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Unnamed Political Commentator
June 10, 2025 Today, President Donald J. Trump made it clear that the provocations he and his administration are escalating in Los Angeles and now elsewhere are using the issue of immigration to suppress dissent entirely. In the Oval Office today, Trump said of the military parade scheduled for this Saturday, if there's any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force. For those people that want to protest, they're going to be met with very big force. His statement comes after the administration instituted aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles, during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ice, met the few hundred protesters with violence. Then, over the protests of both Los Angeles Mayor Karen bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, Trump federalized 4,000 members of California's National Guard and ordered 700 Marines to Los Angeles. He and his advisers have repeatedly threatened to arrest anyone who does not cooperate with ice, including Mayor Bass and governor Newsom. Trump has said he based his decision to federalize the National Guard on his insistence that Los Angeles is staggering under violent riots, but in fact the protests are largely peaceful and local officials maintain they can handle the situation. Still, Trump described Los Angeles as invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals and said violent insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our federal agents to try and stop our deportation operations. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called Los Angeles a city of criminals and other MAGA lawmakers have gotten into the act. Will Sommer of the Bulwark pointed out today that MAGA influencers are also pushing for more crackdowns and more cruelty in a feedback loop as they and the White House officials push each other toward more and more cruelty toward immigrants. But the narrative that LA is under siege is hard to make stick. Protesters have been filming the bands playing and people dancing at the protests, which remain small. They have also filmed the ICE agents shooting less lethal bullets at individuals, including an Australian journalist who was speaking to a camera when she was shot from behind. The complaint against SEIU leader David Huerta, who has been charged with conspiring to impede an officer, says that he walked and sat on a public sidewalk in such a way that he blocked an ICE van before an officer pushed him to the ground and arrested him. Economist Paul Krugman notes that Los Angeles right now is probably as safe as it has ever been, and Newsom has been meeting the claims of MAGA politicians that the city is a hellscape, with actual statistics showing that California is safer than their own states. He reminded Oklahoma Sen. Mark Wayne Mullen that Oklahoma's murder rate is 40% higher than California's. And after Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville called for Newsom to be arrested, retorted, alabama has three times the homicide rate of California. Its murder rate is ranked third in the entire country. Stick to football, bro. As Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post noted today, California recently became the fourth largest economy in the world. It has the highest number of immigrants in the country, although many have moved in the past few years to more affordable states and unemployment numbers are close to the national average. But Trump has always managed his public affairs by projecting dominance in a fake world. His political instincts for keeping attention on himself have been compared to the kayfabe of professional wrestling. This afternoon, he upped the ante again in a speech at the army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Trump delivered a fiercely partisan speech that sounded like it was written by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in front of a crowd of enlisted personnel who journalist Jane Coston reported had been carefully selected to be Trump supporters and to be fit and not look fat. Trump claimed the US Was under a foreign invasion because of stupid people or radical left people or sick people. He goaded the personnel into booing Newsom and Bass. Since the days of George Washington, the American armed forces have been strictly nonpartisan, declaring their allegiance to the US Constitution rather than to any leader. Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted that Trump is turning the world's powerful military away from its focus on Russia and China toward a new enemy, the American people themselves. He mused, I've been saying that I felt Trump's dramatic escalation in recent days was driven in part by Musk's emasculation of him last week. I also wonder whether it's being driven by Zelenskyy's profound humiliation of Putin and Putin lashing out at Trump for not delivering Ukraine to him. Stephen Lee Myers of the New York Times reported today that right wing bots, trolls, conspiracy theorists and MAGA influencers are flooding social media with messages designed to attack immigrants and Democrats and defend Trump. Many of those accounts are linked to Russia and Russian disinformation. It certainly feels as if administration officials are going for broke in ways that benefit Russia. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard today released a video warning that the world is close to a nuclear war caused by a political elite that expects it can survive one in special bunkers. Gabbard has a history of parroting Russian propaganda, and famously, Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the threat of nuclear war to press his demands against Ukraine. A YOUGOV poll out today shows that only 34% of American adults approve of Trump's deployment of Marines to the Los Angeles area to respond to protests over the enforcement of immigration laws, while 47% do not approve. Only 38% of American adults approve of Trump's deployment of national guard soldiers to LA, while 45% disapprove. A strong majority, 56% of Americans, think state and local officials should take the lead in responding to the LA protests, while only 25% think the federal government should. Strikingly, 50% of adults disapprove of the administration's handling of deportations, while only 39% approve. Those numbers were gathered before Pentagon Comptroller Bryn McDonnell told the House Defense Appropriations Committee today that the Pentagon estimates the cost of federalizing the National Guard and deploying the Marines to Los Angeles at $134 million. Today, the Department of Justice announced it was indicting Representative Lamonica McIver, a Democrat of New Jersey, on three counts of forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law enforcement officers after a May 19 event in front of a Newark, New Jersey, ICE detention center. MacGyver was at the detention center with others as part of her oversight responsibilities, and a video shows her being jostled with a crowd that includes an ICE officer. But no one breaks stride. MacGyver called the charges a brazen attempt at political intimidation. Tonight, Governor Newsom delivered a primetime address about the events of the past few days. He outlined the story of the ICE raids and Trump's escalation of conflict. He urged protesters to exercise their First Amendment rights peacefully and warned that anyone participating in violence would be held accountable. Then the governor launched into a wholesale condemnation of the Trump regime. He warned that if some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves, but they do not stop there. Newsom called Trump out for firing the government watchdogs that could hold him accountable for fraud and for declaring war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases, quite literally are vanishing. He's delegitimizing news organizations and he's assaulting the First Amendment. He's dictating what universities themselves can teach. He's targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundations of an orderly and civil society. He's calling for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than, in his own words, for getting elected. This isn't just about protests here in Los Angeles, Newsom said. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, newsom said. This moment we have feared has arrived. He's taking a wrecking ball to our founding father's historic project three co equal branches of independent government. Newsom urged Americans to stand up for the country. I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress and fear, he said. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence to be complicit in this moment, newsom said. Do not give in to him.
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Heather Cox Richardson
Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, MA. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.