If, as many local officials in California have suggested, Trump's goal was to create a powder keg that justifies even more authoritarian repression in LA, it's abundantly clear the regime and its Gestapo were working to create that power keg long before Trump illegally deployed what is now 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 US Marines to the extremely diverse sanctuary city. Take for example the assault, arrest, and smearing of Service Employees International Union President David Huerta during the Friday ICE raids in densely populated portions of LA and the surrounding area.

Whether the Gestapo pigs who assaulted Huerta on camera while the extremely popular labor leader was merely observing the unlawful Gestapo raids targeting workers in his city knew it or not, their fascist piggery was almost certainly the inciting moment for widespread nonviolent protests that broke out across the greater LA area; a day and a half later, Trump would be illegally deploying National Guard troops on the streets of downtown Los Angeles.

commondreams.org/news/david-hu…

'This Is What Fascism Looks Like': Beloved Labor Leader David Huerta Arrested

"The union included remarks from Huertas, who said, "We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice."

"This is about something much bigger" than his own arrest, said Huertas. "This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice."

According to a statement released by the Department of Homeland Security, approximately 44 individuals were "administratively arrested" in a series of raids at retail stores in the Los Angeles area, while one individual, identified as Huertas, was arrested "for obstruction" of federal officers.

"This is what fascism looks like," said California State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat. "Secret police raids. Injuring protesters. Arresting labor leaders."

As the article notes, Huertas is the president of a 750,000 member strong union in California that represents an absolutely massive number of Latinex workers in the state; if the feds were looking to avoid protests, this was the last guy they wanted to assault. Which makes the fact that they did so on camera, and then tried to lie about it later all the more revealing. This is from a Guardian update posted after Huertas was released on bond:

theguardian.com/us-news/live/2…

"In an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint against Huerta, an officer alleged that the union leader was arrested after another officer tried to push him out of the way of a law enforcement vehicle being blocked by protesters on a sidewalk. The officer who witnessed the incident claimed that he saw Huerta “push back, and in response, the officer pushed HUERTA to the ground. The officer and I then handcuffed HUERTA and arrested him.”

However, video of the arrest shared on social media by US attorney Bill Essayli seems to show that the officer shoved Huerta to the ground without being pushed by the labor leader. Huerta’s head was knocked into a concrete curb by the officers and he was hospitalized on Friday."

If you watch the video the government's own attorney shared, it is utterly impossible for the regime to credibly argue that Heurta is a violent protestor or criminal element, and even the regime's argument about "obstruction" seems to revolve around not stepping out the way for a truck full of kidnapped Angelino workers to be driven through; yet they're trying anyway. I believe that's because the facts don't matter to Trump, this arrest in particular merely provided him with the excuse he needed to declare war on LA and by extension, Governor Gavin Newsom.

If it seems like I'm laser focused on the Gestapo raids broadly targeting brown workers in LA on Friday, it's because this is unquestionably the inciting incident that lead to the Trump regime's ongoing fascist invasion of LA and contrary to Downmarket Mussolini and his minion's lies, the Trump administration was completely responsible for these inciting incidents. It was Kristi Noem who demanded vastly more migrant arrests, it was Stephen Miller who gave the order to target retail businesses and public districts, it was ICE officials who told the Gestapo to violate civil rights and start snatching people up for being brown, it was the Trump regime who targeted a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state run by the current 2028 Democrat nomination frontrunner for this spectacle, and it was Trumpenreich officials who responded to nonviolent protests by declaring a violent insurrection was occurring in LA to pave the way for Trump's deployment of US military forces to the city. They had the means, they created the opportunity, and the motives are transparently fascist; Trump snatched it up as an excuse to declare war on his perceived opposition immediately, as if it was planned that way, because it was.

#Fascism #LA #ICE #Trump #KristiNoem #StephenMiller #DHS #Invasion #USPol #Gestapo #Newsom #PoliceState #Nazis

Mayor says Los Angeles being used as ‘test case’ by federal government – as it happened

Mayor says ‘nothing warranted’ the intervention and that cannot ‘emphasize enough the level of fear and terror that is in Angelenos right now’ due to Ice raids

^{Kate Lamb (The Guardian)}

While we're still in the "before ICE starts snatching up brown people at work in perhaps the most diverse city in America" portion of our story, I'd like to take a look at a curious exchange between California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Trump regime, that occurred right before the fascist theater shitshow in LA touched off. While the federal government's invasion of LA is inherently a story about labor class and marginalized resistance against fascist oppression, I do think there is a clear political angle at work here that we're going to have to talk about sooner or later, so I'd like to lay the groundwork for that discussion now before this fascinating tidbit of information fades out of the discourse.

Did you know that literally hours before the Gestapo raids in LA that touched off what would become Trump's invasion, California was threatening to without federal tax payments and the Pork Reich responded by threatening to jail the Governor of California while making arguments that Trump or at least Trump policies should control the state, not Governor Gavin Newsom?

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j…

Newsom is warned of ‘criminal tax evasion’ if he withholds federal taxes

"The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has warned California governor Gavin Newsom that he would be guilty of “criminal tax evasion” if he withholds his state’s tax payments to the federal government amid threats of a funding cut by Donald Trump.

Newsom had threatened to cut tax payments to the federal government two days ago after reports that Trump was preparing huge federal funding cuts targeting Democrat-dominated California, including its state university system."

There's a lot going on here and the Guardian's reporting is a little bit of a flippant but juicy political story because, presumably, they did not know ICE and then the US military were about to invade LA. The two larger background stories here are that Gavin Newsome is the 2028 frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination, and that Trump has been threatening California with drastic cuts to its federal funding unless Newsom adopts fascist political policies, particularly in relation to climate legislation and trans rights. The latter dispute, which has become quite heated, has been raging for months and was recently thrust into the spotlight because the Klepto Kaiser saw some moral panic anti-trans news stories about a girl's high school long jump meet and responded by threatening to defund the California University system; which is to some degree, the pride and joy of California (neo)liberalism.

So our backdrop here is that before a single federal boot hits the ground in LA and the surrounding area, Trump is already trying to broadly control policy in California, and become locked into a highly political battle of wills with Newsom, who the broader right seems to regard as the de facto leader of the Democratic Party given his status as the 2028 nomination frontrunner right now. That battle over the sovereignty of the California government had already escalated to a point just below the surface of open conflict in a way we haven't seen since the Civil Rights Act was passed; at the point the Governor of California is saying he's not gonna to pay the state's taxes unless Trump let's him govern his own state, and US government representatives are threatening to charge Newsom with criminal tax evasion, you are in fact already on the verge of something akin to a Civil War, or at least secession. Which in turn makes regime comments about Newsom's governance, delivered on Friday by White House spokesperson Kush Desai, extremely revealing.

"In a statement on Friday, the White House spokesperson Kush Desai criticized California’s energy, immigration and other positions as “lunatic anti-energy, soft-on-crime, pro-child mutilation, and pro-sanctuary policies”.

“No taxpayer should be forced to fund the demise of our country,” Desai said, but he added that “No final decisions, however, on any potential future action by the Administration have been made, and any discussion suggesting otherwise should be considered pure speculation.”

Now look, I'm not a conspiracy theorist but if you look past the blatantly obvious lies being uttered by the Trump regime, this all sort of looks like the opening stages of a 2028 election battle with the Kelpto Kaiser upping the anti by making that battle highly literal and kinetic. The media isn't picking up on it because A) they're interested in selling Newsom as the next president and B) they're not taking Trump's threats to run for an (unconstitutional) third term seriously, but all the hallmarks of Trump building Newsom and "decadent" California up to be his new Clinton dynasty, or Biden regime style foil are there. This isn't about public safety, it's about power; the power to punish your political opposition and rule like an emperor across every state in America.

That's why they picked LA.

#Fascism #LA #Trump #Newsom #USPol #Funding

Newsom is warned of ‘criminal tax evasion’ if he withholds federal taxes

California governor made threat amid reports Trump is weighing huge federal funding cuts targeting state

^{Edward Helmore (The Guardian)}