macarthur park

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles was illegal, which the sane and democracy-loving among us should applaud — though of course an appeal is coming.

During the trial, though, a concerning but little-noticed exchange popped up between lawyers for the state of California and Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, who was in charge of the federalized National Guard forces in L.A. It should have been an explosive, red-flag moment highlighting the pressure our military leaders are under to shake off their oath to the Constitution in favor of fealty to Trump.

Sherman testified that he objected to National Guard involvement in a show-of-force operation in MacArthur Park, where Latino families often congregate.

That action, Sherman said, was originally slated for Father’s Day, an especially busy time at the park. Internal documents showed it was considered it a “high-risk” operation. Sherman said he feared his troops would be pushed into confrontations with civilians if Border Patrol became overwhelmed by the crowds on that June Sunday.

Gregory Bovino, in charge of the immigration efforts in L.A. for the Border Patrol, questioned Sherman’s “loyalty to the country,” Sherman testified, for just showing hesitation about the wisdom and legality of an order.

It’s the pressure that “you’re not being patriotic if you don’t blow by the law and violate it and just bend the knee and and exhibit complete fealty and loyalty to Trump,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Tuesday. And it’s a warning of what’s to come as Trump continues to press for military involvement in civilian law enforcement across the country.

For the record, Sherman has served our country for decades, earning along the way the prestigious Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the Meritorious Service Medal among other accolades.

The MacArthur Park operation, according to the Department of Homeland Security, was itself little more than a performative display of power “to demonstrate, through a show of presence, the capacity and freedom of maneuver of federal law enforcement within the Los Angeles,” according to agency documents presented in court. It was dubbed Operation Excalibur, in honor of the legendary sword of King Arthur that granted him divine right to rule, a point also included in court documents.

But none of that mattered. Instead, Sherman was pushed to exhibit the kind of blind loyalty to a dear leader that you’d expect to be demanded in dictatorships like those of North Korea or Hungary. Loyalty that confuses — or transforms — a duty to the Constitution with allegiance to Trump. Military experts warn that Sherman’s experience isn’t an isolated incident.

“There’s a chilling effect against pushing back or at least openly questioning any kind of orders,” Rachel E. VanLandingham, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, told me. She’s former active duty judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force who now teaches at Southwestern Law School and serves as a national security law expert.

VanLandingham sees the leadership of our armed forces under pressure “to not engage in the critical thinking, which, as commanders, they are required to do, and to instead go along to get along.” She sees Sherman’s testimony as a “telling glimpse into the wearing away” of that crucial independence.

Such a shift in allegiance would undermine any court order keeping the military out of civilian law enforcement, leaving Trump with exactly the boots on the ground power he has sought since his first term. This is not theoretical.

Through Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump has purged the top ranks of the military of those who aren’t loyal to him. In February, Hegseth fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Black soldier who championed diversity in the armed forces. Hegseth has also purged the head of the Pentagon’s intelligence agency, the head of the National Security Agency, the chief of Naval Operations, multiple senior female military staff and senior military lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force. In August, he fired the head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency after that general gave a truthful assessment of our bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, angering Trump.

At the same time, the military is being pushed farther into civilian affairs, and not just as erstwhile cops. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Hegseth ordered 600 military lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges.

Not to dive too deep into the convoluted immigration system, but these are civilian legal positions, another possible violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, VanLandingham points out.

And beyond that, can a military lawyer — trained and bound to follow orders — really act as an impartial judge in proceedings where the administration’s wish to deport is clearly known?

Goodbye due process, goodbye fair trial.

That “looks like martial law when you have militarized … judicial proceedings,” VanLandingham said. “How can we trust they are making unbiased decisions? You can’t.”

And even though Sherman pushed back on a full-blown military presence in MacArthur Park, that raid did happen. Federal agents marched through, about three weeks after Father’s Day, with National Guard troops remaining in their vehicles on the perimeter. It was Hegseth himself who authorized the mission.

Sherman also said on the stand that he was told there were “exceptions” to the Posse Comitatus Act — the law being debated in the trial that prevents the military from being used as civilian law enforcement — and that the president had the power to decide what those exceptions were.

“So your understanding is that while [some actions] are on the list of prohibited functions, you can do them under some circumstances?” Judge Charles Breyer asked.

“That’s the legal advice I received,” Sherman answered.

“And the president has the authority to make that decision?” Breyer asked.

“The president has the authority,” Sherman answered.

But does he?

Breyer also asked during the trial, if the president’s powers to both command troops and interpret law are so boundless, “What’s to prevent a national police force?” What, in effect, could stop Trump’s Excalibur-inspired inclinations?

For now, it’s the courts and ethical, mid-level commanders like Sherman, whose common-sense bravery and decency kept the military out of MacArthur Park.

Men and women who understand that the oaths they have sworn are to our country, not the man who would be king.

La migra spread across MacArthur Park yesterday morning like a platoon ready for war.

Federal agents on horseback with a white steed in the middle trotted through a soccer field. Others dressed like they were ready for Fallujah walked across lawns that just minutes earlier hosted a kid’s summer camp. Humvees complete with gun turrets parked on Wilshire Boulevard.

A Black Hawk helicopter buzzed above.

It was meant to be a show of force. It was more of a farce.

The park was mostly empty thanks to social media posts that had been warning Los Angeles about the coming incursion since Sunday. A furious Mayor Karen Bass arrived, got on the phone with U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino — who was strolling around while a photographer took glam shots — and told him to pull back. Activists showed up instead of the regular crowd to laugh at and film la migra and cuss them outta there.

It was like the climactic scene in “Blazing Saddles,” when incompetent villain Hedley Lamarr tried to invade a small town with the baddest of hombres besides him only to find a Potemkin village. The Non-Battle of MacArthur Park even had a “cowboy” (those quote marks are getting some serious “air” time as I write this)With his straw cowboy bat and rifle slung over his shoulder, Assistant Chief Border Patrol Agent David Kim seemed to be channeling his inner Alex Villanueva, the ex-L.A. County sheriff who wore Stetsons anywhere and everywhere in urban L.A. because he thought that showed power.

This was the Battle of the Photo Op. Written in D.C. and paid for by taxpayers.

For the past 30 days, President Donald Trump has laid siege to L.A. like a potentate trying to quash a far-away rebel province. Over 1,600 people detained, citizens and noncitizens alike. A parade of his lackeys — Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, Vice President JD Vance, border policy advisor Tom Homan — parachuted in to lecture L.A. about how out of control it is and vow retribution. California’s senior U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, briefly handcuffed for daring to question Noem during a press conference.

Trump and his troupe keep squawking about getting “the worst of the worst,” but they’re mostly not. This operation doesn’t seem to make much of a distinction between snatching an immigrant with a criminal record or a guy armed with a stockpile of tamales he’s trying to sell to make a living.

Masked men grabbing anyone and everyone in the fashion of paramilitary squads from countries we deem uncivilized. Straight-up invasions of workplaces and residential neighborhoods, parks and street corners. Thousands of members of the National Guard and hundreds of Marines called up.

What the city is weathering is supposed to be a warning to all other immigrant-friendly municipalities across the country: submit, or else.

Well, L.A. chose the something else. And Trump and his goons are getting more and more angry — and reckless.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks to the National Guard before their lunch at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 12.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

People are scared, sure — even terrified. That’s part of Trump’s strategy, along with making life so miserable that he hopes Angelenos will turn on each other. Instead, they’re uniting and hunkering down for more. Support networks and neighborhood watchdog groups are blooming across the region. Everyone with a smartphone and a social media account is now a reporter, capturing la migra at its worst and letting the world know what’s really going on. Lawsuits are being filed. More and more average citizens are joining the resistance.

What’s happening reminds me of the concluding line Lisa Simpson sang when Springfield Nuclear Power Plant workers went on strike against Mr. Burns and his heavies:

They may have the strength, but we have the power.

I get it, America: You think what’s happening in L.A. will never come to you. And you sort of like seeing the big, bad City of Angels getting smacked around with promises of even worse things to come. There’s a reason sports fans chant “Beat L.A.” and not “Beat Salt Lake City” or even New York.

But what happened yesterday at MacArthur Park is a microcosm of Trump’s vision for the rest of the country: a massive show of nada that does absolutely nothing to make life better for Americans. A gigantic waste of money. Spectacle over substance. Venom for anyone who dares speak out.

That should concern anyone who cares about a functioning democracy. Including L.A. haters.

The last month of raids across Southern California has shown that when the going gets tough, Trump goes for the easy. Sure, the Department of Homeland Security and its toxic alphabet soup of agencies participating in Trump’s deportation deluge are churning out social media posts featuring grainy photos of some of the people they’ve caught along with their alleged crimes. But that’s a way to mask the reality that these people taken in raids are mostly not criminals. A Times analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley Law found that nearly 70% of those arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement from June 1 through June 10 had no criminal convictions.

The sad irony about what happened yesterday in MacArthur Park is that if ever there was a place in L.A. that might have welcomed a helpful assist from the feds … it’s MacArthur Park.

As my fellow columnista Steve Lopez has written about for years, it’s a jewel of a green space with serious problems that city officials have allowed to fester over the decades and has made it a no-go zone for many Angelenos. Gangs have long extorted businesses in the neighborhood and terrorized everyone else — including immigrants. Too many unhoused people pass through with nowhere else to go. Drug use is as prevalent as sunbathing: When I walked through it earlier this year on the way to Langer’s for lunch, I saw a man smoke a meth pipe within eyesight of an LAPD officer who didn’t even blink.

But this wasn’t about saving MacArthur Park from the bad guys. Instead, the deployment of masked troops in tactical gear showed Trump and his berserkers only care about optics, up to and including a man on horseback leading his fellow cavalry in a straight line while holding an American flag as colleagues whipped out their smartphones. The charade looked like something out of a Western movie — American military subjugating yet another Native American tribe.

Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park on July 7.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

More is going to come, most likely worse. Trump’s Bloated Bullplop Bill has allocated $170 billion to immigration enforcement. Homan is relishing the idea of increasing the number of ICE agents from 5,000 to 15,000 — as if all that migra will improve the economy or make up for the rise in taxes and loss in Medicaid that millions of American citizens will suffer in order to support an agency whose increased budget will put it above the military of most of the world’s countries.

Are you paying attention yet, America?

After the MacArthur Park action, Trump’s disciples proclaimed victory. Bovino bragged to Fox News reporter Bill Melugin — the de facto media stenographer for Trump’s migra mission — that he told L.A. Mayor Karen Bass during their phone call, “Better get used to us now, ’cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller went on Fox News later to thunder, “The Democrat Party’s objective is to flood the West with millions upon millions of illegals from the developing world” as footage of what happened earlier that day rolled next to him.

Big words from little men who act like they’re living some “Apocalypse Now” fantasy.

I preferred what L.A. councilmember Eunisses Hernandez — whose district encompasses MacArthur Park — said shortly after the sweep at a City Hall press conference, something as true as the sun rising in the east: “We are the canary in the coal mine. What you see happening at MacArthur Park is coming to you.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday marked the six-month anniversary of the Eaton and Palisades fires with a call for billions in federal funding to support the state’s wildfire recovery, and offered a blistering critique of the Trump administration’s most recent immigration raids in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.

So far, the GOP-led U.S. House of Representatives has made no progress on a request from Newsom, made in late February, for $40 billion in additional wildfire funding that would go toward rebuilding schools, churches, homes and hospitals.

Newsom said that fire funding is a nonpartisan issue, and that all U.S. states are “in this together.” He said that other states have outstanding requests for federal aid after their own natural disasters, and that the Republican-controlled House will “absolutely” come through. He urged federal lawmakers to do the same for Texas after last week’s deadly floods.

“South Carolina, I think they should get every penny that they need,” Newsom said. “North Carolina, they should get every penny that they need. … I expect that we will figure out a path, a bipartisan path, to support the people of the United States of America, and those include the 40 million Americans residing in California.”

But once again he found himself in the conflicting position of criticizing Republicans while asking them for disaster aid.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had been scheduled to appear at the event, held at Pasadena City College, but did not attend after heavily armed federal immigration agents on horseback descended on MacArthur Park.

Newsom said the immigration raids were proof of President Trump’s “polluted heart,” a shift from the weeks after the fires when he tried to strike a more conciliatory tone as he pushed for more federal aid from Congress and the White House.

The federal government’s work in Los Angeles County has included a record-breaking debris removal program run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Newsom said Monday that 9,195 of the 9,873 properties enrolled in the federal government’s debris removal program have been cleared. That figure doesn’t include commercial buildings, which were not included in the Army Corps program, or the nearly 2,000 property owners who chose to hire their own private contractors for debris removal.

Newsom said the clearance was the fastest in California history, surpassing the cleanups that followed the 2018 Camp and Woolsey fires.

The federal government has reimbursed the state and local governments for direct response costs and paid for their own debris cleanup, said Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the governor. The federal government has also provided more than $3 billion in individual assistance to homeowners and small-business loans, he said.

Long-term recovery funding, which the federal government typically provides states after disasters, is expected to be determined by Congress after lawmakers return to work in September, Ferguson said.

Reps. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), who represent Altadena and Pacific Palisades in Congress, said they were continuing to push for the supplemental aid package in Congress with “no strings.” Some Republicans have suggested linking aid to policy decisions in California, including changes to water policy or voter identification laws.

Sherman said California’s $40-billion request could get through the House “as a supplemental that also includes the Texas disaster and other disasters.”

Newsom and Trump appeared to put aside their political differences in January when the commander in chief traveled to Los Angeles to survey wildfire damage. After embracing on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport, the two sparring partners pledged to work together to rebuild the fire-ravaged communities.

Hours before the in-person meeting, the president had threatened to condition any wildfire funding on California agreeing to adopt more stringent voter identification laws. Trump has continued to point the finger at Newsom since the meeting, calling the governor and local officials “incompetent.”

In his final days in the White House, President Biden pledged that the federal government would cover 100% of disaster assistance costs to California for 180 days, and the Trump administration has “honored that commitment,” Newsom said Monday.

But Newsom hasn’t held back sharp critiques of the president’s leadership on other major topics, including immigration, tariffs, and healthcare funding. After discussing the state’s response to the wildfires, Newsom condemned the federal immigration raids on Monday in MacArthur Park as “a disgrace.”

The timing isn’t a coincidence, Newsom said. He said that an estimated 41% of the state’s construction workforce is working without legal status, and that immigration raids could shake a sector that is “foundational” to the state’s recovery.

“They know what they’re doing,” he said. “And then again, they have no idea what they’re doing. Their ignorance is legendary. And the impacts of this will be felt in the recovery — and that’s on them. Donald Trump owns that. He owns the cruelty, he owns the arrogance.”