In recent days, the city of Los Angeles has been the epicenter of a tectonic clash. On one side, the Trump Administration. On the other, not only groups of protesters who faced ICE raids, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but also state authorities, with the Democratic governorGavin Newsom leading the charge.
The trigger has been operations to capture and deport thousands of people, with a focus on neighborhoods with a Latino population of 70 or 80%, but in reality, it all started much earlier. Not on January 20, when Trump returned to the White House and began signing executive orders. Not even on November 5, when he won the elections and announced his plans, or during the long electoral campaign, which had "Illegal Invasion" as its main theme. It all dates back to his first term when Trump mobilized the National Guard to have soldiers help control the protests in Washington DC following George Floyd's death. And when he was eager to use the full might of the military.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has recounted in many interviews while promoting his memoir that during a White House meeting in 2020 to discuss the protests in a park very close to the White House, Trump turned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, and asked him: "Can't they just shoot them, in the legs or something?".
In late 2023, while fighting the primaries of his party, the then former president said at an Iowa rally that cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago were "dens of crime" and that while in the past he had held back, that would not happen again: "Next time, I won't wait. One of the things I did was let them run to show how badly they do. This time we don't have to wait anymore," he told his audience. "I've been in this situation before and followed all the rules waiting for the governors to ask me to send the National Guard, but they didn't. In Minneapolis, the city was in flames for seven days," he reiterated this Tuesday from the Oval Office.
What is happening is the opportunity the White House has been not waiting for, but preparing for years. There are at least a dozen reasons that explain, contextualize, and provide background. It is the dreamed opportunity, with an open clash with massive media coverage, in real-time, against a state that is massively and historically Democratic and for the central element of his political discourse to return to power: immigration, deportations, and "violent left."
According to his critics, the president is declaring false emergencies to expand his powers, undermine the Constitution, and destroy civil liberties. If everything is an emergency, from the economy to fentanyl, from tariffs to education, everything is extraordinary and requires extraordinary measures. If everything is exceptional, it eventually leads to a state of exception. "President Trump is legitimately using his executive authority — as evidenced by his numerous victories in the courts — to provide resolution and relief to the American people," the White House states.
During his first term, Trump considered on several occasions the possibility of deploying troops on national territory, a huge taboo. Either to suppress protests or to control crime. His advisors at that time, especially Defense Secretary Esper, managed to dissuade him. But today his team is made up of loyalists, and that is why, in addition to 4,000 National Guard members, a hybrid force largely made up of reservists, he has activated an entire Marine platoon, 700 soldiers, something that state authorities have challenged in court as an "abuse of power."
But there is much more. Nothing satisfies the Republican voter, and specifically the Trumpist, more than a brawl trying to deport people, even if the border czar himself, Tom Homan, acknowledges that a very high percentage of those detained have no criminal record. If there are also protests, riots, masked protesters (which awaken the great specter of the antifas, the trigger that activates all the prejudices and fears of the conservative world) and looting, the cocktail is almost perfect.
All of this happens, not by chance, in a city like Los Angeles, a "sanctuary city" in terms of immigration, where authorities do not cooperate with federal deportation efforts. And where all major riots since the Rodney King case begin or end with a racial component. George H.W. Bush was the last president to use the Insurrection Act precisely in response to the riots there in 1992 after the acquittal of the white police officers who brutally beat King in an incident that was recorded on video.
California, the symbol of evil
California symbolizes in the Republican imaginary everything that is wrong, decadence, perversion. A predominantly 'blue' state, Democratic, and that does not require ID to vote, so they claim there is massive fraud in elections for conservatives to lose. With a governor, Gavin Newsom, who is on all lists as a possible presidential candidate for the Democratic Party in 2028. With the added possibility that Kamala Harris positions herself as his potential successor, as Newsom has exhausted his terms. And all this while Washington sought ways, and pretexts, to cut federal funds to the state.
But the reasons, motives, and excuses do not end there. The timing is perfect for a clash of this nature. It allows the administration to regain some breathing room and divert attention after the brutal public confrontation between the president and the world's richest man, Elon Musk, with the brutal mention of financier pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Economic problems. Or the entrenchment in the courts of all major Executive measures, from tariffs to dismissals of officials.
And besides, it is a crisis that unfolds not in technical, legal, and almost political terms, but emotional, symbolic, very visual. It is a crisis that allows for epic, inflamed language. "Arrest the masked ones right now," "it looks very bad in LA, send the troops," "they are paid insurgents," "once a great city, Los Angeles has been invaded and occupied by undocumented immigrants and criminals. Now, violent and insurgent mobs harass and attack our federal agents," Trump has written on his social media these days. "It is a fight to save civilization," said one of his top advisors on these issues, Stephen Miller. "It looks like a third world place," said Attorney General Pm Bondi. A rhetoric in which the president is unbeatable.
To complete the perfect storm, two crucial elements. The first, subjugation. Trump is not satisfied with victories; he wants them to be absolute, to crush his rivals. Force them to kneel, whether they are law firms, small states, universities, or companies. And now he is going after the largest, most populous, wealthiest, and most Democratic state. If he topples the strongest, as in the case of Harvard, the others may withdraw from any potential fight.
The second factor is the theory of unitary executive power. Trump and his supporters follow a political and legal doctrine that argues that the Founding Fathers gave the president powers almost equivalent to those of an emperor, and that neither the legislative nor the judicial branches can or should interfere too much. His famous tweet "He who saves his Country violates no Law" summarizes the worldview well.
The White House, which is making all decisions through executive orders and not attempting to use the Republican majority in both houses of Congress, is now doing the same, invoking the powers of the framers of the Constitution through some of the laws they created. That is why it used one from 1798 (previously used only in 1812 and the two World Wars) regarding the threat of foreign invasion to justify the expulsions of Mexicans or Venezuelans, arguing that gangs and cartels were nearly equivalent to European armies of the 18th century. And that is why it is now also threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which allows for the use of federal troops on domestic soil to quell a rebellion.
When asked this Tuesday if he would invoke the Insurrection Act, President Trump was clear. "If there is an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We will see. But I can tell you that last night was terrible. The night before was terrible, there were areas in Los Angeles that could have been considered an insurrection. It was terrible."
The last president to send the National Guard without a request from the state governor was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama, following the example of Eisenhower or Kennedy, who mobilized it so that black students could enter schools and universities, blocked by racists. The same ministers and advisors of the president who justify and applaud the decision are the ones who said that if Biden did something similar, it would be an unacceptable interference and an unprecedented attack on the rights of the states.