HOW IT STARTED: Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.

—The London Independent, March 20^th, 2000.

How it’s going: Could Britain face a winter ice age? How future temperatures could plummet due to climate change.

—Sky News, today.

Leonard Nimoy, call your office!

And you too, Stephen Schneider, who appeared in the above episode, only to change his mind decades later and rail on about the dangers of global warming:

UPDATE: Once again, Trump is saving England from itself!

ABC NEWS IS ANGRY THAT L.A. IS BEING DEFENDED:

But then, the elites who staff ABC News are pretty uncomfortable with the US military in general:

QTing this again, because the more I think about it, the more telling this is. The comments are a fascinating look into how profoundly out of touch with reality modern liberals are.

They're honestly surprised that the kinds of dudes who fight all of America's wars for us are… https://t.co/oIgGTs3FH4

— Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45) June 11, 2025

Glenn notes that we’ve seen far worse:

As Kurt Schlichter warned the left a decade ago: Liberals May Regret Their New Rules.

I’M SORRY DAVE, I CAN’T ALLOW YOU TO ORDER THAT VENTI, QUAD, HALF-CAFF, NO FOAM, EXTRA HOT, PEPPERMINT, WHITE CHOCOLATE MOCHA: Starbucks to roll out Microsoft Azure OpenAI assistant for baristas.

Starbucks plans to roll out a generative artificial intelligence assistant created with Microsoft

Azure’s OpenAI platform to 35 locations this month as part of its strategy to simplify baristas’ jobs and speed up service in its cafes.

The coffee chain showed off the new technology to more than 14,000 North American store managers at its Leadership Experience in Las Vegas on Tuesday. A broad launch of the “Green Dot Assist” platform across the U.S. and Canada is slated for the company’s fiscal 2026, which starts in the fall.

The three-day event comes as Starbucks pushes to revive its sluggish U.S. sales and “get back to Starbucks,” as CEO Brian Niccol has described the effort since he took the role last year. Niccol’s priorities include slashing service times to four minutes per order. Quick, accurate answers to barista questions could help achieve that goal.

Starbucks running on Microsoft AI just feels so déclassé, but that’s what happens when Apple’s lagging behind in AI: Apple’s AI Siri Update Reportedly Facing Uphill Battle.

Incidentally, how long before Starbucks goes all the way, and implements the coffee equivalent of the Bionic Bar on Royal Caribbean cruises?

THE ULTIMATE HECKLER’S VETO: Karen Bass’s Imbecilic Riot Evasions.

We’ve all heard of the heckler’s veto. Karen Bass wants a rioter’s veto.

The Los Angeles mayor maintains that everything would be fine if federal agents weren’t enforcing federal law in her city.

“This was chaos that was started in Washington, D.C.,” she said at a press conference the other day.

She’s not suggesting that the feds secretly gave agitators masks, stones, and fireworks, and provided them the coordinates of the retail stores most ripe for looting.

No, she’s complaining about law enforcement officers engaging in acts of law enforcement that resulted in their getting targeted by violent protesters.

“On Thursday,” she continued, “the city was peaceful. On Friday, it was not, because of the intervention of the federal government.”

She glosses over the fact that it is quite possible — as, in fact, has happened for decades in this country — for federal immigration officers to conduct raids without being confronted by mobs.

It is her assumption that federal immigration laws cannot be enforced in her city without a violent reaction. This shouldn’t be a condemnation of the raids, but of her city, or at least the people in it who feel compelled to resist federal agents.

Bass’s attitude would take Los Angeles well beyond its status as a sanctuary city, which involves not affirmatively cooperating with the feds, and make it something else — effectively a no-go zone for immigration officers and a jurisdiction that affirmatively resists them.

“We need to stop the raids,” Bass said at her press conference. “The only thing it does is contribute to chaos.”

And now, a word from Barack Obama:

Related: A Karen divided against itself cannot stand!

ACTUALLY, I’D SAY THAT GAVIN NEWSOM MAY HAVE ENDED GAVIN NEWSOM’S 2028 PRESIDENTIAL BID: Victor Davis Hanson Might Have Ended Gavin Newsom’s Political Career.

“He [Newsom] said this was chaotic, this was reckless, and he said that they were just trying to have an arbitrary, deportation quota,” said Hanson.

Gavin, Gavin 12 million people came into the country illegally. That was 3 million a year. That was 250,000 per month. That was over 8,000 a day. They have not been able to deport more than a thousand on most days, sometimes 500. They would have to deport 8,000 people every single day for four years to get back where we were with 20 million illegal aliens, when Joe Biden entered office. So it’s not a quota. It’s an effort to stop an invasion.

He also wrecked him on the National Guard deployment:

Now Gavin is mad that they nationalized the California Guard. Trump has that ability. And people said, no, no president—they have to request it. No they don’t.

You think that JFK said to George Wallace when he nationalized the Alabama National Guard, said, would you please let us nationalize your guard so you can be removed from stopping African-American people going to the University of Alabama? No.

CNN recently did a deep dive on the immigration issue and found that Democrats have lost the plot here, too. There’s been a 40-point swing to the GOP from immigrant citizens, who are also now viewed as being better at handling immigration matters. They’re on the MAGA train regarding deportations, too. It’s amazing how Democrats still don’t get how unpopular their agenda has become to normal voters. They’ve lost the working class, the middle class, and now immigrant citizens. And Newsom, viewed as the man who can help Democrats rebuild, is letting his city burn and peddling anti-Trump nonsense.

As Jon Gabriel notes:

Mrs. Newsom isn’t helping her husband either, with optics such as this: California’s First Lady shrugs off riots crisis to shop in Beverly Hills.

No word yet if the couple will be dining at the French Laundry this weekend.

JOEL KOTKIN: What’s the matter with Los Angeles?

The riots fit a pattern a steep decline. Over the past 20 years, the LA region has lost 750,000 people under 30 – the biggest decline in youth among all large U.S. counties. Even the immigrants are leaving; between the 2010 and 2020 Censuses, the number of foreign-born residents actually dropped. Looking ahead, the state’s Department of Finance predicts no population growth and a reduction of well over a million people for L.A. County.

What went wrong? You can start with the political takeover of the city by ever more leftist leaders. Once dominated by Republicans and conservative Democrats, the city has fallen ever more into the progressive mold, genuflecting to green, gender and racial ideology, which has left LA with an awful reputation among businesses and particularly developers. Indeed despite the city’s advocacy for more housing, it is among the least proficient in building them. There have been declines in everything from manufacturing to Hollywood.

Not everything is failing. There are pockets of success, particularly in the revived aerospace industry, located south and west of the city, but also in spots such as the Asian-dominated San Gabriel Valley or a host of largely successful Latino-dominated cities to its south.

But overall Los Angeles, particularly its central core, now suffers from all the plagues associated with older cities, such as Detroit, Cleveland, Manchester or Liverpool. Far from being “the better city”, Los Angeles is now best known for riots and failing to solve a massive homeless problem, the second worst in the country, despite billions in expenditures.

Fox Butterfield, call your office! In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

RIP: The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Dies at 82. “Wilson, the co-founder and primary songwriter of the Beach Boys, has died, his family announced. The beloved musical auteur, who helped pioneer the studio-as-instrument, influencing generations of musicians in pop and beyond, was revealed in early 2024 to be living with a neurocognative disorder akin to dementia.”

UPDATE: John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd take Brian Wilson Surfing in 1976:

BIAS BY OMISSION: Greg Gutfeld Can’t Help But Notice What’s Missing From Media Coverage of L.A. Riots.

Fox News’ [Greg Gutfeld] calls out liberal media’s L.A. coverage: “What I find interesting is how come the networks aren’t interviewing the protesters? There’s a selective shielding going on. They know the protesters are the worst spokesmen for the protest.”

“So, as the media ‘we’ll take care of that for you, we’ll become the spokesman.’ Their delusional commentary alongside the videos  of the rioters and the arson is a perfect juxtaposition of reality and ideology. They’re trying to tell us it’s ‘mostly peaceful’.”

“Every video strengthens Trump’s position and reminds us how wrong the media was on everything from the ‘summer of love’ to the fall of Biden.”

This also explains why Brian Stelter went into full Summer of Love mode yesterday:

It goes without saying at this point, after five years of the media explaining away Joe Biden’s endless malfunctions, but just think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. I’m not sure I agree with Ann Coulter’s recent statement that “Contrary to popular belief, the media is not the handmaiden of the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party is the handmaiden of the media,” but certainly, the regime media are doing whatever they can to get their side back in power.

Evergreen:

More from Matt Margolis at PJM: Here’s What’s Curiously Missing From Riot Coverage.

AS ALWAYS, LIFE IMITATES THE EARLIER, FUNNIER ITERATION OF SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: USA Today Suggests Rioters Should Only Burn Cars in an Environmentally Responsible Fashion.

Add @waymo to the list of carnage from the LA riots.

What baffles me is LAPD calling these protests mostly peaceful when you’ve got gun fire and burning cars . pic.twitter.com/NDoHWnlhKe

— Oz For NY (Ozsultan.eth, phantom: @ozsultanx) (@OzForNY) June 9, 2025

This is not a preferred method of free expression, according to Elizabeth Weise of USA Today. She delivers a cautionary tale that when seeking ways to deliver your message of opposition to repatriating enforcement by ICE agents, you should be more selective in your choice of vehicle to set ablaze.

Electric vehicle fires can burn hotter and more intensely than gasoline-fueled cars, if their batteries catch fire. This can happen if they are crashed or if their batteries are infiltrated.

…

There are important distinctions between electric vehicle (EV) fires and traditional gasoline-powered vehicle fires, both in terms of combustion characteristics and potential health hazards, said Dr. Alberto Caban-Martinez, deputy director of the Sylvester Firefighter Cancer Initiative at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

EV fires can release gases such as hydrogen fluoride, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and metal-based particulates.

“These emissions differ in composition from those generated by gasoline combustion, which primarily include carbon monoxide, benzene, and other hydrocarbons,” he said.

From Saturday Night Live’s parody of the 1992 presidential debates, starring Kevin Nealon as Sam Donaldson and the late Phil Hartman doing his pitch-perfect Bill Clinton impersonation:

Sam Donaldson: But isn’t it true that during one of the peace demonstrations you burned an American flag in Red Square?

Bill Clinton: I tried to burn an American flag once. I didn’t like it. It gave off toxic fumes, so I didn’t inhale.

As Brad Slager adds at Red State, “Back when Tesla dealerships were being hit with fireballs, no hand-wringing feature articles were being generated. There was a  case of the messaging taking priority over the damaging effects on the planet.”

Well, yes. Elon was getting dangerously close to cutting off the funding for the Democrats who are rioting this week.

DAN MCLAUGHLIN: You Picked the Wrong Time to Riot.

Trump is following through on nationalizing the California National Guard and putting them seriously to work in restoring order over the impotent protests of California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Anybody who read the situation and the man could have told them this would happen. Yes, there’s some truth in the TACO taunt: Trump doesn’t much like standing up to people who can fight back, and he often blusters his way into positions he can’t or won’t back up. But Trump has no downside here. He knows he was elected to restore some basic, commonsense ideas that are overwhelmingly popular like public order in the streets, and that Newsom, Bass, and Kamala Harris are about the least sympathetic adversaries possible. He’s also just over four months into his term; it’s not 2020 anymore. A new president responds to challenges such as this one not only with an eye to the situation, but also with an eye on the tone set for the remaining three-plus years. Why did Ronald Reagan come down so hard on the air traffic controller strike? Partly out of principle but also partly to send a message: There’s a new sheriff in town, and you’re not messing with him. The public-employee unions got the message; so did the Soviets and Congress. Reagan meant what he said and was prepared to go to the mattresses.

All of the incentives for Trump, against people burning Waymos and wearing keffiyehs and waving Mexican flags, point in the direction of doing the same. Before you try to use leverage against an opponent, you should first consider whether your acts are received by him as pressure or as a gift. Trump very obviously views disorder in the streets of Los Angeles, against federal authority, and under foreign flags, as a gift. You have to be a special kind of stupid to hand him that. But nobody ever said rioters were smart people.

Neither are looters: Troops and turmoil in LA: Masked looters raid Apple store.

Flashback to 2020’s Summer of Love: Photos show how Apple is tracking and locking demo iPhones that have been stolen from its stores. “Photos of reportedly stolen iPhones have been circulating on social media showing screenshots with a message from Apple requesting that the devices be returned to the store. ‘Please return to Apple Walnut Street,’ one screenshot read, likely referring to the Apple Store located on Walnut Street in Philadelphia. ‘This device has been disabled and is being tracked. Local authorities will be alerted.’”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): My congressman, Tim Burchett, weighs in.

Looters should be shot. https://t.co/KXtLDkGkq5

— Tim Burchett (@timburchett) June 10, 2025

UPDATE (From Ed):

Alarms blaring on multiple iPhones that were taken from the Apple store in downtown LA
Displays on the devices read
“Please return to Apple Tower Theatre
This device has been disabled and is being tracked. Local authorities will be alerted.” pic.twitter.com/rhMiaRXA9z

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) June 10, 2025

DOUG ROSS: Civil Unrest, Inc.: How America Learned to Spot Manufactured Mayhem.

With 40 million illegal immigrants in the country, foreign flags raised in burning American cities, and Democrats openly cheering for violence, we’ve crossed from civil unrest into something far more dangerous.

The tools exist to deal with this—the same ones used to destroy January 6th participants. The question isn’t capability; it’s will. America’s survival may depend on whether that will materializes before the next switch gets flipped.

The era of treating coordinated political violence as spontaneous protest must end now.

Don’t miss the lengthy accompanying flowchart that diagrams “The Manufactured Crisis.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

We asked UCLA students one simple question:
“I’m Gay + Arab – Where In the Middle East Can I Go?”
Their answers did NOT disappoint.

Do you know the answer?
Video collab: @Facts_For_Peace pic.twitter.com/TP8AoDMy4A

— Jonathan Elkhoury- جوناثان الخوري (@Jonathan_Elk) June 10, 2025

MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver indicted following ICE protest.

IT’S COME TO THIS: LA Mayor Karen Bass issues World Cup threat in war with Trump over riots:

Mayor Karen Bass sent a message to Donald Trump claiming the response to the immigration protests will hurt the World Cup.

The United States is set to co-host the soccer showstopper along with Canada and Mexico next summer.

Bass, speaking at a press conference, said the city’s economy will ‘collapse’ if Trump deports more illegal migrants, and taunted him: ‘Don’t you want the World Cup to be a success for you?’

While it’s true that ESPN reported in March, “President Trump to lead 2026 World Cup task force,” Bass’s communist roots are really showing, if she thinks the former owner of a USFL team is worried all that much about soccer.

Meanwhile, as Joel Kotkin writes: Los Angeles has fallen. How can riot-rocked LA be trusted to host the Olympics?

But unless vast sums are spent on a Potemkin-like makeover, the world will also witness what many of us residents have long suspected – that the city is slipping into an inexorable decline.

Things were very different in 1932, when LA first hosted the Olympics. With a population of 1.2million – a third of today’s population – LA was still fledgling. But the 1932 games served as a wake-up call to the world that LA was on its way to becoming one of the planet’s great cities.

I covered the run-up to the second LA Olympics, in 1984. It was arguably the most successful games in history, despite Russia’s Cold War-era boycott. This was LA at its peak – with native son Ronald Reagan in the White House, and the defence, aerospace, housing and entertainment sectors all booming. ‘LA’s the place’, as the promoters then put it, and few could deny the truth of it.

Some may hope the new games will rescue the city from its doldrums. But numerous studies show that hosting an Olympics offers, at best, fleeting economic benefits – and often leaves enormous burdens. It can provide an opportunity to make a statement, heralding the rise of cities such as Berlin under the Nazis in 1936 or Beijing under the CCP in 2008. But staging an Olympics in a city plainly in decline seems a fool’s errand.

Detroit’s Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh would concur. This 1965 film, created to sell Detroit as a possible host of the 1968 Olympics, looks like something out of The Last Days of Pompeii when viewed in 2025:

Or perhaps the precursor to Bill Whittle’s new “How L.A. Dies” video:

TERRY MORAN OUT AT ABC NEWS:

Terry Moran may go down in history as the only legacy media hack to actually thank President Trump for calling his network “Fake News" pic.twitter.com/6YI0CwMTJc

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) June 10, 2025

Moran dropped the mask, and revealed what everybody at the House of Stephanopoulos thinks about this administration, and with a fair amount of projection, Trump aide Stephen Miller in particular:

UPDATE:

ABC News fires Terry Moran!

Here's a look down memory lane at his worst moments 👇 pic.twitter.com/WoZaoxrPeU

— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) June 10, 2025

GRETA’S BLIND EYE TO MURDER:

The Israelis know how to deport people. If this had been Britain, Greta Thunberg would be sitting in an asylum hotel right now, using a taxpayer-funded mobile phone, working as a Deliveroo driver and gearing up for 20 years of legal battles that will line the pockets of human rights lawyers.

Good riddance, I say. My only regret is that Thunberg refused to watch the footage of October 7 at a screening provided by the Israeli authorities before she was sent back where she came from. Such are the reports, anyway. In an episode rich with irony, this was the turkey in the challah sandwich (provided to the activist by Israeli commandos upon arrival).

* * * * * * * *

Let’s stop beating around the selfie yacht. It was never truly about the climate, any more than it was truly about the conflict in the Middle East. Closing her eyes to the October 7 footage crystallised the sustaining principle of Greta Thunberg: she is absorbed in a world of her own. It is a world that began with hating her teachers; went on to hating the establishment; and has ended with hating the Jews and the West, powered by endless selfies.

More here: “What happened next gives the whole game away. Why is Thunberg on her way home, you might ask, instead of valiantly opposing the Israelis? The answer is because she immediately signed a voluntary deportation agreement, leaving the rest of her crew behind in detention to propagate their ‘revolution’… When push came to shove, Thunberg ran away back to Europe instead of standing against what she falsely claims is a ‘genocide.’ She’s not a revolutionary. She’s just an attention-seeking fraud who wants to post selfies and get on television while not paying any cost for her radical activism. We’ve seen that dynamic play out many times, where Thunberg is ‘arrested’ and released within hours. She’s cosplaying.”

UPDATE:

Goblin Greta destroying her own image and lies… with her own words.

Whoever made this video is brilliant🔥pic.twitter.com/rIG9frEgWd

— Cheryl E 🇮🇱🎗️ (@CherylWroteIt) June 9, 2025

NEO: What is the left’s goal in staging these LA riots?

So why does the left do this? I think there are many reasons. First of all, their base loves it. Secondly, it sows chaos and might actually impede some of the deportations, which stymies Trump and causes more chaos. But I believe the deeper desire is to provoke a strong reaction from Trump that can then be labeled in all the ways they love to label Trump: he’s a fascist and a power-mad brutal dictator. Today it’s the illegal criminal aliens, tomorrow it will be you!

It’s a classic leftist move. Their playbook – in US history, anyway – is the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. I wrote a piece back in 2006 about this leftist strategy. Most of the remainder of the present post will be quotes from that 2006 article, and I believe the relevance is obvious (the Horowitz link no longer works, however).

Read the whole thing.

Related: ABC News is shocked – shocked! – to discover: There are more US troops in LA than in Iraq, Syria.

There are now more U.S. troops deployed to Los Angeles than in Iraq and Syria.

There are 4,800 activated Guard and Marine personnel in LA, compared to the 2,500 troops in Iraq and 1,500 in Syria.

It’s a good start! Perhaps though, it’s time to really up the stakes in L.A.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Visit California: It's America's Future pic.twitter.com/pGtIBsxFE4

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) June 10, 2025

POLLING NUMBERS IN? Newsom, Bass, Suddenly Talking Tough to their Shock Troops:

But they likely won’t:

Flashback to Andy Ngo in 2023: Who funds Antifa protests? We all do.

On March 5, an [National Lawyers Guild] member and staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center named Thomas Jurgens was charged with domestic terrorism for his alleged involvement in a violent Antifa attack on police in Atlanta.

When the NLG’s legal observers and their comrades are arrested, they’re immediately provided with pro-bono legal aid and connections for bail money (rioters often write the NLG’s phone number on their body in anticipation of arrests.)

And then the lawsuits come.

Last year, New York City agreed to pay tens of thousands to NLG members arrested in the Bronx in June 2020.

In Detroit, NLG members are suing the city for alleged wrongful conduct stemming from its police response in 2020.

Nearly every American city afflicted by mass protesting and rioting in 2020 ended up settling and paying out millions in taxpayer money to radical protesters who were allegedly subjected to force by law enforcement.

Denver settled to pay $1.6 million to just seven people.

Austin settled to pay $17.3 million.

The cities, led by Democrats, don’t even bother to fight the cases, preferring to write a check.

The settlement cash doesn’t just end up rewarding the protesters, awarded inflated attorney fees are used to reinvest in the legal groups to grow the operation for the next cause. Additionally, law enforcement morale declines as they are punished for doing their jobs.

But lawsuit settlements aren’t the only way that militant protesters and riot suspects get paid. Bail funds have emerged as a lucrative cash source with progressive district attorneys refusing to prosecute most left-wing riot-related cases.

We’ll know if Trump is serious about pushing back against the rioters if they face federal charges and lengthy prison sentences.

YOUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS AT WORK: Oops! Masked ‘Protester’ Reveals Identity to Reporter – DataRepublican Shows NGO is Paying Her to Dissent.

First, the funny part. A pro-illegal alien protester in Asheville, North Carolina, was being interviewed by a local TV news reporter. She said and spelled out her name on air. Then said she was wearing a mask to protect her identity. Yep, they’re not sending their brightest. Then, X sleuth extraordinaire DataRepublican did some quick research. Wham! Bam! Yep, the masked fool is a paid protester.

* * * * * * * *

At the beginning of 1991’s Parliament of Whores, P.J. O’Rourke famously wrote:

Not long after Andy [Ferguson] and I met, we were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue and encountered some or another noisy pinko demonstration. “How come,” I asked Andy, “whenever something upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever something upsets the Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch American flag?”

“We have jobs,” said Andy.

But for the protestors on the left, as we’ve learned, this is their job. Nice work if you can get it: Who’s Paying for the Violent L.A. Protests Against ICE? You Are. And It Gets Worse From There.

Oh, and speaking of “signs already printed,” a quick reminder:

They have no clue why they are there, and they have no clue what their signs even mean. pic.twitter.com/BxtiskoD3t

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 6, 2025

And this all-time classic from the late Andrew Breitbart:

IT MUST BE THE SUMMER OF LOVE AGAIN, BECAUSE CNN HAS ACCESS TO ALL THE BEST HALLUCINOGENICS:

But is Stelter getting the wrong message, from watching footage that is “hours old?”

To be fair, Stelter isn’t the only Democrat Party operative with a Chyron who is pushing the Summer of Love message this week:

SUPERCUT!

Corporate media: These murderous riots are actually mostly peaceful pic.twitter.com/9Aig54BoH2

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 9, 2025

Or that they’re simply fun-filled peaceful “rallies:”

And what’s a rally without plenty of American flags?

Which presumably will quickly be set alight. But when they are, the party will demand that you ignore that it happened:

"Don't believe what you saw" is the new slogan of the Democrat Party. https://t.co/WDK4HyT1Oj pic.twitter.com/BwxrSXDCkC

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 10, 2025

FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL:

The difference between reality and the legacy media is insane! https://t.co/zHEjmPbrjn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2025

TYLER O’NEIL: Who Organized the LA Anti-ICE Protests That Escalated Into Riots?

When anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agitators took to the streets in the Los Angeles area over the weekend attacking officers, setting cars on fire, and looting, they drew attention to the left-leaning activist groups that may have helped instigate the riots.

Three major organizations have come under increased scrutiny: the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Los Angeles; the Party for Socialism and Liberation; and the Service Employees International Union. One of these groups, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Los Angeles, has received millions in government funding.

We should also ask the mayor of L.A. about her role in mobilizing her party’s shock troops:

ED MORRISSEY: Newsom Plans to Sue Trump to Remove Nat’l Guard.

Did these ‘protests’ interfere with the ability of ICE to execute their legitimate law-enforcement operations? They did indeed. Did Newsom or Karen Bass take action to restore order and allow those operations to proceed? They most certainly did not. Instead, Bass insisted that the city would not do anything to assist ICE in terms of their operations or protection, and Newsom refused to act. Instead, Newsom and Bass have insisted that ICE stop its legitimate operations in California rather than enforce the law. Their inaction and rhetoric attempted to leverage the violence directed at ICE as a way to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from ‘execut[ing] the law of the United States.’

Reuters spoke with four legal experts who cast doubt on this provision, but it exists clearly and explicitly in statute and in precedent. The rhetoric from Newsom and Bass — including Newsom’s remarks to Tom Homan that the NYT includes as context for this legal effort — makes it clear that Democrat leaders in California intend to prevent the federal government from executing federal laws in their jurisdiction. Newsom has taken the George Wallace/Orval Faubus position in history, and while he might find a federal judge to temporarily agree that Newsom can dictate terms of federal law enforcement in California, that won’t last long. Trump has both the law and precedent on his side here, and he will accelerate this to the Supreme Court before removing a single National Guard troop from LA.

Speaking of states’ rights issues, this ABC News employee is suddenly a big fan: The View’s Whoopi Questions Whether Trump Admin Is Now ‘Pure Fascism’ After Weekend of LA Protests. “What ever happened to states’ rights?” the ABC moderator asks.

Following a weekend of protests over ICE raids in Los Angeles being escalated by the Trump administration sending in the National Guard, “The View” host and moderator Whoopi Goldberg wondered on Monday morning if the country is now experiencing “pure fascism.”

“What ever happened to states’ rights? I thought that was what you do,” she said, kicking off the day’s Hot Topics. “Because you tell the state ‘This is what we’re thinking of doing,’ you know, you don’t just send people in. You don’t just send troops in.”

Each of the hosts agreed, and as the conversation progressed, Whoopi also called out Trump’s reinstated travel ban.

“None of the countries that are on this ‘you can’t come in here’ list seem to have done anything of note to keep them from coming in,” she said. “So, what is it? Are we about state’s rights? Are we about keeping people in or out? Are you out because you got here in a different way, because you fled the nation you live in?”

“So what is it? Is this just pure fascism that’s happening?” she added. “Is this what’s going on?”

Well, it can’t be “pure fascism,” since Whoopi Goldberg and ABC are both still very much on the air to disagree with Trump’s decisions, despite her paranoia at the beginning of 2024 that “That If Elected Again Donald Trump Will ‘Disappear’ Journalists And ‘Gay Folks.’”

Decrying the mobilization of the National Guard, Whoopi says it's "states rights" for California to allow the streets of LA to be set ablaze by riots, and that trying to deport illegals is the problem:
"I mean, whatever happened to state's rights. I thought that what's you… pic.twitter.com/XlvkbX9ZSM

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) June 9, 2025

As VDH asks today, “Why Is Governor Newsom Going Full Jefferson Davis? What triggered the American Civil War were state officials who refused to honor federal law and instead boasted of their open defiance of Washington.”

Why Is Governor Newsom Going Full Jefferson Davis?

What triggered the American Civil War were state officials who refused to honor federal law and instead boasted of their open defiance of Washington.

That precedent apparently is the incendiary model for the weird, but…

— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) June 9, 2025

Back in May of 2016, he similarly explored: The Nihilism of Sanctuary Cities.

The apparent principle of sanctuary cities is akin to roulette. The odds suggest that most illegal aliens detained by officials are not career felons and thus supposedly need not be turned over to ICE for deportation. On the chance that some of their 10,000 released criminals will go on to commit further crimes in the manner of Juan Lopez-Sanchez, officials then shrug that the public outcry will be episodic and quickly die down, or will at least not pose political problems as great as would come from deporting aliens.

Yet the idea of a sanctuary city is Confederate to the core, reminiscent of antebellum Southern states picking and choosing which federal statutes they would abide by or reject. Even before the Civil War, the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33 pitted South Carolina against a fellow southerner, President Andrew Jackson, as the state declared that federal tariff laws were not applicable within its confines. Jackson understood the threat to the union, and promised to send in federal troops before South Carolina backed down.

The problem with legal nullification is always the enduring principle, never just the immediate landscape, of its implementation.

Sanctuary cities are careful to employ euphemisms rather than explicit references to illegal immigration. But not labeling San Francisco as an “illegal alien sanctuary” or even an “immigration sanctuary” only institutionalizes the idea of any city becoming a “sanctuary” from any federal law it finds convent. If sanctuary cities continue to flaunt federal immigration laws and if the federal government does not cut off federally earmarked funds to such offenders — or if ICE does not, in Jacksonian style, threaten to use force to arrest and deport illegal aliens — then the concept will spread, and spread well beyond matters of immigration law.

Hence the Bad Orange Man, and Karen Bass’s Orwellian doubletalk in response:

"I blame crime on the police" https://t.co/WuzMe0bO4o

— Fusilli Spock (@awstar11) June 9, 2025

She’s never going to change, no matter what the consequences: OMG, Her Face! CNN Confronts Karen Bass with Trump’s Approval Ratings with Deportations and LOL (Watch).

UPDATE:

Here's Gavin Newsom in June of 2024 telling Republicans to stop playing politics and to send some National Guard to California to help with the border.

It was election time so it was time to pretend to be for law and order.

Today Newsom announced that he is suing Trump because… pic.twitter.com/2TANRrmITW

— MAZE (@mazemoore) June 9, 2025

GREAT MOMENTS IN OBJECTIVITY: ABC News Drops All-Time Insane Description of ‘Mostly Peaceful Protesters’ in Los Angeles.

A local ABC News affiliate in Los Angeles raised eyebrows when one of their anchors described rioters as “just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn.”

It’s the ‘Mostly Peaceful Protester 2.0.’

The ‘Fiery but Mostly Peaceful Protest’ on steroids.

I’m not sure what kind of mental exercises one has to go through to develop the ability to perform verbal gymnastics at this level, but this ABC reporter would surely take gold in the Olympics.

As Redstate’s Nick Arama reported on Sunday, pro-illegal immigrant rioters have been calling in Waymos – self-driving vehicles – just to set them on fire.

The ABC 7 news anchor, while watching these vehicles burn in the background, voiced his concerns about law enforcement stepping in and whether it might escalate the situation. You know, beyond all the criminal activity taking place.

“There’s a large group of people – it could turn very volatile if you move law enforcement in there in the wrong way, and turn what is just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn into a massive confrontation and altercation between officers,” he said.

WATCH: ABC News wants you to know what is happening in California isn’t a violent riot.

It’s “just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn.” — ABC 7’s Marc Brown. pic.twitter.com/xjiQZJyuDq

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 9, 2025

At PJM, Matt Margolis writes, “Who is Marc Brown, who made this insane observation?”

He’s not some random reporter; he’s the longtime co-anchor of ABC 7’s Eyewitness News and perhaps one of the most recognizable faces in Los Angeles broadcasting. Over the years, Brown has racked up an impressive collection of honors, including four Emmy Awards, a Golden Mike, and accolades from both the Associated Press and the Radio and Television News Directors Association.

Previously, during a surreal exchange on CNN, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) had to correct anchor Dana Bash after she claimed on air that these weren’t “real riots.” She tried to minimize the violence by comparing it to the 1992 Rodney King riots, as if the chaos in L.A. today somehow doesn’t qualify.

But the gaslighting didn’t stop there. CNN’s Juliette Kayyem dismissed the mayhem as merely “some unrest,” and another CNN reporter outright called the scene “very peaceful,” claiming not to have seen any violence at all.

In contrast though: L.A. Police Chief Admits Officers ‘Overwhelmed’ as Thousands of Rioters Block Freeway, Torch Cars.

UPDATE: Another ABC7 journalist has his “fiery but mostly peaceful” moment, while standing on the set of Full Metal Jacket: 

Lol @ABC7TimCaputo is like Trump calls it rioting but I wouldn’t call it that, just a few cars on fire and explosions, the “vast majority” of protesters are just taking pictures lololol what!?! pic.twitter.com/QCsaAORFgB

— ¡El SooperMexican! ن c137 🦬 (@SooperMexican) June 9, 2025