What's happening in LA confirms everything sentient bloggers and legacy media predicted about this fascist putz's authoritarian instincts. From other writers:
The outrage is beginning to boil over
“The fog crept in on little cat feet.”
— Carl Sandburg, Fog (1916)
Eventually, people in countries that are in the process of flipping from democracy to fascism figure out that they’re now living in a dictatorship; by then, however, it’s usually too late.
For people in Hungary, it was May, 2020 when Orbán started arresting people for their Facebook posts. For folks in Russia it was when Navalny and his supporters were first assaulted in public and then arrested and sent to brutal gulags in Siberia. For Germans, it was July 14, 1933 — six months after he became chancellor — when Hitler outlawed all political parties except his own.
But at first, the steps from democracy to fascism and tyranny always seems like “just another thing the government has to do to deal with a very real problem.” Something that reasonable people would understand and can’t reasonably object to. Something that, even if weird, makes a certain amount of sense.
Four and a half months after his inauguration, Donald Trump is exercising his authoritarian chops, targeting immigrants in the state he most despises — California. Making good on Trump’s nativist pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security started conducting widespread raids outside workplaces in Los Angeles. They began on June 6, with no prior notification to the California governor, L.A. mayor or local law enforcement.
During these raids, ICE officers arrested people in military-style operations that instilled fear and panic in the community and terrorized immigrants.
Donald Trump loves authoritarian theater, but let's not forget that Stephen Miller is also to blame for the violence and chaos in Los Angeles. Last week, the right-wing Washington Examiner reported that Trump's deputy chief of staff called a meeting with the top officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to "eviscerate" them for falling far short of the ridiculous goal he set of 3,000 deportations a day. In their desperation to keep Miller happy, ICE has already been targeting legal immigrants for deportation, mostly because they're easy to find, due to having registered with the government. ICE agents stake out immigration hearings for people with refugee status and round up people here with work or student visas for minor offenses like speeding tickets, all to get the numbers up. But these actions were not enough for Miller.
"Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” he reportedly screamed at ICE officials. One ICE leader protested that the agency's lead, Tom Homan, said they're supposed to be going after criminals, not people who are just working everyday jobs. Miller reportedly hit the ceiling, furious that arrests aren't widespread and indiscriminate. Trump has repeatedly implied he was only targeting criminals, but as Charles Davis reported at Salon, that conflicts with his promise of "mass deportations." Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born Americans. The expansive efforts to find and arrest immigrants in California, which kicked off the protests, appear to be a direct reaction to Miller's orders to grab as many people as possible, regardless of innocence.
by Peter Bloom | June 11, 2025 - 4:53am | permalink
The crackle of tear gas canisters and the rumble of tactical boots on asphalt echoed through Los Angeles this week as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), backed by federal agents and U.S. Marines, descended upon protestors decrying a sweeping series of immigration raids. What began as a protest against ICE quickly exploded into a broader protest. Progressive community members of all types flooded intersections, blocked freeways, and surrounded detention centers in a show of mass resistance. Federal forces responded with mass arrests, tear gas, and brute force—but the crowds didn’t disperse. They stayed. They returned. They grew.
The targets of the raids revealed the intent. ICE didn’t go after exploitative bosses or the companies violating labor laws. Instead, they rounded up garment workers, day laborers, and food delivery drivers—those whose labor keeps the city alive but whose status makes them vulnerable. Meanwhile, as Congress quietly pushed forward legislation providing major tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy, the manufactured “immigration emergency” shifted public attention away from growing inequality and back toward fear and division. The raids were less about enforcement than they were about distraction—shaping a narrative, channeling anger, and justifying control.
by Robert Reich | June 10, 2025 - 5:22am | permalink
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Friends,
The man who launched an attempted coup on the United States in 2020 and instigated an insurrection at the Capitol that resulted in five deaths now claims that people in Los Angeles are launching an insurrection. They’re not.
Yesterday, the Pentagon activated 700 Marines out of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, to join the 4,000 federalized National Guard’s military occupation of parts of Los Angeles.
Trump doesn’t give a damn whether the troops are necessary. Nor does he care how many people are injured or even killed in his raid on Los Angeles. The show of military force is the point. It gives him the appearance of power.
Like any bully, Trump is fundamentally a coward. Humiliated by China, Harvard, the Supreme Court, Elon Musk, and the federal courts, Trump has launched a war inside America on vulnerable people inside America, in a place — California — most of whose inhabitants loathe him.
by Thom Hartmann | June 10, 2025 - 5:05am | permalink
Trump: Well, we’re going to have troops everywhere.
Reporter: What’s the bar for sending in the Marines?
Trump: The bar is what I think it is.
The 2026 and 2028 elections may have just gotten a lot more distant. First, the backstory.
It was around 2 a.m. on July 15, 2020, when Mark Pettibone, then 29, was walking home from a relatively calm Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland. He hadn’t done anything more provocative than wearing a black shirt; no slogans, no mask, no glimmers of violence. Yet moments later, an unmarked minivan pulled up alongside him. Out jumped several armed men in camouflage, with no insignia, slipped a bag over his head and kidnapped him.
by Robert Reich | June 9, 2025 - 5:35am | permalink
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Friends,
Now that Trump’s tariffs have been halted, his One Big Beautiful Bill has been stymied, and his multibillionaire tech bro has turned on him, how does he demonstrate his power?
On Friday morning, federal agents from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration conducted raids across Los Angeles, including at two Home Depots, a doughnut shop, and a clothing wholesaler, in search of workers they suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
They arrested 121 people.
by Chuck Idelson | June 11, 2025 - 4:47am | permalink
There’s a little-discussed word behind the escalating Gestapo-style abductions and deportations of ordinary working people, many longtime residents, that has produced increasing confrontations and mass protests across the U.S., most prominently in Los Angeles in recent days.
The term is quota. Yes, a word long viewed by the right as wicked as socialism or, more recently, woke.
From affirmative action to diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI), and other social justice aims that sometimes include numeric percentages, quotas, are intended to redress centuries of racial, gender, and other discriminatory practices in employment, education, politics, and other sectors of society. Such quotas are designed to shift societal behaviors to create opportunities for historically marginalized people.
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