Politics
National Guard arrives in Los Angeles as fallout from immigration raids continues
California National Guard troops arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday in a show of force following scattered clashes between immigration agents and protesters and amid a widening political divide between California and the Trump administration.
The move by President Trump to activate nearly 2,000 guardsmen marked the first time since 1965 that a president has deployed a state’s National Guard without a request from that state’s governor. The decision was met with stern rebukes from state and local officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom who said the deployment was “not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis.”
Newsom’s office on Sunday afternoon sent a formal letter to the Trump administration asking them to rescind their deployment of troops.
“There is currently no need for the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles, and to do so in this unlawful manner and for such a lengthy period is a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation, while simultaneously depriving the state from deploying these personnel and resources where they are truly required,” the letter reads.
On Sunday afternoon, there were tense moments outside a federal detention center in downtown L.A., with officers firing tear gas and less-lethal rounds at protesters.
Around 4 p.m., a swarm of protesters streamed onto the southbound side of the 101 Freeway, blocking traffic. The protesters were in a standoff with dozens of officers lined up under the Los Angeles Street bridge.
But other areas that had seen unrest over the last few days, including the Garment District, Paramount and Compton, seemed calm.
It was unclear exactly how many troops were deployed to Los Angeles as of Sunday afternoon. The National Guard’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based in San Diego, said Sunday that 300 personnel were on the ground to protect federal property and personnel.
Trump administration officials have seized on the isolated incidents of violence to suggest wide parts of L.A. are out of control. On Sunday, Trump took to social media to claim “violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking” federal law enforcement.
“A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” he wrote, blaming Democratic politicians for not cracking down earlier.
While officials have not said how long the immigration enforcement actions will continue, Trump told reporters Sunday, “we’re going to have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country.”
Many California officials, who have long been at odds with Trump, say the president was trying to exploit the situation for his political advantage and sow unneeded disorder and confusion.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the deployment of federalized troops a “chaotic escalation” and issued a reminder that “Los Angeles will always stand with everyone who calls our city home.”
While most demonstrators have gathered peacefully, some have hurled objects at law enforcement personnel, set garbage and vehicles on fire and defaced federal property with graffiti.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Los Angeles over the past week has resulted in the arrest of 118 people, including some who have been convicted of drug trafficking, assault, child cruelty, domestic violence and robbery, according to the agency.
Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin and Republican politicians who support Trump’s immigration actions have characterized the protests as riots intended to “keep rapists, murderers and other violent criminals loose on Los Angeles streets.”
Representative Maxine Waters speak to the media at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles on Sunday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
On Sunday morning, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) addressed roughly two dozen National Guard soldiers posted outside the Metropolitan Detention Center on Alameda Street. She had arrived at the center to inquire about Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta, who was injured and detained while documenting an immigration enforcement raid in downtown Los Angeles on Friday.
“Who are you going to shoot?” Waters asked the solders. “If you’re going to shoot me, you better shoot straight.”
Remnants of tear gas used by law enforcement during protests Saturday lingered in the air around the building, at times forcing Waters to cough. Waters, an outspoken critic of the president, called the deployment of National Guard troops an unnecessary escalation of tensions and accused Trump of “trying to make an example” out of Los Angeles, a longstanding sanctuary city.
Leonard Tunstad, a 69-year-old Los Angeles resident, rode his bike up to the edge of the loading dock where troops were stationed and asked them if they really wanted to be loyal to a president that “had 34 felony convictions.” He said he felt compelled to shout facts about Trump at the guardsmen because he feared the young men have been “indoctrinated against their own citizens.”
Tunstad said he believed the deployment was a gross overreaction by the Trump administration, noting the city has been home to far more raucous protests that were handled by local police.
“This is just a show. This is just a spectacle,” he said.
A Department of Homeland Security officer approached one of the louder demonstrators saying that he “didn’t want a repeat of last night” and didn’t want to “get political.” He told protesters as long as they stick to the sidewalk and don’t block vehicle access to the loading dock there wouldn’t be any problems.
Later, DHS and California National Guard troops shoved dozens of protesters into Alameda Street, hitting people with riot shields, firing pellets into the ground and deploying tear gas to clear a path for a caravan of DHS, Border Patrol and military vehicles to enter the detention center.
Jose Longoria struggled to breathe as clouds of tear gas filled Alameda Street. He pointed to a white scuff mark on his shoe, saying that a tear gas canister had hit him in the foot, causing him to limp slightly.
“We’re not armed. We’re just peacefully protesting. They’re acting out,” Longoria said of the officers.
Julie Solis, 50, walked back and forth along Alameda Street holding a Mexican flag and urging the crowd to make their voices heard, but to keep the scene peaceful. She said she believes the National Guard was deployed solely to provoke a response and make Los Angeles look unruly to justify further aggression from federal law enforcement.
People march toward the Metropolitan Detention Center during an immigration march in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday.
(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)
“They want arrests. They want to see us fail. We need to be peaceful. We need to be eloquent,” she said.
National Guard troops were last summoned to Los Angeles and other Southern California cities in 2020, during the George Floyd protests. Those deployments were authorized by Newsom.
However, the last time the National Guard was called on by a president without a request from a state governor was 60 years ago, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.
Antonio Villaraigosa, former speaker of the California Assembly and a former L.A. mayor, said Trump’s move was “meant to incite more fear and chaos in our community.”
“Trump’s military-style mass deportation ICE raids in California have gone too far, tearing families apart and threatening public safety,” he said in a statement. “The raids at stores and workplaces are wrong, just as it’s wrong to separate families with raids at schools, graduations, and churches.”
In Paramount, a group of camouflaged National Guard troops were stationed in a business park with armored vehicles where a Department of Homeland Security office is located.
Jessica Juarez walked along Alondra Boulevard with a trash bag full of spent tear gas canisters on Sunday morning. Her voice grew hoarse as she helped a group of volunteers clean up after clashes between protesters and law enforcement the day before.
United States Attorney Bill Essayli told NBC in an interview that an officer suffered a broken wrist and others were injured by rocks and cement block pieces that were thrown at them during Saturday’s protest. He said it was “an extremely violent crowd,” but officials are “undeterred.”
An acrid odor still hung in the air from the gas and flash bang grenades law enforcement fired on protesters Saturday, while scorched asphalt marked the intersection outside a Home Depot where federal authorities had staged.
“I’m proud of our community, of the strength we showed,” said Juarez, 40. “It’s like they put so much fear into Paramount and for what? These guys didn’t even clean up after themselves.”
The images of Paramount shrouded in smoke and flanked by police in riot gear are unusual for this community of about 50,000 residents. In many ways, the city became the starting point for the escalating federal response.
“What else do you call it but an attack on Paramount and the people who live here?” said resident and union organizer Alejandro Maldonado. “People in the community were standing up to unjust immigration policies.”
For some, the fight between Los Angeles residents and the federal government is akin to David and Goliath. “It really does seem like they wanted to pick a fight with the little guy,” union organizer Ardelia Aldridge said.
Staff writers Seema Mehta, Rebecca Ellis and Brittny Mejia contributed to this report
But while that is a new element in the talks, the cultural divide in how to negotiate is not.
That divide was evident 11 years ago, in the gilded halls of the 160-year-old Beau-Rivage Palace Hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, where Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts from five other countries struggled to close a preliminary agreement with Iran. It was, perhaps, the closest analogue to what is unfolding now in Islamabad.
Every day the American delegation would speak about how many centrifuges had to be disassembled and how much uranium needed to be shipped out of country. Yet when Iranian officials — including Abbas Araghchi, now the Iranian foreign minister — stepped out of the elegant, chandeliered rooms to brief reporters, most of the questions about those details were waved away. The Iranians talked about preserving respect for their rights and Iran’s sovereignty.
“I remember we finally got the parameters agreed upon at the hotel,” Wendy Sherman, the chief U.S. negotiator at the time, said on Monday. “And then a few days later the supreme leader came out and said, ‘Actually, some very different terms were required.’”
Ms. Sherman, who went on to become deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration, would go into these negotiations with a large posse. She often had the C.I.A.’s top Iran expert in the room, or nearby. So was the energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, an expert in nuclear weapons design. Proposals floated by the Iranians would be sent back to the U.S. national laboratories, where weapons are designed and tested, for expert analysis of whether the agreements being discussed would keep Iran at least a year away from a bomb.
But Mr. Trump’s negotiating team travels light, with no entourage of experts and few briefings. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the president’s son-in-law and the special envoy, learned their negotiating skills in New York real estate and say a deal is a deal. They say they have immersed themselves in the details of the Iran program, and know it well.
Politics
Soros-linked dark money network fuels Virginia redistricting push backed by national Democrats
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Virginians for Fair Elections, a main group fighting to get Virginia voters to approve a ballot referendum that will allow the state to redraw its congressional maps, has been pumped with millions in cash from a web of George Soros-backed dark money groups and top Democratic Party officials.
The money the group has garnered ahead of Tuesday’s vote, which is poised to allow Democrats in the House of Representatives to potentially take four seats from Republicans going into the midterms, also comes from leading Democratic Party figures and organizations like Nancy Pelosi and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
Other left-wing juggernauts pumping money into the Democratic Party’s redistricting effort in Virginia include the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which once championed the adoption of “independent redistricting commissions,” national green energy group the League of Conservation Voters, and the U.S. House of Representatives campaign arm for the Democratic Party, according to a Fox News Digital review of state campaign finance records and records from the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP), which tracks public spending in Virginia.
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“Dark money is flooding into Virginia,” GOP strategist Matt Gorman told Fox News Digital. “Democrats talked all about the cost of living during the campaign, but all they did once in office was raise taxes and rig elections. It’ll be the same elsewhere across the country in 2026 too.”
A woman casts her vote at a polling place in Burke, Fairfax County, Virginia, in 2026. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg)
Fox News Digital reported in March that the left-wing group fighting to redraw Virginia’s maps raised more than $38 million, according to VPAP’s donation totals based on state campaign finance records. As of right before the mid-April referendum vote, just a handful of weeks later, that total ballooned to more than $64 million.
In 2026, the largest giver to Virginians for Fair Elections was House Majority Forward, the nonprofit counterpart of House Democrats’ House Majority PAC, which has donated over $38 million, records show.
Meanwhile, entities directly tied to Soros, or that obtained significant funding which can be traced back to the billionaire Democrat megadonor, come in second and third in terms of total giving to the group, per VPAP’s accounting of donation totals.
One of those groups, the Fund for Policy Reform Inc, was founded by Soros. The other, titled The Fairness Project, has been funded by groups like the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund and the Tides Foundation, which Soros has given significant funding to.
George Soros pictured on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2020. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
DAVID MARCUS: DESPERATE DEMS TAP OBAMA TO PITCH VIRGINIA GERRYMANDERING LIES
Another one of the top donors to the left’s Virginians for Fair Elections is American Opportunity Action, described as “a pure pass-through entity” by Parker Thayer, a dark money expert from the conservative Capital Research Center. The group is so new that it does not even appear to have any 990s filed with the IRS but is still one of Virginians for Fair Elections’ top donors, according to VPAP and state campaign finance records.
Top Democratic Party members of Congress from outside Virginia, including Reps. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., and Katherine Clark, D-Mass., also donated tens-of-thousands of dollars, according to a review of state campaign finance records. Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s leadership PAC donated $100,000 as well, while the Democratic Party of Virginia put up just shy of a million dollars, per VPAP’s accounting.
Meanwhile, a group founded by Obama wingman Eric Holder, who previously championed “independent redistricting commissions,” provided a more than $10,000 in-kind contribution to the left-wing redistricting group, state election filings show. The League of Conservation Voters, and the Soros-backed MoveOn.org were also among Virginians for Fair Election’s top donors. In terms of labor union support, SEIU gave half-a-million, while AFT gave $100,000.
CBS HOST PRESSES FORMER AG ON DEFENDING PARTISAN REDISTRICTING EFFORTS IN VIRGINIA
Fox News Digital reached out to Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the other top donors pumping thousands or millions into the redistricting battle, but did not receive a response ahead of publication.
“No one wanted to take this action, but in a democracy, we can’t let entire states rig their congressional maps just to bend to the will of one person,” Alexis Magnan-Callaway, a spokesperson for The Fairness Project, told Fox News Digital in March.
“We have to respond. This amendment is a temporary, one-time exception that gives Virginia voters a voice and meets the needs of the current moment, while ensuring Virginia’s bipartisan redistricting process will resume after the 2030 census,” she continued. “This isn’t about favoring one party over another. This is about restoring fairness across the board by temporarily changing Virginia’s congressional districts.”
A main group in Virginia opposing the redistricting effort led by Democrats, Virginians For Fair Maps, raised a little over $3 million at the time of Fox News Digital’s late March report. However, the right-wing redistricting group in Virginia appears to have gained some ground since then as well, albeit still far behind the left’s Virginians for Fair Elections funding totals.
As of just before the referendum vote Tuesday, the anti-redistricting referendum group raised its fundraising total to nearly $20 million, with most of that money coming from a group by the same name that is also a significant donor to the Virginia Republican Party.
Other donations to the group come from a series of several much smaller donors, such as $50,000 from the National Shooting Sports Foundation and $100,000 from a wealthy D.C.-area real-estate investor, who donates primarily to GOP campaigns. That investor is the top individual donor at $100,000 out of just a handful of individual contributions, according to VPAP.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Policy Conference at the Washington Hilton on June 22, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
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Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, has reportedly given more than $500,000 in efforts against the redistricting measure, per reporting from the Virginia Scope. He also has been a leading voice in Virginia holding events to campaign against the measure despite no longer being in office.
Wealthy tech entrepreneur and Republican donor Peter Thiel has reportedly donated to Justice for Democracy PAC, which has been part of the anti-redistricting effort alongside Virginians for Fair Maps as well.
The most unpredictable California governor’s race in recent history took another set of dizzying turns on Monday, with former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra surging after former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out in the face of sexual assault and misconduct allegations, and former state Controller Betty Yee ending her bid.
The race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom is the first in a quarter of a century with no clear front-runner and a sprawling field of candidates who have been jockeying for the attention of Californians, who are just beginning to pay attention to the campaign two weeks before ballots arrive in their mailboxes.
“I certainly could not have imagined the twists and the disturbing turns that this race has taken,” Yee said as she announced she was dropping out. “But through it all, my values and my vision for California has never wavered.”
A poll released Monday by the state Democratic Party — its first since Swalwell (D-Dublin) dropped out — showed Becerra’s support jumped nine points to 13%, placing him in a tie with Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental warrior. Former Rep. Katie Porter of Orange County saw a slight bump to 10% from 7%, while the remaining Democrats in the contest were mired in the low single digits.
The party began the surveys out of concern that Democrats could be shut out of the governor’s race because of California’s unique primary system, where the top two vote-getters in the June 2 primary move on to the November general election regardless of political party.
“I continue to believe there are too many Democrats in the field,” California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks told reporters Monday. “My call for candidates to honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaigns still stands, especially if you are stalled in the single digits, seeing financial resources dry up and/or are failing to pick up additional support.”
Hicks and other party leaders and allies had unsuccessfully urged low-polling candidates to reconsider their candidacies before the filing deadline in an attempt to cull the field and avoid splintering the Democratic vote. Though most did not name candidates who they thought should think about their viability, Yee was widely believed to be among them.
Yee became emotional as she said on Monday that she decided to withdraw from the race because she wasn’t able to raise the resources necessary to compete in the state. She also said her message of competency and experience wasn’t resonating among voters who were seeking a fiery foil to President Trump, not “Boring Betty,” as she dubbed herself. Yee said she would assess the field before making an announcement on whether she would endorse one of her fellow Democrats.
Becerra was another candidate believed to be a target of party leaders’ efforts to shrink the field. But he held on and apparently benefited from Swalwell’s downfall.
“I’m not the richest candidate, I’m not the slickest candidate, but I am the guy that’s got you,” Becerra said, rallying supporters in Los Angeles on Saturday.
The audience was filled with members of labor groups backing the longtime politician, and Becerra told them he’d serve as a “union man” in the governor’s office.
Pro- and anti-Becerra forces tussled outside the town hall after two people, who declined to identify whom they were working for, passed out fliers highlighting critical media investigations of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the migrant crisis when the agency was led by Becerra.
Pro-Becerra attendees grabbed the fliers and told the men to go away, prompting a security guard to intervene.
The question is whether Becerra, who also served as state attorney general, a member of Congress and a state Assembly member, can raise the funds necessary to compete in a state with some of the nation’s most expensive media markets. And he was tied in the state party poll with a billionaire who dumped an additional $12.1 million of his own money into his campaign last week.
Steyer’s total investment in his bid reached $133 million, according to the California secretary of state’s office. He also received the endorsement of Our Revolution, a progressive political organization founded by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
“We’ve never endorsed a billionaire — but Tom Steyer is using his position to upset the system,” the group posted on X on Monday. “As Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese told @theintercept, ‘He’s been a partner in the movement. Most billionaires have used their wealth and privilege to lock in the status quo. Tom is doing the opposite.’”
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is also running for governor, accused Steyer of hypocrisy for the hedge fund he founded profiting from investments in private prisons being used to house ICE detainees, and Steyer calling for the abolishment of ICE.
Steyer got “rich investing off the ICE infrastructure he now wants to abolish,” Mahan posted on Instagram.
Steyer, who sold his stake in the hedge fund in 2012, has said he ordered the company to divest from the private prison company and has repeatedly expressed remorse about his former firm’s ties with the detention company.
Mahan also appeared Monday at a Hollywood production lot to announce his proposal for a special fund to lure sporting events, concerts and other productions to California as part of his plan to help the struggling film and television industry.
An independent effort supporting Mahan has also raised roughly $11 million since Swalwell left the race.
Mehta reported from Los Angeles and Nixon from Sacramento. Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
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