News Analysis: A political lesson for L.A. from an unrestrained president
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- The Trump administration took less than 24 hours to decide on a historic deployment of the National Guard.
- The response from Trump risks broadening isolated protests in Los Angeles into a wider law enforcement challenge.
WASHINGTON — When racial justice protests roiled cities across America at the depths of the pandemic, President Trump, then in his first term, demonstrated restraint. Threats to invoke the Insurrection Act and to federalize the National Guard never materialized.
This time, it took less than 24 hours of isolated protests in Los Angeles County before Trump, more aggressive than ever in his use of executive power, to issue a historic order.
“The federal government will step in and solve the problem,” he said on social media Saturday night, issuing executive action not seen since civil unrest gripped the nation in the 1960s.
It was the latest expression of a president unleashed from conventional parameters on his power, unconcerned with states’ rights or the proportionality of his actions. And the targeting of a Democratic city in a Democratic state was, according to the vice president, an intentional ploy to make a political lesson out of Los Angeles.
“The immediate question is the legality of the president pulling in the National Guard, and it is another clear example of the president using the full force of the government in response to resistance,” said Peter Kastor, chair of the history department at Washington University in St. Louis. “It speaks to how much the gloves are off in his second term.”
The pace of the escalation, and the federal government’s unwillingness to defer to cooperative local law enforcement authorities, raise questions about the administration’s intentions as it responds to protesters. The administration skipped several steps in an established ladder of response options, such as enhancing U.S. Marshals Service and Federal Protective Service personnel to protect federal prisons and property, before asking the state whether a National Guard deployment might be warranted.
Harold Koh, a former dean of Yale Law School, where he is now a professor, said the facts on the ground in a quiet Los Angeles are evidence that Trump’s claims of widespread disorder are “a pretext looking for a justification.”
“What’s been going across the board, where this ties together — tariffs, Harvard, immigration — is to assert claims of emergency and national security threats to trigger extraordinary powers that are rarely, if ever, invoked,” Koh said, “to give extremely expansive readings to statutes that were enacted for other, limited purposes, and to try to use that to get into zones where they think they’re being resisted.”
Unions in California are different from many in the U.S. because they are predominately people of color and immigrants. The arrest of a union president in L.A. will likely activate these unions to become powerful forces of nonviolent protest.
Local officials were clear that they did not want, or need, federal assistance. And they are concerned that Trump’s heavy-handed response risks escalating what was a series of isolated, heated clashes consisting of a few hundred people into a larger law enforcement challenge that could roil the city.
“We tried to talk to the administration and tell them that there was absolutely no need to have troops on the ground here in Los Angeles — the protests that happened last night in L.A. were relatively minor, about 100 protesters,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said. “So this is unnecessary.”
The president’s historic deployment prompted fury among local Democratic officials who warned of an infringement on states’ rights. Trump’s takeover of the California National Guard, Gov. Gavin Newsom said, was prompted “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle.”
“Don’t give them one,” he said.
Vice President JD Vance, calling the anti-ICE protesters “insurrectionists,” welcomed the political pushback, stating on X that “one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil.”
His use of the term “insurrectionists — echoed by others in the administration, including Stephen Miller, the president’s chief advisor on immigration — suggests the administration may be looking to invoke the Insurrection Act, a powerful tool that could enable the president to suspend posse comitatus, an 1878 law that prohibits the use of federal law enforcement in state and local matters.
But the vice president’s remarks also underscore the political motivations behind Saturday’s action. The last time Trump faced a decision on calling in the National Guard to quell insurrectionists — on Jan. 6, 2021 — he declined to do so.
“The morning of Jan. 6 was a protest rally. The afternoon of Jan. 6 was an attack on a federal building, the Capitol,” Kastor said. “He wouldn’t call up the National Guard in that moment of crisis, but he’ll do it now. In that case, it was people who supported him. Here it is people opposing him.”
‘Zero tolerance’
Protests against ICE agents on Friday and Saturday were limited in scale and location. Several dozen people protested the flash raids on Friday afternoon outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, with some clashing with agents and vandalizing the building. The Los Angeles Police Department authorized so-called less-lethal munitions against a small group of “violent protesters” after concrete was thrown at an officer. The protest disbursed by midnight.
On Saturday, outside a Home Depot, demonstrators chanted “ICE go home” and “No justice, no peace.” Some protesters yelled at deputies, and a series of flash-bang grenades was deployed.
Surprise U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps in downtown Los Angeles on Friday prompted fierce pushback from elected officials and protesters.
“What are you doing!” one man screamed out.
Times reporters witnessed federal agents lobbing multiple rounds of flash grenades and pepper balls at protesters.
Despite the limited scale of the violence, by Saturday evening, the Trump administration embraced the visuals of a city in chaos compelling federal enforcement of law and order.
“The Trump Administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Saturday night. “These criminals will be arrested and swiftly brought to justice. The commander in chief will ensure the laws of the United States are executed fully and completely.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a statement Saturday, said the administration is prepared to go further, deploying active-duty U.S. Marines to the nation’s second-largest city. “This is deranged behavior,” Newsom responded.
Trump’s decision Saturday to call in the National Guard, using a rarely used authority called Title 10, has no clear historic precedent. President Lyndon Johnson cited Title 10 in 1965 to protect civil rights marchers during protests in Selma, Ala., but did so out of concern that local law enforcement would decline to do so themselves.
An hours-long standoff between protesters and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents erupted Saturday morning near a Home Depot in Paramount.
By contrast, this weekend, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department said it was fully cooperating with federal law enforcement. “We are planning for long-term civil unrest and collaborating with our law enforcement partners,” the department said in a statement.
The 2,000 guardsmen called up for duty is double the number that were assigned by local authorities to respond to much wider protests that erupted throughout Los Angeles in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
Tom Homan, the president’s so-called border czar, told Fox News on Saturday evening that the administration was “already ahead of the game” in its planning for a National Guard deployment.
“This is about enforcing the law, and again, we’re not going to apologize for doing it,” he said. “We’re stepping up.”
National Guard troops began arriving in Los Angeles on Sunday morning, deploying around federal buildings in L.A. County.
“If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs,” Trump wrote on Truth, his social media platform, “then the federal government will step in and solve the problem.”
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