even heard about it if they'd marched peacefully, and if they had it would have changed nobodies minds, and otherwise changed nothing. The issues for which a simple march can have any influence at all on are the ones for which the powers that be don't have strong feelings on, where they can be swayed by seeing public support for the issue. Trump has well past dug in his heels on illegal immigration, and has a large base that backs him on it (as you recognize); a fully peaceful protest would have accomplished absolutely nothing.
There are issues worth rioting over. Maybe you don't feel that illegal immigration is one of them, but you should at least understand the logic of a protest, and why sometimes becoming violent is necessary to accomplish anything.
speakfreely · 2h ago
It's relevant to mention that the trigger for these riots was federal agents administratively detaining people who are in the country illegally. These are not new federal immigration laws that Trump has passed; in fact, they were enforced thoroughly by the Obama administration, as well.
Trump is purposely manufacturing a crisis because he knows his opposition is taking a losing position. Polls have been very clear that voters want the government to enforce immigration laws. Maybe not in Los Angeles, but nationally, the left is taking the losing side of this issue.
anon84873628 · 2h ago
How does a raid only target people who are here illegally? How do agents determine the identity and status of the person they're grabbing in a factory or school?
The idea is absolutely farcical. Plus, we know for sure that these raids have taken people mistakenly.
It's extra bad when the government's official position is that they can't get someone back from the foreign prison they're sent to. The threat to all citizens is clear; that's why they're resisting. "The left" may lose in the mainstream media but it's clearly the correct side of history.
trymas · 1h ago
Not to mention, that in most of the videos I’ve seen about detention of “illegals” - “ICE agents” look like a bunch of thugs. Facemasks, no identification features, they never introduce themselves, etc.
It’s clear since the election - Trump administration will use violence without any due process. Sort of Catch-22.
If you resist the indiscriminate purge of what Trump considers “illegal immigrants”[0] - military will be called to suppress the protests with some sort of never ending “emergency situation” established giving him full dictatorial powers.
Or he will just do the purges without resistance and achieve same goals.
“Protest voters” and democratic leadership have a lot to think about right now.
[0] lets not forget that you can be a US citizen and you can still be purged
BLKNSLVR · 2h ago
Trump has piloted a plane into the skyscraper that is the US democratic system of government.
The destruction happens in the blink of an eye.
Rebuilding takes a lifetime.
runarberg · 2h ago
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of democracy. In a democracy you cannot vote your self a dictator. A democracy has democratic institutions such as courts and different branches of government, or systems in place which prevent any one individual from misusing their power, or grabbing more power then they have been handed from the electorate.
In a democracy people can vote for the Devil him self, and the Devil him self would become the president, but there are institutions which prevent him from instituting his demonic policies.
Elections have consequences, but if those consequences are the loss of rights, then you never lived in a democracy to begin with.
overfeed · 37m ago
> This is a fundamental misunderstanding of democracy. In a democracy you cannot vote your self a dictator
Self-coups are a thing, and the best person to subvert a democracy is one who already wields considerable power within one. History is replit, unless you're doing the no-true-scottsman shuffle on the topic of democracy - if so, carry on.
HdS84 · 1h ago
History shows that to simply not the case.
Individuals are bringing down democracies all the time. Especially presidential democracies are super vulnerable to this because the president has outsized power compared to the other branches of the government.
hn_throwaway_99 · 2h ago
> Elections have consequences, but if those consequences are the loss of rights, then you never lived in a democracy to begin with.
So I guess these folks who live in a "real democracy" according to you just have the good government fairy swoop in when the people vote in a dictator.
At the end of the day, a democracy is just people, all the way down. It doesn't matter what laws you've written down, what courts you have, what procedures you've developed. If enough people stop believing in the enforcement of those laws, or court orders, or governmental norms, there is no deus ex machina.
tbrownaw · 2h ago
Sensible modern democracies will have those features, but they're no more part of the definition than having seatbelts and airbags is part of the definition of what a car is (I guess the model t is the equivalent of ancient Athens here?).
jleyank · 8h ago
Let’s just hope Neil doesn’t have to update his lyrics. But, given as that’s probably the point of the exercise…
Why doesn't Trump just send in the same goons that marched for him on the capitol.
daft_pink · 3h ago
I lived through the BLM protests in a liberal city. They let them destroy everything, then they called in the National Guard to stop looting that already happened.
Everyone’s okay with peaceful protests, but they should call in the national guard and prosecute people for violence. You might hate Trump, but in my previous experience, it’s the residents of the most liberal districts that suffer all the consequences of this nonsense.
dgfitz · 3h ago
If it’s the city I think you’re referring to, the governor was literally begging the mayor to ask for help from the national guard, and she refused for hours. They would have been deployed long before that. I believe the quote the mayor said at the time was something like “give them room to destroy” and basically gave the rioters the green light.
Edit:
Fwiw, the governor probably shouldn’t have waited for permission. A white man encroaching on the city run by a black woman at the height of Freddie Gray, tough spot to be in.
> where the mayor of the city said that she was going to allow, give protesters room to destroy and wasn't going to stop them.
LA had plenty of local police to handle the scale of the protests (it's something like 88 different jurisdictions in the whole region).
Of the 2000 national guard deployed, only 300 have actually been operationalized.
There was hardly any looting or rioting. Certainly not more than could be handled locally. Trump is doing this to deliberately escalate the situation.
ptero · 3h ago
While I think you are right that Trump is doing this to escalate the situation,
> LA had plenty of local police to handle the scale of the protests before
sure, and why didn't they do it this time? I suspect for the same reason: both Bass and Newsom want to escalate the situation as well. And when both sides want escalation that's what we get. My 2c.
mrj · 41m ago
Are we watching the same things? It would seem they are. I see videos of LA police shooting reporters (with less than lethal but from a lethal distance) and swarms of cops ignoring 3 mounted officers attempting to trample a guy on the ground. Tons of arrests already. LA police are plenty capable of escalating things all on their own. They arrested a solid 1/4 of the protesters last night and will keep right on doing that, I'm sure.
anon84873628 · 2h ago
Note I edited my post to remove "before". What I meant is at the start of these protests. LA had and continues to have plenty of its own law enforcement available. There is simply no reason to nationalize the guard without consent of the governor.
anigbrowl · 1h ago
Trump decided to call out the National Guard in response to one car getting burned. That's something on the scale of a sports riot, not a collapse of law and order. You are making a mountain out of molehill, or falling for the manipulations of the people who are.
khazhoux · 3h ago
Now, did they really destroy “everything”?
0_____0 · 3h ago
Oakland had some boarded up windows for a while around then. The destruction of the window of the Chase branch in downtown was indeed complete, I think people might have broken it twice.
daft_pink · 2h ago
Honestly in 2020, I went to an open grocery store, a little bit outside the city center, the next day and I'm riding in the elevator to the grocery store and there is this black elderly man from the poor area of the city riding with me and we get out and it's closed, and he's like "Oh Man, they destroyed all the grocery stores in my neighborhood."
Was literally everything destroyed, no, but I've got photographs of small businesses boarded up with they already looted everything, please don't loot again. There was devastation throughout the city.
After everything happened, national guard trucks showed up and guarded the devastation. If you drive out to the wealthy burbs, it's like nothing happened. They devastated one of the most liberal parts of America. Congrats.
brewdad · 3h ago
Of course. You’ve never heard of the lost city of Neverhappenda?
mkfs · 3h ago
I didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2024, but I did do so in 2020 specifically because of the BLM riots, which the media incited (through selective reporting of police violence), excused ("fiery, mostly peaceful protests"), and then went so far as to doxx and harass anyone who resisted the mob, or even just those who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the fuel truck driver who hadn't been informed that BLM had commandeered an interstate (and didn't want to get Reginald Denny'd): https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/tr...
Glad to see Trump learned his lesson from the first time.
protocolture · 2h ago
BLM wasnt on the ballot, so your vote for Trump was really just performative.
No comments yet
legitster · 8h ago
Soldiers, especially Marines, are trained to follow orders and kill. They are not specialists in de-escalation or crowd control.
Here's hoping this is purely an optics play and they are only there to waste money and incite nationalism. Because if this escalates in any way and the US military turns on Americans, its hard to understate how bad things could get.
tylerflick · 4h ago
Not saying I agree with the deployment, but as someone who was in this gun club this isn’t true at all and hasn’t been for some time. IIRC basic de-escalation was taught in recruit training.
Refreeze5224 · 4h ago
This is like saying since a gun has a safety it's not meant for firing bullets. 90% of the effort, design, and engineering of a gun goes into firing potentially lethal bullets. It's what a gun does, this is not controversial.
Now ask yourself why Trump is sending a group (who are explicitly prohibited from making arrests) whose entire mission is war to the 2nd biggest city in the country? It's for the same reason those Marines carry guns.
As I've seen others remark, LA gets far worse whenever the Dodgers or Lakers win a championship. It is not a war zone, warriors are not needed. But clearly they are desired.
mgiampapa · 4h ago
Hanlon's razor applies.
Refreeze5224 · 2h ago
Which part of Hanlon's Razor asks you to ignore years of evidence and explicit declarations of intent?
inferiorhuman · 4h ago
I suspect that whatever training the military provides is more than what LAPD officers get. LAPD is talking a good game this time around but ABC broadcast footage of mounted LAPD officers trying to get their horses to stomp someone who was on the ground, prone, and not resisting.
YMMV.
No comments yet
acdha · 6h ago
I’m not sure that’s true any more. I know a few vets and it was definitely thought-provoking to hear a Marine who’d been in the thick of Fallujah react to some police shooting by noting that they had stricter rules about use of force because the top brass wanted to get the Iraqi people on their side.
zzgo · 6h ago
I suspect that the current administration isn't concerned about winning the hearts and minds of Angelenos.
vrosas · 4h ago
You suspect what is very obvious.
leptons · 1h ago
Every city in the US has illegal aliens, but how many ICE raids are making the news in places like St. Louis, or New Orleans, or Houston - no, they aren't sending ICE to red states like they are to California, they are focusing on Los Angeles for the purpose of fomenting unrest so they can enact martial law. That wouldn't be so cool for their supporters if red states had riots, but their supporters love seeing liberal California with a boot on its neck.
acdha · 5h ago
Very true, but I don’t think there’s been enough time to completely reverse years of training.
simoncion · 3h ago
> I’m not sure that’s true any more.
If it was ever true, it hasn't been true for a long time.
There used to be (and probably still is) a saying in the US military that goes something like "Folks who can't hack it in the military wash out and become cops.".
The military is not at all configured to be an effective long-term occupying force, but its personnel are trained to be soldiers [0] and peacekeepers. (While I'm absolutely certain that one can find examples of psychos that should have been detected and discharged earlier, that's true of any sufficiently-large organization. Finding every malicious person is a task that's next to impossible.)
Anyway, in a high-pressure, chaotic situation, I'd rather come up on a random member of the US military [1] than a random cop any day of the week.
[0] Yes, this does mean that they damage, destroy, injure, and kill when required.
[1] Whether active duty, reservist, or honorably discharged.
hypeatei · 6h ago
> Here's hoping this is purely an optics play and they are only there to waste money and incite nationalism
They don't deserve any benefit of the doubt at this point. Ask yourself what the MAGA reaction would've been to troops being deployed to their riot at the Capitol.
IG_Semmelweiss · 4h ago
If I lived or had a business near the epicenter of LA, i'd cheer to see the military come in and take back control that the municipality refuses to do
Is it crazy to want someone to protect my neighbor's car , or business? Is it wild to expect my lifetime saving not be torched or destroyed?
toxic · 3h ago
Your neighbor's car and business are 100% safe from protesters, unless your neighbor is a fed.
You realize that this is all happening in a very small part of LA, which is an absolutely enormous metropolitan area with more than 10 million residents. The cars being torched are Waymos (which have been happily recording video that is turned over to authorities at request, instead of by warrant -- this action will keep them out of the protest zones) and no businesses are being harmed. The ones being violent are in uniform (even LAPD is saying that protesters are peaceful and those who are violent are people who are frequently violent and showed up for the fight, which is telling on themselves more than a bit).
For 99% of Angelenos, this weekend could have been business as usual if they chose to ignore the federal threats to their neighbors. Millions went to farmers markets, kids birthday parties, church, and all of the other regular weekend activities. The city has not been invaded by anyone other than feds, it is not a war zone, it's not even close to a riot. You are being lied to and manipulated if you believe any of that.
And this week, many residents who have the privilege of doing so are standing in line to barricade the entrance to schools that are hosting graduation ceremonies, so abuelas can celebrate the end of elementary school without being terrified of being kidnapped by men in masks. This is how the community protects its own, and a lot of other places could learn from that if they gave a shit.
In LA, the guys standing outside of Home Depot are the kind of guys that a woman would feel safe telling that they're carrying cash, invite them into their car, and bring them to their house... alone. These are not dangers to anyone.
LAPD and especially LASD, on the other hand, aren't the kind of guys who are safe alone with their own wives.
eastbound · 2h ago
“This is a peaceful protest”
Sorry, this ship has sailed.
For those who don’t know the reference: This quote is from a journalist who tries to make a protest with a few billion dollars private property set on fire (BLM), pass a peaceful, with fire as the decorum of the journalist. It ignited the moods because the speech was obviously contradicted by the background, highlighting that journalists invert reality and are missioned for propaganda (by whom, nobody knows).
And then “the People” voted for Trump. It’s probable there is massive support for the current deployment of forces. The protestors themselves probably aren’t the real target of this episode, it’s probably rather about highlighting the lack of will and complacency of the Californian structures in establishing order.
khazhoux · 3h ago
It’s not crazy to want protection.
It’s dangerous to have the military do it. The Founding Fathers knew this.
gamblor956 · 1h ago
I live there and very few of us are cheering the military. We get protests like this in LA all the time. TBH, these protests are nothing compared to what happens when the Lakers or Dodgers win a championship.
And the protestors aren't the problem; the problem are the looters using the protestors as cover. The looters mostly belong to the retail theft gangs that have been plaguing stores across the country (even in red states) since COVID.
kalkin · 1h ago
The Homeland Security Secretary today described LA as a "city of criminals". It's hard to see how it could be anything but willful ignorance or self-delusion at this point to think that the Trump administration's intention is to protect LA residents.
dylan604 · 3h ago
did the locals refuse to show up? no. This is Trump pushing his agenda and not because the locals are refusing to do their job
jeffgreco · 3h ago
Yes.
koolba · 3h ago
> Is it crazy to want someone to protect my neighbor's car , or business? Is it wild to expect my lifetime saving not be torched or destroyed?
No, it’s not crazy but for an unusually large portion of the populace it makes you a racist.
Ditto for any suggestion that immigration law be enforced.
anon84873628 · 3h ago
What federal agents have been doing is not legal enforcement of immigration law.
This is probably an unpopular opinion but I would like politicians on the left to speak up about the rioting and burning of stuff at the current protests and also the Tesla and George Floyd protests. It doesn’t help the cause if we allow some assholes to destroy stuff. Basically they are giving people like Trump an excuse to deploy force and a lot of people will agree. I can’t see what is achieved by burning cars and stores.
ekidd · 4h ago
> This is probably an unpopular opinion but I would like politicians on the left to speak up about the rioting and burning of stuff at the current protests and also the Tesla and George Floyd protests.
I mean, Gavin Newsom just did a long interview from a "crisis center" where he did exactly that, today. And plenty of Democratic politicians also speak against violent protests whenever they occur.
But unless you actually pay pretty close attention to what Democratic politicians actually say, you won't hear these statements. Fox doesn't cover Democratic politicians speaking against violence. And frankly, if there's a 99.9% peaceful protest with one burning car, the media will devote 80% of their coverage to the burning car, and maybe a few sentences to politicians saying the burning car is bad. The media is unfortunately interested in spectacle and entertainment.
I pay more attention than average to what politicians of both parties say, and it's kind of hilarious how often I hear "Why didn't so-and-so say X?" (uh, they do every week or two), or "I never believed so-and-so would do Y" (uh, they literally promised Y on the campaign trail). I don't know how to fix this.
speakfreely · 2h ago
The Democratic politicians have painted themselves into a corner by trying to maintain far left support. Compare the messaging:
Trump: We must have law and order. Immigration laws must be enforced. We will not tolerate riots or destruction.
Protesters: The government shouldn't detain people who are in the country illegally. We should ignore federal laws we don't agree with. If we disagree with federal agents who are enforcing existing laws, we should impede them, attack them, and destroy property to lash out.
This is not an endorsement of Trump, as he's clearly milking this situation to squeeze Newsom. This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal to everyone outside California. Until the left takes a logically defensible position on illegal immigration, they will continue to be vulnerable to Trump's theater on this and he will continue to bludgeon them with it in elections.
NalNezumi · 1h ago
>The Democratic politicians have painted themselves into a corner by trying to maintain far left support
>This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal
What's fascinating with current US politics and media is how these two sentences can be constructed in same sentence in an attempt to come off as "see I'm smart and media literate, I can see the full picture!" while literally the first sentence of your comment shows that that's not the case.
The media repeating "Democrats are far left" long enough and it have penetrated your head. There's probably pandering to far left in democratic party I assume, but it have been magnified to a reality altering level by media so that's now believed as the core, while same thing happening on the far-right & Republican party.
Both side must be truly be thinking like you, I assume. "I see the full picture, I'm smart" while parroting a distortion only required to be repeated for years.
If everyone could put their phone down, touch some grass, take a road trip to the opposite political isle maybe this distortion could've been avoided.
anigbrowl · 1h ago
They do, to say otherwise is uninformed or dishonest.
erezsh · 42m ago
Can you provide some examples?
protocolture · 2h ago
Spreads out police resources for one. Protesters outnumber police. Every cop pulled away from the protest to respond to a fire, looting incident, or whatever can translate directly to lives saved / protesters not arrested etc. Also makes certain goals more achievable. I read a crimethinc article about the george floyd protests and it suggested that the looting drew the cops away from the barricade at the police station, allowing them to destroy it. Seems a lot more practical than pearl clutching.
unsnap_biceps · 2h ago
> protesters not arrested
We should be clear, protesting is not illegal. It's protected first amendment speech. There is activity at protests that is illegal, and should be punished, but that's not protesting and lumping them together puts a chilling effect on.
octo888 · 3h ago
It makes you wonder about agents provocateurs
FireBeyond · 3h ago
The best quote I heard about the BLM / Floyd protests:
"Too many people are saying, "It's terrible that innocent black men died, but this property destruction has to stop!"
when they should be saying, "It's terrible that there is property destruction, but the death of innocent black men has to stop!"."
hn_throwaway_99 · 2h ago
I think the difficulty of this is how much Trump absolutely wants to escalate things, because it fits right into his narrative.
I've seen lots of pictures of protestors waving Mexican flags, and of the burning Waymos, etc. My guess is these are a very small percentage of protestors, but it makes for great TV, and Trump gets to say that he's "protecting America against violent foreign invaders". And I can imagine many people watching this and agreeing with him - I mean, I consider myself quite liberal, but waving a Mexican flag at these events just makes me think you can fuck right off with that bullshit.
It's a great example IMO of how Trump deliberately sows division and escalates whenever possible in order to use people's fear to consolidate power. It's basically Autocracy 101.
thecrash · 1h ago
> I consider myself quite liberal, but waving a Mexican flag at these events just makes me think you can fuck right off with that bullshit.
I'm confused, you consider yourself quite liberal but you think it's bullshit for Mexicans in the US to celebrate their heritage?
If you think that's what's going on, you are indeed quite confused
hobs · 4h ago
An unelected billionare bought votes and then went about cutting programs that directly benefit the american people and hurt himself. A president sending in troop in a situation he directly caused, on purpose. At best you are acting like a useful fool.
unethical_ban · 4h ago
Whether or not someone supports the current topic of the mostly peaceful and somewhat rebellious and violent protests, this much is clear.
You either support somewhat violent protests, regardless of topic, expecting that law enforcement and civilians will handle it amongst themselves, or you are authoritarian and demand that the federal government intervene with the US Armed Forces the moment someone throws a rock at a cop car.
This is an abomination, and anyone who supports the deployment of troops in my opinion lacks the values I thought were universal in this country.
(To support this action by Trump is to say you don't support the second amendment, on the grounds that the people should never have the power to subvert the state).
msgodel · 3h ago
>lacks values
I really hated when Fox news would say things like this and I hate it when individuals do. It makes it impossible for us to communicate.
Just because the other side doesn't share your values doesn't mean they have none. You might say their values are evil. That's a different discussion, but they're rarely just reacting blindly.
unethical_ban · 3h ago
I didn't say they lacked values. They clearly value authority and order above all else.
I'm saying they lack the values I grew up believing were universal in this country.
mindslight · 17m ago
> They clearly value authority and order above all else
No, they do not get to even claim order any more. This situation is being escalated by Trump in order to have a raging crisis to attack and drive more division. Just like he did to the 2A/BLM protests, just like he did with his appalling anti-leadership during Covid. The fascists only real value is now naked autocratic "strong" man authoritarianism. They only reason they're still clinging to caring about the law is to assuage their own egos that the suffering they're reveling in is justified.
mixmastamyk · 3h ago
The mission so far is to protect federal buildings and employees.
hulitu · 1h ago
> Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests
Finally, the American people fights for democracy, after centuries of oppresion. /s
yahway · 3h ago
I originally turned to HN to get away from politics, so it's disappointing to see one of the last remaining refuges being overtaken
tanepiper · 2h ago
[flagged]
hn_throwaway_99 · 2h ago
And it's their only comment. They went through all the trouble of creating an account to write a comment about how much they hate politics on a political post, when they could have just hit the "hide" link that's on every post.
Grimblewald · 2h ago
[flagged]
Grimblewald · 2h ago
when it doesn't impact you, or your immediate future, it is fair to steer clear and consider it noise - but this is a textbook historical moment. This isn't cheap talk. These are real and national trajectory altering events.
What happens in these coming months defines a major historical event for the USA, which sets it's course for the coming century.
It may become a country which is directly hostile to you. If you are American and are ignoring this, then it is no different to getting mad your family is wanting to talk about the raging kitchen fire that is unaddressed and escalating because "so what, the stove top has fire sometimes, it's a gas heater, that's normal" which, sure, would be right, but right now the entire wall is ablaze.
You cannot ignore this one, even those of us in other countries cannot ignore this one, as we have to reconsider our alliance with a country that reasonably one can assume is in the middle of falling to a fascist regime.
This is NOT run of the mill politics. This is genuinely about the collective future of the Anglosphere.
0_____0 · 3h ago
There's a little button called "hide" next to each post on the frontpage.
SkyeCA · 2h ago
I am honestly so done with American politics infecting every single part of the English internet. Thankfully there is usually some refuge for those of us who speak more than one language.
icar · 2h ago
I'm interested. Any examples? I feel I'm on the same page as you.
whyenot · 2h ago
Why are you posting this on some brand new dummy account? If you feel so strongly about this, post your opinion on your regular account.
DoktorDelta · 3h ago
You cannot "get away" from politics. Burying your head in the sand will not insulate you from what is happening.
darkmighty · 2h ago
Plato: "One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
I don't love the phrasing of inferiors, but at least evil certainly applies. (Well thought out, well informed) Politics is a duty not a luxury.
mindslight · 2h ago
Go start a website for the tech scene in your country that presumably isn't in the process of being taken over by fascists? Us Americans need all the avenues to organize we can get.
And it's even topical here - this surveillance industry that grew out of many tech startups is itself at ground zero of this fascist takeover, both boosting extremist disinformation to drive "engagement" and also creating a crop of newly-minted elites with the audacity to kick over the whole apple cart of our American way of life.
3eb7988a1663 · 4h ago
Wasn't this roughly spelled out in Project 2025?
an0malous · 3h ago
What was spelled out? Can you elaborate?
sh34r · 8h ago
I wonder how many civilians will be disappeared before a Dem governor finds their balls and musters the state militia. There’s millions of patriots out there just waiting for the call to action. This nonviolent shit will get you killed. MLK was a gun owner.
If that kind of talk worries you, consider how much uglier it will be when the good people of LA form unregulated militias instead. Do you really want to see Ruby Ridge 2: Rooftop Korean boogaloo?
tdeck · 6h ago
Newsom is too busy performatively harming homeless people and platforming fascists on his podcast to cook up anything like this.
DoodahMan · 1h ago
The idea of unregulated blue state militias has me chuckling a bit, given how said states have largely neutered their citizen's ability to own capable rifles.
We are to depend on our trusted local law enforcement to protect us, as well as our valiant governors who will assuredly call up local guards to do the same. Examples of brave, novel Democratic resistance to Trump abound these days. There's no need to worry!
wkat4242 · 4h ago
I really don't think it would be a good idea to throw more guns into this mix. That will not help any protester and it will help Trump justify his decision to send the military, to his supporters. It will also escalate things. I'm sure most marines will be very hesitant to use force against unarmed American civilians. Half of them wouldn't even have voted for Trump. But if they're up against a militia all bets are off.
khazhoux · 3h ago
Seems to me that sending the USMC to protect a burning Waymo is a bit of an overreaction.
MaxHoppersGhost · 3h ago
The marines aren't there to keep cars from catching fire, they're deploying to guard federal buildings and federal workers only.
speakfreely · 2h ago
Yes, but their performative purpose is to create the illusion that the situation is out of the control of the civilian authorities.
rocqua · 1h ago
By what authority can they actually use violence to guard these federal workers and buildings? Not the insurection act, and so not at all due to pose comitatus.
What can they do to guard then?
hparadiz · 59m ago
Typically their presence alone is enough to stop anything new from happening. In theory they would only need to use enough violence to defend themselves. That's how we got Kent State but in general Kent State was also because the guards in that situation found themselves alone and isolated with little training. In a modern context 60 national guards standing around outside of a downtown highrise with a couple Humvees is unlikely to see any escalation.
xeornet · 55m ago
A lot of excuses for the behaviour of the people rioting. Clearly this is way out of control of the police.
shakna · 42m ago
The police shot a foreign reporter, on camera, standing nowhere near the protesters. What part of that behaviour is seeking to control, and not escalate?
xeornet · 42m ago
Feel free to downvote. It’s a fact, although not politically popular here - that’s okay.
"At stake is a fundamental component of the framework of US constitutional democracy. It begins with the principle, enshrined in law, that military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law.
Most fundamentally, the founders of the American republic understood very clearly that concentrated military power, loyal to a single man, could be used to achieve total control by that person. And they had a historical example in mind: Rome — a republic governed by the people and the Senate — was transformed into an empire ruled by an emperor as a result of the Roman army being turned against its citizens."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-06-09/trump-...
Although I know quite a lot of (what I consider) well-educated Americans, it is also the only country from which I regularly meet the type of person who doesn't care at all about how society works (also, technology, history, art, etc).
You'll probably find that HN-person is the kind of person who values this kind of argument, but HN-world is quite small.
On multiple occasions, I've met Americans who simply care about might-makes-right. It's skin-deep, as soon as you ask them why they support this or that policy, it's because they are powerful and the rest of the world is not. I've literally met Americans who thought their tax money allowed them to summon troops, more than once. (This ended up backfiring as it turns out, they did not know how to get US Marines to arrive, big shocker.)
The same kind of thinking seems to be prevalent internally. You can trample the law, because you can. You see it even in ordinary US-made popular media. What happens what a character gets in trouble with the law? Well, then of course it depends on who has the most money to hire the best lawyers.
In the current case, I suspect the government will just do whatever it wants and there will be no legal reckoning.
serious question: are Countries such as Italy, France etc not a democracy?
All of them are, verbatim from wikipedia, "a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population.". Ditto for spain Guardia Civil, and many of the countries listed in that same wiki page: Algeria, Netherlands, Poland, Argentina, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Chile, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie
In the Netherlands, the Royal Marechaussee are literal soldiers who perform military police duties and also many civilian policing duties, but all of them are soldiers first.
They are, but not in the the "framework of US constitutional democracy." A system for which we have more evidence of stability than either of Italy or France's modern republics. (Note, too, les gendarmes' heritage: imperial France. Also, gendarmes aren't usually deployed overseas. They are, in a sense, more similar to the FBI than the U.S. Marines.)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sz2QN8_VvoM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
The people coming will be coming for a variety of reasons but it won't be to take the jobs of the uneducated Americans
They act accordingly to those incentives.
It was a multi-million dollar if-statement that copied the expertise of the relevant law into a permanently legacy expert system.
Doing anything besides that would be illegal. But that also means there is no cross-referencing or vendor enforcement of fraud.
It did things like check if some tax-related status code was valid for the indicated home country of emigration. It didn’t do things like check against a national database for an SSN.
It basically punished people for filling out forms incorrectly or not being able to scan a document.
We didn’t get new regulations every quarter or ever. I dunno what the point was.
Edit: the everify step technically used personally identifiable information to contact a national database.
I guess my gripe is that I didn’t see how it could prevent fraud in any way a normal HR person wouldn’t have caught if it were to be caught. It’s a duplication of a process everyone was already doing.
Even if we had a perfect e-verify system that magically guaranteed the result was accurate, it probably wouldn't make a difference. Not while it's use is "optional" in states like Texas.
The Nazis leveraged hatred towards minorities as a wedge to force their totalitarian control over Germany's state and society. They built up a ficticious enemy within, they inflamed society against that enemy, and proceeded to promise they would eliminate that enemy if the were granted total control over everyone and everything.
It's no coincidence that Trump is targeting California to fabricate a crisis and rapidly escalate the issue he created himself, specially how he forced the unjustified and illegal deployment of national guard and the armed forces. The goal is clearly not illegal aliens standing next to Home Depots. The goal is to force a scenario where loyalists in the armed forces target any opposition. It's no coincidence Trump has been threatening the governor of California with prison for the crime of "running for elections" at the time he's announcing deploying armed forces in California without authorization or legal standing and against the will of the governor of California.
They blamed them for pre-existing social problems. I feel the important context was that the government had to be significantly dysfunctional for the Nazi party to even exist.
No, it’s much better to go harass people who aren’t in republican circles. Us vs them. Round up some illegals, make some examples, stick it to the democrats (who loosened the borders and are complicit). Trump is strong, and finally cracking down on all of this illegal nonsense, hoo rah!!
It’s all theater, that’s what Trump is - a darn good showman. Some illegals will get deported, eventually some of his core will see him as the thug he is. We just need to ensure democrats have a viable candidate lined up…ideally a white southern man. Clearly the push to elect a woman isn’t working at this time - we’ve tried it twice and Americans vote Trump instead.
I had a really good chuckle on this one. You may it sound like those ("we") who tried (and not only once) are not Americans.
Joking aside: these (voting Trump, and/or ready to shoot and even kill fellow countrymen) are ALL Americans. None of them were brought and installed by Stalin's tanks, when he purged half of Europe, post WWII, and forced migrated his mujiks all over, while moving local populations to Siberia. So - ought to eat American [own] "food" now, and probably for some time to come.
This does not eliminate illegal labor completely but significantly reduces it.
If you're implying that employers of illegal immigration are hard to find, it's really not. Any farmer who receives subsidies (which is most of them) has to submit all sorts of paper trails, and if they have both no employees and no fancy farm-automation equipment, then it's pretty easy to check if they have illegal immigrants.
Hell, a single surveillance drone during harvest season could do 90% of your work. Work you're already doing if you're looking for illegal immigrants. "Gee I have no idea why a bunch of illegal immigrants harvested all my fruit for free", yeah pull the other one.
Second, I disagree. It's important to disincentivize both the supply and demand. Right now, employees of illegal immigrants suffer no negative consequences when caught... so they keep in doing it. Which means that these mass deportations are purely performative, and the next wave of immigrants will get the same jobs.
If you want something like this to work, federal agents need to do it.
Doing the arrests? Sure. Intimidating protesters for partisan messaging while desecrating the honour of our armed forces? No.
And if illegals are such a problem, why do the Republicans toady up to the corporations that perpetuate and profit from it?
Afterwards, and from the outside, it looks and sounds like ... well read some history about attempts to 'restore proper order'. The outcome and progression is entirely and sadly predictable.
It's been about 80 years since WWII. Are we doomed to repeat this on an 80 year cycle, when the last generation who went through this passes from the scene?
So - maybe not doomed to an 80 year cycle, as life expectancy changes, and/or as cultural memory changes due to more/better records.
But in broad strokes... yes.
That said, what the current administration is doing is almost like they're following a manual other countries followed on their road to nationalistic decline and all the right people in places of power seem to know this. I wonder if they're ready for it? My observation is that the previous administration had four years to pass laws and measures based on trump's first four years and they didn't, which tells me there is really no stopping what is to come.
The planned decline of America won't be like other countries because of post-WW2 "super power" repositioning of country and it's critical role in global trade, communications and finance. All of humanity might suffer, at least that's my fear.
On the other hand, I like to think that if things turn sour and gruesome very fast, the American public might react to that well enough to make a u-turn.
I'm in LA right now. If I didn't read the news I wouldn't know anything is up.
Graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...
Republicans get primaried for supporting Dems.
This creates the reality which is sold in their information and news networks. Dems always have bad bills, and see - no Republican is supporting it.
Yeah, the decline of the British Empire is starting to look sedate and well-managed compared to this.
I'm sure because the USA was there to pick up any slack that Britain dropped, in a way that China is not doing with the USA.
The Ghorman massacre in the recently aired season 2 of Star Wars Andor is the playbook version of this.
I don't think the US is there yet, but the direction seems about right. As you say, step by step.
Andor was great. I really enjoyed it. It's the AI robots you should really worry about.
It’s usually too much for people to contemplate that things are going to end.
Or worse, it’s bad faith, and it’s shared to lull people into accepting the change.
One of the clear things is that the right side of the political sphere is no longer constrained to narratives that have accurate correspondence to reality.
Even if this blows over, there will be something else, and then something else - and some superficially plausible rationale that contradicts previous positions.
And people who’ve seen this before will point it out - but people in the hall of mirrors will be stuck dealing with whatever is being reflected around them.
It’s genuinely cognitively hard to reason past such things, especially if reasoning past them is done alone - because then you are now stuck feeling like you are outside of your group - worse, you might have to join the people you were angry with.
This is one reason it takes a long time (months, years) to travel this distance - you can’t mentally switch allegiances and world views in a moment. There’s too many interconnected beliefs, actions - neurons.
But for people who’ve seen this before, it’s pretty clear cut.
The Governor requested federal help. Legally different.
I edited this post because riots implies they weren't burning down their own neighborhoods because they didn't actually own anything there and had not been prevented from owning anything. Certain groups love to post the actually affected Korean store owners, but it's a gross one minority group was pitted against another to prove racism was ok in retrospect to cause the conflict.
You need electoral reform post haste - but I do not seed even a start to that discussion, so I think you are hosed. Might not be Dictator Trump, but maybe Vance or some other guy who succeeds in this game.
And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't. The democrats are too slow to recognize the problem and even if they eventually do, there are no majorities to change the system. And finally: Democracy needs at least two parties - democrats cannot be expected to keep branches of the government forever. You need a sane and democratic second party. Republicans ain't it - but the current system gives them success, so why change?!
We tossed that all aside in the 1930s via threatening to pack the Supreme court. Federal powers are now everything because interstate commerce is now everything and without a functional 10A and with delegation to executive agencies POTUS approaches God level.
EDIT: It was US President George H. W. Bush ...
I agree that Trump is unlikely to turn into a dictator. But Caesar wasn't Rome's last dictator. And he wasn't the first to march on Rome.
Precedents are being set. Regardless of your views on illegal immigration, what's going on should be concerning because eventually someone with strong views you don't agree with will be in power, and if they can just arrest members of Congress, openly defy courts, ship ideological opponents to Guantanamo and send Marines into states they don't like, we're all going to be poorer for it. (If this shit stands, I'd argue the next Democrat in the White House should go FDR on the system.)
Governor Wilson called up the National Guard, actually; subsequently, at Governor Wilson's request, and coordinating planning with both the Governor and Mayor Bradley of LA, President Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Guard, and called up the Marines, and deployed the federal and federalized forces (including, also, federal law enforcement) in close cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement to restore order.
That is very different from the situation presently.
The national guard and the marines are not trained in crowd control. They are trained in combat situations. They have no role to play here, at best they just make people angry, at worse could perpetuate a massacre.
You think any individual marine will follow their conscience and step in if they see an abuse of power by authority?
From an outsider's view, everything looks so performative and fabricated to be consumed by a tv target audience. I mean, if there is so much illegal immigration in the US, is it the most effective use of resources to target a TV cliche that would gather a residual number of people?
They is doing lots and lots of heavy lifting here. At the same time things are very confusing, because it seems like your fellow American is out for blood in a manner that shows no humanity.
Your fellow American on the right is plugged into a Matrix that traffics in its own narratives and can now freely manufacture or amplify its own fringe facts and narratives.
They are actually fighting very hard for the soul of america - as they see it. Virtuous efforts to stop the villainy and stupidity of the venomous yet weak liberals, leftists and democrats.
There’s a system in place to manufacture narratives, the closest analogy would be wrestling - except the President doesn’t treat it as fiction, he acts as if it’s real.
And since you can make and sell narratives incredibly quickly, while facts and analysis are days of effort - well, you have a structural change to the market place of ideas.
It happens everywhere in democracies now. See Brexit - entirely predictable. Yet completely unable to “sell” the known and clear problems to a majority of the citizenry.
Same with tariffs.
There’s a floor to people’s capability in navigating our current information environments - and partisan groups of experts are happy to use it to their advantage.
The problem began empirically with conservative positions, but the efficacy of the technique has now created its own political force.
The image the Trump administration conveys goes way beyond targeted hate. They appear to be replaying the Nazi playbook of persecuting minorities as a strategy to wedge in totalitarian control over a nation and society. Illegal immigrants just so happen to be the path of least resistance in the US.
So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.
Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the U.S., according to people familiar with the meeting.
Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-...
I think this makes it even scarier. This means the goal is clearly not establishing sound policy, but to output propaganda that is designed to be easily consumed by TV audiences. It is beyond reality because it is not designed to make sense, it is designed to make sense to TV consumers by feeding on the context they get from their TV tropes. The Mexicans hanging around in Home Depots is a TV cliche that's recognized by people living wel beyond any Home Depot.
The best is Trump crowing about historically low unemployment numbers, and then peddling hysteria about illegals "taking American jobs." None of his degenerate followers care that this argument is stupid, and calls them stupid.
Now it's been papered over with other excuses, like the mythical "fentanyl" that's pouring in from Canada.
So, you know, maybe they could try to do what they said they'd do for once?
Whether it’s good public policy is neither here nor there, so long as our Leader is right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
Safe? When manned by actors known to shoot journalists in the head with “less lethal” weapons?
ADS operators would be exposed to more than the standard maximum permissible exposure (MPE) limits for RF energy, and military use requires an exception to these exposure limits
According to Wired, the ADS has been rejected for fielding in Iraq due to Pentagon fears that it would be regarded as an instrument of torture
Seems to have problems on both ends.
One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kill-l-police-attacked-fireworks-...
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said "you had people who were...attacking police officers, deputy sheriffs and causing a lot of destruction."
The 101 Freeway shut down Sunday evening two times due to protesters on an overpass throwing rocks, debris, and firecrackers at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles.
Footage on Sunday from the CBS News Los Angeles helicopter showed that multiple windows of the police headquarters had been shattered as well.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/downtown-la-protests...
Rocks / debris came after tear gas.
The news has been startling in its mis-coverage.
Your effort to overstate might have derailed your own reality.
Don't know about you, but I could never throw a brick at anyone. I couldn't and wouldn't put a mask on and head out with the intent to burn cars, throw rocks, loot, and cause criminal damage. That is the opposite of "largely peaceful."
The LAPD chief stated it's "out of control." Your attempt to imply tear gas was used on peaceful protesters doesn't fit the evidence. Many of the rioters are highly organised with supply runs of masks, fireworks and projectiles. I'm not sure what your agenda is but "accuracy" doesn't seem to be it.
But some people hang around after it's ended and then the sun goes down and the protest is actually over and the police try to get people to leave. Then it's a people Vs police confrontation that may escalate. Then it's a riot. Usually these deescalate and the police have training in how to do that.
It's not the protests that is violent it's what happens after the protest finishes. Riots by definition are out of control!
Some protestors would claim that the violence is orchestrated by the police. There has been some evidence of that in some places of the world. Mostly it's a riot of violent people, criminals, kids usually, who are thrilled by the violence and chaos and hatred. Mob mentality creates a mob.
There's a lot of people in LA with the skills and equipment to rapidly organize like this; got to see it in person during the Occupy protests, when a tiny village popped up around City Hall - complete with power and internet infrastructure; medical, porta-potties, meals, workshops and seminars... it was pretty impressive!
It's also worth noting the insanity that is July 4th in Los Angeles, so there being a lot of fireworks is uhhh... really, really not weird for LA? We usually get increasing amounts (in size and frequency) of illegal firework "shows" all throughout June.
Lastly - there's also a big difference between "out of our [LADP's] control" and "out of control" - that's (AFAIK) actually the norm for effective protests. A large protest that's under the LAPD's control is generally a "demonstration" instead (see the women's marches).
Once the state sets its eyes on enemies, it doesn't stop adding to that list.
Use of the tools and techniques in place right now will continue to be used, and against "legal" citizens.
I worry how we turn the corner. I don't like what history says.
This was always a well-understood risk though.
So less violence towards law enforcement and insurrection than January 6th. Action the President endorsed in January by issuing pardons.
Honestly, if a Democrat were to match Trump's energy, they'd be promising pardons to protesters who damaged ICE property or torched a Trump property. They're not. In part because they're rudderless. But also because they're still gripped by the notion that we're not in the midst of a coup.
I trust this is true. But the comment would be stronger with a source.
is one source, others may have more or less detail. It supports arrests being made wrt looting, not the assertion that most of the looters were arrested.
The governor of Louisiana requested federal help. Legally very different.
They are being deployed on American soil for their force projection.
Will a useful idiot throwing a rock at a federal building be sufficient casus belli for the latter?
I have zero problem with deporting people that are here illegally. I have plenty of problems with how it's currently being done.
Can you expand on this? If you are referring to the AEA, as far as I know that’s not what is being used in LA.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-...
Well in a Freudian way this statement could be interpreted to exactly mean that what ICE is doing is illegal.
No comments yet
The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions. They do not declare themselves, do not present their civil warrant, do not produce identification, and subsequently frequently do not follow laws, regulation, or the constitutional requirements of due process.
There is no reason that their neighbors, family, and friends need to be happy with what’s happening. They are afforded protection in our society to be angry and disclaim the government without fear of persecution or prosecution. When they’re then persecuted and prosecuted for doing that, people are pissed by the injustice. Then when their governments responsible is to fly in the military, you should expect an explosive situation.
Indeed it seems pretty clear the explosive situation was premeditated and planned - using armored vehicles and riot armored police to invade immigrant neighborhoods and abduct service workers and day laborers in broad daylight when a simple standard ICE operation was clearly designed to provoke strong response in those neighborhoods. Everything after that has been pretty deductively arrived at to create this precise situation. Even the language of insurrection and rebellion - laughably absurd claims for even a riot - which hadn’t happened until the national guard were deployed - are carefully chosen words to provide pretext for what comes next.
I desperate miss the states rights individual freedoms libertarian leaning republicans. They would never have done these things.
Also that they’re going after many people who are actually attempting to comply with the law, because those are the easiest to find. Meanwhile tens of millions of undocumented immigrants are still here, and the lesson they’re being taught is don’t trust the legal process, stay under the radar. In the end the Trump administration is unlikely to make a large dent in the undocumented population - they certainly haven’t so far. It’s mostly theater. They’ll just end up discovering how unintended consequences work.
That doesn't include the hundreds of students legally here on student visas.
And of course, if ICE is going to deport people in the country illegally: it's well establish by now that Musk and Melania violated the terms of their nonresident visas when they first came to the U.S., rendering their U.S. citizenship null and void (Musk worked in violation of his student visa; Melania both worked in violation of her tourist visa and overstayed her visa by several years; if she hadn't married Trump she would have been deported and banned from the U.S. for 10 years).
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Note that this affords the freedom to relocate within, leave, and return to one’s country, not the freedom to enter into other countries in violation of their immigration laws.
As it turns out when you send a force trained only to kill and subjugate, that's what they do. A few guardsman stood down but most did not.
No it's not. They just like slavery. If it was about states rights they wouldn't support sending in the military.
What I find shocking about comments like yours is the reminder that propaganda works. Someone in the republican party decided "guys, advocating for slavery openly doesn't go over well, let's tell them it's actually about states rights", and loads of people actually believed it.
There's no need to give legitimacy to the lie.
We'll see how far Project 2025 will go within Trump's term. I'm not optimistic.
Well, I'm not so sure about that last part anymore.
Yet it's clear your police isn't trained for deascalation (or at all tbh), and have no idea of how a mobile defense works (that's a doctrinal issue, not an individual issue).
Kinda liked the 'shame, shame' chant though, very good idea, keep it up!
Tame is good.
The administration wants the protests to turn into a flashpoint so they can send in more military control.
Lighting things on fire and launching fireworks is enough to create the tipping point. Don't encourage this stuff.
https://theonion.com/protesters-urged-not-to-give-trump-admi...
The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors. The worst possible thing for a protest movement to do is scaring the masses, since then they will flock to the state for "protection" and give the state carte blanche to get the situation under control.
For all the work that MLK and his coalition did to practice nonviolence and to appear respectable, they were always disliked by the majority of the public. Being liked by the public is not a prerequisite to getting results. If you focus too much on respectibility, the impact of what you can do decreases until it hits YouGov petition levels.
Being annoying can be quite beneficial to a protest. It brings attention and forces people to think about you. There is a point after which it turns people off, and becomes a net negative, but you usually have to be very annoying for that to happen.
Being scary is entirely different thing though. When people are afraid they tend to become closed off to new ideas, and look to strong leaders. You absolutely don't want that in a protest.
> The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
I think the ultimate point of a protest is to reach the ordinary people who aren't part of a movement. Movements succede and fail not by how much they convince the die hard supporters, but by how much they convinced average uninvolved people.
This doesn't just work by getting the public on your side. It works by showing that you are not repressed by fear. Fear is how facists rule, so showing others they don't need to fear, that they can decide not to fear, that is the real threat to authority.
That means they will abuse you to make others fear. When that happens, you need it to trigger outrage as widely as possible.
The problem with your opinion is that it leaves out the fact that one side is deeply involved in ensuring this escalation takes place, either in fact or in appearance only.
So regardless of what protestors are doing, or even who infiltrated protests to inflame and escalate events, the Trump administration is hell bent on having these protests escalate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Split
So a tipping point is required. ideally you engineer it to more likely tip the right way. But doing nothing because otherwise it might reinforce the status quo, will guarantee the status quo.
Horribly, this means one of the best possible outcomes is an unprovoked massacre by these Marines, ordered by Trump.
I've seen a number of people on social media thanking others for neutralising tear gas, so it's definitely happening. Maybe just not evenly distributed.
I tell my friends that we need to look to Hong Kong and France in case the protests move to Texas.
Such "protests" would be much rarer and shorter in Texas.
No comments yet
edit: I got throttled, as is the case on HN when things get "active". Here is my response to koolba:
---
At a head? Sure.
Do I think police can get rough and "in it" with civilians without live fire and without the use of the US Military? Yes.
Do I think, when a sufficient bloc of a city rebels against its law enforcement, then maybe the law enforcement should reconsider what they're enforcing? Also yes.
I disagree with the premise that the State is always right and that their monopoly on violence is absolute.
We celebrate the US revolution and revolutions across the world when governments act illegally and against the will of the people, violating civil rights.
I would not support firing into a crowd of people because of minor property damage.
So you are saying, guy throws rock. Now he has no rock. He should be shot despite having no rock?
So you are saying, police riot gear is useless against rocks?
Trailer: https://youtu.be/QDz1WVUHim4
Def worth watching with people and sharing. Very inspiring <3
In the end, it will come down to SNCOs and NCOs to make the decision because the Marines try to push down "battlefield" decisions to as close to the action as possible. Of any service, I expect your average Marine to be able to make independent decisions in the moment. That may or may not be a good thing.
This is the heaviest hammer in the toolbox. Deploying it against citizens he doesn't like because he resents their message is a historical display of bad character and is profoundly unethical in a way that the harshest adjectives struggle to reflect.
I’d cite my source, but can’t find it. I also can’t find anything saying he is invoking it.
Do you have any specific source?
Edit: I’ve found several sources that make It clear the Insurrection Act had not been invoked.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/09/politics/insurrection-act-tru... - “Trump officials quietly discuss moves in LA that avoid invoking Insurrection Act, but it’s not off the table”
Republicans would have to lose a lot of seats for it to happen. Or, Trump would do something beyond the pale for the GOP. Hard to imagine what would make them change their minds on it. Probably not thousands of dead protesters.
> Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.
It seems like Trump has not invoked the insurrection act but instead it’s all under a different federal law. Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor, has a write up [2] on Title 10 vs the Insurrection Act and some possible concerns. He posted this about the National guard but given the military release states they are being deployed to assist the nation guard under title 10 it still seems relevant. To quote the TL;DR of his post:
> The TL;DR here is that Trump has not (yet) invoked the Insurrection Act, which means that the 2000 additional troops that will soon be brought to bear will not be allowed to engage in ordinary law enforcement activities without violating a different law—the Posse Comitatus Act. All that these troops will be able to do is provide a form of force protection and other logistical support for ICE personnel. Whether that, in turn, leads to further escalation is the bigger issue (and, indeed, may be the very purpose of their deployment). But at least as I’m writing this, we’re not there yet.
[1] https://www.northcom.mil/Newsroom/Press-Releases/Article/421...
[2] https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/156-federalizing-the-californ...
Trump deploys National Guard as Los Angeles protests against immigration agents (105 points, 2 days ago, 50 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44214230
The National Guard Deployment in LA Is a Threat to Democracy (15 points, 7 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44230137
(Although you'd think 2000 National Guard troops would be enough without the 700 Marines)
The President can of course dispatch the military for domestic law enforcement, but to do so he needs to establish a legal exception, like the Insurrection Act. That hasn't happened yet.
[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/poss...
The USA is a dictatorship now, the trump cult has won. Let's hope it crumbles fast.
Kind of like shooting reporters with rubber bullets.
This is a dire situation and I'm not sure how this country crawls back out of this authoritarian slide, but we've got to somehow.
(But to your point, anything >0% is pretty horrible.)
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...
>In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote and 65.3% (or 154 million people) voted according to new voting and registration tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Moreover, due to the electoral college and Senate and gerrymandering of House districts, the majority is hardly needed for attain power. I bet that even in other societies, throughout time, roughly a third of the population will not react to what one of the other thirds is doing (even if they claim they don't approve in polls).
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-d... ("Former Pentagon chief Esper says Trump asked about shooting protesters")
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tiananmen-... ("Resurfaced Trump interview about Tiananmen Square massacre shows what he thinks of protests")
I think the analogy will be more akin to Bloody Sunday, a hideous massacre denounced across the globe that sparks a 25 year long insurgency against an illegitimate monarch, the occupation, and the loyalist WASP paramilitaries who kept disappearing Catholic minorities. Yeah… if you don’t think those old world sectarian hatreds don’t still fester under the surface, you’re not paying attention.
Imagine if the Provos had FPV drones, ransomware as a service, and 3D printed rocket launchers. The future is gonna suck.
edit: and remember, it was a net positive for conservatives in the end.
Y'know, if we even get to vote again.
EDIT:
Downvote all you want. It doesn't make me wrong. It was blatantly apparent that a second Trump administration would end up this way. Anyone who told you that Harris would be anything remotely similar was lying.
We're not even six whole months in. It's going to get worse.
The only effect of any protest vote is to tell your friends. Hasan had a lot of friends. Arab communities in Michigan had a lot of friends. Never-never Trumpers had a lot of friends.
I personally believe that a personal political strategy should have a conscientious goal, cognizant of the effects of its action.
There’s no separate moral universe where you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side.
A voter should weigh the value of their statement vs the value of voting for the lesser evil. In a state like mine, where the results of the next three presidential elections could be predicted with accuracy today, a statement seems to have more value to me; if I lived in a battleground state, it would be different. I have often voted in presidential primaries where the candidate was already selected; again, I value my vote for the lesser evil much less than a statement.
Harris was an authoritarian, but not an autocrat. People got sick of ever-growing bureaucratic authoritarianism, but made the mistake of thinking the problem was the bureaucracy rather than the authoritarianism. So now the bureaucracy has been smashed and we are left with autocratic authoritarianism.
Its been comical watching broken systems fall over themselves to accommodate trump while people pretend that they just need to vote for people who will maintain the broken systems instead of abusing them.
If you didnt spend the last 12 years tearing down your broken system and replacing it, you support all this bs. Eventually someone was going to get past the election, into the cockpit of the machine and press all these fucking buttons.
Not only did americans vote for the chimpanzee twice, they never got rid of all the buttons.
"Elections have consequences" you guys are meant to be the demonstration of how an armed populace responds to tyranny. But until I see you guys actually do anything about it, its just proof that more american values are completely worthless.
Enjoy the fall.
However, enforcement of immigration laws has been one of the biggest parts of his election platform, if not the central part(build the wall, etc).
I imagine his voters are happy to see some action being taken.
The protestors could really do with some better optics, destroying property and waving foreign flags is just going to increase approval for military action.
If the protestors had instead marched peacefully with American flags, it would have been a much better PR win.
If you pay attention, you will notice that immigration policies have nothing to do with what's happening in the US, and at most they are a pretext.
The Trump administration is rounding up and transfering people, including US citizens, to prisons in third world countries they have no connection with. They are doing this without due process or legal basis. They have attacked and threatened judges who can and did opposed these actions. Lately the Trump administration is even threatening elected officials, including governors, with imprisonment.
Now you are witnessing the Trump administration illegally mobilizing both a state's national guard and the armed forces against its own citizens.
At one point anyone has to ask themselves if this is really about immigration at all.
News flash. The opposition is always going to say something like this to set an impossible bar for the protestors. This type of thinking undermines all protests, protects the status quo, and basically boils down to victim blaming.
Not to mention you can always have false flag operatives undermining a movement.
It's true that the opposition will say that even the best most peaceful protest is bad. But sometimes people broadly will agree with them, and other times they won't, and that depends on what's actually going on.
This is a pre- post-truth line of thought.
Then this would be a great time for him to start following them.
Many of his actions this year have been in violation of immigration laws. Incredibly brazen violation of them, in fact.
There are issues worth rioting over. Maybe you don't feel that illegal immigration is one of them, but you should at least understand the logic of a protest, and why sometimes becoming violent is necessary to accomplish anything.
Trump is purposely manufacturing a crisis because he knows his opposition is taking a losing position. Polls have been very clear that voters want the government to enforce immigration laws. Maybe not in Los Angeles, but nationally, the left is taking the losing side of this issue.
The idea is absolutely farcical. Plus, we know for sure that these raids have taken people mistakenly.
It's extra bad when the government's official position is that they can't get someone back from the foreign prison they're sent to. The threat to all citizens is clear; that's why they're resisting. "The left" may lose in the mainstream media but it's clearly the correct side of history.
It’s clear since the election - Trump administration will use violence without any due process. Sort of Catch-22.
If you resist the indiscriminate purge of what Trump considers “illegal immigrants”[0] - military will be called to suppress the protests with some sort of never ending “emergency situation” established giving him full dictatorial powers.
Or he will just do the purges without resistance and achieve same goals.
“Protest voters” and democratic leadership have a lot to think about right now.
[0] lets not forget that you can be a US citizen and you can still be purged
The destruction happens in the blink of an eye.
Rebuilding takes a lifetime.
In a democracy people can vote for the Devil him self, and the Devil him self would become the president, but there are institutions which prevent him from instituting his demonic policies.
Elections have consequences, but if those consequences are the loss of rights, then you never lived in a democracy to begin with.
Self-coups are a thing, and the best person to subvert a democracy is one who already wields considerable power within one. History is replit, unless you're doing the no-true-scottsman shuffle on the topic of democracy - if so, carry on.
So I guess these folks who live in a "real democracy" according to you just have the good government fairy swoop in when the people vote in a dictator.
At the end of the day, a democracy is just people, all the way down. It doesn't matter what laws you've written down, what courts you have, what procedures you've developed. If enough people stop believing in the enforcement of those laws, or court orders, or governmental norms, there is no deus ex machina.
Everyone’s okay with peaceful protests, but they should call in the national guard and prosecute people for violence. You might hate Trump, but in my previous experience, it’s the residents of the most liberal districts that suffer all the consequences of this nonsense.
Edit:
Fwiw, the governor probably shouldn’t have waited for permission. A white man encroaching on the city run by a black woman at the height of Freddie Gray, tough spot to be in.
> where the mayor of the city said that she was going to allow, give protesters room to destroy and wasn't going to stop them.
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/hogan-says-defunding-police-wors...
Of the 2000 national guard deployed, only 300 have actually been operationalized.
There was hardly any looting or rioting. Certainly not more than could be handled locally. Trump is doing this to deliberately escalate the situation.
> LA had plenty of local police to handle the scale of the protests before
sure, and why didn't they do it this time? I suspect for the same reason: both Bass and Newsom want to escalate the situation as well. And when both sides want escalation that's what we get. My 2c.
Was literally everything destroyed, no, but I've got photographs of small businesses boarded up with they already looted everything, please don't loot again. There was devastation throughout the city.
After everything happened, national guard trucks showed up and guarded the devastation. If you drive out to the wealthy burbs, it's like nothing happened. They devastated one of the most liberal parts of America. Congrats.
Glad to see Trump learned his lesson from the first time.
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Here's hoping this is purely an optics play and they are only there to waste money and incite nationalism. Because if this escalates in any way and the US military turns on Americans, its hard to understate how bad things could get.
Now ask yourself why Trump is sending a group (who are explicitly prohibited from making arrests) whose entire mission is war to the 2nd biggest city in the country? It's for the same reason those Marines carry guns.
As I've seen others remark, LA gets far worse whenever the Dodgers or Lakers win a championship. It is not a war zone, warriors are not needed. But clearly they are desired.
YMMV.
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If it was ever true, it hasn't been true for a long time.
There used to be (and probably still is) a saying in the US military that goes something like "Folks who can't hack it in the military wash out and become cops.".
The military is not at all configured to be an effective long-term occupying force, but its personnel are trained to be soldiers [0] and peacekeepers. (While I'm absolutely certain that one can find examples of psychos that should have been detected and discharged earlier, that's true of any sufficiently-large organization. Finding every malicious person is a task that's next to impossible.)
Anyway, in a high-pressure, chaotic situation, I'd rather come up on a random member of the US military [1] than a random cop any day of the week.
[0] Yes, this does mean that they damage, destroy, injure, and kill when required.
[1] Whether active duty, reservist, or honorably discharged.
They don't deserve any benefit of the doubt at this point. Ask yourself what the MAGA reaction would've been to troops being deployed to their riot at the Capitol.
Is it crazy to want someone to protect my neighbor's car , or business? Is it wild to expect my lifetime saving not be torched or destroyed?
You realize that this is all happening in a very small part of LA, which is an absolutely enormous metropolitan area with more than 10 million residents. The cars being torched are Waymos (which have been happily recording video that is turned over to authorities at request, instead of by warrant -- this action will keep them out of the protest zones) and no businesses are being harmed. The ones being violent are in uniform (even LAPD is saying that protesters are peaceful and those who are violent are people who are frequently violent and showed up for the fight, which is telling on themselves more than a bit).
For 99% of Angelenos, this weekend could have been business as usual if they chose to ignore the federal threats to their neighbors. Millions went to farmers markets, kids birthday parties, church, and all of the other regular weekend activities. The city has not been invaded by anyone other than feds, it is not a war zone, it's not even close to a riot. You are being lied to and manipulated if you believe any of that.
And this week, many residents who have the privilege of doing so are standing in line to barricade the entrance to schools that are hosting graduation ceremonies, so abuelas can celebrate the end of elementary school without being terrified of being kidnapped by men in masks. This is how the community protects its own, and a lot of other places could learn from that if they gave a shit.
In LA, the guys standing outside of Home Depot are the kind of guys that a woman would feel safe telling that they're carrying cash, invite them into their car, and bring them to their house... alone. These are not dangers to anyone.
LAPD and especially LASD, on the other hand, aren't the kind of guys who are safe alone with their own wives.
Sorry, this ship has sailed.
For those who don’t know the reference: This quote is from a journalist who tries to make a protest with a few billion dollars private property set on fire (BLM), pass a peaceful, with fire as the decorum of the journalist. It ignited the moods because the speech was obviously contradicted by the background, highlighting that journalists invert reality and are missioned for propaganda (by whom, nobody knows).
And then “the People” voted for Trump. It’s probable there is massive support for the current deployment of forces. The protestors themselves probably aren’t the real target of this episode, it’s probably rather about highlighting the lack of will and complacency of the Californian structures in establishing order.
It’s dangerous to have the military do it. The Founding Fathers knew this.
And the protestors aren't the problem; the problem are the looters using the protestors as cover. The looters mostly belong to the retail theft gangs that have been plaguing stores across the country (even in red states) since COVID.
No, it’s not crazy but for an unusually large portion of the populace it makes you a racist.
Ditto for any suggestion that immigration law be enforced.
I mean, Gavin Newsom just did a long interview from a "crisis center" where he did exactly that, today. And plenty of Democratic politicians also speak against violent protests whenever they occur.
But unless you actually pay pretty close attention to what Democratic politicians actually say, you won't hear these statements. Fox doesn't cover Democratic politicians speaking against violence. And frankly, if there's a 99.9% peaceful protest with one burning car, the media will devote 80% of their coverage to the burning car, and maybe a few sentences to politicians saying the burning car is bad. The media is unfortunately interested in spectacle and entertainment.
I pay more attention than average to what politicians of both parties say, and it's kind of hilarious how often I hear "Why didn't so-and-so say X?" (uh, they do every week or two), or "I never believed so-and-so would do Y" (uh, they literally promised Y on the campaign trail). I don't know how to fix this.
Trump: We must have law and order. Immigration laws must be enforced. We will not tolerate riots or destruction.
Protesters: The government shouldn't detain people who are in the country illegally. We should ignore federal laws we don't agree with. If we disagree with federal agents who are enforcing existing laws, we should impede them, attack them, and destroy property to lash out.
This is not an endorsement of Trump, as he's clearly milking this situation to squeeze Newsom. This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal to everyone outside California. Until the left takes a logically defensible position on illegal immigration, they will continue to be vulnerable to Trump's theater on this and he will continue to bludgeon them with it in elections.
>This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal
What's fascinating with current US politics and media is how these two sentences can be constructed in same sentence in an attempt to come off as "see I'm smart and media literate, I can see the full picture!" while literally the first sentence of your comment shows that that's not the case.
The media repeating "Democrats are far left" long enough and it have penetrated your head. There's probably pandering to far left in democratic party I assume, but it have been magnified to a reality altering level by media so that's now believed as the core, while same thing happening on the far-right & Republican party.
Both side must be truly be thinking like you, I assume. "I see the full picture, I'm smart" while parroting a distortion only required to be repeated for years.
If everyone could put their phone down, touch some grass, take a road trip to the opposite political isle maybe this distortion could've been avoided.
We should be clear, protesting is not illegal. It's protected first amendment speech. There is activity at protests that is illegal, and should be punished, but that's not protesting and lumping them together puts a chilling effect on.
"Too many people are saying, "It's terrible that innocent black men died, but this property destruction has to stop!"
when they should be saying, "It's terrible that there is property destruction, but the death of innocent black men has to stop!"."
I've seen lots of pictures of protestors waving Mexican flags, and of the burning Waymos, etc. My guess is these are a very small percentage of protestors, but it makes for great TV, and Trump gets to say that he's "protecting America against violent foreign invaders". And I can imagine many people watching this and agreeing with him - I mean, I consider myself quite liberal, but waving a Mexican flag at these events just makes me think you can fuck right off with that bullshit.
It's a great example IMO of how Trump deliberately sows division and escalates whenever possible in order to use people's fear to consolidate power. It's basically Autocracy 101.
I'm confused, you consider yourself quite liberal but you think it's bullshit for Mexicans in the US to celebrate their heritage?
If you think that's what's going on, you are indeed quite confused
You either support somewhat violent protests, regardless of topic, expecting that law enforcement and civilians will handle it amongst themselves, or you are authoritarian and demand that the federal government intervene with the US Armed Forces the moment someone throws a rock at a cop car.
This is an abomination, and anyone who supports the deployment of troops in my opinion lacks the values I thought were universal in this country.
(To support this action by Trump is to say you don't support the second amendment, on the grounds that the people should never have the power to subvert the state).
I really hated when Fox news would say things like this and I hate it when individuals do. It makes it impossible for us to communicate.
Just because the other side doesn't share your values doesn't mean they have none. You might say their values are evil. That's a different discussion, but they're rarely just reacting blindly.
I'm saying they lack the values I grew up believing were universal in this country.
No, they do not get to even claim order any more. This situation is being escalated by Trump in order to have a raging crisis to attack and drive more division. Just like he did to the 2A/BLM protests, just like he did with his appalling anti-leadership during Covid. The fascists only real value is now naked autocratic "strong" man authoritarianism. They only reason they're still clinging to caring about the law is to assuage their own egos that the suffering they're reveling in is justified.
Finally, the American people fights for democracy, after centuries of oppresion. /s
What happens in these coming months defines a major historical event for the USA, which sets it's course for the coming century.
It may become a country which is directly hostile to you. If you are American and are ignoring this, then it is no different to getting mad your family is wanting to talk about the raging kitchen fire that is unaddressed and escalating because "so what, the stove top has fire sometimes, it's a gas heater, that's normal" which, sure, would be right, but right now the entire wall is ablaze.
You cannot ignore this one, even those of us in other countries cannot ignore this one, as we have to reconsider our alliance with a country that reasonably one can assume is in the middle of falling to a fascist regime.
This is NOT run of the mill politics. This is genuinely about the collective future of the Anglosphere.
I don't love the phrasing of inferiors, but at least evil certainly applies. (Well thought out, well informed) Politics is a duty not a luxury.
And it's even topical here - this surveillance industry that grew out of many tech startups is itself at ground zero of this fascist takeover, both boosting extremist disinformation to drive "engagement" and also creating a crop of newly-minted elites with the audacity to kick over the whole apple cart of our American way of life.
If that kind of talk worries you, consider how much uglier it will be when the good people of LA form unregulated militias instead. Do you really want to see Ruby Ridge 2: Rooftop Korean boogaloo?
We are to depend on our trusted local law enforcement to protect us, as well as our valiant governors who will assuredly call up local guards to do the same. Examples of brave, novel Democratic resistance to Trump abound these days. There's no need to worry!
What can they do to guard then?