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Los Angeles is rioting again. The MOB was spurred by expert agitators and attacked federal law enforcement officials with fatal intentions, assaulted federal law enforcement officials by unspoken support from elected Democratic officials. The violence, including throwing rocks, caring, fireworks and assaulting federal law enforcement officials, aims to prevent the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) from carrying out legitimate deportation efforts.
Missing the irony, the mob eagerly waved the flag of the country that was fighting their return.
In response, federal and some local law enforcement agencies deployed tear gas and flash bangs to disperse crowds outside Paramount. However, with law enforcement being clearly threatened and local law enforcement responses not robust, President Donald Trump ordered 2,000 National Guard members to restore the order. Additional active-duty units are said to be on standby.
As expected, California Governor Gavin Newsom and La Mayor Karen Bass clutched their pearls and whined about “cruel” immigration enforcement while the city spiraled in an unconventional manner. Newsom labeled Trump’s federalization of the National Guard as “inflammatory”; He said it would escalate the tension. Suppose future presidential candidates view Ruckus as “almost peaceful.” The group’s immigration group, an integrated Latin American Citizens’ Federation, predictably denounced Trump’s order, claiming it “telling a deeply troubling escalation in the administration’s approach to administration and civilian responses to immigration to the use of military-style tactics.”
Smoke rises from a burning car on Atlantic Avenue during standoffs by protesters and law enforcement in the Los Angeles County city of Paramount, California, USA, following multiple detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). June 7th, 2025. (Reuters/Barbara Davidson)
Trump is not moved by criticism. He doesn’t want to see federal law enforcement officials being killed or injured by anarchists or become revolutionaries simply because they are at work.
I saw this movie before. In 1992, as captain of the California Army National Guard, I patrol the burnt Crenshaw district of LA during the Rodney King riots. The marauders ran in the wild, businesses burned, chaos reigned, Governor Pete Wilson called for the National Guard, President George HW Bush called for the Rebellion Act, and 3,500 federal forces (activity Army and Marines) dispatched 10,000 federal security guards. Your order will be returned promptly. That worked.
So far, there is a huge difference between today’s uncertainty and the 1992 uproar. Rodney King Riot was caused by resentment against what was initially considered excessive police. The riot quickly went out of control due to tactical mistakes that retreated law enforcement from a chronically unstoppable police station in LA and the intersection taken over by violent mobs. Finally, around 63 people were killed, 2,383 injured, 12,111 people were arrested, and inflation-adjusted property damage was incurred in more than $2.3 billion. In comparison, La Riott in 1992 was comparable to all deaths, injuries, arrests and damages in the 2020 George Floyd Antifa Blum riots. Combined. In 1992, when law and order fell apart, opportunistic looting and arson soon followed.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, left and La Mayor Karen Bass, right and La Wildfire are images at the center (AP/Getty)
Rather than using excessive force to anger the police, today’s riots are fueled by Open Borders Radicals and their enablers. ICE enforces federal law and rounds up illegal immigrant criminals and criminals who have received ultimate deportation orders. And so far, danger has focused more on federal law enforcement officials than private property itself.
Thus, in 1992 there are subtle differences in the calling of the army, both in terms of the scale and purpose of the 13,500-2,000 deployment.
Typically, National Guard personnel can enforce civil law when they operate on state missions for governors. Generally, the postwar Kositatus law does not apply, which prohibits the use of military forces to enforce civil law. However, if the guards are the federal government, that is, if they are called to federal services, the restrictions on the Posse Comitatus Act apply to guards, as they do to active service members. But there is a big exception: the rebellion law. Until 1992, the president invoked the Rebellion Act 31 times. Essentially, if local law and order fall apart, the president is allowed to use the military to enforce civil law.
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But Trump has not yet invoked the Rebellion Act. What he did instead was to call the California National Guard and potentially some Marines Protect federal law enforcement officials. Therefore, these military personnel are not permitted to arrest agitators or mobs or carry out immigration enforcement activities, but are permitted to carry out armed protection missions and provide logistics assistance.
Of course, if that’s not enough. Trump can always invoke Rebellion Act, federalizing more National Guard soldiers, even from other states, and dispatching additional active-duty units, just as Eisenhower and Kennedy tried to break the separatist resistance in the 1950s and ’60s.
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Newsom and Bass are responsible here. Their mistakes are dazzling. Californians have been voting on their feet for years, fleeing Newsom’s wrong policies. Now, his mismanagement of LA violence will torch what remains of his presidential ambitions.
These mobs are not protesters, they are rebels. Like ANTIFA in 2020, they are attacking federal authorities and targeting ice agents who will enforce laws passed by Congress. Newsom and Bass spoil them. They don’t act, so Trump has to.
The left will scream “tyranny” and some retired generals will be worried about “politicizing” their troops. But anarchy is its own brutal tyranny.
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