Gavin Newsom: Donald Trump’s ‘militarisation’ of LA is an attack on America

The California Governor has accused the US President of escalating the crisis for political gain as protests stretched to a fifth day.

Law enforcement officers arrest a demonstrator outside the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Picture: AFP

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Gavin Newsom has accused Donald Trump of “pulling a military dragnet across Los Angeles” and engineering the “unlawful militarisation” of the city to generate a political crisis, as protests against the US President’s immigration crackdown extended into a fifth day.

The California Governor used a televised address on Tuesday (local time) to sharpen the political battlelines with Washington and position himself as the leading Democratic figure taking up the fight to the administration – fuelling speculation he was soft-launching his own presidential bid.

Mr Newsom’s extraordinary take-down video came shortly after a curfew was imposed from 8pm to 6am (1pm to 11pm Wednesday AEST) in a one square mile area of downtown LA, with Mayor Karen Bass saying the measure would prevent what she described as “bad actors” from “taking advantage of the President’s chaotic escalation”.

Arrests have climbed to more than 220 since the demonstrations first began on Friday when immigration raids targeted day-labourers at a Home Depot car park in Paramount area as well as workers at an apparel warehouse in the fashion district.

Many shop fronts in LA were boarded up or protected by security guards as demonstrators continued to gather in the streets near the Metropolitan Detention Centre – a key focal point where protesters clashed over the weekend with authorities who responded with tear gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets.

But a show of overwhelming police force meant they were vastly outnumbered on Tuesday, with some protesters covering their face with masks, waving Mexican flags, chanting and carrying placards condemning the President and his immigration crackdown.

“We got the peaceful ones and we got the violent ones,” one masked protester told The Australian. “You got to know the difference. We’re the peaceful ones.”

His message to Mr Trump was “don’t get into a job you can’t handle”.

Danielle Kahl, another protester draped in an American flag, said she was protesting peacefully because she didn’t “agree with illegal search and seizures just because the Trump administration thinks this is OK”.

“Mobilising the military for domestic reasons when we’re not doing anything? There are bad actors that are causing violence and throwing things at the cops and stuff. I don’t stand for that. I stand for peaceful protesting, utilising my First Amendment right to disagree with what they’re doing.”

California Highway Patrol officers arrest a demonstrator. Picture: AFP

Related protests also saw demonstrators taking to the streets in other cities across America including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Dallas, Austin and Philadelphia with Mr Newsom warning that California was only the President’s first target.

“California may be first, but it clearly will not end here,” Mr Newsom said. “Other states are next. Democracy is next.”

Mr Trump, who earlier this week briefly entertained arresting Mr Newsom, championed the deployment of the military as a vital step to “liberate Los Angeles” and described the city as a “trash heap”.

Speaking at a military demonstration at Fort Bragg to mark the 250th anniversary of the US Army, the President likened the protesters to “animals” and branded them a “vicious and violent mob”.

He said the protesters in LA “would have burned down the city” had he not intervened by invoking a federal statute – Title 10, Section 12406 of the US Code – to federalise about 4000 California National Guard members and deploy 700 Marines to the city.

Mr Trump said that what was happening in California was a “full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country”.

Police enforce a curfew after it went into effect during a protest against ICE raids. Picture: Getty Images

But Mr Newsom said the mobilisation of troops on domestic soil amounted to a “brazen abuse of power by a sitting president”.

He said this action had “inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk”.

California has filed a legal challenge against the deployment of troops by the administration, with Mr Newsom saying it had also sought an emergency court order on Tuesday to “stop the use of the American military in the engagement of law enforcement activities”.

The filing argues that Mr Trump usurped the state’s authority by deploying the National Guard in an unconstitutional use of executive power, with a hearing having been scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

Mr Trump later continued his attack on Mr Newsom, saying that “he just doesn’t do a very good job … And if we didn’t get involved, Los Angeles would be burning down right now, just like the houses burned down.”

“I want to save Los Angeles, and Newsom is totally incompetent,” he said. “It can only go right by having the military de-escalate.”

As the political fight intensified, the cost of deploying the National Guard and Marines to LA was pegged at $US134m ($206m) at a House budget hearing in Washington. Sitting next to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Acting Pentagon Comptroller Bryn MacDonnell said the money would cover “travel, housing (and) food”.

Mr Hegseth defended the expense, telling the committee that “ICE agents need to be able to do their job. They’re being attacked for doing their job which is deporting illegal criminals.”

Under the terms of the order signed by the President on Saturday, the National Guard is not involved in policing actions but is instead being used to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel as well as federal buildings and functions in the area.

This appeared to be the case on Tuesday, with members of the National Guard quietly standing out the front of the Federal Building on North Los Angeles Street where they were ignoring frequent verbal abuse from protesters.

The walls of many buildings in downtown LA have been defaced with graffiti including vulgar statements like “F..k ICE;” “ICE is terrorism;” “Dead cops;” “Die pigs” and “F..k Trump”.

A former US Marine peacefully protesting in LA against the deployment of the National Guard and Marines by the Trump administration. Picture: Joe Kelly

One masked demonstrator carrying a US flag told The Australian he was a former Marine with eight years’ experience and two combat deployments. He was looking for the Marines to tell them their “leadership is failing them because they’re forgetting what they signed up for. They signed up for the constitution, not for any president.”

“I signed up to defend the constitution and what Trump is doing is violating the constitutional rights of all persons,” he said. “This is intimidation … I’ve never seen Marines put in a situation on domestic soil.

“I think the rest of America can understand the situation if you’re willing to do this in Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. If it happens in one place, it’s going to happen somewhere else.”

Mike Harnett, a former staff sergeant in the Air Force who was deployed three times in the Middle East, has come to peacefully protest in LA. Picture: Joe Kelly

Mike Harnett, a protester who said he served in the US Air Force from 1999 to 2009, said that “military members who are active duty, you don’t have to follow unlawful orders because you are supposed to be supporting and defending the constitution of the United States.”

He said he spent three years in Germany in the US Air Force and “saw the effects of fascism even decades after (World War II). I saw what happens when people are oppressed, put down. And I see that happening in my country right now.”

Mr Newsom used his message to 40 million Californians on Tuesday evening to say that democracy was “under assault before our eyes,” warning that the US President was “taking a wrecking ball to our founding fathers”.

He blasted Mr Trump’s crackdown on illegal aliens as being “different than anything we’ve seen before” because the administration was “indiscriminately targeting hard-working immigrant families regardless of their roots or risk”.

This meant immigration agents were arresting “dishwashers, gardeners, day labourers and seamstresses” instead of violent and serious criminals.

“That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength,” he said. “What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him.”