THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES

Tanks rolled into Washington D.C. as part of preparations for Taco’s Birthday Party. Flash-bangs lit up the streets of Los Angeles.

And in between, Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring protests a “rebellion” while he was en route to a UFC fight in Newark.

This isn’t immigration enforcement. This isn’t public safety. This is a regime cracking down on dissent in broad daylight—then lying about it before the smoke even clears.

Stephen Miller wanted “a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day.” His words. He scolded federal agents for not raiding Home Depots and 7-Elevens aggressively enough. He accused them of weakness. He wanted a spectacle.

He got it.

Hundreds detained in downtown L.A., including those just showing up for their regularly scheduled ICE check-ins. Protesters gassed and shot with rubber bullets outside federal buildings. A union president arrested. And then came the declaration: these weren’t protests. They were “insurrections.” And Trump, surrounded by yes-men and enablers, took the bait he laid out himself.

He deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles County without permission from the state. For the first time in sixty years, the federal government bypassed a governor’s authority to send troops into a U.S. city not for disaster response, not for mutual aid, but to crack down on Americans protesting immigration raids.

This is martial law by press release. Authoritarianism by tweet. And it’s happening in real time.

Make no mistake—Trump planned this. In January 2024, he deliberately killed a bipartisan immigration deal that would’ve increased border security and sped up court proceedings. Why? Because he wanted chaos. He needed the crisis. He wanted immigration to remain broken so he could weaponize it.

He lied about migrant crime. He claimed migrants were eating people’s pets. And when his most gullible followers swallowed it whole, he escalated. More ICE raids. More workplace sweeps. More rhetoric about invasion. And now, more troops in cities that never asked for them.

Los Angeles was never going to go quietly. It’s too big, too loud, too mixed, too proud. That’s exactly why Trump chose it. Not to pacify it—but to try and break it. To flood the streets with agents and troops and dare Californians to push back so he could call it a war.

He called the protesters “paid insurrectionists.” He said L.A. was “occupied.” He gave his usual cartoon villain signoff—“Thank you for your attention to this matter!”—like he was announcing a school assembly, not ordering a domestic military operation.

Meanwhile, Governor Newsom told the truth: this wasn’t about public safety. This was about manufacturing a crisis, violating state sovereignty, and rerouting military resources to chase down gardeners, garment workers, and their children.

The scariest part isn’t that Trump did all this. It’s how openly he did it.

There was no pretense. No careful wording. He flat-out admitted the purpose of the troops was to “liberate” L.A. from “the migrant invasion.” It’s the language of ethnic cleansing wrapped in the flag.

And it’s not just the language that’s unraveling. The regime itself is cracking at the seams.

Trump’s trade deals are vapor. His economic numbers are sliding. His backers are turning on him. The Department of Government Efficiency, which Elon Musk once used like a toy box, is now under scrutiny. His “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is facing growing Republican opposition. And yet—here we are. Military boots in a city that didn’t ask for them.

At the end of the day, Trump didn’t storm a burning city. He lit the match, took a selfie, and tripped on the stairs to Air Force One.

They want fear. They want silence. They want Americans to scroll past, to shake their heads and sigh and accept it.

But not this time.

Because what just happened in Los Angeles wasn’t a policy disagreement. It wasn’t an immigration debate. It was the regime testing the perimeter.

And if we don’t call it what it is now, we may not get another chance.

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