Sticking with the Trumpenreich invasion of LA for just one more moment, I'd like to take a look at the intentional fascist intimidation tactics employed by Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, or at least her security team, against the US Senator from California, Alex Padilla. This event received extensive coverage in the mainstream media, but I believe it's important to take note of here for two reasons; one which was discussed in liberal media circles, and one that got far less coverage because our establishment is instinctively allergic to calling US cabinet officials "liars" even when everyone knows they're lying.

Let's get into the weeds:

truthout.org/articles/senator-…

Sen. Alex Padilla Tackled to the Ground, Handcuffed at Noem Press Conference

"Video of the incident that circulated on social media showed Padilla attempting to ask Noem a question when multiple men began grabbing and shoving him.

“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla says, struggling to speak as he’s manhandled. He seemingly begins to make a comment about the “rotating” set of people supposedly convicted of crimes that the Trump administration is parading around in attempts to justify their brutal, sweeping anti-immigrant campaign.

As he’s speaking, the officers forcibly remove him from the room, with Padilla yelling “hands off.” Grabbing his arms, chest, and clothes, they shove the senator into a hallway, where they force him to the ground and handcuff him."

First of all, this is outrageous, intentional, fascist political intimidation and Senator Warren is absolutely right when she says the DHS Secretary should resign. Not that Noem will, because Trump purposely stacked his regime full of nazis who don't know the meaning of the word shame this time, and Kristi really fits that description; after all, this *is* a woman who bragged about murdering a puppy because she thought it would help her political career. The fact is however there are only 100 United States Senators, and while Capital Hill may be a city within a city, it's not a particularly large city. Every single person in that room, including Noem, her security detail, and the press corps, knew who Alex Padilla was the entire time. Furthermore, while Noam might have a TV star's face thanks to her surgeon, she's a very poor actor, and watching her during this widely-recorded moment makes it clear she's fully aware of what's going on the whole time. The assault, and it was an assault, by Noem's security detail on a Democrat sitting US Senator representing the community the Trumpenreich is currently invading, was completely intentional; Noem, and through her Trump, meant to send a message.

As the article goes on to detail, this fascist bullshit is firmly part of a larger Swine Emperor and GOP quest to criminalize their political opposition, specifically the Democratic Party. This is occurring not only in rhetoric, but in deed. The regime is investigating Act Blue, a Dem-aligned fundraising org, they've arrested both a Democrat Mayor, and a Democrat Congresswoman for attempting to conduct oversight on an ICE facility, federal agents burst into NY Democrat Jerry Nadler's office, cuffed an employee, and accused his staff of harboring "criminals." They're working hard to get Americans used to seeing Democrat officials aligned against Trump, in handcuffs on the six o'clock news, and I suspect that's not an accident.

All of which then brings us to Kristi Noem's bald-face lie, that Senator Padilla "burst into the room," "lunged at her,' and "did not identify himself." Let's roll the tape:

theguardian.com/us-news/live/2…

CBS video of Padilla interrupting Noem with a question appears to undermine her claim that he lunged at her

"Just three seconds into the incident, Padilla could be seen standing, with his left hand raised slightly in a rhetorical gesture, trying to continue with his question, as a security officer placed his hands on the senator’s chest and back and began pushing him away from the front of the room.

There is no visual evidence in the clip to suggest that Padilla was moving in Noem’s direction when he started speaking, or was ever within 10-15ft (3-3.5 metres) of her."

So, actually Padilla was already in the room, he never got within 12 feet of Noem and certainly didn't lunge, and he clearly identified himself in a room he didn't have to. I'm sorry for the Zapruder film treatment here, but I want to establish that Kristi Noem is unquestionably, and intentionally lying about something she knows is being recorded live, because that's the most important thing about this incident.

Noem knows she's lying, she knows you know she's lying, and she knows the camera knows she's lying, but in true fascist fashion she's claiming the power to force you to accept that lie as valid; and a media pretending she could just be stupid and mistaken, would make Orwell weep.

#Fascism #Trump #USPol #DHS #InvasionOfLA #KristiNoem #AlexPadilla #GOP

Sen. Alex Padilla Tackled to the Ground, Handcuffed at Noem Press Conference

“If this is how this administration responds to a senator … imagine what they’re doing” to everyday Americans, he said.

^{Sharon Zhang (Truthout)}

Keeping with collecting facts to remember about the ongoing invasion of LA in a discourse actively trying to reimagine these events in real time, I'd like to talk about this June 10th article on Huffpost because I think it highlights three important points I've been writing about on this blog. First, state security forces, particularly federal Trumpenreich immigration forces are the ones committing violence and sewing disorder, not protestors. Second, the "nonlethal" weapons being deployed on nonviolent protestors in LA are still extremely dangerous, and represent an unacceptable application of force against people exercising their constitutionally-protected rights. And third, the class sympathies of corporate media organizations are so powerfully encoded that they supersede even basic self-preservation.

huffpost.com/entry/journalists…

Dozens Of Journalists Targeted, Shot, Detained While Covering LA Protests, Press Org Says

"Shocking video and photos taken amid the ongoing immigration protests in Los Angeles show journalists and news crews being shot, detained and forced off public property by law enforcement, raising concerns of excessive force and First Amendment rights violations.

There have been more than 30 incidents of police violence against journalists as of Tuesday, including 20 injuries, at least five of which required emergency room or urgent care visits, said Adam Rose, the press rights chair with the Los Angeles Press Club, which released a statement Monday urging an end to the targeting of journalists whose work is constitutionally protected."

Keep in mind that this story was published on June 10th, and it is now June 13th; I've watched enough livestreams from LA to guarantee you the more than 30 incidents of police violence against journalists catalogued by the LA Press Club is now a drastic undercount as we roll through day 7 of the fascist Trumpenreich invasion of LA. Furthermore, while everyone has seen the clip of the Australian 9 News reporter being purposely shot in the back of the leg by a murderpig, incidents of deliberate calculated violence against journalists by various state security forces are by no means isolated, and have resulted in far more serious injuries than Tomasi got in that clip. These violent assaults on journalists by federal immigration officers and local police forces are *not* accidental; check out this quote from the LA Press Club's letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem:

“In some cases, federal officers appear to have deliberately targeted journalists who were doing nothing more than their job covering the news,” a letter addressed to Noem by the organizations states."

Do you have any idea how sure a mainstream press body has to be before they accuse cops of purposely targeting journalists? Security forces, particularly Trump's federal Gestapo, have been intentionally attacking journalists to prevent them from covering their widespread civil rights abuses and fascist piggery towards migrants and protestors; full stop. Is this violence? Is this disorder? Cause if it is, I think it's safe to say the pigs are the one bringing those elements to the streets of LA.

Which brings us to nonlethal rounds, and the intentional application of excessive force against journalists, by security forces. Take this story from a veteran reporter shot through the leg with a "nonlethal" round by a cop aiming an area effect weapon directly at his midsection.

"Graphic photos shared with HuffPost show a gaping wound in Nick Stern’s right thigh that he said has left him unable to walk or move without assistance.

“Why this device was shot at human, kind of, waist high level, I do not know. The people around me at that time was doing nothing more than waving Mexican flags,” he told HuffPost."

Stern's story is by no means an outlier, and the article provides evidence of more injured journalists like him. All of which might make you ask how media muppets can continue to blame violence on protestors and hump murderpigs on live TV while their compatriots are being wounded in the streets by deliberate pig assaults? The answer is cold hard cash, and the class sympathies of people who own and run media corporations. These folks are so committed to the police state that protects their material interests, that the media they control will jump through absurd hoops to conflate victim with victimizer; a few days ago I watched a CNN reporter claim protestors were throwing exploding foam objects at the press while holding up a nonlethal munition that I know came from the cops because they're the only ones who had those types of weapons at the protest.

My friends, you're damn right there is violence and disorder on (some of) the streets of LA; and if all the murderpigs and soldiers committing that violence and causing that disorder would like to fuck off now, I'm sure Angelinos can handle the rest from here.

#Fascism #Trump #InvasionOfLA #Police #PoliceViolence #Media #Journalists #CivilRights #USPol

Dozens Of Journalists Targeted, Shot, Detained While Covering LA Protests, Press Org Says

“I never thought for one moment that I’d actually have to be fearful of law enforcement during a public protest," said one photojournalist hospitalized after getting shot in the leg.

^{Nina Golgowski (HuffPost)}

In this thread I've written a lot about the importance of keeping track of what the regime says surrounding the fascist shitshow that is the Trumpenreich invasion of LA. Speaking frankly, I think everyone living in a capitalist police state should keep close track of what their "leaders" say at all times, but in this case it's important because the Trump regime uses propaganda to create space for action. In talking about and justifying their fascist activities, including the invasion of LA, regime officials frequently reveal a great deal about their methods of operation and future intentions.

To go deeper into what I mean by this sort of tea leaf reading and how it pertains to the Trump regime's statements about Los Angeles, let's take a look at this June 10th Guardian article discussing a very similar issue with some help from NYU history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j…

‘The language of authoritarianism’: how Trump and allies cast LA as a lawless city needing military intervention

"As a pretext to this action, the Trump administration had characterized the protests as a broader threat to the nation. On X, White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called LA “occupied territory”. “We’ve been saying for years this is a fight to save civilization. Anyone with eyes can see that now.”

Trump posted on Truth Social: “A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations – But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve.”

FBI director, Kash Patel, wrote on X that LA was “under siege by marauding criminals”.

If I'm being honest, this entire article is basically one huge "They Said It" post, so you'll forgive me for centering Trumpenreich official's comments over Ben-Ghiat's analysis. If you read on however, she confirms that the regime's language is designed to create an 'existential sense of fear," paint LA as a warzone, and justify putting soldiers in the streets to enforce Trump's fascist rule. Ben-Ghiat also points to a statement made by Trump's crusader fascist Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, for a perfect encapsulation of how this narrative building then translates to implied justification for very specific authoritarian regime actions.

"The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil,” Hegseth wrote. “A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK.”

Ben-Ghiat said Hegseth employed “the classic authoritarian thing, of setting up an excuse, which is that the internal enemy, illegal criminal aliens, is working together with an external enemy, the cartels and foreign terrorists, and using that to go after a third party, of protesters, regular people, who came out to show solidarity”.

All of which brings us to the same, familiar, gnawing question that defines so much of the second Trump era; are these guys fucking serious? As I mentioned elsewhere, the fact is a fascist regime really only gets one shot at going for the full Third Reich dictatorship experience; if Trump and his minions go for it, but fail, everyone who doesn't have SCOTUS-granted immunity from prosecution is probably fucked. Is Downmarket Mussolini willing to risk the tremendous power and privilege he has now to make himself the true master of all he surveys? I'm not sure anyone, even Trump's unofficial minister of nazi shit Stephen Miller, actually knows the answer to that question.

What I can tell you however, is what I told you earlier on this blog today; at some point the idea that Trump is just accidentally falling into all the steps he'd need to take to install a permanent fascist dictatorship in America, ceases to hold water. This guy is either the world's luckiest accidental authoritarian, or the Trump regime is planning to go the full nine yards and what we're talking about now is a question of courage, not will. Take a look at what this article quotes Miller as saying, and then tell me you're sure I'm wrong.

“Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States,” Stephen Miller wrote on X."

Folks, it's hard to say that the Trump regime is "preparing for war," when they've clearly already started one. But almost everything the regime does and says, especially in regards to the Los Angeles protests, strongly implies we haven't remotely hit rock bottom here. Trump is running out of shiny things to distract the public with and it's increasingly becoming clear the Trumpenreich is building a dictatorship brick by brick; you don't do that because you want to admire the shine on your Gestapo's riot helmets.

#Fascism #Trump #USPol #LA #InvasionOfLA #Propaganda #Dictatorship #StephenMiller

‘The language of authoritarianism’: how Trump and allies cast LA as a lawless city needing military intervention

As a pretext to sending in the national guard, the White House marked the Ice protests as a broader threat to the US

^{Tess Owen (The Guardian)}

Today in deeply not at all fun Trump facts; did you know the Swine Emperor has currently deployed more troops to LA than the US military officially maintains in Syria and Iraq, combined? No, seriously:

truthout.org/articles/trump-ha…

Trump Has Deployed More Troops in LA Than Syria and Iraq, Per US Counts

"President Donald Trump’s latest deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles means that there are now more troops carrying out Trump’s anti-protest crackdown in southern California than in both Iraq and Syria, regions where the U.S. has executed some of its most intense and inhumane military campaigns in recent decades, according to official counts.

Trump has dispatched roughly 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to respond to L.A.’s protests of his immigration raids, for a total of roughly 4,700 troops. Meanwhile, according to publicly reported Pentagon figures, the U.S. has roughly 2,000 troops deployed in Syria and 2,500 troops in Iraq, for a total of 4,500."

As the article goes on to note, a Pentagon still operating under War on Terror logic while occupying Iraq and purportedly fighting terrorism in Syria, may well be undercounting the troop levels in those two countries; they've certainly done so in the past.

Regardless, if we consider the *official* deployment of military personnel to be a de facto statement of the regime's policing priorities, that still means the Trumpenreich is arguing that unarmed domestic protesters inside very small pockets of the Los Angeles area are a greater threat than militarized terrorist militias in two countries US intervention has helped transform into semi-perpetual warzones. Please keep in mind that the LA protests are happening on livestream, and there are hundreds of eye witness accounts in the public discourse from Angelinos saying there is no widespread disorder for the troops to quell. There is not a man, woman, nor child in America who can't verify for themselves that Trump is lying about a “rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” going on in Los Angeles, if they want to.

All of which of course leads us directly back to our ongoing discussion about what the Trumpenreich is trying to use its militarized invasion of LA to sanctify in practice, if not in US Law. Trump wants the power to permanently occupy US cities, while engaging the military in both domestic policing and assisting the Gestapo in the regime's ethnonationalist mass deportation project; including apparently providing detention facilities for caged migrants. Furthermore, as Zhang ominously notes, there are clear signs the regime is exploring how to scale up what they're doing in LA, to a much more national project.

"According to a report by ABC News, the Pentagon is considering a plan crafted by the Department of Homeland Security to deploy more than 20,000 additional National Guard troops to aid with Trump’s immigration raids.

This would cost $3.6 billion over the course of a year, and would represent roughly half of the number of troops deployed across the entirety of the Middle East. It would also be an escalation of the Trump administration’s use of the U.S.’s colossal military capacity to attack and subdue the American public."

Folks, I'm just going to be real with you; you don't martial up 20,000+ troops from all across the country in advance because ICE is going to raid a bunch of cities one by one to hunt down brown people Stephen Miller's shriveled conscience cannot abide existing in his county. We're definitely going to talk more about the ABC report the author mentions at a later point in time, but what you're looking at here is the opening steps the regime would need to take if they intended to militarily occupy the parts of the United States that didn't vote for Trump without meeting organized, violent resistance.

Like a lot of the fascist bullshit the Klepto Kaiser is doing right now, it's hard to tell if he's going to go "all the way." At some point however, the idea that Donald Trump is just accidentally stumbling in to all the steps he would need to enshrine a militarized fascist dictatorship under a perpetual state of quasi-martial law, strains credulity. If Trump gets away with transforming protests into an insurrection and soldiers into policemen in LA, you should bet on the idea that the nazis will soon be coming for a town near you in that very same way.

#Fascism #Trump #InvasionOfLA #Imperialism #WarOnTerror #USPol #LosAngeles #Protests #MENA #Syria #Iraq #PoliceState

Trump Has Deployed More Troops in LA Than Syria and Iraq, Per US Counts

The figures are a show of the administration’s willingness to use extreme military force on its own population.

^{Sharon Zhang (Truthout)}

They Said It (June 8th, 2025)

"Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem has said the protests in Los Angeles are “absolutely” organized by people being paid to instigate violence, without providing any evidence.

Asked by Sean Hannity on Fox News about pallets of bricks that he claimed had mysteriously appeared at the protests and whether she had found evidence of organisation and funding, Noem said:

"Absolutely. These are organized. These are people that are being paid to do this. You can follow how they behave, the signals they give to each other in these crowds and these protests to instigate violence. This is an operation, and it’s professionally done. They’ve done it before, and we’re going to stop it and make sure that we prosecute every single one of them."

She also called Karen Bass a “trainwreck of a mayor” and said Los Angeles was not “a city of immigrants they’re a city of criminals.”

Source - Guardian live feed, June 8th:

theguardian.com/us-news/live/2…

#Fascism #InvasionOfLA #KristiNoem #Trump #USPol

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)}

In previous analysis, I wrote about my belief that the Trumpenreich's invasion of LA had established a repeatable legal, logistical, and political framework for transforming the National Guard and indeed the US military into the enforcement arm of a permanent fascist police state under at least the constant threat of martial law. Well, it turns out that I could have just waited a couple of days for the regime to say the quiet part out loud, because Pete Hegseth all but admitted that's precisely how this is going down in real time, during a Congressional oversight hearing on Capitol Hill.

commondreams.org/news/hegseth-…

Hegseth Lays Out a Case for Troop Deployments in 'Any Jurisdiction in the Country'

"U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told members of Congress on Tuesday that he believes Immigration and Customs Enforcement "has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country."

Given that Hegseth and President Donald Trump have cast the National Guard and U.S. Marine deployments to Los Angeles as an effort to protect ICE personnel as they carry out the administration's mass deportation campaign, the Pentagon chief's testimony to lawmakers represented a justification for troop mobilizations to any part of the nation where protests against ICE are deemed a potential threat."

To completely understand what Trump's crusader Secretary of Defense is getting at here, you have to place it in the larger context of the regime's fascist mass deportation project, and the conditions which administration officials, including President Trump himself have outlined to "justify" escalation and additional military involvement. The rough process by which the regime is now actively conducting a fascist takeover of the broader American state at every level of government, looks a bit like this:

A) Send ICE Gestapo squads along with other federal agents to any city Trump regards as ideologically opposed to his fascist agenda, and begin kidnapping people and very publicly and aggressively violating civil rights.

B) Declare any protests or opposition to those nazi ICE raids and tactics, no matter how peaceful or lawful they may be, to be an insurrection and an attack on federal law enforcement. Use that attack, even if you have to make it up whole cloth, to justify commandeering a state's own National Guard to enforce Trump's rule militarily, while actively tasking them with protecting ICE Gestapo agents conducting raids; which conveniently gets around the legal restrictions that have previously prevented Trump from using the army to conduct ethno-nationalist immigration enforcement policies and mass deportations.

C) As Trump himself has proposed, respond to any "attack" (which again, we know they can just make up) on National Guard forces, by sending in the US Military and presumably invoking the Insurrection Act to place the targeted city under martial law and Trump's de facto command.

Please note that the only part of this outline that's still hypothetical is C; and while Trump hasn't actually done it yet, numerous powerful nazis in his administration have hinted that is the direction they're heading, including Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Hegseth himself, Tom Homan, Pam Bondi, and Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who at least in theory speaks for the president. How many times do I have to share the Maya Angelou quote "when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time" in regards to Trump's fascist movement before the reality sinks in that these guys might not be capable of grasping as much power as they desire, but they abso-fucking-lutely mean to try regardless?

What we are looking at here is an arbitrarily deployable framework for a fascist police state enforced by a US military that answers only to Trump, which can be conjured up out of thin air and portably deployed around the country at will. The Swine Emperor is effectively announcing his immanent takeover of the entire country, by demonstrating on the streets of LA that he can instantly take over any given part of that country and unless local officials are prepared to fight the fucking National Guard and or US Army, there's sweet fuck all they can do about it; or at least, so the regime openly says.

Folks, I must confess that I am just as overwhelmed as you are trying to keep track of all the horrifying stories spewing out of the fascist Trumprenreich invasion of LA. But listening to the regime talk, watching Trump activate the California National guard to stop an insurrection we could all watch not happening on livestream, and seeing the LAPD gleefully join in with the nazis to argue stopping fascist ICE raids is a justification to revoke civil rights and engage in unconscionable security state violence, this doesn't sound like we're talking about a *hypothetical* fascist dictatorship anymore.

#Fascism #Trump #InvasionOfLA #LA #NationalGuard #InsurrectionAct #Dictatorship #PoliceState #ICE #LAPD

Hegseth Lays Out a Case for Troop Deployments in 'Any Jurisdiction in the Country'

"The standoff on the streets of Los Angeles," warned critics, "shows how truly eager Trump and his administration are to turn America's vast warmaking powers inward on the president's domestic foes."

^{jake-johnson (Common Dreams)}

In the thread above, I've made the argument that the entire Trump regime's invasion of LA, from the original Gestapo raids on Friday, all the way through to this very moment, is a carefully orchestrated authoritarian political project stapled to an engineered bit of fascist theater. To my eye, this conclusion seems pretty obvious, particularly given how quickly after protests broke out the entire Trump regime, including noted nazis Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, produced clearly-coordinated sound bites about a "violent insurrection" in LA that literally was not happening. Proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt however, is an evolving process that's going to take time and evidence; so I'm going to intersperse that evidence throughout this thread as we go along.

First up, did you know the regime brought noted anti-migrant, pro-Trump fascist propagandist Dr. Phil to LA for an exclusive "before and after" raid interview with border Czar Tom Homan?

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j…

Talkshow host Dr Phil joined Ice agents for Los Angeles immigration raids

"Phil, whose full name is Phil McGraw, was with Ice before and after its agents conducted a series of raids on multiple locations across LA on Friday. Immigration advocates said at least 45 people were arrested, and the action was condemned by California’s governor and LA’s mayor.

It was the second time McGraw, a former practising psychologist who hosted a TV talkshow for two decades, has been embedded with Ice this year. In January, he joined the US border czar, Tom Homan, in a choreographed immigration raid in Chicago, in a stunt that was criticized at the time."

First of all The Guardian, I think describing Phil McGraw as a "talk show host" and "television personality" in this year of our discontent 2025, is a bold move; Dr. Phil is now a fascist propagandist trading on his personal relationships inside the Trump administration to push an aging conservative audience further into the Klepto Kaiser's cult of personality. He isn't on my TV anymore; he's on a fake TV network for fascists and bigot Boomers and he's actively working with the Trump regime to produce anti-migrant, pro-ICE propaganda because his career prospects at this point are virtually nonexistent otherwise.

Which is of course why I'm sharing this article at all. We already know that the regime brought in Dr. Phil to create highly-choreographed propaganda to support fascist ICE raids after he was embedded with Gestapo agents led by Tom Homan himself back in January; it's not like this is a hobby for McGraw or anything, it's his job now. What then does it say that Homan once against tapped McGraw to provide the theatrical component to fascist ICE raids, using new tactics officials knew would result in outrage and resistance, while clearly preparing to justify the deployment of US military forces to LA against then entirely peaceful protests?

It says the regime was putting on a show; and if there's one thing we know about Trump and putting on a show, it's that Downmarket Mussolini likes to go big, or go home.

#Fascism #Trump #USPol #LA #MartialLaw #Insurrection #Propaganda #Nazis #DrPhil #WhiteNationalism #ICE #Gestapo #InvasionOfLA #TomHoman #StephenMiller

Talkshow host Dr Phil joined Ice agents for Los Angeles immigration raids

Conservative channel MeritTV says psychologist and TV host was there to get ‘first-hand look at targeted operations’

^{Adam Gabbatt (The Guardian)}