Both statements are from last night. Note difference between how Trump characterizes conditions in LA ("RIOTS AND LOOTERS"), vs how the LAPD does ("Peaceful Protests")
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) June 8, 2025 at 11:16 AM
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Hello. I live in Los Angeles. The president is lying.
— Kai Ryssdal (@kairyssdal.bsky.social) June 8, 2025 at 2:54 PM
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As always with an LA story, I need to start by reminding everyone not familiar with the area just how big LA County is (and this very much is a county-level story). There are almost 10 million Angelenos in an area covering over 4,000 square miles. Inevitably, any Los Angeles story—particularly one involving a crisis—will be wildly unrepresentative. As with the Black Lives Matter protests and the wildfires, it is easy to get the impression of an entire city devastated, particularly if you rely on the East Coast-based press.
Here, I made a helpful graph to assist with “Cities are where very, very large numbers of Americans live” discourse, with real Census data and everything.
— Kieran Healy (@kjhealy.co) June 8, 2025 at 6:31 PM
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As best I can tell, the protests are limited mostly to downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. There's certainly been no sign that anything unusual is going on here in the Valley, and as far as I can tell, that's the case for most of the county.
That's not to say this isn't a big deal and we aren't a little on edge. I certainly am, and have been taking precautions in case things should get crazy. I filled my car with gas last night and made sure that all of my batteries are charged up, just in case the unexpected happens. Having 2,000 National Guard troops operating under questionable orders here in town will make a fellow a bit nervous.
I'll be perfectly honest, I wish we had a Jerry Brown or even an Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I have to admit Gavin Newsom has stepped up and is striking the right tone and doing the right things. This could very well be his moment, and so far he's meeting it.
In an interview with NBC News' Jacob Soboroff, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that Pres. Trump "has created the conditions" surrounding the Los Angeles protests & called Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard "a manufactured crisis," via @msnbc.com — www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/...
— Lora Kolodny (@lorak.bsky.social) June 8, 2025 at 10:47 PM
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I wish I could say the press was also rising to the occasion, but so far the coverage has been predictably weaselly and craven. The New York Times website is terrible. The Washington Post and CNN are only a little better. The extraordinary precedent-breaking and illegality—the transparent attempt to drum up crisis—are pushed aside for countless images of the same handful of acts of vandalism. Perhaps the most representative quote came from the NYT, which talked about ICE “firing back,” despite the fact they were the only ones actually firing.
— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) June 8, 2025 at 6:09 PM
In itself it's not the biggest thing but Congress specifically passed a law requiring ICE to allow access to members of Congress because of Trump's antics in the first term. This isn't even norms. It's violating black letter statute law.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) June 8, 2025 at 8:11 PM
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Critically important point from Juliette. The only real justification for federalizing the nat guard over a governors objection is when the civil authorities are defying the law. This is attack on the sovereign right of the people of California to self government.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) June 7, 2025 at 11:58 PM
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I'll close with a historical note. It has been 60 years since the president activated the National Guard in a state without a request from its governor. That was LBJ, and he did it to guard civil rights protesters.
During the WTA protests in Seattle, the press did the same thing you describe. While the actual protesters were sitting on sidewalks in turtle costumes, a small group of embedded anarchists from Eugene OR committed acts of vandalism, including the shattering of a large window on a Starbucks. A reporter happened to catch the breakage on film. This short clip then became the only vignette that anyone saw from the protests, played over and over again on all major networks every time the protests were discussed. A number of historic things happened during those protests, but the press was only interested in irrelevant stories about minor violence.
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