(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Court sides with Trump on National Guard deployment: A decision beyond stupid [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-20
A three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to quell a protest in Los Angeles was lawful. It based its ruling on these facts of the case: “The undisputed facts demonstrate that before the deployment of the National Guard, protesters ‘pinned down’ several federal officers and threw ‘concrete chunks, bottles of liquid, and other objects’ at the officers. Protesters also damaged federal buildings and caused the closure of at least one federal building. And a federal van was attacked by protesters who smashed in the van’s windows. The federal government’s interest in preventing incidents like these is significant.”
To base this decision on such relatively minimal acts of violence makes the judges appear politically motivated. Let me put this entire event in perspective. First, the court does not provide evidence of significant violence that could not have been controlled by the L.A. police. The court does not reveal that the violence cited was widespread amongst the crowd of protesters or even whether the “pinned down” officers were seriously injured. Video of the demonstrations reveal that very few individuals caused the violence. Almost all of the protesters were peaceful, doing nothing more disturbing than shouting at the ICE agents. Second, the size of the demonstration was widely estimated to be no larger than a thousand protesters. As protests go in a city the size of Los Angeles, this is no more than a minor skirmish, not cause for deploying 4,000 National Guards and 700 Marines. To say this was overkill is a massive understatement. Third, this protest occurred in a one square mile of downtown L.A. I was born and raised in Los Angeles. The city is enormous. If you drive in a straight line from one side to the other, it is 44 miles in length. It’s total area is officially 469 square miles. So, the court affirmed the lawful right of Donald Trump to deploy the National Guard and the Marines to control a mostly peaceful protest of minor significance in a tiny area of the city until Trump inflamed the situation by militarizing Los Angeles in a clear effort to terrorize protesters and anyone contemplating future demonstrations. Even when the protest had completely dissipated, Trump days later sent in even more National Guards. Stupid is just one characterization for this decision. I can think of many other adjectives even more disturbing.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/20/2329174/-Court-sides-with-Trump-on-National-Guard-deployment-A-decision-beyond-stupid?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
