Just like the near-miss assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, the Los Angeles riots that grabbed headlines over the weekend can be summed up in a picture worth thousands of words.
In the former case, Americans will remember the iconic image of a bloodied Trump rising up after a bullet barely missed killing him, pumping his fist, and yelling, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” It is an image of a man who survived the attempts to frame him by the deep state, the media, and thoroughly corrupt judges and lawyers—and now has dodged even an assassin’s bullet. It is an image of the American spirit.
The picture that will characterize the riots of 2025 is that of a masked man on a motorcycle carrying a Mexican flag as massive plumes of smoke from a burning car rise around him. For those who thought Barack Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform” America was good but not far enough, this image does the trick. It is an image of a man whose fundamental political allegiance is to another nation. It is an image of a man exulting in chaos and destruction in the name of rejecting American authority to enforce immigration laws—or any laws at all.
It is an image of revolution and insurrection.
The violence began on June 6, when over a thousand rioters surrounded a federal building in Paramount, California, to protest ICE’s work in the state. As ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said in his June 7 statement, that work was “to arrest criminal illegal aliens, including gang members, drug traffickers and those with a history of assault, cruelty to children, domestic violence, robbery, and smuggling.” Yet, “It took over two hours for the Los Angeles Police Department to respond, despite being called multiple times.”
Like the 2020 Minneapolis riots that initiated a long national nightmare that Seattle Mayor Nadine Durkan (who had allowed rioters to take control of six whole blocks of her own city) called a “summer of love,” the Los Angeles riots have nothing to do with love.
That hasn’t stopped the media from attempting to view them through the same gauzy lens they used five years ago. CNN, which infamously characterized the 2020 riots as “fiery but mostly peaceful,” was back to its old tricks this past weekend, blandly labeling riots that included arson and violent attacks on law enforcement officers “lawful protests with some unrest.”
This attempt joins the various attempts of local and national Democrats to gaslight the American people, who have been watching in real time on social media as rioters launch explosive devices at a federal building, block U.S. Marshal Transport buses, and throw rocks at Border Patrol agents, among other violent acts.
President Trump has acted quickly this time. He has ordered 2,000 National Guard troops to help quell the riots, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has promised that active duty Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton will be brought in if needed.
As of the time this column went to print, the National Guard has now been deployed. This action is encouraging.
The lawyer going under the X handle @Shipwreckedcrew reported that the President did not justify his decision by “the Insurrection Act under 10 U.S.C. Sec. 253,” but instead cited 10 U.S.C. Sec. 12406. This part of America’s legal code authorizes the President to “call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any state in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws [that are unable to be executed by regular law enforcement].”
As @Shipwreckedcrew observed in a follow-up post, the use of “or” in the text of the law indicates that only one of the three—invasion, rebellion, or inability to execute laws—needs to be present for the President to invoke this authority. Thus, the argument about whether there was an “invasion” is not necessary for this strong executive action. It is good that Vice President Vance is talking about it, however. Referring to those debates, which were a large part of the battle with the Biden administration, he posted: “So now we have foreign nationals with no legal right to be in the country waving foreign flags and assaulting law enforcement. If only we had a good word for that…”
The reality is that many Americans do see this as an invasion and a rebellion. After all, nobody really thinks these riots are organic demonstrations. They are organized by CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights LA, which has been the recipient of large amounts of federal and state government largesse over the last few years, some of which was canceled by the Department of Homeland Security this year.
In other words, Americans are paying for these riots.
The American vibe shift hasn’t affected every single American. It has, however, affected all parts of this country—as evidenced by the maps showing Trump’s electoral gains in almost every part of the country, whether red, blue, or purple. Americans want a country where the law is followed.
They may feel sympathy that some illegal aliens who may appear to be harmless are being deported. They also refuse to buy the lie that all illegal immigrants are harmless. The revelations about the Democrats’ poster boy Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the countless stories of villainous illegal aliens committing crimes have put paid to this mythology.
Above all, however, Americans want this country to be a place of the rule of law, good order, and peace. They want the laws of this country to be enforced fairly. They do not want to see their cities battered again by rioters falsely claiming a mantle of justice while burning the American flag.
If the left thinks that another “summer of love” that costs Americans billions of dollars, destroys businesses, and led to the deaths of at least 25 people is going to work this time, they have another thing coming.
The Trump administration is right to come out of the gate strong this weekend against this rebellion, invasion, lawlessness—take your pick. The country wants healing. We will no longer accept the hurling of bricks and bombs in the name of “love.”
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.
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