Trump's Manufactured Distraction
Upset about Elon, our authoritarian president turned his attention to his least favorite state.
One thing that many people who have never visited Los Angeles fail to understand about our city is how spread out everything is. Back in January, I received dozens of messages from people concerned about the fires in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, both on the opposite side of LA from my home in Long Beach. While our air quality suffered greatly during the fires, and we did have several false alarms to evacuate, Long Beach hotels took in many of the evacuees, most notably aboard our beloved Queen Mary.
Paramount on the other hand, shares a border with Long Beach. That Home Depot where the ICE raids that started these protests took place is a ten-minute drive from my apartment. I was fairly shocked when texts asking me if I was okay started flowing in, as downtown Long Beach showed no signs of the chaos that was apparently severe enough that Trump sent 4,000 National Guard troops, along with 700 Marines into the city. The chaos that’s apparently so terrible that it needed thousands of troops didn’t affect traffic by a single minute when I drove to West Hollywood for a play on Sunday.
As California Governor Gavin Newsom has said, Trump’s deployment of the National Guard was a blatant abuse of power, a publicity stunt by a man reeling from his public breakup with his boyfriend Elon Musk, and the uncertain future of his Big, Beautiful Bill. California did not need the National Guard, defying both the governor and LA Mayor Karen Bass’ wishes. The Made for TV president couldn’t resist the urge to manufacture a crisis for him to watch on TV while he eats his ice cream and tries to forget the absence of the billionaire who used to share his bed.
Normally, the National Guard is deployed through a chain of command that goes from the ground up. If you’ve ever watched a police procedural, you may be familiar with the trope of jurisdiction friction, where the local cops express frustration that the feds are taking over their case. Almost always, the dynamic of local expertise vs. federal meddling favors the home team.
As this controversy enters its fifth day, it’s important to remember the geography of Los Angeles. While the original ICE protests took place in Compton and Paramount, both considerably southeast of downtown Los Angeles, the federal response has largely enveloped the downtown area, particularly the Federal Building, where many of the ICE detainees are being held. The famous picture of the burning Waymo and the closures of the U.S. 101 freeway happened about an hour’s drive from where this all started.
The federal response undoubtedly made the problem worse, not better. Estimates suggest that only 600 protestors were on the streets when Trump bypassed the chain of command and sent in the National Guard. There are close to 9,000 officers in the LAPD. As of yesterday, days after this unrest started, there have only been 150 arrests since this started on Friday. By comparison, 122,304 people were arrested in New York City in 2024, or about 335 a day. The LAPD did not need any additional help.
The situation only worsened well after Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops into an area well outside the original protests. Not that anyone in the Trump administration cares, but the First Amendment gives citizens the right to lawful assembly. The First Amendment doesn’t give the right to looting or crime, but that wasn’t happening before Trump turned downtown LA into a police state, complete with troops in battle fatigues and weapons of war. Trump even thanked the National Guard for stopping the protests before they’d even arrived in LA.
Roughly half of the population of LA are Hispanic or Latino, the groups most targeted by ICE. There are countless videos of plainclothes ICE officers under Trump pulling up to people on the street and grabbing them into unmarked vans. I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty fascist, even before you consider how many were sent to El Salvadoran prisons without an iota of due process.
It's textbook authoritarianism to deploy active duty Marines onto American soil. Those Marines don’t exactly have anything to do either. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits active duty military from performing law enforcement duties. Like at the border, active duty military can only perform support functions. The Trump administration is so supportive of the military, that they made zero arrangements for housing when they called in the Marines, forcing them to sleep on the floor.
I have some experience living in a city where the National Guard was called in. During the George Floyd Protests of 2020, there was looting in downtown Long Beach after a few hours of peaceful protests. The National Guard was not activated until well after the scene was under control.
This sole Humvee sat on a street adjacent to City Hall for a few days.
The only other National Guard presence in the downtown area was confined to two street corners. They did not improve the situation in the slightest. The best thing I could say is that, unlike what’s going on in downtown LA, they didn’t make things worse. Also, unlike what’s going on in LA, no US personnel were actively engaging in tyranny against people in this country entitled to due process.
Trump manufactured the scene he wanted in Los Angeles, a welcome distraction from his many controversies. The media paints our city as a giant authoritarian dystopia. Many outlets will center the isolated looting that’s gone on in certain areas.
I don’t like looting. Certain acts, like when the Hot Topic near my apartment was ransacked during the George Floyd protests carry some amusement, like this dramatic account from a news helicopter.
I know many small businesses that were looted during those riots, struggling from the pandemic, and all the inflation that hasn’t gone away since. At least in Long Beach, the looting was the result of a coordinated effort of criminals looking to capitalize on the important work of the protestors. I heard stories of cars pulling up to businesses, where masked intruders broke into stores with sledgehammers and quickly fled the scene. It’s a bit of a stretch to tie any of that to the thousands of people who took to the streets to exercise their First Amendment rights. The National Guard presence is also having quite the negative effect on local businesses, who are seeing severely decreased traffic.
It's also more than a bit ironic to hear Republican lawmakers condemn the protestors in Los Angeles when they refuse to lift a finger to stop the gun violence epidemic in our schools. Apparently, to them, the First Amendment matters far less than the Second. The nifty thing about the Constitution is that it’s not supposed to be an à la carte menu.
I visited a local Home Depot on Friday, the same day that ICE raided the one in Paramount. The Home Depot parking lot is a well-known spot to hire day laborers. I saw plenty there that day.
I’ve done a lot of reflection on the reality that it easily could have been my Home Depot that was hit by ICE. I could have been walking to my car as plainclothes officers abducted people into their vans, spreading fear throughout a whole community. We’ve seen so many stories in the past few months of people erroneously detained, given no due process. ICE detained a Canadian woman for two weeks for no reason last March. I don’t know about you, but I don’t carry my papers with me everywhere I go. That’s the reality Trump wants us to live in.
We’ve spent a lot of time in this column over the past year talking about tyranny in a distant or abstract notion. Part of why I love California, and why Trump hates it, is that this is a city that welcomes literally everyone. I came here in 2015 a scared, lonely kid, terrified of the gender transition I was about to embark on. I didn’t know anyone.
This city afforded me the opportunity to transition in dignity. I love living in such a diverse area, with all the food and culture I wouldn’t be exposed to otherwise. This city has marched when my rights were under attack. LA is a little grimy, and the traffic is terrible, but this is a place that offers a home to people who have nowhere else to turn.
We don’t want ICE in Los Angeles. The day laborers at Home Depot aren’t harming anyone. If Trump actually cared about stopping that practice, he might turn his attention to the people who employ them. He doesn’t care.
The value of the protests can be summed up by this video of a man peacefully questioning the armed presence in front of the Los Angeles VA.
History is being written this week. An unhinged tyrant sent the military into a situation that by all objective measures had no use for its presence. Across Los Angeles, people saw what was going on and exercised their First Amendment right to make their voices heard. I’ve loved this city with all my heart for almost a decade now, but I’ve been prouder than this week. Authoritarianism will not be met sitting down. We will not go quietly into the night.
Lots of protests on the 14th. Yam Tits is threatening to arrest... everyone who protests. We need our country back.
We need to find a way to keep Trump from unconstitutionally running in 2028.