The meaning of the protests in Los Angeles

THE MOOD changed by the moment. On June 8th a woman hugged her two young daughters on a bridge overlooking the 101 freeway in downtown Los Angeles. Vendors sold Mexican flags and protesters adjusted the rhythms of their chants. “Move ICE get out the way” morphed into “Donald Trump, let’s be clear, immigrants are welcome here”. It felt like a neighbourhood block party—if block parties encouraged graffiti. But chants turned to screams as police exploded flash-bang grenades to clear the road. The two young girls grimaced and hustled away. California Highway Patrol officers paced in riot gear, their less-lethal weapons aimed at the crowd. Some protesters lobbed bottles at police, who dodged the projectiles. Nearby, several Waymo driverless cars were set aflame.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had conducted several raids across Los Angeles County, which sparked protests. Mr Trump likened them to a “rebellion” and invoked a rarely used statute to deploy at least 2,000 members of the California National Guard to LA to protect federal agents and property, against the wishes of California’s state and local officials. This overreaction galvanised Angelenos and turned what were isolated clashes between protesters and federal agents into general unrest that swallowed parts of downtown. Since then, Mr Trump has doubled the number of guardsmen and added 700 active-duty marines to the mix.

Mr Trump’s political success since 2016 can be partially explained by his talent for rallying his supporters against a common enemy, whether that be illegal immigrants, Democrat-run cities, or, in this case, both. That his first reaction was to reach for the military suggests that the move was meant as a provocation, as if he were daring Angelenos to resist, thereby justifying his decision to call in troops and proving to his followers that Democrats will raise hell to shield immigrants from deportation. Local leaders urged protesters to stay peaceful lest they offer Mr Trump a reason to invoke the Insurrection Act, a law from 1807 that gives the president the power to deploy the military to help quell domestic uprisings. He has not ruled that out. The troops’ deployment has already traumatised Los Angeles and turned a tense relationship between California and the Trump administration into a hostile one. What happens next will determine whether the unrest in LA fades, or sparks a national movement.

LA was already having a bad year. Raging wildfires in January killed 30 people, incinerated two neighbourhoods and left locals angry at their leaders. A survey from the University of California, Los Angeles, in April found that just 37% of Angelenos viewed Karen Bass, the city’s mayor, favourably, down from 42% a year ago. Now the president is piling on. During a speech at Fort Bragg on June 10th Mr Trump expressed disdain for his country’s second-largest city, calling it “a trash heap” in need of liberation. Ms Bass is trying to strike a balance by promising to punish protesters who got violent, while defending LA’s massive immigrant community (roughly one-third of the county’s 10m people are foreign-born).

The unrest could unite the city against the administration, but right now it seems more likely to sow division. Several protest leaders stood on a truck bed in front of City Hall and decried Mr Trump, ICE—and their local leaders. “If Karen Bass can’t protect us, if the city council can’t protect us, if the Democratic Party can’t protect us, who’s going to protect us?”, asked one young man. The answer, he argued, isn’t just rebellion but “revolution”.

Still, LA has seen worse. More than 220 people have been arrested so far and Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, promises that number will grow. In 1992 thousands of people were arrested and 63 were killed when Angelenos rioted after police officers were acquitted of beating Rodney King, a black motorist. Across most of the city there was no sign that anything unusual was happening, except perhaps the circling helicopters. Even downtown, protesters ambled past “Fuck ICE” graffiti to admire the violet buds of the blooming Jacaranda trees. That duality is part of the city’s character: LA promises a sun-drenched dreamscape but sometimes delivers something closer to the darkness and moral ambiguity of film noir.

The unrest pits California squarely against the Trump administration. It was not an easy relationship to begin with. The liberal politics of America’s most-populous state make it a favourite target of the Republican Party. Mr Trump attacked Kamala Harris last year as a “San Francisco radical” who would turn America into California. When Mr Trump was inaugurated in January, Mr Newsom played nice: he needed the feds to help pay for LA’s recovery from the fires.

Things began to devolve even before the recent immigration raids. Last month the Republican-led Senate voted to revoke a waiver California uses to set stricter emissions standards than the federal government, and the administration said it would claw back federal dollars for the state’s boondoggle of a bullet train. California, meanwhile, is involved in at least 22 lawsuits against the administration, including a new one questioning the legality of Mr Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles.

Though Mr Newsom and Mr Trump are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, they share a love of the limelight. When Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, threatened to arrest the governor for allegedly interfering with immigration enforcement, Mr Newsom told him to “come after me, arrest me, let’s just get it over with”. Mr Homan backed down, even if his boss didn’t. “I would do it,” Mr Trump told the press outside of the White House. “I like Gavin Newsom, he’s a nice guy, but he’s grossly incompetent.” Their catty spats can be mutually beneficial. The president titillates his base by attacking the governor, and Mr Newsom raises his national profile, perhaps with 2028 in mind, by presenting himself as the anti-Trump.

Now more is at stake than their approval numbers. In a speech on June 10th Mr Newsom warned other states that “California may be first but it clearly will not end here.” Legal scholars point out that the proclamation federalising National Guard troops did not mention LA, leaving open the possibility of sending them to other cities. After California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois are the Democratic-run states where the most unauthorised immigrants live (see map). Anti-ICE protests have already started to spread beyond Los Angeles, to Chicago, New York City and elsewhere. Some Democratic mayors may see the trouble LA is in and try to avoid attracting Mr Trump’s ire. Daniel Lurie, San Francisco’s moderate mayor, seems to be trying this route, though protesters there have taken to the streets anyway.

What the federal government does next will depend on whether Mr Trump’s end goal is to scare cities into not protesting against deportations, or to provoke unrest so he has an excuse to declare an insurrection and use the military to crack down on places that disagree with him. LA’s experience suggests the latter is not hyperbole. During his speech Mr Newsom coined a clunky phrase: “the rule of Don” (rather than the rule of law). He meant it as an insult, but Mr Trump may not mind. When asked what the standard would be for sending troops elsewhere, the president replied: “The bar is what I think it is.”■