Already and this is the Daily This is the Dahlias. Oh now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Thursday, the twelfth of June. I'm Zara Seidler, I'm Emma Gillespie. Protests on the streets of La have entered another day after the city's mayor announced a curfew and state of emergency yesterday. These protests began last Friday after the country's immigration enforcement body conducted a series of widespread raids. Since then, protesters have been gathering across the city to call for
an end to the raids. In response to these protests, US President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard and Marines, a decision that has been hotly contested by the state's governor. In today's podcast, we'll explain everything you need to know about how the situation got to this point and the latest for those in La.
Zara. So many of us had a long weekend. This weekend just passed and might have missed the origins of this story. It felt like, all of a sudden, there were these really intense headlines coming out of La violent scenes, reports of injuries. An Australian journalist making headlines caught in the cross fire or directly fired up by police on the ground. It feels like things are escalating with every passing day. But for people who might just be tuning in, where does it all begin?
Yeah, it's a really good point, and because if you've seen the escalation and you don't know the source, it can be a bit confusing. So the story begins on Friday last week when Immigration and Customs Enforcement they're called ICE, and I'll just call them that for ease for the rest of the podcast, they conducted a series of widespread
raids on businesses across the city of Los Angeles. ICE is the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws and deporting people who were in the USA without legal permission, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners are familiar with them now. ICE has been carrying out raids over the past few months as part of President Donald Trump's broader immigration crackdown. So this idea of raids is not a new thing. It's certainly been quite a feature of
this term of the Trump presidency. Just last month, the Trump administration set a target to arrest three thousand people a day over alleged immigration violations. It's a very very big number.
That's enormous, it is.
And so I say that just to set the scene that while these raids are not unfamiliar to those watching the Trump presidency, the ones that occurred in LA on Friday were seen, at least by those protesters who gathered afterwards, to be substantially wider in scope than the previous ice operations. So, for example, the Associated Press reported the people were arrested in a home depot parking lot, so a chainsaw outside
a chain saw as part of these raids. And LA's mayor Karen Bass, who you're going to hear quite a lot about in this podcast, said in an interview, how did we get from gang members to home depot? She's referring there to the fact that originally these raids were targeting or at least as the Trump administration said, they were targeting gang members, but it has become far more
widespread than that. According to officials, more than one hundred people were arrested on Friday alone in these immigration raids.
Okay, so the kind of protest response that we've seen is really in response to the scope of these raids, rather than them existing in the first place. We've known for some time that Donald Trump is hardline on his immigration stance. He campaigned on it in the lead up to the November election. So this policy isn't necessarily surprising, but the number of raids that have been carried out is what is shocking people.
I think that it's all of those things taken together. I think you're right that people have seen this happen before, but as we said, the nature of these feel different, and certainly the response that we've seen now happen in LA is far more significant than we've seen elsewhere in the country.
So these raids started on Friday in LA Then the protesters start to gather in parts of the city.
What happens from there.
It's a pretty quick turnaround between people first finding out about those raids and protesters starting to gather. And the original site of the protest is the Metropolitan Detention Center in LA That's where some of the people who have been detained by ICE agents during those raids are being held. And so protesters start to arrive outside that center and begin to protest against ICE. Over the course of the weekend,
the protests begin to grow in numbers. We've seen lots of pictures of demonstrators holding signs that read things like ice out of LA and education not deportation. I say that just to give you some sense of what it is these people are actually asking for and protesting against. One protester told local news over the weekend that the whole thing about going after immigrants and people who are undocumented, the most vulnerable of our populations, that is so wrong.
So that is kind of the flavor I guess of where these protesters.
Are community response exactly.
And so these protests are originally described by police to be largely peaceful when they begin on Friday and then again into Saturday. However, by Sunday, police and protesters have begun clashing. The LA Police Department, the LAPD, said it made twenty eight arrests on Sunday after it says that protests escalated. It said that it responded to acts of violence, vandalism and looting, and then the LAPD's chief, Jim McDonald's claimed in a press conference that the unrest had become
increasingly worse and more violent. And that's certainly I think where we start to see some of those images and videos coming out.
Of La Okay.
So what was or has been the response to this escalation. Police have described peaceful action that has turned violent. We've seen more and more coverage. It appears the protests have grown in size. What happens next?
So the next big part of this story, And it's kind of confusing because there are two big stories happening at once. What's happening on the ground in La and then there's also this political story that is unforl Rin at the same time. But basically the next part of this story comes when US President Donald Trump signs an executive order deploying two thousand National Guard members to La Zara.
Forgive my potential ignorance here. When we say national Guard, they sound very.
Important, unofficial. What is the National Guard?
The National Guard is a reserve military force, so it's typically made up of part time soldiers who can hold civilian jobs and often do hold civilian jobs, but then they're called to active duty in specific circumstance. Did not know that, yes, So in a statement, Trump said to the extent that protests or acts of isolence directly inhibit the execution of the laws. They constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States.
And so that is the justification that Donald Trump has provided in a statement when he signed that executive order calling for the National Guard to be deployed, he was basically calling these protests a rebellion against the United States government.
And I guess that kind of answers the question that I had in my mind about how did we go from local police the LAPD managing this response at a state level, there is a management and then that escalating to a federal response.
Well, your question, I think is the question that Californian Governor Gavin Newsom also has, because this is where there has been a lot of political tension. So, just to set the scene, Gavin Newsom is a Democrat, He's the governor of California. He's largely seen as a potential next presidential candidate without aside for the second discussion, exactly, so he has typically been quite an outspoken opponent of Donald Trump.
And so where this has come to a head is that typically state governors control their state's National Guard and they use them for emergencies like national disaster. Okay, so the president can activate them, but typically and historically this occurs with the governor's consent, right, and so Trump is actually the first president since nineteen sixty five to deploy the National Guard without a governor's request.
Wow.
Yeah, So this is where the kind of political fallouts stems from when it comes to why Donald Trump has done this without asking for or discussing with the governor of the state. White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said, in the wake of this violence, California's feckless Democrat leaders have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens.
We'll be back with more of today's deep dive right after this. So a lot going on there.
As you've described, the National Guard kind of historically has been used in a political senses to recover or respond to emergency threats, and that could be natural disasters, and typically we see presidents working with state governors to coordinate that response. But now we've had these really strong words from the White House condemning California's handling of the situation. The situation and that's led us to this political division
as well as this on the ground action. I can't imagine Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is particularly pleased with the sentiment coming out of the White House.
We hear from him, so he has actually made moves to sue Donald Trump on the deployment of troops. He called Trump's move an unmistakable step towards authoritarianism, and he said that he had filed this lawsuit to end the illegal and unnecessary takeover of the National Guard, which has needlessly escalated chaos and violence in the LA region. So
basically he's saying, I'm filing this lawsuit for two reasons. One, Donald Trump deployed the National Guard without the consent or the input of me, that the Californian governor, not me Zarasidler. And second that the decision by Donald Trump, he claims was unwarranted. That basically, sending in the National Guard, all three thousand of them, is escalating a situation that could have been handled by local authorities.
What's the goal of launching a proceeding like that? If Goavin Newsom successfully sues Trump, is it basically asking for an admission of wrongdoing.
Well, he's been trying to stop it from continuing, so he's tried to put a pause on allowing them in. But this all takes time, as we know.
So how has Donald Trump then responded?
Well, Trump's taken to social media to actually voice support for arresting Newsom. Over the weekend, Newsome again the Californian governor. He dared Tom Homan, who is the director of ICE, to arrest him, and then in response, Donald Trump saw those suits and said I would do it if I were Tom. So he's saying if he were in charge, he would arrest the governor. Fair to say that. Newsom didn't take to that one too well. He said on social media, the President of the United States just called
for the arrest of a sitting governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America. I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican. This is a line we cannot cross as a nation.
It's been so interesting, obviously, you know, from our perspective as outsiders here in Australia seeing this unfold, because I think part of Donald Trump's legacy has been his policy around state versus federal leadership, and I think he's been very clear on state responsibilities for certain aspects of health care and education. But now this is playing out in a very different way.
So yeah, well, I mean, just to bring it home for an Australian audience. This is kind of the equivalent of Anthony Aberezi, a labor prime minister, being sued by a liberal premier in say David Chris a fully the Queensland premier yep, and in turn calling for his arrest. That is the I guess equivalent as much as we can do.
And Aguin you put it like that, it sounds pretty bizarre.
It is. It's certainly a really significant moment. But what's more than that, it's that this is all occurring as there is this state of emergency unfolding in La.
Yeah, well, I wanted to ask you what is happening on the ground in La at the time of recording. What do we know about the situation right now?
Well, I think the first thing to say is that it's not de escalating by any stretch of the imagination. That protesters are still taking to the streets, They are still calling on ice to stop their raids. We know, of course that the National Guard has since arrived after being summoned by President Trump, as have Marines who were also ordered into the city. Now the source of the
protests kind of finishing as we ended this podcast. So those immigration raids they've actually also continued throughout this period, so it hasn't been like Friday was the end point and since then there have been none. They've continued throughout this period. CBS News, which is an American outlet, reports that they've seen figures that say that ICE recorded more than twelve hundred arrests across the US over the weekend.
In terms of on the ground in LA, yesterday, LA's mayor announced a curfew and she declared a national state of emergency. She said that was to stop the vandalism and to stop the looting. So that will be in place, that curfew from eight pm until six am in part of downtown LA. And we'll have to wait and see if that has any effect on the protests. But it does feel like this is only growing. The anger and the hostility, certainly on both sides, appears to be growing.
And I think i'll just end off with what Donald Trump has said most recently. He said that La was being invaded and conquered by a foreign army. He said that yesterday.
Wow, very very strong language there. But I think it's also interesting to touch on, you know, downtown LA. We're talking about a densely populated area of a major global city. And this is a story that has garnered international attention for many reasons, but of course for us here in Australia it's dominated headlines as well because we've seen these journalists on the ground in la reporting for Australian broadcasters. So Lauren Tamasi from Channel nine, Lauren Day, a correspondent
for the ABC. Both of those journalists have reported being targeted injured by police. We saw the rubber bullet that was fired at the Channel nine reporter. The ABC journal was caught up in tear gas that police dispersed across a crowd. An ABC cameraman was shot in the chest with a rubber bullet and that's just what we've heard from the Aussies on the ground. There are reporters out of the UK and the who have cited similar run ins with police, and.
Just on that, we do know the LAPD is currently investigating how that Channel nine journalist was shot at, yeah, because the vision does show that it was an officer who did point the gun at her. So an investigation is underway into what happened there.
Exactly, and that incident has been criticized and condemned by the Prime.
Minister Foreign Minister Pennywong.
But clearly this is just another element of a very escalating and evolving story. But in terms of global interest, in terms of national interest here in Australia, you know it's not going away. I'm sure there'll be more to talk about in the days to come, and as always he'll keep you updated. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We will be back a little later on in the day with the evening news headlines, but until then, have a fantastic day.
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda bunjelung Caalcutin woman from Gadigal Country.
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