Democrats Can (And Must) Win the Fight Over Trump's Response to the Protests in LA
The past week has been filled with images that once seemed impossible to fathom coming from the United States of America. The U.S. military is patrolling the streets of Los Angeles to provide cover for ICE agents conducting raids on Home Depots, taco stands, and other businesses. Five hundred Marines have been deployed to L.A. and are training for urban combat in American cities — all to suppress a small number of violent protesters in a sea of nonviolent ones.
Neither the mayor, the governor, nor the local police chief requested the military. The National Guard has been federalized against the wishes of the governor, who is suing the president to keep the military out of his state.
Trump administration officials have threatened to arrest Democratic leaders, including the governor of California. In case you thought those were idle threats: on Thursday, Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a public briefing, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed — simply for demanding answers from a Trump cabinet official. The administration’s response was not to apologize or hold anyone accountable. Instead, they doubled and tripled down — blaming Padilla and spreading lies. Speaker Mike Johnson has even called for Padilla to be censured by Congress.
On Saturday, the president will force the military to conduct a taxpayer-funded celebration of his birthday.
This week should put to rest any doubt that America is being marched down a dark path toward authoritarianism.
If this were happening in another country, the U.S. State Department would warn Americans not to travel there. And yet, many of our political institutions are struggling to muster an adequate response. Most of the traditional media are too bound to the journalistic ideal of balance to explicitly call out what the Trump administration is doing, choosing instead to treat U.S. troops patrolling American streets as a horse-race political story. The business community cares more about tariffs and potential tax cuts than about the freedoms being abrogated. While some in the Democratic Party have met this moment with the righteous anger it deserves, too many are still afraid — of the politics of immigration, of civil disorder, of saying the wrong thing.
There are a litany of excuses for Democratic caution:
“Immigration is Trump’s best issue.”
“We don’t want to be seen as siding with violent protesters.”
“Trump is trying to distract us from his unpopular tax bill.”
“It’s a trap.”
If the Democratic consultant class had a family crest, it would be emblazoned with the creed: Paralysis by Analysis.
Once again, we are overcomplicating the simple. The president is deploying the military to manufacture a crisis, and his jackbooted thugs are roughing up a U.S. senator for doing his job. That is not a distraction from what matters — it is what matters. One lesson I’ve learned, often painfully, is that ignoring what truly matters out of political expedience is a surefire way to lose.
We Don’t Get to Choose the Fights — We Have to Win Them
The people arguing that Trump’s deeply unpopular, morally bankrupt tax bill — which gives more to the rich by taking food and health care from the poor — is a better issue are 100% correct. It’s one of the most unpopular major pieces of legislation in modern history. It’s twice as unpopular as Trump’s 2017 tax cut, and 20 points less popular than the Affordable Care Act was when it passed in 2010. I would love for the national conversation to be dominated by a giant fight over Medicaid cuts.
But we don’t always get to choose the fight. Trump is the president. He has the bigger megaphone. Sometimes, we have to play on his turf.
The president deploying the military to silence those who would question the regime — that’s the fight in front of us. It’s not the one we would have chosen, but it’s the one we must win.
Trump Is Weaker Than He (and Everyone Else) Thinks
Even if the polls showed widespread support for Trump’s actions in L.A., I’d still argue that Democrats must respond aggressively — as Gavin Newsom, Padilla, and others have done. Sometimes you just have to speak out, politics be damned. You meet force with force. Voters — especially cynical ones — can smell calculation and cowardice a mile away. Failing to speak out in moments like these reeks of both.
But here’s the thing: voters don’t like how Trump is responding.
A YouGov poll found that only 34% of Americans approve of Trump sending Marines to L.A. Only 38% support the National Guard deployment. Disapproval of the protests themselves is higher — 45% — but that tells us this is about Trump, not just unrest.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll did find that 48% of Americans said the president should deploy the military to quell violent protests. That result made the rounds online as supposed proof of public support. But the question was hypothetical — not tied to what’s actually happening in Los Angeles. More telling: just a third of Americans support Trump’s real-world response to the protests, and nearly half believe he’s gone too far with arrests and military action.
If you need more evidence, look at Nate Silver’s model tracking Trump’s approval on immigration.
Since June 8, his immigration approval has dropped six points — and is now two points underwater. We’ve seen this before: when attention stays focused on the real consequences of Trump’s immigration policies — like the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia earlier this year — his numbers drop.
Democrats don’t need to be afraid. We don’t need to pull our punches or hope for a more politically convenient issue. Trump is overplaying his hand, and we must make him pay a price. If he gets away with what happened this week, democracy will almost certainly be lost.