The Padilla Incident

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start

In a disturbing and unprecedented move, FBI agents grabbed the sitting California Senator, dragged him out of the room, and shoved him to the ground, handcuffing him even after he identified himself. Video Courtesy of the Office of Senator Alex Padilla. pic.twitter.com/s5ON5cTxXs

— Santa Monica Mirror (@SMMirror) June 13, 2025

Padilla: From the moment I entered the building, I'm being escorted by a member of the National Guard and an FBI agent. I asked, well, since we're waiting, can we go listen in to the press conference? They escort me over to the press conference. They opened the door for me. pic.twitter.com/R3ur8msJKh

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 12, 2025

Michael Luciano at Mediaite:

While Padilla’s treatment understandably received all the attention, lost in the incident was a pledge from Noem that the federal government will “liberate” Los Angeles from the leaders the city’s voters elected to represent them:

The Department of Homeland Security and the officers and the agencies and the departments and the military people that are working on this operation will continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city. We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor had placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.

It was at that point, Padilla interrupted and was physically pushed out of the room and into a hallway, where he was handcuffed.

Newsom v. Trump

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Trump likes riots.  He federalized National Guard units and sent them to Los Angeles, hoping to escalate the disorder.  He got his wish.

JACK BLANCHARD with DASHA BURNS  at POLITICO:

Let’s be clear: These are precisely the sorts of scenes — U.S. troops assisting with immigration raids in liberal cities — that Dems have feared since Trump’s election. They are also precisely the target of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request for an emergency injunction against the way Trump is deploying military force in his state, per POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein. District Judge Charles Breyer — the Bill Clinton-appointed brother of former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer — will hear that case tomorrow. It could be quite a moment.

We need to talk about Gavin: Newsom, for his part, delivered a pretty extraordinary address to the nation last night, in which he sought to position himself as the leader of America’s anti-Trump opposition. Speaking directly to camera in a crisp, eight-minute monologue, Newsom denounced Trump’s aggressive deployment of ICE officers and military forces in LA — before raising his eyes to horizons far beyond his own state.

“This isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles,” Newsom told America. “This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes.”

Going viral: The video is getting plenty of love from Dems online — hitting more than a million views on the MeidasTouch YouTube channel inside three hours last night. And it was on the front pages of both the NYT and WaPo early this morning. “I for one am very happy to see somebody that isn’t afraid to speak up,” Ana Navarro told CNN. “I have been so thirsty for somebody that is not cowardly, bending the knee and selling out to Donald Trump as he does all of this to America.” Even the WSJ describes Newsom as “the leader of the opposition.”

This is all fascinating stuff for kremlinologists of the fledgling 2028 Democratic race. Playbook noted yesterday that politicians aligning themselves with anti-ICE protesters may be taking on political risk come a general election, but Newsom is playing a different game right now — and playing it well. He even leaned into Trump’s threat to have him arrested, spying the same political opportunity enjoyed by Trump himself in 2023. (POLITICO’s Jeremy White and Melanie Mason take a closer look at Newsom’s leadership prospects here.)

Incompetence and Disorder

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

The Trump administration's incompetence extends across the river into the Pentagon.

  Matthias Gafni at SF Chronicle:

President Donald Trump’s rush to deploy California National Guard troops to Los Angeles has left dozens of soldiers without adequate sleeping arrangements, forced to pack together in one or more federal buildings, resting on the floors of what appear to be basements or loading docks, the Chronicle has learned.

The state troops federalized by the Trump administration over the weekend to confront immigration protesters, without the approval of Gov. Gavin Newsom, were “wildly underprepared,” said a person directly involved with the deployment, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak on the issue.

The troops — whose makeshift quarters are shown in photographs exclusively obtained by the Chronicle — arrived without federal funding for food, water, fuel, equipment or lodging, said the source, who was granted confidentiality under Chronicle policies. This person said state officials and the California National Guard were not to blame.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell Responds to Possible Deployment of Marines to Los Angeles pic.twitter.com/bYrUSC4m0L

— LAPD PIO (@LAPDPIO) June 9, 2025

DTLA

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Trump likes riots.  He federalized National Guard units and sent them to Los Angeles, hoping to escalate the disorder.  He got his wish.

Politico Playbook:

The scenes everyone will be talking about this morning … Masked protesters pose for photos with Mexican flags in front of a burning vehicle in downtown LA … A law enforcement official shoots an Australian journalist with non-lethal ammo, the moment captured on her own rolling news camera … Protesters pelt stranded police vehicles with e-scooters and rocks from an occupied freeway bridge … A shirtless van driver attempts to reverse-ram rioters at spinning high speeds before racing off into the night … (Second vid here from ground level).

...

For Trump, this is simply a fight he has been waiting for. The president was under no illusions about the protests that would eventually meet his deportation strategy, nor in any doubt about how he would respond when the moment came. And Saturday’s historic decision to send in the National Guard may only be the start; last night Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put 500 Marines on standby for deployment.

And then … this: “Looking really bad in L.A.,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, shortly after midnight. “BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” Helping Trump’s cause were comments from the LAPD that the situation has spiraled “out of control” (though Newsom is blaming Trump himself for that.) It’s worth noting that Trump has not ruled out invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act — which gives authority for a president to deploy the U.S. military on the streets — though he told reporters yesterday afternoon that he did not believe the current situation meets that bar.

This is diving-line politics, and Trump thinks he is on the winning side. The president knows Democrats will stand in opposition to his every move in L.A, but believes the popularity of his immigration policies means he has enough of the public on his side. And for these protests to have escalated so rapidly into televised riots makes the ideal backdrop for the White House’s messaging; they want the president standing up for law and order, and the deluded Dems on the side of flag-waving rioters. The fact it all came just as Trump faced one of the toughest news cycles of his presidency is just … a delicious bonus. Elon who?

But for Newsom, there’s a big opportunity too — to stand up to a bullying opponent on behalf of his home state, while playing to the broader Democratic base ahead of 2028. It was striking to see Newsom invite the Dem-friendly MSNBC cameras right inside his situation room last night to stick it to Trump directly, even as the violence on the streets continued. “Donald Trump needs to pull back,” Newsom told viewers sternly. “He needs to stand down. Donald Trump is inflaming these conditions.”

And there’s more: There were even echoes of the WWE locker room when Newsom was told that border czar Tom Homan has not ruled out arresting California’s leaders if they obstruct federal law enforcement. “He’s a tough guy. Why doesn’t he do that?” Newsom shot back. “He knows where to find me.” Addressing Homan directly, he added: “Lay your hands off four-year-old girls who are trying to get an education … Come after me. Arrest me. Let’s just get it over with, tough guy.” Reminder: these people are meant to be the grown-ups.

Trump to California: Drop Dead

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.   Because of Harri's lopsided victory in California, Trump fell short of a majority of the aggregated popular vote.

He noticed.

Cat Zakrzewski, Sarah Ellison and Michael Birnbaum at WP:

President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal aid from California as it works to recover from devastating wildfires, recycling several baseless claims and attacks against California’s Democratic leaders during his first sit-down interview since his inauguration.

“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” he told Sean Hannity during a Fox News interview that aired Wednesday night.

Trump was repeating a false claim he has repeatedly made that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and other public officials have refused to allow water from the northern part of the state to flow down into the Los Angeles area.

Withholding aid, or making it conditional, would be a significant change in standard practice for how the government responds to natural disasters. Recent hurricane funding for mostly GOP-led states passed Congress without conditions.

Los Angeles does not get its water from the Northern California systems Trump described, and water experts have repeatedly explained that the scale and severity of the Southern California fires was not caused by empty reservoirs or a lack of water flowing from Northern California.

Bass in Trouble

Our last book was titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Our next book will look at the 2024 election. Among other things, it discusses state and local elections.

Shawn Hubler and Soumya Karlamangla at NYT:

After the first rally in her campaign for mayor of Los Angeles in 2021, Karen Bass spoke candidly about what she saw as a potential drawback to the job — a lack of world travel and involvement in global affairs.

Ms. Bass was accustomed to circling the globe as a Democratic member of Congress and of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and had spent decades working on U.S.-Africa relations. It was one of the most absorbing parts of her political career, she told The New York Times in an interview on Oct. 17, 2021, at her home in the Baldwin Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles.

“I went to Africa every couple of months, all the time,” she said, adding, “The idea of leaving that, especially the international work and the Africa work, I was like, ‘Mmm, I don’t think I want to do that.’”

She ultimately decided that she did, telling The Times that if she was elected mayor, “not only would I of course live here, but I also would not travel internationally — the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and New York, in relation to L.A.”

That pledge has been spectacularly broken.

When a cascade of deadly and destructive wildfires erupted across the Los Angeles region on Tuesday, the mayor was on her way home from Ghana in West Africa, where she had attended the inauguration of a new president.

...

 “I think being out of state and not at her post when the crisis broke out is fairly devastating for her,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant who was an aide to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “This is the biggest disaster in Los Angeles since the Watts riots. You have one job as mayor. It’s to be here and be leading. This wasn’t unpredictable, like an earthquake.

...

The National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office began telegraphing increasingly dire messages about heavy winds on Sunday. A red flag warning about fire danger that was issued Sunday was upgraded Monday to a “particularly dangerous situation” warning, only the fifth time the agency had ever issued such a warning for Los Angeles.

“HEADS UP!!! A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, Widespread Windstorm is expected,” the agency posted on X Monday, saying that winds could reach 100 m.p.h and would hit places that were not usually affected.

L.A. County Veers RIghtward on Crime

Our next book will look at the 2024 election. Democrats gained three House seats in California, but the state also showed its conservative streak.

Koko Nakajima and Phi Do at LAT:

A decade ago, Proposition 47 turned some nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors. At the time it was overwhelmingly approved by 90% of neighborhoods in L.A. County. This month parts of it were repealed by Prop. 36.

Eighty-seven percent of neighborhoods that previously supported the ballot initiative voted to overhaul it. Those same neighborhoods heavily supported Nathan Hochman for district attorney.

New polling analysis reveals only 14% of L.A. County voters supported former Dist. Atty. Gascón and “No” on Prop. 36.

 

Unions and City Elections

The sagacious Willie Brown, former California Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor, writes at The San Francisco Chronicle:

The real news in the San Diego mayoral race isn't that a Republican won, but that the candidate backed by public-employee unions lost.

That is a real shift in California politics. And it's the second time it's happened in a big-city mayoral race in less than a year.

In San Diego on Tuesday, City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, a middle-of-the-road Republican, knocked the stuffing out of the union-backed Democrat, Councilman David Alvarez.

And he did it in part by hammering on the big union money behind Alvarez, much of which came from out of town.

In some ways it was a replay of the Los Angeles mayoral race last year, when labor's heavy backing of Wendy Greuel ultimately proved to be a liability for her in her race against Eric Garcetti.

It might be time for the public-employee unions to go on a retreat and rethink both their tactics and their goals. The politicians they're backing aren't exactly winning points by running on platforms of allowing transit strikes and maintaining the status quo on public pensions.

If labor's candidates can lose in heavily Democratic Los Angeles and in San Diego, they can lose here, too.

P.S. I was a big admirer of David Alvarez's- and a contributor to his campaign as well.

Fred Davis and a Los Angeles Super PAC

Over the next few months, the biggest political race will be for mayor of Los Angeles.  And a super PAC is entering the fray.  The Los Angeles Times reported a few weeks ago:

Looking to dramatically tip the scales in the race for Los Angeles' next mayor, a nationally prominent Republican media strategist has formed a "super PAC" that aims to spend millions of dollars to elect dark-horse mayoral candidate Kevin James.

Fred Davis, a GOP advertising man who has worked on campaigns for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina and former President George W. Bush, said the Better Way LA committee has raised nearly $500,000 on behalf of James and plans to collect at least $3.5 million more.

 The PAC is the first outside committee to form on behalf of a mayoral candidate in the March 5 election. Davis, who lives in Hollywood, said a victory for James, a former prosecutor who is both gay and Republican, could ignite a "rebirth" of the GOP in California, where Democrats hold two-thirds of the seats in the Legislature, and Republican voter registration has fallen below 30%.

Davis made the "Demon Sheep" ad for Fiorina, as well as many other memorable political spots.

 "Demon Sheep" (2010).  Ironic note:  the web ad attacks the 2005 California budget as "disastrous" -- even though Davis's 2006 ads praised Schwarzenegger's economic record.

 

 "I'm Not a Witch" (2010)

 

 "Celebrity" (2008)