\n<\/p>\n
As Democratic senators gathered on Tuesday for their closed-door weekly luncheon, they heard from their California colleagues, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, who carefully differentiated between isolated cases of vandalism in Los Angeles and the larger number of peaceful protesters who swarmed the streets to oppose President Trump\u2019s deportation efforts.<\/p>\n
At roughly the same time, Mr. Trump was across town in the Oval Office unspooling stories of violence, asking the assembled cameras, \u201cDid you see the guy throwing the rocks at the police cars?\u201d<\/p>\n
For Democrats, the scattered yet searing scenes of unrest in Southern California have uncomfortably thrust to the center two issues that have powered Republican gains in recent years \u2014 immigration and crime \u2014 as party leaders worry that the president is setting a dangerous political trap with provocations too outrageous to ignore. As demonstrations spread to other cities, the Los Angeles mayor on Tuesday evening announced a curfew for parts of the city<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s extraordinary decision to send military troops to quell domestic protesters over the objection of local authorities, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, has unleashed an avalanche of condemnation from Democrats who argue that the president\u2019s actions were authoritarian and unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In an interview, Mr. Schiff urged his party to push back on Mr. Trump without falling prey to his political framing.<\/p>\n \u201cThe president would like nothing better than to create a conflict in L.A. to demonstrate his strongman credentials by then cracking down on the chaos,\u201d said Mr. Schiff, who has clashed repeatedly with Mr. Trump and led his first impeachment<\/a>. \u201cThe president is a chaos agent. He thrives on disorder. He thrives on situations that allow him to pretend, to act like a strongman.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has used viral images of car fires, damaged property and masked protesters brandishing foreign flags to bolster his claims of a mandate for a crackdown. And he has used them as justification, sometimes after the fact, for his decision to deploy National Guard troops and Marines despite the objections of Mr. Newsom, a Democrat.<\/p>\n Polls have long shown<\/a> immigration and crime as areas of Democratic vulnerability. And some Democrats see a risk that the party will seem soft on crime and criminals without clearer denunciations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who has increasingly broken with his party, described the scenes unfolding in Los Angeles as \u201canarchy and true chaos,\u201d posting a photo that Republicans have heavily circulated of a masked man waving a Mexican flag standing on a vandalized car surrounded by fire.<\/p>\n \u201cMy party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement,\u201d Mr. Fetterman wrote on Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The confrontation \u2014 both politically and in the streets \u2014 between Mr. Trump\u2019s hard-line immigration agenda and the nation\u2019s biggest blue state felt almost inevitable.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all knew that this day would come,\u201d Representative Jimmy Gomez of California said on Tuesday on Capitol Hill, flanked by other Democrats from the state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Newsom asked a judge on Tuesday to block<\/a> the Trump administration\u2019s planned troop deployment. One influential House Democrat, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump\u2019s actions amounted to an impeachable offense.<\/p>\n But even as Democrats try to fight back, few issues have left the party more divided than immigration enforcement, with some in the party shifting to the right<\/a> along with the American public in recent years. Most prominent Democrats have denounced the recent violence, and many have cited local officials who say such incidents have been mostly isolated.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a Trump-manufactured crisis beginning with the increasing theatrics, the increasing cruelty, the increasingly aggressive ICE raids,<\/em>\u201d Senator Padilla said in an interview. \u201cAt the end of the day, we have to both hold Trump accountable and remind everybody he\u2019s doing this to distract from his horrible failing agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Newsom has used his confrontation with Mr. Trump \u2014 who has mused about arresting him \u2014 to elevate himself as one of the leading Democratic foils nationally to Mr. Trump, responding to the president\u2019s comments with bravado and seemingly in real time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Heading into the weekend, America\u2019s political class had been consumed by the operatic demise of the warm relationship between Elon Musk and Mr. Trump. Mr. Musk attacked the centerpiece of the president\u2019s legislative agenda as a \u201cdisgusting abomination<\/a>,\u201d and Mr. Trump threatened retaliation against the tech billionaire\u2019s companies.<\/p>\n Now the attention is on California, where Mr. Trump is explicitly pushing the boundaries of his powers<\/a>. His deployment of federalized troops without a state\u2019s consent was the first since they were sent to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama more than a half-century ago.<\/p>\n The current situation has reminded some of the protests and riots that followed the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer five years ago. The political effects for both parties \u2014 a racial reckoning and a subsequent backlash \u2014 continue to linger.<\/p>\n There is yet another potential tinderbox looming this weekend, when Mr. Trump has planned a military parade<\/a> for the Army\u2019s 250th birthday \u2014 which coincides with his own. \u201cThose people that want to protest, they\u2019re going to be met with very big force,\u201d he warned<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump and his aides, including his longtime immigration whisperer and deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, appear intent on reappropriating the term \u201cinsurrectionist,\u201d which has often been used to describe the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Now, they use it to describe anti-deportation protesters and Democrats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis is the definition of insurrection,\u201d Mr. Miller wrote on X about the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, after she called for an end to the federal immigration raids.<\/p>\n Mr. Schiff said such messaging \u201cwould be amusing if it weren\u2019t so galling\u201d coming from a White House that pardoned<\/a> the Jan. 6 participants. He urged his party to cast Mr. Trump\u2019s actions not just as an overreach but also as a breach of his pledges to focus on securing the border and removing violent criminals who entered the country illegally.<\/p>\n \u201cThe president promised he would focus on deporting violent criminals, and has betrayed that promise,\u201d Mr. Schiff said.<\/p>\n Frank Sharry, the founder of America\u2019s Voice and a longtime advocate for immigrants and an immigration overhaul, said the lack of a unified Democratic vision on the issue \u2014 how to handle both the border and those in the country illegally \u2014 was hobbling the party\u2019s ability to respond more forcefully.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason some Democrats fear leaning into immigration is they don\u2019t have a particularly good defense, and what they\u2019re really lacking is a good offense,\u201d Mr. Sharry said. \u201cIf Democrats had a very clear, solution-oriented stance on immigration, they would be contrasting Trump\u2019s extremism with their pragmatism, and that\u2019s a debate Democrats can win.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The problem, he said, is that no such stance yet exists.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats need to figure out not only what they\u2019re against, but what they\u2019re for,\u201d Mr. Sharry said of opposing Mr. Trump\u2019s tactics. \u201cI know it sounds trite, but you can\u2019t beat something with nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n A 54 percent majority of Americans supported Mr. Trump\u2019s program to deport those in the country illegally, according to a CBS News\/YouGov poll<\/a> taken on the eve of the current immigration fight. Americans were in favor of Mr. Trump\u2019s goals, if not necessarily his approach.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump also made significant inroads with Latino voters in 2024, when he made an immigration crackdown a centerpiece of his campaign.<\/p>\n In recent days, he and his allies have continued to argue that California in general and Los Angeles in particular are descending into a lawless state of chaos. At the same time, local officials have said that outbursts of violence have been only sporadic, even as they spread widely on social media.<\/p>\n In a post of his own on Tuesday, Mr. Trump claimed<\/a> with his customary hyperbole that if he had not deployed thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles, the \u201conce beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Arms of the federal government amplified his argument.<\/p>\n The official Department of Homeland Security account on X posted a video<\/a> of the same scene that Mr. Fetterman cited with burning cars and a masked man waving a Mexican flag, adding, \u201cCalifornia politicians must call off their rioting mob.\u201d The post singled out Mr. Newsom.<\/p>\n One of the most veteran Democrats on Capitol Hill, Representative Maxine Waters, who represents a district in Los Angeles County, claimed everything had been peaceful despite images of clashes.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no violence,\u201d Ms. Waters said on Tuesday, in a video clip that Republicans soon circulated<\/a>. \u201cI was on the street. I know.\u201d<\/p>\n Representative Yvette D. Clarke of New York, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said she believed that Mr. Trump\u2019s actions \u2014 sending in troops over the objection of local officials \u2014 rose to the level of impeachable offenses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf this president is willing to send military troops into an American city over peaceful dissent, we must ask what happens next,\u201d she said at a Capitol news conference. \u201cWhat American community will be next.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Clarke and the chairs of the Hispanic and Asian Pacific American caucuses were peppered by questions from conservative-leaning or right-wing outlets, including The Washington Times, The Epoch Times, Fox News, the Daily Caller News Foundation and The Daily Signal, in a sign of how the immigration issue was resonating on the right.<\/p>\n Representative Pete Aguilar of California, the chairman of the House Democratic Conference, said on Tuesday that his party\u2019s response to those in swing districts next year who were concerned about images of unrest would be pivoting to Republican cutbacks to health-care programs.<\/p>\n \u201cOur message broadly to that audience is going to be, \u2018Your Republican member of Congress voted to kick hundreds of thousands of people off of their health care and take away their basic needs,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But some on the right hope that immigration will prove as salient in 2026 as it did in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more the Democrats keep this craziness with the protests up, the more I think Republicans could actually win the midterms even if they cut Medicaid,\u201d Matthew Boyle, the influential Washington bureau chief for the Trump-aligned Breitbart News, remarked on X<\/a>. \u201cWhich is unreal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n