Police vehicles were filmed ramming into protesters as anti-government demonstrations escalated in Morocco on Tuesday. Officials said police were attempting to disperse ‘violent and unauthorised crowds.’
Published On 1 Oct 20251 Oct 2025
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Nepali army orders people in Kathmandu to stay home amid mass unrest gripping capital.
Published On 10 Sep 202510 Sep 2025
Armed soldiers have been patrolling the streets of Kathmandu, ordering people to remain in their homes, following a wave of deadly protests in Nepal’s capital.
The Nepali army checked vehicles and people on Wednesday amid an indefinite curfew, imposed in a bid to “normalise” the capital after mass unrest saw demonstrators set fire to several government buildings and force Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to resign.
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The protests, triggered by a social media ban, have escalated since Monday, when security forces killed 19 demonstrators and injured hundreds. Tens of thousands filled Kathmandu’s streets on Monday and Tuesday as the protests expanded to target corruption and unemployment in the country’s most violent tumult in decades.
“We are trying to normalise the situation first,” army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet told the Reuters news agency. “We are committed to protect the life and property of people.”
The army’s emergence from the barracks after Oli’s resignation seemed to do little to ease the uproar across the capital.
Late into Tuesday evening, demonstrators blocked roads and stormed the parliament, presidential house and central secretariat, while videos showed protesters beating Nepali Congress party leader Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife, Arzu Rana Deuba, the foreign minister.
Prompted initially by a now-rescinded government plan to block most popular social media platforms, protesters were galvanised by the deaths on Monday and widespread frustrations with alleged corruption and joblessness.
Pabit Tandukar, 22, was among those shot by live ammunition. “We were there for a peaceful protest. They were initially firing tear gas at us, and we were pushing back. Suddenly, I was shot,” Tandukar told Al Jazeera.
While so-called “nepo kids” — the children of top politicians and government officials — show off lives of luxury on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, most common people have been struggling with an unemployment rate of nearly 11 percent, according to the World Bank. Millions have migrated abroad to Malaysia, the Middle East and South Korea to find jobs.
Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak was the first to resign on Monday, followed by Agriculture Minister Ramnath Adhikari and then Oli on Tuesday. President Ram Chandra Poudel, the ceremonial head of state, moved to appoint Oli to lead a caretaker government — though his location was unclear — and appealed to protesters to “focus on resolving the crisis without further bloodshed or destruction”.
Meanwhile, army helicopters ferried ministers to safe locations.
The protests have led to concern across South Asia over regional stability, with governments having been unseated in recent youth-led uprisings in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Neighbouring China weighed in on the unrest on Wednesday. A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman told journalists that Chinese citizens in Nepal should “pay close attention to safety” and that Beijing hopes Kathmandu “can properly handle domestic issues and quickly restore social order and national stability”.
China has sought to increase its influence in Nepal in recent years with diplomatic efforts and the Belt and Road Initiative.
Violence spreads after police vehicle kills delivery driver on motorcycle.
Violence has broken out on the streets of Indonesia after a motorcycle taxi driver was run over and killed by police.
The president has apologised and appealed for calm, but protests continue.
What’s driving the anger, and how will the government respond?
Presenter: Adrian Finighan
Guests:
Abigail Limuria – Cofounder of What Is Up Indonesia?, a digital media platform that unpacks Indonesian sociopolitics
Vedi Hadiz – Professor of Asian studies at the University of Melbourne
Wirya Adiwena – Deputy director of Amnesty International Indonesia
Published On 30 Aug 202530 Aug 2025
Heavy police presence at Faridpur rally after violence erupts between security forces and supporters of ousted PM Sheikh Hasina.
Authorities in Bangladesh have imposed heavy security measures to prevent a repeat of further political violence, after clashes between security forces and supporters of deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left four people dead and more than 50 injured.
Hundreds of police were deployed Thursday to the site of a planned rally in Faridpur by the National Citizen Party (NCP), a new political party formed by students who spearheaded the unrest that ousted longtime leader Hasina last year, local media reported. Their presence underlined the volatile political tensions that remain in the divided country nearly one year on from the mass protests that toppled Hasina from power.
On Wednesday, an NCP rally in Gopalganj district, Hasina’s ancestral home and a stronghold for her support base, erupted in violence when supporters of her Awami League party tried to disrupt the event.
Four people were killed and more than 50 were injured in the violence, local media reported, citing police.
Footage from Gopalganj showed pro-Hasina activists armed with sticks setting upon police and lighting vehicles on fire as NCP leaders arrived in vehicles at the party’s “March to Rebuild the Nation” event commemorating the uprising against Hasina.
More than 1,500 police, along with army and border guard personnel, were deployed to respond to the violence, the Dhaka Tribune reported, citing a police report. Armed personnel carriers were seen patrolling the streets as security forces responded to the unrest.
The English-language Daily Star, citing Gopalganj civil surgeon Abu Sayeed Md Faruk, named the four dead as Dipto Saha, Ramzan Kazi, Sohel and Emon. The newspaper reported that hospital staff had said that eight others were being operated on for bullet wounds.
Home Affairs adviser Jahangir Alam Chowdhury said that 10 police personnel were also injured in the violence, local media reported. He added that 25 people had been arrested over the unrest.
The streets of Gopalganj were quiet on Thursday, with shops closed and few vehicles on the road, the Dhaka Tribune reported, as authorities imposed a curfew on the district in response to the violence.
The violence in Gopalganj has underlined the volatile divisions that remain in Bangladesh nearly a year after Hasina was forced to resign, fleeing to exile on a helicopter to India, as the interim government struggles to ensure security.
Wednesday’s clashes drew promises of a harsh response from the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus that has governed the country since Hasina’s ouster last August.
Yunus said in a statement Wednesday that the attempt by Hasina’s supporters to disrupt the NCP rally was “a shameful violation of their fundamental rights”, and warned that the violence would “not go unpunished”.
The government said on Thursday that it had established a committee to investigate the violence, which would be chaired by Nasimul Ghani, senior secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, and report its findings within two weeks.
Despite its promises to crack down on those responsible, Yunus’s government has faced criticism for failing to deliver security in the divided country.
Hasina’s Awami League party, which authorities banned in May, posted a number of statements on social media platform X condemning the violence, including one saying that all the gunshot victims were supporters of the party. It blamed the interim government for the deaths and injuries.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), one of two parties, alongside the Awami League, that have traditionally dominated Bangladeshi politics, also criticised the government on Thursday over the violence, saying it had failed to maintain law and order.
Meanwhile, the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami party condemned the attacks on the NCP and announced protests of its own.
Earlier this month, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal indicted Hasina and two senior officials over alleged crimes against humanity linked to a deadly crackdown on protesters during the uprising against her rule. In a separate, earlier ruling, Hasina – who lives in self-imposed exile in India – was sentenced in absentia to six months in prison for contempt of court by the tribunal.
They were deployed by the Trump administration to combat “violent, insurrectionist mobs” in and around Los Angeles, but in recent days the only thing many U.S. Marines and California National Guard troops seemed to be fighting was tedium.
“There’s not much to do,” one Marine said as he stood guard outside the towering Wilshire Federal Building in Westwood this week.
The blazing protests that first met federal immigration raids in downtown Los Angeles were nowhere to be seen along Wilshire Boulevard or Veteran Avenue, so many troops passed the time chatting and joking over energy drinks. The Marine, who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said his duties consisted mostly of approving access for federal workers and visitors to the Veterans Affairs office.
More than five weeks after Trump mobilized an extraordinary show of military force against the will of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, few National Guard troops and Marines have remained in public view, most retreating to local military bases in Orange County.
As an indication of the military’s dwindling role in immigration enforcement operations, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Tuesday ordered the release of 2,000 National Guard troops. Now, Bass, Newsom and others are demanding the complete removal of remaining troops — or about 2,000 California National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines.
“Thousands of members are still federalized in Los Angeles for no reason and unable to carry out their critical duties across the state,” Newsom said on X, accusing Trump of using California National Guard troops as “political pawns.”
“End this theater and send everyone home,” the governor said.
Bass said the troops’ primary mission in L.A. was to guard federal buildings that “frankly didn’t need to be guarded.”
“They had to leave their families, they had to leave their education, they had to leave their work,” Bass said at a news conference Tuesday. “We have had no problems for weeks, so why were they here?”
Steve Woolford, a resource counselor for GI Rights Hotline, a nonprofit group that provides free, confidential information to service members, said calls from troops had gone down dramatically over the last month.
“The most recent people I talked to sounded like they’re sitting around bored without much to do,” Woolford said. “And they’re happy with that: They aren’t asking to do more. At the same time, I don’t think people see a real purpose in what they’re doing at all.”
The majority of National Guard troops have been stationed at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, according to military officials and governor’s office officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Over the last few weeks, a massive tent city has risen at the Orange County base — about 25 miles southeast of downtown L.A. The tents, some of which stretch up to 50 yards long, provide living quarters, cafeteria space and other facilities. On a recent morning, National Guards troops — some dressed in full combat fatigues, others in T-shirts and shorts — could be seen exercising, milling about and playing a game of touch football.
A separate group of Marines and National Guard troops have remained at the Westwood federal building for an entire month. The federal building has been outfitted with sleeping and eating arrangements for troops, according to a Marine who spoke with The Times.
To be sure, some California National Guard troops embarked on tense missions with federal immigration agents on sweeps at farms, warehouses and public streets.
On July 7, Guard troops accompanied federal agents as they descended on MacArthur Park on horses and in armored vehicles in a heavily militarized show of force. It’s still unclear whether any arrests were made that day, but crowds quickly formed around the federal agents and military troops, screaming for them to “get the f— out!”
A few days later, Guard troops wearing riot face shields and clutching long, wooden batons faced off with hundreds of protesters in Ventura County as immigration agents arrested about 200 suspected undocumented immigrants at Glass House Farms, a large, licensed cannabis greenhouse in Camarillo.
But most of the deployed Guard troops and Marines do not appear to have been engaged in raids or even the federal building security in recent weeks.
An estimated 90% of the National Guard troops stationed in the L.A. area over the last few days have not been deployed on daily missions, according to a source within Newsom’s office who has knowledge of the military operation.
“For the most part … they’re sitting around,” the source said.
The source, who spoke on condition on anonymity because they were unauthorized to speak publicly on the deployment, said an estimated 3% of the 4,000 troops — about 120 soldiers — were taking part in daily missions, mostly consisting of security at federal buildings.
An additional couple hundred were standing by for “quick response force” missions — ready to mobilize within a few hours for an immigration raid or a crowd control operation. But even if all those troops were used each day, the source said, that still left about 88% of the 4,000 troops — or about three-quarters of the remaining 2,000 — underutilized.
The Pentagon and Task Force 51, the military’s designation for Los Angeles area troops, declined to answer questions about how many Guard troops and Marines were engaged in protecting federal buildings or accompanying immigration agents on daily missions. Nor did they comment on the claim from Newsom’s office that most troops were “sitting around.”
Guard soldiers and Marines were “primarily protecting fixed-site federal facilities and protecting federal law enforcement personnel while they conduct immigration enforcement activities, such as warrant services,” read a task force statement.
Federal officials have also declined to provide precise details on the cost of the deployment. Hegseth previously said that the mobilization of troops would cost $134 million, but it’s unclear whether that estimate is accurate.
Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a military research group, said there is little evidence that the military presence is necessary.
“The need for military forces in Los Angeles is low while the need for National Guard forces elsewhere in the state is rising,” Kavanagh said. “That they’re still deployed after so much time, when there doesn’t seem to be a need, suggests that this really is about setting precedent of having military forces involved in immigration enforcement and deployed in U.S. cities.”
Kori Schake, senior fellow and director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed: “They have a real job to be training for — fighting and winning the nation’s wars — which this performative policing is a distraction from.”
The first convoys of Guard troops rumbled into L.A. on June 8, shortly after the Trump administration announced it would send 2,000 Guard members to the city to quell unrest as protesters graffitied buildings downtown, set Waymo driverless cars ablaze and clashed with ICE agents as they tried to conduct immigration raids.
As California leaders protested, and called the deployment unnecessary, the Trump administration doubled down. On June 10, 700 Marines from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center about 150 miles west in Twentynine Palms arrived in L.A. A week later, the task force ballooned to 4,800 personnel when Hegseth added 2,000 more Guard troops.
Newsom condemned Trump for diverting members of the California National Guard as they geared up for wildfire season, noting that the unit assigned to combating wildfires was at just 40% of its regular staffing levels due to the deployment. The governor’s office also complained that about 150 California Guard soldiers were being pulled from the state’s Counterdrug Task Force, which focuses on interrupting drug trade at the U.S.-Mexico border and throughout California.
The Trump administration eventually approved a request to release 150 Guard members for state wildfire suppression.
The Guard has been deployed to Los Angeles before, but never against the will of the L.A. mayor and California governor.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush mobilized the National Guard to L.A. after multiple days of riots following a jury’s acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Black motorist Rodney King. About 6,000 troops were ultimately sent in, requested by California’s then-Gov. Pete Wilson and Mayor Tom Bradley, to guard trouble spots and gain control of neighborhoods after rioters attacked stores, torched buildings and, in some extreme cases, beat and killed residents. The Times dubbed it “the worst civil unrest in Los Angeles history.”
Nearly 30 years later, Guard troops were called in again during the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd. After downtown buildings were vandalized and graffitied and police cars were set aflame, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti asked Newsom to send in 1,000 National Guard troops to restore order and assist local law enforcement.
But last month, the federal government sent in the troops without local politicians’ support, setting in motion an intense legal showdown.
A day after National Guard troops hit the ground in L.A., Newsom and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to end the “illegal and unnecessary takeover” of a California National Guard unit. They argued that the unwarranted commandeering of National Guard troops, without the consent or input of the governor, violated the U.S. Constitution and exceeded the president’s Title 10 authority.
A U.S. district judge in San Francisco sided with the state, ruling June 12 that Trump broke the law when he deployed thousands of California National Guard troops to L.A. against the state’s will. The judge issued a temporary restraining order that would have returned control of the National Guard to California. But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals paused that court order, allowing the troops to remain in L.A. while the case played out in federal court.
Kavanagh said she was disturbed to see Guard troops accompanying federal agents on immigration raids. Even if they had orders not to participate in law enforcement activities, confrontations could escalate quickly.
“There’s so many chances for things to spiral out of control,” she said. “While we haven’t seen any unintentional escalation yet, that doesn’t mean we won’t.”
When troops were first deployed to L.A., advocates for service members warned of low morale. The GI Rights Hotline received a flurry of calls voicing concern about immigration enforcement, Woolford said.
Some military personnel told the hotline that they did not want to support ICE or play any role in deporting people because they considered immigrants part of the community or had immigrants in their family, Woolford said. Others said they did not want to point guns at citizens. A few worried that the country was on the verge of turning into something like martial law, and said that they didn’t want to be on the side of being armed occupiers of their own country.
Many were shocked that the deployment orders were for 60 days.
“There’s no way they’re really going to keep us here that long, are they?” Woolford said he was asked.
But as the military brought in more contractors and set up giant tents with cots, Woolford said, callers to the hotline seemed more resigned to the idea that they would remain in L.A. a long time.
Asked about the pressures facing troops on their mission to Los Angeles, one Marine outside the Wilshire Federal Building summed it up this way:
“That’s just orders,” he said. “We do what we’re told — it’s the system.”
Times staff writer Jeanette Marantos contributed to this report.
The clashes between National Guard troops, police and protesters in recent days have evoked memories for some Angelenos of the deadly riots that erupted after LAPD officers were acquitted of brutally assaulting Black motorist Rodney King in 1992.
But leaders who were involved in dealing with the uprising more than three decades ago say what has unfolded with President Trump’s deployment of soldiers to Los Angeles and surrounding communities bears no resemblance to the coordinated response that took place then.
“It’s not even close,” said former LAPD chief and city councilman Bernard Parks, who was a deputy chief in the police department during the 1992 unrest. “You get a sense that this is all theatrics, and it is really trying to show a bad light on Los Angeles, as though people are overwhelmed.”
Protesters continue to gather in downtown Los Angeles due to the immigration raids in L.A. on Tuesday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
The chaos of 1992 unfolded after four LAPD officers who were videotaped beating King the prior year were not convicted. It took place at a time of deep distrust and animosity between minority communities and the city’s police department.
Federal troops and California National Guard units joined forces with local law enforcement officers to quell the turmoil, but not without harrowing results. More than 60 people were killed, thousands were injured and arrested, and there was property damage that some estimate exceeded $1 billion.
What has played out recently on the city’s streets is significantly more limited in scope, Mayor Karen Bass said.
“There was massive civil unrest [then]. Nothing like that is happening here,” Bass said on CNN on Sunday. “So there is no need for there to be federal troops on our ground right now.”
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1. A demonstrator is arrested as protesters and police clash downtown Monday . (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times) 2. Los Angeles police officers in riot gear prepare to clear a street in Downtown Los Angeles on Monday. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times) 3. Blood spots on the ground near the Metropolitan Detention Center, in Los Angeles on Sunday. (Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times) 4. National Guard are stationed at the Metropolitan Detention Center, on Sunday. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
As of Wednesday evening, several hundred people had been arrested or detained because of their alleged actions during the protests, or taken into custody by federal officials because of their immigration status. On Tuesday, after the 101 Freeway was blocked by protesters, buildings in downtown Los Angeles were vandalized and businesses ransacked, Bass imposed a curfew in the city’s civic core from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. that is expected to last several days.
Zev Yaroslavsky, who served on the City Council in 1992, recalled that year as “one of the most significant, tragic events in the city’s history.”
He described the riots as “a massive citywide uprising,” with “thousands of people who were on the streets in various parts of the city, some burning down buildings.”
Yaroslavsky, who was later on the county Board of Supervisors for two decades, said that while some actions protesters are currently taking are inappropriate, the swath of Los Angeles impacted is a small sliver of a sprawling city.
“All you’re seeing is what is happening at 2nd and Alameda,” he said. “There’s a whole other city, a whole other county that is going about its business.”
Another significant distinction from 1992, according to people who lived through it, was the bipartisan coordination among local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, and Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley requested assistance from then-President George H.W. Bush.
That’s a stark contrast from what started unfolding last week, when Trump’s administration sent ICE agents to Los Angeles and federalized the state’s National Guard without request by the state’s governor, which last happened in the United States in the 1960s.
“The biggest difference is that the governor requested federal help rather than having it imposed over his objection,” said Dan Schnur, a political professor and veteran strategist who served as Wilson’s communication’s director in 1992. “There were some political tensions between state and local elected officials. But both the governor and the mayor set those aside very quickly, given the urgency of the situation.”
Loren Kaye, Wilson’s cabinet secretary at the time, noted times have changed since then.
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1. Critics say police gave up when the rioting erupted in 1992, letting big chunks of the city burn while looters and hoodlums ruled. Street cops say commanders held them back, fearing violent clashes would produce an endless stream of Rodney Kings. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) 2. A National Guardsman stands at alert near graffiti that spells out support for Rodney King, April 30, 1992. (Los Angeles Times)
“What I’m worried about is that there aren’t the same incentives for resolving the contention in this situation as there were in ’92,” he said. Then, “everyone had incentives to resolve the violence and the issues. It’s just different. The context is different.”
Parks, a Democrat, argued that the lack of federal communication with California and Los Angeles officials inflamed the situation by creating a lag in local law enforcement response that made the situation worse.
“You have spontaneous multiple events, which is the Achilles heel of any operation,” he said.
“It’s not that they’re ill-equipped, and it’s not that they’re under-deployed,” Parks said. “It takes a minute. You just don’t have a large number of people idly sitting there saying, okay, we are waiting for the next event, and particularly if it’s spontaneous.”
Protests can start peacefully, but those who wish to create chaos can use the moment to seek attention, such as by burning cars, Park said. The end result is images viewed by people across the country who don’t realize how localized the protests and how limited the damage was in recent days.
“The visuals they show on TV are exactly what the folks in Washington want to be seen,” Parks said.
On Monday, the president deployed hundreds of Marines from Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. State leaders have asked for a temporary restraining order blocking the military and state National Guard deployments, which is expected to be heard in federal court on Thursday.
Trump, speaking to U.S. Army troops at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina on Tuesday, said that he deployed National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles “to protect federal law enforcement from the attacks of a vicious and violent mob.”
The president descried protesters as leftists pursuing a “foreign invasion” of the United States, bent on destroying the nation’s sovereignty.
“If we didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a Los Angeles,” Trump said. “It would be burning today, just like their houses were burning a number of months ago.”
Newsom responded that the president was intentionally provoking protesters.
“Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities — they’re traumatizing our communities,” Newsom said. “And that seems to be the entire point.”
Activists who witnessed the 1992 riots said the current turmoil, despite being much smaller and less violent, is viewed differently because of images and video seen around the world on social media as well as the plethora of cable outlets that didn’t exist previously.
“They keep looping the same damn video of a car burning. It gives the impression cars are burning everywhere, businesses are being looted everywhere,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable.
Hutchinson, an activist from South L.A. who raised money to rebuild businesses during the 1992 riots, said he was concerned about the city’s reputation.
“L.A. is getting a bad name,” he said.
Driverless Waymo vehicles, coated with graffiti and engulfed in flames. Masked protesters, dancing and cavorting around burning American flags. Anonymous figures brazenly blocking streets and shutting down major freeways, raining bottles and rocks on the police, while their compatriots waved Mexican flags.
The images flowing out of Los Angeles over nearly a week of protests against federal immigration raids have cast America’s second most populous city as a terrifying hellscape, where lawbreakers rule the streets and regular citizens should fear to leave their homes.
In the relentless fever loop of online and broadcast video, it does not matter that the vast majority of Los Angeles neighborhoods remain safe and secure. Digital images create their own reality and it’s one that President Trump and his supporters have used to condemn L.A. as a place that is “out of control” and on the brink of total collapse.
The images and their true meaning and context have become the subject of a furious debate in the media and among political partisans, centered on the true roots and victims of the protests, which erupted on Friday as the Trump administration moved aggressively to expand its arrests of undocumented immigrants.
As the president and his supporters in conservative media tell it, he is the defender of law and order and American values. They cast their opponents as dangerous foreign-born criminals and their feckless enablers in the Democratic Party and mainstream media.
The state’s political leaders and journalists offer a compelling rebuttal: that Trump touched off several days of protest and disruption with raids that went far beyond targeting criminals, as he previously promised, then escalated the conflict by taking the highly unusual step of sending the National Guard and Marines to Southern California.
Reaction to the raids by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and the subsequent turmoil will divide Americans on what have become partisan lines that have become so predictable they are “calcified,” said Lynn Vavreck, a political science professor at UCLA.
“The parties want to build very different worlds, voters know it, and they know which world they want to live in,” said Vavreck, who has focused on the country’s extreme political polarization. “And because the parties are so evenly divided, and this issue is so personal to so many, the stakes are very high for people.”
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1. A demonstrator waves a Mexican flag as a fire that was set on San Pedro street burns on Monday night. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times) 2. Protesters continue to clash with the Los Angeles Police Department in downtown on Monday. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times) 3. Protesters continue to clash with the Los Angeles Police Department in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times) 4. Anti-ICE protesters face off with the LAPD on Temple St. on Monday. (Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times) 5. Flowers lay at the feet of federalized California National Guard members as they guard the Federal Building on Tuesday. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
As a curfew was imposed Tuesday, the sharpest street confrontations appeared to be fading and a national poll suggested Americans have mixed feelings about the events that have dominated the news.
The YouGov survey of 4,231 people found that 50% disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of deportations, compared with 39% who approve. Pluralities of those sampled also disagreed with Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Marines to Southern California.
But 45% of those surveyed by YouGov said they disapprove of the protests that began after recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions. Another 36% approved of the protests, with the rest unsure how they feel.
Faced with a middling public response to the ICE raids and subsequent protests, Trump continued to use extreme language to exaggerate the magnitude of the public safety threat and to take credit for the reduction in hostilities as the week progressed.
In a post on his TruthSocial site, he suggested that, without his military intervention, “Los Angeles would be burning just like it was burning a number of months ago, with all the houses that were lost. Los Angeles right now would be on fire.”
A large crowd hold their fist up with faith leaders outside the Federal building in downtown Los Angeles as demonstrators protest immigration raids in L.A. on Tuesday,.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
In reality, agitators set multiple spot fires in a few neighborhoods, including downtown Los Angeles and Paramount, but the blazes in recent days were tiny and quickly controlled, in contrast to the massive wildfires that devastated broad swaths of Southern California in January.
Trump’s hyperbole continued in a fundraising appeal to his supporters Tuesday. In it, he again praised his decision to deploy the National Guard (without the approval of California Gov. Gavin Newsom), concluding: “If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.”
The Republican had assistance in fueling the sense of unease.
His colleagues in Congress introduced a resolution to formally condemn the riots. “Congress steps in amid ‘out-of-control’ Los Angeles riots as Democrats resist federal help,” Fox News reported on the resolution, being led by Rep. Young Kim of Orange County.
A journalist based in New Delhi pronounced, based on unspecified evidence, that Los Angeles “is descending into a full-blown warzone.”
Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas Collins suggested that the harm from the protesters was spreading; announcing in a social media post that a care center for vets in downtown L.A. had been temporarily closed.
“To the violent mobs in Los Angeles rioting in support of illegal immigrants and against the rule of law,” his post on X said, “your actions are interfering with Veterans’ health care.”
A chyron running with a Fox News commentary suggested “Democrats have lost their mind,” as proved by their attempts to downplay the anti-ICE riots.
Many Angelenos mocked the claims of a widespread public safety crisis. One person on X posted a picture of a dog out for a walk along a neatly kept sidewalk in a serene neighborhood, with the caption: “Los Angeles just an absolute warzone, as you can see.”
Federal officers and the National Guard protect the Federal building in downtown Los Angeles as demonstrators protest on Tuesday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
In stark contrast to the photos of Waymo vehicles burning and police cars being pelted with rocks, a video on social media showed a group of protestors line dancing. “Oh my God! They must be stopped before their peaceful and joy filled dance party spreads to a city near you!” the caption read. “Please send in the Marines before they start doing the Cha Cha and the Macarena!”
And many people noted on social media that Sunday’s Pride parade in Hollywood for the LGBTQ+ community went off without incident, as reinforced by multiple videos of dancers and marchers celebrating along a sun-splashed parade route.
But other activists and Democrats signaled that they understand how Trump’s position can be strengthened if it appears they are condoning the more extreme episodes that emerged along with the protests — police being pelted with bottles, businesses being looted and buildings being defaced with graffiti.
On Tuesday, an X post by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass reiterated her earlier admonitions: “Let me be clear: ANYONE who vandalized Downtown or looted stores does not care about our immigrant communities,” the mayor wrote. “You will be held accountable.”
The activist group Occupy Democrats posted a message online urging protesters to show their disdain for the violence and property damage.
“The moment violence of property damage begins, EVERY OTHER PROTESTER must immediately sit on the floor or the ground in silence, with signs down,” the advisory suggested. “The media needs to film this. This will reveal paid fake thugs posing as protesters becoming violent. ….The rest of us will demonstrate our non-violent innocence and retain our Constitutional right to peaceful protest.”
Craig Silverman, a journalist and cofounder of Indicator, a site that investigates deception on digital platforms, said that reporting on the context and true scope of the protests would have a hard time competing with the visceral images broadcast into Americans’ homes.
“It’s inevitable that the most extreme and compelling imagery will win the battle for attention on social media and on TV,” Silverman said via email. “It’s particularly challenging to deliver context and facts when social platforms incentivize the most shocking videos and claims, federal and state authorities offer contradictory messages about what’s happening.”
Dan Schnur, who teaches political science at USC and UC Berkeley, agreed. “The overwhelming majority of the protesters are peaceful,” Schnur said, “but they don’t do stories on all the planes that land safely at LAX, either.”
Protesters march in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Though it might be too early to assess the ultimate impact of the L.A. unrest, Schnur suggested that all of the most prominent politicians in the drama might have accomplished their messaging goals: Trump motivated his base and diverted attention from his nasty feud with his former top advisor, Elon Musk, and the lack of progress on peace talks with Russia and Ukraine. Newsom “effectively unified the state and elevated his national profile” by taking on Trump. And Bass, under tough scrutiny for her handling of the city’s wildfire disaster, has also gotten a chance to use Trump as a foil.
What was not disputed was that Trump’s rapid deployment of the National Guard, without the approval of Newsom, had little precedent. And sending the Marines to L.A. was an even more extreme approach, with experts saying challenges to the deployment would test the limits of Trump’s power.
The federal Insurrection Act allows the deployment of the military for law enforcement purposes, but only under certain conditions, such as a national emergency.
California leaders say Trump acted before a true emergency developed, thereby preempting standard protocols, including the institution of curfews and the mobilization of other local police departments in a true emergency.
Even real estate developer Rick Caruso, Bass’ opponent in the last election, suggested Trump acted too hastily.
“There is no emergency, widespread threat, or out of control violence in Los Angeles,” Caruso wrote on X Sunday. “And absolutely no danger that justifies deployment of the National Guard, military, or other federal force to the streets of this or any other Southern California City.”
“We must call for calm in the streets,” Caruso added, “and deployment of the National Guard may prompt just the opposite.”
United States President Donald Trump has ordered the deployment of 2,000 members of the National Guard to Los Angeles County to quell protests against coordinated immigration raids, bypassing the authority of the governor of California.
The extraordinary development came on Saturday, the second day of protests, amid clashes between law enforcement officers and demonstrators in the city.
The Los Angeles Police Department said Saturday’s demonstrations were peaceful and that “the day concluded without incident”. But in the two cities south of Los Angeles, Compton and Paramount, street battles broke out between protesters and police who used tear gas and flashbangs to disperse the crowds.
Local authorities did not request federal assistance. On the contrary, California Governor Gavin Newsom called Trump’s decision to call in National Guard troops “purposefully inflammatory”.
He accused the Trump administration of ordering the deployment “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle”.
It all started on Friday, when law enforcement officials in full riot gear descended on Los Angeles, rounding up day labourers at a building supply shop.
The raids, part of a military-style operation, signalled a step up in the Trump administration’s use of force in its crackdown against undocumented immigrants. The arrests were carried out without judicial warrants, according to multiple legal observers and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Department of Homeland Security said more than 100 undocumented immigrants have been arrested in two days of raids across southern California.
After word spread through southern Los Angeles of immigration agents arresting people, residents came out to show their outrage, and a police crackdown followed.
It is made up of part-time soldiers who can be used at the state and federal levels. Under the authority of state governors, National Guard troops can be deployed to respond to emergencies, such as the COVID pandemic, hurricanes and other natural disasters. It can also be used to tackle social unrest when local police are overwhelmed.
During times of war or national emergencies, the federal government can order a deployment for military service – that is, when the National Guard is federalised and serves under the control of the president.
The president can federalise, or take control of, the National Guard in very specific cases.
The main legal mechanism that a president can use to send military forces is the Insurrection Act to suppress insurrections, rebellions, and civil disorder within the country. If certain conditions are met, the president can send in the National Guard, bypassing the authority of the governor, though that is rare and politically sensitive.
Following the breakout of protests in Los Angeles, Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act, but rather a specific provision of the US Code on Armed Services. It says National Guard troops can be placed under federal command when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority” of the US.
But the law also says “orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors” of the states, making it not clear whether Trump had the legal authority to bypass Newsom.
Trump’s directive ordering the deployment of troops said “protests or acts of violence” directly inhibiting the execution of the laws would “constitute a form of rebellion” against the government.
According to Robert Patillo, a civil and human rights lawyer, Trump’s order will likely face legal challenges.
“Normally, federal troops are going to be used inside states at the invitation of the governor of that state,” he told Al Jazeera, citing the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, which were put down by federal troops invited by Pete Wilson, then-governor of California.
“But if the governor, such as Gavin Newsom, has not asked for federal troops to come in, and these troops are coming in against his will, then there will be challenges … and this will have to go to the Supreme Court in order to determine who has a legal right to deploy those troops,” Patillo said.
In 2020, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to respond to the protests that followed the killing by a Minneapolis police officer of George Floyd. Then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper pushed back, saying active-duty troops in a law enforcement role should be used “only in the most urgent and dire of situations”.
Finally, Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act and asked governors of several states to deploy their National Guard troops to Washington, DC. Those who refused to send them were allowed to do so.
But this time around, Trump has already signalled his unwillingness to hold back on calling in troops. When on the campaign trail in 2023, Trump told supporters in Iowa that he would not be waiting for a governor to be asked to send in troops as during his first term.
“The next time, I’m not waiting,” he said.
Federal agents have fired flashbangs and tear gas towards crowds angered by the arrests of dozens of migrants in Los Angeles, United States, a city with a large Latino population.
The Department for Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Los Angeles this week had led to the arrest of “118 aliens, including five gang members”.
The standoff came on Saturday in the suburb of Paramount, where demonstrators gathered outside a reported federal facility, which the local mayor said was being used as a staging post by agents.
On Friday, masked and armed immigration agents carried out high-profile workplace raids across different parts of Los Angeles, drawing angry crowds and causing hours-long standoffs.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass acknowledged that some residents were “feeling fear” following the federal actions.
“Everyone has the right to peacefully protest, but let me be clear: violence and destruction are unacceptable, and those responsible will be held accountable,” she said on X.
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said multiple arrests had been made after Friday’s clashes.
“You bring chaos, and we’ll bring handcuffs. Law and order will prevail,” he said on X.
The White House has taken a firm stance against the protests, with deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller describing them as “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States”.
As Israel’s devastating war on Gaza grinds on, pushed forward by a prime minister insistent that a goal of total military victory be met, the divisions within Israeli society are growing increasingly deeper.
In the last few weeks, as Israeli peace activists and antiwar groups have stepped up their campaign against the conflict, supporters of the war have also increased their pressure to continue, whatever its humanitarian, political or diplomatic cost.
Members of the military have published open letters protesting the political motivations for continuing the war on Gaza, or claiming that the latest offensive, which is systematically razing Gaza, risks the remaining Israeli captives held in the Palestinian territory.
Another open letter has come from within Israel’s universities and colleges, with its signatories doing a rare thing within Israel since the war began in October 2023: focusing on Palestinian suffering.
Elsewhere, campaigns of protest and refusal of military service have spread – a result of a mixture of pro-peace sentiment and more prevalent anger at the government’s handling of the war – posing a risk to Israel’s war effort, which is reliant upon the active participation of the country’s youth.
The war’s critics say that the man they oppose, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has become reliant upon the extreme right to maintain his coalition, and an opposition too cowardly to confront him in the face of mounting international accusations of genocide.
It is important not to confuse the growing domestic criticism of the Israeli government’s handling of the war with any mass sympathy for the Palestinian people.
A recent poll reported that 82 percent of Jewish Israeli respondents would still like to see Gaza cleared of its Palestinian population, with almost 50 percent also backing what they said was the “mass killing” of civilians in enemy cities occupied by the Israeli army.
And on Monday, thousands of Israelis led by the country’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, rampaged through occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, chanting “death to Arabs” and attacking anyone perceived to be either Palestinian or defending them.
Also addressing the crowd at the “Jerusalem Day” march was the country’s ultranationalist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who has been vocal in his push for the annexation of the occupied West Bank, and the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.
Smotrich asked the crowd: “Are we afraid of victory?”; “Are we afraid of the word ‘occupation?’” The crowd – described as “revellers” within parts of Israeli media – responded with a resounding “no”.
“There’s a cohort of the extreme right who feel vindicated by a year and a half of war,” the former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera. “They think their message that, if you blink you lose; if you pause, you lose; if you waver, you lose, has been borne out.”
Alongside the intensifying of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, which has now killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, voices of dissent have grown louder. In April, more than 1,000 serving and retired pilots issued an open letter protesting a war they said served “political and personal interests” rather than security ones. Further letters, as well as an organised campaign encouraging young Israelis to refuse to show up for military service, have followed.
Perhaps sensing the direction the wind was blowing, the leader of Israel’s left-wing Democrats Party, Yair Golan – who initially supported the war and took a hardline position on allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza – launched a stark broadside against the conflict earlier this month, claiming that Israel risked becoming a “pariah state” that killed “babies as a hobby” while giving itself the aim of “expelling populations”.
While welcomed by some, the comments of the former army major-general were rounded upon by others. Speaking at a conference in southern Israel alongside noted antiwar lawmaker Ofer Cassif, Golan was heckled and called a traitor by far-right members of the audience, before he had to be escorted off the premises by security.
Cassif, who refers to himself as an anti-Zionist, has long attracted the outrage of mainstream Israeli society for his loud denunciation of the way Israel treats Palestinians.
“There have always been threats against me,” Cassif, who has been alone among Israeli lawmakers in opposing the war from its onset, told Al Jazeera. “I can’t walk down my own street. I was attacked twice before October 7 and it’s gotten much worse since.
“But it’s not just me. All the peace activists risk being physically attacked or threatened, even the families of the hostages are at risk of attack by these bigots,” he said.
“Many people are coming to realise that this government and even the mainstream opposition aren’t fighting a war for security reasons, or even to recover the hostages, but are carrying out the kind of genocidal mission advocated by Smotrich and the other messianic bigots,” Cassif said of the finance minister and his supporters.
“This has been allowed by people like [Benny] Gantz, [Yair] Lapid and [Yoav] Gallant,” he said, citing prominent politicians opposed to the prime minister, “who didn’t dare criticise it [the war] and Netanyahu, who has manipulated it for his own ends.”
Cassif’s comments were echoed by one of the signatories to the academics’ open letter criticising the war, Ayelet Ben-Yishai, an associate professor at the University of Haifa.
“The opposition has nothing,” she told Al Jazeera. “I get that it’s hard to argue for a complicated future, but they do and say nothing. All they’ve left us with is a choice between managing the war and the occupation and Smotrich and his followers. That’s it. What kind of future is that?”
Many members of the government and opposition have previously served in senior roles within the army, either engaging in or overseeing combat operations against Palestinians, and maintaining the illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
Democrats Party head Golan was even previously criticised by the army in 2007 for repeatedly using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
“What we’re seeing right now is a struggle between two Zionist elites over who is the greater fascist in different forms,” Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani, a professor at Tel Aviv University, said of the political struggles at play within Israel.
“On the one hand, there are the Ashkenazi Jews, who settled Israel, imposed the occupation and have killed thousands,” he said of Israel’s traditional military and governing elites, many of whom might describe themselves as liberal and democratic, and were originally from central and Eastern Europe. “Or [you have] the current religious Zionists, like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who [the old Ashkenazi elite] now accuse of being fascists.
“You can’t reduce this to left and right. I don’t buy into that,” Shenhav-Shahrabani said. “It goes deeper. Both sides are oblivious to the genocide in Gaza.”
While resistance against the war has grown both at home and abroad, so too has the intensity of the attacks being protested against.
Since Israel unilaterally broke a ceasefire in March, almost 4,000 Palestinians have been killed, hundreds of them children. In addition, a siege, imposed upon the decimated enclave on March 2, has pushed what remains of its pre-war population of more than two million to the point of famine, international agencies, including the United Nations, have warned.
At the same time as Israel’s war on Gaza has intensified, so too have its actions in the West Bank. Under the guise of another military operation, the Israeli army has occupied and levelled large parts of the occupied territory displacing a reported 40,000 of its inhabitants as it establishes its own military network there.
On Thursday, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz, alongside Smotrich, who as finance minister enjoys significant control over the West Bank, announced the establishment of a further 22 Israeli settlements, all in defiance of international law.
Smotrich’s announcement came as a surprise to few. The far-right minister – himself a settler on Palestinian land – has previously been clear about his intention to see the West Bank annexed, even ordering preparations to do so in advance of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, who he expected to support the idea. He has also said Gaza will be “totally destroyed” and its population expelled to a tiny strip of land along the Egyptian border.
For Shenhav-Shahrabani, little of it was surprising.
“I went with some others to South Africa in 1994. I met a justice of the Supreme Court, a Jew, who’d been injured by an Afrikaner bomb [during the struggle against apartheid],” Shenhav-Shahrabani said. “He told me that nothing will change for Palestinians until Israelis are ready to go to jail for them. We’re not there yet.”