Trump foists National Guard on unwilling California

What happened

President Donald Trump mobilized the California National Guard to Los Angeles on Saturday over the objection of local officials and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). Trump said his presidential memorandum was necessary to tackle the "lawlessness" in L.A. County after protests erupted over ICE immigration raids at Home Depots and other locations starting Friday.

As the protests escalated Sunday in response to the first 300 of 2,000 activated National Guard troops arriving at the downtown Metropolitan Detention Center, Newsom formally asked Trump to rescind the "unlawful" and unnecessary deployment, calling it a "serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation."

Who said what

Trump's "unorthodox use of a law aimed at quelling serious domestic unrest" or a foreign attack "appears unprecedented," The Washington Post said. The last president to deploy the National Guard domestically without a request from the state's governor was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. Trump — who congratulated the National Guard for a "great job" in Los Angeles before the first troop arrived in the city — told reporters Sunday that "we're gonna have troops everywhere. We're not going to let this happen to our country."

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Los Angeles and state police and federal agents fired tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators, some of whom threw water bottles and set at least four self-driving Waymo cabs ablaze. "Donald Trump has created the conditions you see on your TV tonight," Newsom said on MSNBC Sunday night.

It's "fanciful to think that raiding restaurants to snatch busboys, or Home Depot to grab stock clerks, won’t inspire a backlash," The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial, but Trump "knows Americans don't like protests that include burning tires" or "broad disruptions" of public order. Americans "routinely cause more property damage after their sports teams win or lose," The New York Times said in an editorial. The closest the U.S. has come to Trump's definition of rebellion is when his "own supporters (whom he incited, then mostly pardoned) sacked the U.S. Capitol in 2021," and he did not call out the National Guard then.

What next?

Trump's deployment is an "illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act," Newsom told MSNBC, "and we’re going to test that theory with a lawsuit."