Troops in L.A. -- Troops Ask What Are We Doing Here?

This is not martial law. Just a practice run.

By Marc Cooper

Sunday June 8, 2025. Mid-Day PDT

I think the BBC report from Los Angeles best sums up the deployment of 2000 National Guard troops by Donald Trump last night.

By the time the Guard hit the streets in Los Angeles the “violent insurrection” that troll Stephen Miller claimed the protests were, had more or less evaporated into a few dozen or more protesters caught between two massive line of riot police from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office. The cops launching flash bang grenades and pepper balls and the handful or two of protesters waving Mexican flags and tossing back a few fireworks at the police line.

The protests that erupted Friday and Saturday as militarized ICE columns in battle gear and with armored troop carriers invaded three areas where mostly Latinos congregate to look for WORK — not to plan gang rapes or home invasions. A sweatshop district and two Home Depots were the main targets. The protests were immediate and large in comparison to other previous pushbacks against ICE because the immigrant community had already anticipated these actions and there was at least a nominal level of rapid response organization in place. Remember that 30 percent of L.A. residents are immigrants and are the mainstay of the labor force and of the unionized labor community.

But let this be crystal clear: Based on as much reporting as I can gather, no single demonstration drew more than 500 participants at the very most. And while some small groups vandalized a ICE vehicles, and a couple of small bonfires were ignited in empty streets, and some rocks and bottles were thrown, the overwhelming majority of the protesters were peaceful.

I lived through L.A.’s two historic riots and uprisings. Watts in 1965 and citywide in 1992. Compared to these two cataclysmic events, this weekend’s anti-ICE protests were but popcorn farts and were easily contained by local law enforcement. Those two eruptions involved thousands, and thousands were arrested, dozens were killed, entire stretches of main boulevards were set ablaze. An epidemic of looting spread through the city.

No elected officials in California, including the Mayor of L.A. and Governor Newsom (or Newscum as the man-baby in the White House calls him) wanted the Guard this weekend.. And it’s the Governor who ordinarily commands the state-based guard. Trump went right over his head without as much as a consultation and “federalized” the Guard under his own command. Meanwhile, the tattooed dolt who runs the Pentagon threatened to bring in active duty U.S. Marines, if needed. The only task they could conduct at present would be to disperse the National Guard for loitering.

This is the first time a president has made this federalization move since 1965 when LBJ took over the Guard to protect civil rights demonstrators against brutish and racist local cops in the Jim Crow south.

A few readers have asked if I think this week’s military intervention is Act One of declaring the Insurrection Act and clamping down Martial Law to suspend the midterms. My answer is a robust NO. Not yet, at least

This is not Act One, this is merely an early rehearsal, a test by the Trump administration on a reduced scale to see if all the parts would be in place for a serious attempt at declaring a national stage of siege down the road.

All the elements necessary for such a move were in place this weekend, albeit on a very small scale. A “violent insurrection” in a liberal state and city where he could claim that the elected pols were feckless and incompetent and perhaps even inciting a mass rebellion. His beloved and worshipped ICE masked rangers under deadly attack. And a break down of civil society that only the military could handle.

None of this is happening in L.A. and Trump knows it. But this weekend was a good excuse to give the machinery a test. And maybe with some luck, the dispatch of the troops could produce a much greater and violent backlash, setting the table for more repression.

So far, that last part is failing. From what I can gather, the Guard is standing around doing nothing because there is nothing to do. I am fairly confident that later today or tomorrow, the presence of the troops will attract some new protests but I suspect they will be small scale and not particularly dramatic. But who knows?

{Breaking as I write this. Reports coming in say there are now some minor clashes with the Guard breaking out. This was more or less inevitable]. This just in from the BBC] ==>

What we can deduce from this deployment is that Trump CAN do it. And do it on a larger scale. If nothing else he walks away from this in a few days boasting how he and the troops saved the day from an insurrection allied with Radical Left Democratic Lunatics, further preparing the ground for a future more consequential intervention.

I have been saying for months that I cannot visualize Trump just sitting still, being told by his witch doctors come February or March that he will lose his House majority to a Blue Wave. I don’t think he will just accept that. Yes, the midterms are run by the states not by the federal government. But something like the insurrection act could nullify the voting, not to mention two dozen MAGA-run states that easily could conspire with Trump to torpedo the voting.

We would then have a de jure dictatorship and taking it down would require much bolder tactics by the opposition — By Any Means Necessary.

We are not at that point yet and hopefully will not get there. Our task for now is to build up next Saturday’s 1400 planned protests nationwide as much as we humanly can to remind the White House wretches — and the military—that there are millions of us who will not passively submit to a kleptocratic presidential dictatorship.

Stay Safe. Stand Strong. Be Fearless. Resist Dictatorship. Participate.

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