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GIVEN THE HEAVY-HANDED, often completely over the top approach of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents endeavouring to apprehend and deport so-called “illegal aliens” and the very high concentration of women, men and children living without official status in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, it was sadly inevitable that trouble would ensue. The scenes broadcast around the world this week are regrettable and unfortunate.
There have been many, including Longford-born Father Peter O’Reilly, who featured on RTÉ’s News at One on Wednesday, exercising their peaceful right to protest. Malevolent elements, however, have engaged in acts of violence and looting, which local law enforcement agencies have struggled to suppress.
Sensing an opening, President Donald Trump opted to “send in the cavalry” and used an obscure statute to deploy thousands of National Guard members and hundreds of Marines to the city, despite the contrary pleas of California Governor Gavin Newsom and others on the ground who’ve declared that they had matters under control. At present, those summoned are authorised solely to protect ICE personnel and federal buildings.
Hopefully, the tumult in Los Angeles will soon calm, and the fears of residents will be allayed. Notably, uprisings in response to ICE tactics have spread to New York, Chicago, Seattle, Dallas and beyond. These are alarming times in Trump’s America.
Initially, two things merit mention in this context. In dispatching the military to deal with this situation on his own accord, President Trump is once again demonstrating his penchant for issuing fiats.
Those who repeatedly assert that his authoritarian streak poses a genuine threat to the rule of law and to the polity more generally in the United States have a valid, if controversial and strenuously disputed, point. The commander-in-chief’s apparent view of soldiers as co-police, in concert with a military parade in Washington DC of the sort typically associated with Moscow or Beijing, undeniably bolsters their case.
Additionally, zooming out a bit, a healthy respect for the balance of powers between the federal government and the individual state governments buttresses the system. The precise nature of the relationship between national and local authority is ill-defined and imprecise. Most politicians at the two levels have been cognisant of the need to maintain stability.
Indeed, conservatives have traditionally genuflected to states’ rights and cautioned as to the dangers inherent in overreach from central government. They have made a solid argument for deference on this front. How they might persuasively proffer it in future on Capitol Hill or in the fifty statehouses is anyone’s guess. For the man they dare not defy has called in the troops, with absolutely no regard for the contrary pleas of California’s elected representatives.
What are the political realities emanating from recent chaotic events in the Golden State? Remember, as cold-blooded as it may sound, shrewd politicians see opportunities in crises. The acerbic back-and-forth on social media and elsewhere between Governor Newsom and President Trump indicates that each has identified benefits to be derived from a clash.
It is no secret that the former is readying a bid to be the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And the ex-San Francisco mayor isn’t mincing his words on Twitter/X: “When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. Democracy is under assault before our eyes — the moment we’ve feared has arrived. The rule of law has increasingly given way to the rule of Don. The founding fathers did not live and die to see this moment.”
He has pretty much begged to be arrested by Trump’s director of enforcement and removal operations, Tom Homan. Why wouldn’t he? Footage of his being taken into custody for refusing to bow to the administration that progressive Democrats loathe so passionately would make a great campaign ad. It would be political gold dust. While his being handcuffed is an unlikely prospect, Newsom and his team correctly perceive that this is his chance to assume the mantle of leader of the opposition.
His adversary similarly deems downtown LA fertile territory. Trump is banking that a majority of the cohort of apolitical, non-ideological Americans who decide elections assess the images they’ve witnessed in the same fashion as Vice President JD Vance: “these are foreign nationals with no legal right to be in the country waving foreign flags and assaulting law enforcement.”
Early surveys, looked at in the round, reveal that people are split down the middle on Trump’s decision to utilise the National Guard and Marines in California. Equally, they are fairly evenly divided when asked if they support the rallies and related disruptions in the wake of ICE’s flurry of activity. That’s all the mandate Trump requires.
Further, some commentators, this writer among them, wonder if aggressively pursuing the expulsion of Latinos could damage his standing with that vital, growing, surprisingly receptive audience for the MAGA message. CNN statistician Harry Enten suggests a converse scenario.
In Enten’s words, “no group has become more hawkish on immigration and shifted to the GOP than immigrants.” His data shows that, whereas they had a net positive perspective on undocumented persons of +23% in 2020, that figure had plummeted to a net negative of -6% by 2024 as they embraced Trump.
When coupled with the probability that, as in the past, allegations being advanced by Governor Newsom and lots of other prominent Democrats that the 47th POTUS is a putative dictator who intends to unravel American democracy won’t land with a jaded, ruthlessly self-interested citizenry, it is manifest that the California calamity is to Trump’s advantage.
In sum, it is difficult to contest the editorial analysis of The American Conservative magazine. “Public opinion on immigration can be nuanced. But there is still more reason to believe that, for now, the Trump-era Republican stance on immigration has more crossover appeal than a Democratic alliance with mobs waving Mexican flags in protests against American law enforcement.”
The president’s job approval rating is hanging tough at 46.8% in the RealClearPolitics.com aggregated polling. It appears that Elon Musk is seeking to return to the fold, having expressed contrition for social media posts last week that, he says, went too far.
It is hard at this juncture to envisage the “big, beautiful bill” not getting over the line as sceptical, yet cowed, Republicans on Capitol Hill must vote as if their political careers are at stake, because they are.
All the usual disclaimers and caveats apply. There is an inescapable truth here, though. Politically speaking, Donald Trump is doing just fine in June 2025.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a Law Lecturer at the University of Galway and a political columnist with TheJournal.ie.
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