The Chaos Is The Point

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

Hi, you’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller, let’s get started. Today we’re talking about what’s happened in LA over the weekend, how it started, and how this is all part of Trump’s big, beautiful plan. Then I’ll answer your questions you asked in my YouTube community post at the end.

First, what’s going on in LA. Over the weekend, multiple days of protests led to the brief closure of the 101 freeway, numerous arrests, the burning of several Waymo self-driving cars, and, ultimately, the deployment of about 300 national guard troops by executive order of the president on Sunday and Trump announced 2000 more to be deployed, plus 700 marines despite protests on Monday remaining generally peaceful. In that executive order from Saturday, which was clearly drafted long before the events of this weekend unfolded in preparation for taking advantage of this type of unrest, Trump cited to 10 USC section 12406 which authorizes the president to federalize a state’s national guard, to call a state’s national guard members to assist with quelling rebellion against the authority of the US government. The law explicitly states “orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States.” Despite this explicit legal provision, and despite Trump’s own order directing “the Secretary of Defense to coordinate with the Governors of the States and National Guard Bureau in identifying and ordering into Federal service the appropriate members and units of the National Guard” Trump and his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent in troops over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom and without coordinating with him or any local authorities.

The executive order is notable both in that it allowed for the deployment of 2000 National Guard troops, even though only 300 have actually been sent, and it extends their deployment for up to 60 days. It is also notable because it is not limited in time or geography generally. It allows for deployment of troops, quote “at locations where protests against these [Federal] functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.” Meaning at any point Pete Hegseth could decide to deploy troops anywhere he claims there is or could be a threat, up to 2000 National Guard personnel for up to 60 days. Additionally, Hegseth could, under the guidelines of this order, quote “employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in ANY number determined appropriate in his discretion.” In ANY number. Any number Hegseth decides, he could deploy from ANY other branch of the armed forces. Indeed, Hegseth has confirmed there are hundreds of locally based Marines that have been given orders to prepare to be deployed to quell unrest in LA if needed. Technically he’s supposed to coordinate with governors but as we’ve seen in LA this weekend, that is apparently only a suggestion. Gavin Newsom has already promised he will be suing the federal government for breaking the law when it did not consult with him about the deployment of troops, but that is pretty much his only recourse and the Trump regime knows that. As they’ve made a habit of, especially in this second Trump term, this is an administration that puts the saying “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” on full display.

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What I think is important to unpack about this weekend’s events in LA is how they all started. Because much attention has been paid to burning cars and whether or not the protests have been peaceful, which we’ll get into, but that is overshadowing the reason why protestors showed up to begin with. In addition to not coordinating with local officials about National Guard deployment this weekend, the Trump regime has made it a habit of showing up to conduct ICE raids and arrests without coordinating with local law enforcement or forewarning anyone. This inevitably leads to chaos and has people all across the country on edge. This happened just last week here in Minneapolis when federal officials conducted a raid on one of the busiest corners of one of the most heavily immigrant populated neighborhoods in the city. Groups of residents immediately showed up when reports of federal officials and ICE sightings got out, and a protest ensued, requiring the Minneapolis Police Department to respond to unrest without any idea of what the hell federal agents were even doing there to begin with. This lack of transparency only aids federal officials, who can then say hey we were just doing a regular arrest actually there is nothing sketchy happening here, you all are overreacting and being crazy anarchist leftists, and there’s not much local mayors or governors can do to ease tensions because they are also in the dark about the nature of the federal activity. But especially for residents of so-called sanctuary cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles, people are on edge and looking out for federal activity because they want to protect their neighbors and do not agree with the way that the Trump regime is carrying out immigration enforcement. And leaving democratic governors in the dark about federal enforcement actions just gives the Trump regime ammunition to claim that leftist-led governments are letting anarchists run rampant in the streets.

The difference here in Minneapolis is that the protest that broke out happened in response to a single isolated incident. Not to say this city isn’t crawling with ICE agents, but Los Angeles is of course a much bigger city with a much larger immigrant population, and California shares a border with Mexico, so immigration enforcement there is going to be much more high profile and widespread. And so the protests that occurred in and around LA over the weekend got so big at first because they were in response to multiple incidents, including upwards of 7 different workplace raids at a garment factory, a Home Depot parking lot, and elsewhere.

Here’s the problem, though. When ICE raids a workplace, for example, to arrest certain individuals they believe are in the country illegally, they are conducting CIVIL arrests. ICE and immigration enforcement are part of civil law enforcement, as opposed to criminal law enforcement. ICE is not an arm of the Department of Justice, it is not tasked with arresting people for violating the criminal statute. They are engaged in “administrative arrests” to enforce immigration law. Yet despite this, they are conducting what have been described as “military-style” raids. Multiple legal observers and the ACLU have confirmed that the arrests carried out during the raids were done without any judicial warrants by heavily armed agents in tactical gear with varying levels of face coverings and identification. According to Al Jazeera, quote “Agents arrived in unmarked black SUVs and armoured vehicles and, at certain points, sealed off entire streets around targeted buildings. Drones were reportedly used for surveillance in some areas and access to sites was blocked off with yellow tape, similar to measures which would be taken during a high-threat counterterrorism or drug bust operation.” Reports of just how many people were arrested in those raids varies with some estimating upwards of over 100 people, though according to Al Jazeera, as of at least Saturday only a handful of lawyers have been allowed into the detention center where they’re being held. DHS has released information about 12 of the people arrested, of course highlighting the people with criminal histories to indicate that what they’re doing is simply taking violent criminals off the street and reinforcing their narrative that all immigrants are criminals and dangerous and therefore excessive force is justified. According to LAist, at least two of the 12 people DHS identified as having been arrested during the LA raids over the weekend were already in federal custody before this weekend. Meaning there’s no way they could have been arrested because they were already detained. So if we’re keeping a tally of the lies being told by the federal government about what’s happening, first it was that they were going to coordinate with state governors before deploying troops and second is that at least 12 of the people they arrested were violent criminals even though at least two of the people they named could not have been arrested over the weekend because they were already in custody.

The accounts on the ground also do not line up with what the federal government is claiming. The LA police department released a statement Saturday night that protests had been largely peaceful and without incident, thanking the people of LA for remaining calm. Throughout the night Saturday, the unrest intensified, but at no point did the Mayor of LA or Governor Gavin Newsom call for additional reinforcements. In fact, before troops even made it on the ground in LA, Trump issued a self-congratulatory social media post claiming responsibility for the lack of unrest in LA. Despite this, and in the face of condemnations from elected officials on the ground in LA, Trump decided to issue his executive order and deploy troops to the area. This decision was roundly criticized due to the fact that it was likely to only intensify unrest, violence, and chaos in the area, especially given the lack of coordination between federal troops and local law enforcement.

And tensions did escalate Sunday, with people on both sides taking advantage of the chaos to instigate violence. At one point, the 101 freeway was overtaken and people were throwing fireworks, electric scooters, and pieces of cement at the police below the highway overpass. Various Waymo electric self-driving cars were set on fire. One man was seen driving his van into protestors and cops alike. Both LAPD and National Guards troops used tear gas and other quote unquote “less lethal” weapons against protestors. Notably, at least two members of the media were shot with rubber bullets. British photojournalist Nick Stern has been a journalist for 30 years and told the BBC he had been hit by rubber bullets before, which always resulted in a bad bruise. This time, though, the bullet broke the skin and left a two inch hole in his leg that required surgery. According to Stern, at the time he was shot he was clearly a member of the press, standing visibly in the middle of the street. He believes he was shot by the LAPD though he said it was hard to tell. Again, the chaos can blur what’s really happening, making it hard to tell when either side is acting illegally. And video captured of an Australian journalist, mic in hand talking to a video camera, clearly a member of the press, shows a law enforcement officer turning towards her and shooting her directly with a rubber bullet. There is no one around her. She is facing away from law enforcement. Members of the press routinely get caught up in the violence of the uprisings they are reporting on, often getting injured, but the direct targeting of journalists and the press while clearly identifiable as press is deeply concerning especially given the general hostility this regime has shown against the press. While local law enforcement in California has claimed they are not in cahoots with ICE and were simply there to address unrest, it’s not like we’re dealing with bleeding heart liberals in local law enforcement either. The overlapping agendas of heavily militarized ICE agents and heavily militarized local law enforcement, even if they are not working in coordination, even if they are in a sanctuary city, creates situations ripe for abuse.

And the result of all of this is the terrorization of the local population, many of whom are not engaging in any form of protest and, if they are, the vast majority are doing so peacefully in order to exercise their right to free speech and assembly. I’m not going to say that it was exclusively the cops, the feds, or the troops that escalated things, there were people present at those protests throwing things and lighting shit on fire and generally escalating the chaos, but that is a truly foreseeable outcome when unrest like this ensues. Trump should know, he was president during the George Floyd uprising here in Minneapolis.

I can say from my experience on the ground, the vast majority of people participating in and living around the protest sites in Minneapolis in 2020 were interested in maintaining peace, they were interested in voicing their dissent and calling for consequences and police reform or abolition, but most would agree that setting buildings on fire was not the best means to achieve those ends. There were numerous reports of people coming into the city from elsewhere to take advantage of the chaos. I witnessed giant, souped up pickup trucks, the kind you never see inside the city, driving around filled with people who clearly did not live here. There were reports of people racing down side streets with guns hanging out the windows of their trucks. Apartment buildings formed watch groups to stand watch with baseball bats to divert any would-be arsonists and looters from gaining entrance to the buildings. Armed tankers eventually rolled down our streets. The 3rd precinct police station is still a burnt out husk of a building that stands vacant to this day. It is not an exaggeration to say the people of Minneapolis were terrorized during that summer. It’s been five years and the sound of helicopters overhead still activates my fight or flight response.

Trump saw this unfold in 2020. He wanted to federalize the national guard then to send them into Minneapolis but was stopped by the various people in place overseeing the department of defense and DHS. This time around, he’s not making that mistake again. He has made sure to put a human puppet, a literal walking joke, in place as the head of the department of defense for a reason. Pete Hegseth is a failing TV personality with a drinking problem (allegedly). He owes all of his power and credentials to Trump and he is a walking talking stooge for the President, ready to do whatever daddy says and too stupid to know any better. That’s exactly how Trump likes it. Ditto for ICE Barbie self proclaimed dog killer Kristi Noem. They are both sadistic vacant shells devoid of critical thinking skills. And Trump will use that to his advantage.

And by Trump I do mean him personally, because he loves being seen as a “strongman” and showing force, but I also mean the people playing behind the scene roles and the ones really pulling the strings. Because of course Donald Trump did not sit down at his typewriter and author that executive order to deploy the troops. As much as Hegseth and Noem are loyal to Trump, Trump is also a walking talking stooge for the right wing white nationalists behind the scenes, like Stephen Miller, a 4th generation immigrant, who is frothing at the mouth to watch this entire thing burn to the ground. To Miller, NO relation, ew, ICE is not arresting people fast enough. He has repeatedly laid the groundwork for calling immigration at the southern border an “invasion” so that a state of emergency can be declared, paving the way for further federal law enforcement deployed to border states. He has been calling the protestors in LA “insurrectionists” which Trump also parroted today. That is in order to lay more groundwork for future presidential actions that could include invoking the Insurrection Act. That Act allows the president to use the armed forces in whatever way he deems fit in any state, with or without that state’s permission, to suppress an “insurrection.” Conveniently, nowhere does the statute actually define what an “insurrection” means, and the Supreme Court has ruled that it is at the discretion of the president to decide what an “insurrection” is and when to deploy the troops under the insurrection act.

But Trump’s cronies know that people are jumpy about the idea of invoking the insurrection act, and so instead of doing so, they dipped a toe in with their executive order over the weekend by citing to a different statute that allows the federalization of national guard troops with permission from the governors, but then just didn’t obtain that permission. That way they avoid the media circus that would come from an official invocation of the insurrection act. Because invoking the insurrection act is the closest thing this country has to martial law. The President cannot declare martial law. Instead he can suspend habeas corpus, which I already made a whole episode about, and then invoke the insurrection act to send in troops wherever he wants with or without the cooperation of local authorities, to handle whatever he’s deemed is an “insurrection” and to enforce whatever federal laws he’s decided need to be overseen by federal authorities. As the Brennan Center has pointed out, the Insurrection Act is woefully devoid of any checks on the authority of the president and so broadly written and ill-defined that it provides a shocking amount of leeway for abuses. Which is why Stephen Miller and other of Trump’s cronies are chomping at the bit to use it.

What’s new about the use of the insurrection act and the latest moves by the Trump administration to federalize the national guard is that, in the past, these tactics have largely been used to help protect the rights of civilians, as opposed to protecting federal agents doing shit that the people do not agree with. The last time the President federalized the national guard against the wishes of the governor of a state, it was LBJ federalizing the national guard in Alabama. He took this extraordinary step on March 20th, 1965 days after Bloody Sunday in Selma during which 600 protestors were violently assaulted while trying to peacefully march from Selma to Montgomery. After demonstrators received permission from a federal judge to attempt to do the march again, LBJ attempted to work with Alabama governor and notorious segregationist George Wallace to deploy troops in order to avoid another violent clash. Wallace promised LBJ he’d deploy the national guard and then went on public television and told Johnson to send in federal troops instead, saying he wouldn’t do it. And so LBJ federalized the Alabama national guard and sent the 10,000 available national guardsmen to maintain order while 50,000 marchers joined Martin Luther King to march from Selma to Montgomery.

I have no doubt that, 60 years later, there is someone behind the scenes in the Trump administration feeling vindicated to now be able to abuse the power of the President to serve the white nationalist bigots who had the national guard turned against them all those years ago in Selma. Instead of protecting the rights of people to assemble and voice their dissent, the National Guard is coming in to protect ICE’s ability to conduct broad daylight abductions with face coverings and no warrants.

And after 5 months of watching ICE grow ever bolder in its willingness to act as faceless, unidentifiable gestapo for the Trump regime’s grand plan to crack down on brown people, the people are understandably on edge. They are ready to show up and show out whenever ICE shows its face. And Trump’s cronies are betting that some of them will resort to violence. Or that, even if they don’t, adding armed troops to the mix will be the spark necessary to ignite further unrest, which will then provide further justification for greater federal crackdowns and militarization in the very liberal and sanctuary cities that have been on Trump’s radar since his first administration.

It is also notable that this is happening in Los Angeles, and the Trump regime is absolutely seizing on this fact. They are likening the unrest this weekend to the Rodney King riots in 1992. After a group of cops pulled Rodney King over for drunk driving, a bystander caught them on film beating the black man for 15 minutes straight, leaving him with permanent disabilities. The cops were acquitted and rioting ensued. In that chaos, looting happened, buildings were burned down, and the national guard and the marines were called in to restore order. In that case, however, the LAPD were fully overwhelmed and the governor requested the troops be sent in to assist them. That is not what is happening in LA now, nor are the events from this weekend nearly as bad as they were in 1992. But the images of the protests this weekend do recall the famous images from the Rodney King riots, and it isn’t hard for the Trump regime to utilize that history for their own propaganda. LA is simply a city full of unruly brown people, prone to civil unrest, always in need of saving, Trump himself promised that the national guard will be sent in and LA will be set free.

And it is this tactic, combined with my experience existing in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, that leads me to believe that calls by elected officials and others for protestors to remain peaceful in order to not give Trump what he wants, greater unrest, those calls are misguided. Yes, elected officials should condemn violence, studies show that condemnation by public officials does genuinely help quell violence. However, these calls for people to remain peaceful misplace the blame for the violence on the people who are very unlikely to be instigating the violence to begin with. People who genuinely care about the wellbeing of their neighbors and their city, who believe in the message of the protestors that ICE is not welcome in LA, who want greater transparency, who demand that the rights of those being targeted by ICE be respected, they are not the ones setting Waymo self-driving cars on fire. Though honestly good riddance those things are a danger to the public and they creep me out. They were not the ones in Minneapolis setting buildings on fire and looting local businesses. And the people causing the destruction and chaos are not going to hear Gavin Newsom saying “hey everyone lets be peaceful” and think ah heck he’s right! People are absolutely angry, and they’re throwing things at law enforcement, spitting on them, yelling at them, but throwing rocks and spitting do not cause the level of unrest we’ve seen in LA this weekend. It is when that very justified anger of the populace is met with militarized federal law enforcement that things escalate. Trump said it himself this weekend when he said, ever the poet, “when you spit, we hit.” That is when tear gas and rubber bullets start to fly. And in the pandamonium, there are people present who will take advantage of the chaos. And then the entire movement can be written off as nothing more than violent left wing lunatics.

David Frum at the Atlantic wrote yesterday of the potential three step process that the Trump regime may take from here ahead of midterm voting in 2026. I think it’s important to lay out because statements from the likes of Trump, Stephen Miller, border czar Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, and others in the wake of the unrest in LA, characterizing it as an insurrection, calling for the arrest of Gavin Newsom, pushing for greater military presence, indicate that this is the direction they may likely head, probably in ways that aren’t entirely cut and dry or overtly obvious. They’ll try to hide behind legalese to make it seem like a legitimate exercise of power, but please know that it won’t be. Those three steps as laid out in the Atlantic are:

“Step 1: Use federal powers in ways to provoke some kind of made-for-TV disturbance—flames, smoke, loud noises, waving of foreign flags.

Step 2: Invoke the disturbance to declare a state of emergency and deploy federal troops.

Step 3: Seize control of local operations of government—policing in June 2025; voting in November 2026.”

What happens between now and November 2026 is, of course, a major question mark, but like I said that executive order Trump issued over the weekend does not have an expiration date or a geographic limitation. It can be used to deploy whatever number of armed forces Pete Hegseth sees fit to any location in the country to quell whatever level of quote unquote unrest the administration doesn’t like. And you better bet it will be other sanctuary cities targeted for the inevitable social unrest that will happen in the wake of further civil and human rights abuses conducted in broad daylight, caught on camera, and broadcast to everyone via social media. Our empathy and outrage are the very things that can be used against us. And I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Martin Luther King would have told us all to practice peaceful protesting because I think he had far more complicated tactics and beliefs than that, especially towards the end of his life when he became more frustrated and disillusioned with the willingness of the state to commit violence, but I do think this weekend’s unrest in LA does provide a good lesson in the power of peaceful protest in the age of chronic online-ness. On the one hand, we have become INCREDIBLY desensitized to seeing brutality committed on camera and broadcast across the world. There’s only so much empathy even the most caring person can experience before shutting down. That being said, the last five months have shown that we are still capable of outrage, we still care about the wellbeing of our neighbors and peoples’ rights being violated, and the internet is a great way to alert others to the existence of injustice in a way that has never been possible in the history of our species. And so I do still think there is power in the dissemination of images and video of protestors peacefully exercising their first amendment right to voice their dissent and to assemble, and being met with very overt and hostile state violence. The people en masse are not great at grasping nuance and subtlety. But that juxtaposition of peaceful protestor met with clear, overt, and heavy handed state violence, has always seemed to move people. But there is a lot to be learned from the Civil Rights movement today. Optics do matter. Being prepared to face violence with non-violence takes training and strategy, it is not a spur of the moment thing that just anyone is prepared for. But that really is the only weapon we have in the face of an increasingly violent state: each other and the fact of being on the right side of history. The world just needs to see it. I know there will be a lot of people in the comments who disagree with me, just as there have been and continue to be many movements in the US and abroad who believe fundamentally that state violence has to be met with violence from the citizenry. But I really want to hear from viewers in the LA area, I know there are a lot of you, what are you seeing on the ground? What has your experience been since Friday?

Okay getting to your questions. 158 of you responded, so I won’t get to all of them, but one of the ones I saw pop up a few times was about the waving of the Mexican flag at the protests. Like I said, I think optics do matter. And I think the right is better at optics than we are. I think it would be a more powerful image to see an American flag flying at these rallies. I saw an image of a man flying a flag that was the Mexican flag on one side and the American on the other, which I think could also be powerful, but coalition building and tipping the needle is all about reaching across differences to work towards a common goal with people who you don’t necessarily agree with on everything. I think waving an American flag is subversive in a way that calls people in to question what IS patriotic? This IS America.This is about people from Mexico, certainly, but it’s about America the country. I think taking back the American flag on the left has some powerful symbolism that has yet to be tapped. But if it’s a Mexican person waving the Mexican flag I think that is their prerogative. But if you’re a white person or non-Mexican waving the Mexican flag I think it’s important to think critically about the optics of that situation because that could be sending a message you don’t intend to send about a country and people from a country that you are not a part of.

Spike315 asks what are the implications of Trump mobilizing the Marines rather than the National Guard and KimKasey0137 asked What can Newsom Do. These go hand in hand. I’m very sorry to report the main thing Newsom can do and the implications of mobilizing the marines are what Newsom is already doing–file a lawsuit. Say Trump overstepped his authority by bringing in the Marines or the National Guard frankly without first working with Newsom, say it is against the constitutional principle of federalism and violated the sovereignty of the state of california. And while that lawsuit gets written and filed, Trump’ll just move on to the next city.

IrisSullivan3612 asks “Glendale cancelled its contracts with ICE. LA is a sanctuary city so why does LA have contracts with ICE at all?” So that is true that Glendale announced it was going to cancel contracts with ICE to house detainees. They had about 82 detainees and as of Monday morning officials confirmed it no longer houses those detainees. Glendale is located in Los Angeles county, but it is in fact the entire state of California that is a sanctuary state. SB 54 prohibited local and state municipalities from using funds for federal immigration enforcement purposes, including the use of jail facilities. Glendale was the only known holdout that continued to defy that law and work with federal authorities. I don’t know why they were allowed to do that, their contract began in 2007 so perhaps they were allowed to grandfather in the existing contract, but it could have just been a lawsuit against them that never got filed so they were never forced to follow the law until recent public pressure finally made them fold. A great example of the importance of local law and politics–you can get your city or state to pass sanctuary laws, you can be a watchdog and a whistle blower of local authorities, you can put pressure on them to change.

And that goes into the final question people asked over and over which is what can we do? Especially if you aren’t in LA or can’t protest for various reasons. If you CAN protest, I encourage you to do so with vetted organizations in your area. Again, there needs to be some strategy to this, and there are precautions and processes that need to happen for a protest to happen without completely devolving into chaos–I’m talking medics, legal bystanders, media attention, understanding which irritants need water to wash your eyes out with or milk, there is a wealth of protest knowledge that local organizations have gathered over decades of work that needs to be tapped into. Protesting does work. Unfortunately with any social or political movement it’s about sustained protest, not one big bang protest that changes the world. I know that’s what we’re taught about the civil rights movement: well Rosa Parks didn’t give up her seat and then they marched on Washington and MLK had a dream and then they won. That’s not how it works. Rosa Parks was a trained activist actively working with MLK and others when she refused to give up that seat, so they were ready when the bus boycott started in Montgomery. That bus boycott lasted THIRTEEN MONTHS. So it’s about not looking for immediate gratification but finding what you can do that will be sustainable over the long haul. Often that involves creating community. Find the local organization that speaks to you and vow to keep showing up, even if you can only do a little here and there. That matters. Try your local indivisible chapter if you don’t know where to start. Another tangible thing: become a Legal Observer. You don’t have to be a lawyer, though lawyers and law students also do great at this role. As a legal observer, you are trained to be the eyes and ears and gather evidence for future lawsuits. You stand witness to what’s happening and you are a vital resource for protecting the rights of protestors either in the field or after the fact. And you get a nifty little vest. You get trained to be a Legal Observer through your local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Google the National Lawyers Guild legal observer program and find your local chapter to get started. Local ACLU chapters also hold trainings. If you don’t see one scheduled, reach out to your local National Lawyers Guild or ACLU branch and request a training given the increased likelihood that we’ll be in the streets for the foreseeable future. If that’s not your jam, there are other skills needed at protests, again this is where joining a local organization with experience will serve you well and give you the tools you need to show up with a strategy. The next major event is June 14th, the No Kings protest, that’s THIS SATURDAY. June 14th is the day Trump plans on having a military parade in his honor, so there will be counter protests nationwide, everywhere BUT Washington DC, to pull the attention away from his event. The more people that show up, the more pathetic his little parade will look. Go to No Kings dot org to find the event near you.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from last week about Palantir and the government’s plan to make a giant federal database.

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