Donald Trump is deploying at least 2,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles — against the wishes of the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

Newsom accurately called what Trump has done “purposefully inflammatory” and “a serious breach of state sovereignty.”

• This started on Friday, when the Trump regime raided workplaces throughout Los Angeles. Many people — rightly outraged at the regime’s ongoing campaign of militant xenophobia and unlawful deportations — took to the streets in peaceful protest.

• Trump then used the peaceful demonstrations against his own misguided raids as an excuse to send in the National Guard — an authoritarian overreach that is generating even more justified dissent.

• As is so often the case, law enforcement has overreacted. According to news reports, peaceful protesters have been tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets at close range. David Huerta, the well-known leader of the Service Employees International Union in Los Angeles — who was present at one raid as a peaceful observer — was arrested (and wounded in the process).

• Some “news” outlets are going out of their way to show anything that makes the protests look unruly or out of control. The overwhelming evidence from numerous legitimate sources on the ground in Los Angeles is that demonstrators are committed to peaceful resistance and that law enforcement is instigating the vast majority of confrontations.

• Trump also told his sycophantic Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, to use regular military troops “as necessary.” Hegseth has already said that active duty Marines stationed just 100 miles from Los Angeles are “on high alert.”

• On Sunday, Trump refused to rule out invoking the Insurrection Act and said this to reporters: “We’re going to have troops everywhere.” We should not be surprised — furious, but not surprised — if Trump uses all of this as a pretense to declare martial law.

It has been 60 years since a president deployed the National Guard to a state against the wishes of that state’s governor. The last time was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed the National Guard — to protect civil rights activists — against the wishes of Alabama’s infamously segregationist governor, George Wallace.

Along with California, 22 other states currently have a Democratic governor. All 22 of those governors signed an open letter standing with Governor Newsom and condemning what Trump is doing in Los Angeles, correctly declaring it to be “an alarming abuse of power.”

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Join Public Citizen and the 23 Democratic governors in condemning the flagrantly authoritarian actions the Trump regime is currently taking in Los Angeles.

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For democracy,

- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen

P.S. Public Citizen and allies are organizing rallies all across America this Saturday, June 14, to tell Trump “No Kings!” Find a rally near you.
 
 
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