Insurrection in California?

This was the Trump plan all along. Conduct provocative and illegal raids again and again. Create melodramatic scenes of cruelty against men, women, and children, deliberately violate the law – and eventually you get violent clashes with the ICE officials, aka, masked goons who often don’t wear uniforms or badges or identify themselves as law enforcement – acting deliberately in a lawless fashion. All they are missing are the brown uniforms.

You get scenes of resistance that either are violent or can be falsely portrayed as violence against the lawless ICE goons. And then Trump 2.0 can use that to escalate violent state repression. Trump has now taken the step of federalizing the California National Guard in order to protect lawless ICE goons deliberately violating the law on Trump’s direction.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law School, said in a text to The Times that Trump has the authority under the Insurrection Act of 1807 to federalize the National Guard units of states to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that “so hinders the execution of the laws.”

But he called the move very troubling. Such deployment typically happen during “extreme circumstances. ... Here it seems it was an early response. And I fear that is to send a message to protesters of the willingness of the federal government to use federal troops to quell protests.”

In the most serious recent incident of protest violence, a crowd gathered Saturday near a Home Depot at 6400 Alondra Blvd. in Paramount for a demonstration that escalated over the course of the day into a fiery and tumultuous clash with federal agents.

The protest began without violence as demonstrators chanted “ICE go home” and “No justice, no peace.” Some protesters yelled at deputies, and a series of flash-bang grenades was deployed.

“What are you doing!” one man screamed out. [my emphasis] (1)

Kyle Kulinski gives a passionate summary of the situation. Hew notes, “This was the plan from the beginning.” (2)

California’s Democratic Senator Adam Schiff posted:

I don’t plan to engage in any sterile abstract discussions about the right of resistance in these situations. Kyle is right. “This was the plan from the beginning.” Schiff’s post makes the same point.

Experienced organizers and people engaging in protests have to be careful about provocateurs. And organizers know how to do this. Any time there’s a large protest in a city, somebody is liable to break a window, which critics will happily mis-label as “violence.” Trump himself during his first terms as President notoriously tweeted, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts." The phrase “dates back to the civil rights era and is known to have been invoked by a white police chief cracking down on protests and a segregationist politician.” (4)

What might be a legitimate reason to use force against protesters? Well, take the hypothetical case of an armed mob breaking into the US Capitol, chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” and wounding and killing police officers in the protests. Most people not in the MAGA cult would think that was a legitimate reason to employ force against protesters.

Some rando breaking a store window during a protest march is not.

The distinction is always important. For any remotely decent person, anyway. I posted on May 2 about one of the best-publicized ICE raids that occurred in Oklahoma when ICE thugs showed up at night with a warrant for people who not longer lived in a house and terrorized a woman and her daughters to stand outside the house in the rain in their underwear. (I haven’t seen any report on whether ICE returned the money and property the woman claimed they stole.)

I usually don’t quote myself a lot. But this is what I wrote at the time about that incident. And ICE’s continuing conduct bears out the concerns expressed there:

The aspiring rightwing terrorists who refer to themselves as “patriot militia” types have been saying since forever that we need an unlimited flood of pistols, rifles, shotguns, and combat rifles among American citizens because that’s the only sure protection against jack-booted thugs from the federal gubment bustin’ into your house, holding you illegally, stealing your stuff, and doing things like making you and your children stand outside at night in the rain in your underwear. We’ll see how many Second Amendment enthusiasts are willing to criticize this action in public. [06/08/2025: I haven’t yet heard of any of them doing that, but maybe I just missed it …]

According to the “castle doctrine” and “stand-your-ground“ concepts that the "Second Amendment people" have been promoting and even getting enacted into state laws, if an individual or an armed gang of thugs come busting into your house at night, it actually would be legal to shoot them.

It’s highly advisable for people who keep loaded guns available in their houses for self-defense to stay well-trained on how to use them. And I believe the usual law-enforcement advice is still that if you hear someone breaking into the house, getting out of the house if possible is the preferable approach. And also to call emergency services right away, and also for single-home units to have an alarm system that is connected to the local police department.

The truth of it is that what Melissa [the woman who was terrorized by ICE] referred to, that busting into a house could get the home invaders shot. And presumably the pervy migra [ICE] goons would immediately respond with deadly force without a second thought, since a lot of them are working at ICE anyway because they could pass police academy training to meet the standard to be local cops.

And if a house alarm connected to the local police went off and the cops showed up and saw people carrying guns outside the house and some of them were masked, the cops themselves could be the ones who initiate the shooting. I don’t know if la migra makes a practice of notifying the local cops of raids like this beforehand. And even Kristi Noam’s thuggish operation probably wouldn’t care if they killed a few actual police officers because they would then blame it DEI programs, or treasonous mayors, or something, and use that as a reason to be even more unprofessional.

My guess is that at least some bad operators in the Trump 2.0 regime are hoping for shootouts to happen so they can use it to promote the narrative that they are fighting terrorists and gang members and violent criminals.

Notes:

(1) Vives, Ruben, et. al. (2025): 2,000 National Guard troops will be sent to L.A. amid clashes over immigration raids. Los Angeles Times 06/07/2025. <https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-07/paramount-home-depot> (Accessed: 2025-08-06).

(2) EMERGENCY BREAKING: TRUMP INVOKES INSURRECTION ACT. Secular Talk YouTube channel 06/08/ 2025. <https://youtu.be/SEsRGGW-Fq8?si=R_ZTr2VQeXIEYJz> (Accessed: 2025-08-06).

(3) Schiff, Adam (2025): X/Twitter 06/08/2025. <https://x.com/SenAdamSchiff/status/1931536364065247309> (Accessed: 2025-08-06).

(4) Sprunt, Barbara (2020): The History Behind 'When The Looting Starts, The Shooting Starts'. NPR 05/20/2020. <https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/864818368/the-history-behind-when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts> (Accessed: 2025-08-06).