The Los Angeles protests.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 14 minutes.

Some great content.

We’ve been churning out all manner of coverage over the last few days — so much so that it’s possible you missed some:

• Isaac’s conversation with Jonah Platt, where Jonah came on the show to press Isaac on his Zionism piece.
• Your criticisms (and some responses) to Isaac’s piece on Zionism.
• Our emergency podcast with Isaac, Kmele and Ari on the Trump–Elon breakup (which we recorded as the entire blowup went full tilt). 

Quick hits.

1. The Trump administration brought Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States from El Salvador, where he had been sent in March despite a court order barring his deportation to the country. Abrego Garcia will face charges of unlawfully transporting unauthorized migrants to the U.S. (The return)
2. The U.S. economy added 139,000 jobs in May, lower than the total from April but exceeding economists’ expectations. (The numbers)
3. A federal appeals court paused a lower-court ruling that required the White House to allow journalists from The Associated Press to participate in covering President Trump’s daily events and travel. The appeals court said that many of the spaces the presidential press pool has access to are effectively invite-only and not covered by First Amendment protections. (The ruling)
4. The Department of Commerce suspended licenses for nuclear-equipment suppliers to sell to China's power plants, the latest in a series of sales restrictions on companies doing business with China in recent weeks. (The restrictions)
5. ABC News suspended Senior National Correspondent Terry Moran after he criticized White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in a post on X. The network said Moran would be suspended “pending further evaluation.” (The suspension)

Today’s topic.

The protests in Los Angeles. On Friday evening, protests over immigration arrests in Los Angeles, California, sparked violent confrontations with federal and local law enforcement that led President Donald Trump to deploy the National Guard. Federal immigration agents wearing riot gear swept several locations near downtown Los Angeles during the day, according to witness videos, leading to the arrest of 45 people. President Trump authorized the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to the city on Saturday, over the objections of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D). The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) confirmed the troops arrived Sunday afternoon as clashes between protesters and law enforcement continued into the evening.

Two incidents on Friday, one in the parking lot of a Home Depot in the Westlake neighborhood and another at a clothing wholesaler in the Garment District, turned into violent standoffs between federal officers and protesters. Service Employees International Union President David Huerta, a U.S. citizen, was injured and among those arrested on Friday. At least 11 Mexican nationals were detained.

On Saturday, protesters gathered in front of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office that Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents were using as a staging center in nearby Paramount, California. Protesters lit fires and threw rocks at CBP vehicles, while federal agents fired non-lethal munitions and tear gas into crowds, leading to tense standoffs into the evening. After more unrest, tensions in the city largely subsided before midnight. 

President Trump authorized the National Guard deployment under Title 10 on Saturday, directing the troops to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The rarely used statute provides national guardsmen less authority than the Insurrection Act, and Trump’s decision marks the first time a president has deployed the National Guard to a state against the wishes of its governor since 1965. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed the troops had mobilized that evening, adding that he would send active-duty Marines to the city if the violence persisted. Governor Newsom called Hegseth’s statement “deranged behavior,” leading to a back-and-forth between the two over X. 

Protests continued on Sunday, as thousands of demonstrators gathered around city hall, the federal courthouse, and a detention center. Demonstrators also shut down a portion of the US-101 freeway, throwing rocks and damaging police vehicles, according to the LAPD. Several Waymo vehicles were also set on fire in downtown Los Angeles and police arrested 39 people involved with the protests over the weekend, according to LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell and Capt. Raul Jovell.

Mayor Bass called the National Guard deployment “completely unnecessary,” adding that the deployment would “agitate the population.” Governor Newsom said “local law enforcement didn’t need help” and that President Trump sent the National Guard to “manufacture chaos and violence.”

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem defended Trump, saying the administration would not let “a repeat of 2020 happen.” In a Truth Social post, President Trump said he was directing agency heads “to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion.”

The incidents in Los Angeles come amid a push from President Trump to deport unauthorized migrants en masse. We’ll get into what the left and right are saying about the situation in Los Angeles, then my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left criticizes Trump’s decision to send the National Guard to Los Angeles, with many arguing it has exacerbated the conflict.
• Some say the situation is at risk of spiraling out of control. 
• Others say the protesters are calling out legitimate overreach by the administration.

The New York Times editorial board said “Trump calling troops into Los Angeles is the real emergency.”

“The National Guard is typically brought into American cities during emergencies such as natural disasters and civil disturbances or to provide support during public health crises — when local authorities require additional resources or manpower. There was no indication that was needed or wanted in Los Angeles this weekend, where local law enforcement had kept protests over federal immigration raids, for the most part, under control,” the board wrote. “Which made President Trump’s order on Saturday to do so both ahistoric and based on false pretenses and is already creating the very chaos it was purportedly designed to prevent.”

“Past presidents, from both parties, have rarely deployed troops inside the United States because they worried about using the military domestically and because the legal foundations for doing so are unclear. Congress should turn its attention to such deliberations promptly. If presidents hesitate before using the military to assist in recovery after natural disasters but feel free to send in soldiers after a few cars are set on fire, the law is alarmingly vague,” the board said. “Protesters will do nothing to further their cause if they resort to violence. But Mr. Trump’s order establishes neither law nor order. Rather it sends the message that the administration is interested in only overreaction and overreach.”

In The Nation, Sasha Abramsky criticized “Trump’s dangerous escalation in LA.”

“California’s National Guard was federalized briefly during the Rodney King riots, in 1992, but that was with the blessing of then-Governor Pete Wilson and occurred when large parts of the city were aflame — conditions that clearly do not apply today,” Abramsky wrote. “Prior to that, the last time a state National Guard was federalized was in 1957, when Eisenhower took over the Arkansas National Guard in order to protect African American school children attempting to attend a newly integrated school, and Alabama in 1965 by LBJ to protect civil rights marchers in Selma. But the Arkansas episodes were both part of an effort to expand American democracy; Trump’s move, by contrast, is aimed at snuffing out the light of popular protest and civil rights.”

“The scale of America’s undocumented population may represent a bipartisan failure to meaningfully reform the immigration process over the past generation, but it does not by any credible definition of the word constitute an ‘invasion,’” Abramsky said. “America’s undocumented are not organized as a military force, do not respond to a single set of political or military leaders, and do not have either the ambitions or the ability to displace the ruling class in the US or to conquer large swaths of territory. Most of them are simply hard-working, keep-your-nose-to-the-ground individuals, trying to protect their families and looking for ways to survive in an increasingly unsympathetic world.”

In The American Prospect, Harold Meyerson wrote “the only disorder the National Guard will find comes from the deporters.”

“Let’s be clear about who, exactly, the agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been arresting in and around Los Angeles. On Friday, they raided downtown L.A.’s fashion district, where seamstresses and retail clerks, some of them undocumented immigrants, are clustered. On Saturday, they made arrests outside a Home Depot in Paramount, a working-class L.A. suburb where day laborers, some of them undocumented immigrants, assemble daily to get work on small-scale construction projects,” Meyerson said. “The microscopically thin pretext behind the Trump administration’s deportation policies is that they’re targeting criminals and gang members.”

“If you listen to Trump and his governmental and media minions, you’d think these protesters were rioters. Trump actually said they were rioters who were looting. Neither ICE nor any of the police agencies on the spot have reported a single instance of looting, however, and if this was a riot, it sure didn’t look like one,” Meyerson wrote. “I led the coverage and did extensive on-the-ground reporting, for both L.A. Weekly and The New Republic, of the huge 1992 L.A. riots in the wake of the acquittal of the cops who beat Rodney King. Those riots continued for days, with or without the police. This, by contrast, is purely a protest of the presence of federal agents.”

What the right is saying.

• The right mostly supports Trump’s decision to use the National Guard, saying he is ensuring lawful immigration enforcement. 
• Some say the riots may be a sign of things to come under Trump’s immigration agenda.
• Others blame Democratic immigration policies for allowing the situation to get to this point. 

In USA Today, Nicole Russell argued “ICE is enforcing the law. Trump is right to send National Guard to protect them.”

“The images of fires burning and smoke rising above the streets of Los Angeles make America's second-largest city look like a war zone. But it's not war. It's what happens when a Republican president enforces the law in a state as far left and as lost as California,” Russell said. “If California is one version of America and the rest of the country is another version, I know which America I choose. It's the same one a majority of Americans also have chosen. Polls have consistently shown that voters side with Trump and other Republicans on immigration and border security, not the lawlessness and chaos that Democrats and their progressive allies promote.”

“It's important to note that ICE agents aren't arresting just anyone. The Department of Homeland Security reported that the arrests in Los Angeles included people accused of drug trafficking, assault, cruelty to children, domestic violence, robbery and the smuggling of illegal immigrants,” Russell wrote. “Progressive states like California and Democratic leaders like Newsom and former President Joe Biden have ignored our immigration laws. They sent a clear message to people all over the world that the border was open, and millions took advantage of that fact to enter our country illegally. Now, it is Trump who must enforce the law and restore order.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote “the deportation wars begin.”

“Rounding up and deporting millions of illegal migrants was never going to go down without protest. But President Trump is determined to do it, and no one can say he didn’t tell voters during the campaign. But there are risks for both sides of this dispute, and especially for the country if it turns violent and triggers a military response from the White House… The weekend’s clashes in Los Angeles are a sign of what could be ahead,” the board said. “[Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen] Miller and the restrictionists want to deport everyone to send a message never to come again. But the lost contributions to the U.S. labor force will be great, especially since neither Mr. Miller nor Big Labor will tolerate more legal immigration.”

“There is also the risk of unrest, as we’ve seen in California. It’s fanciful to think that raiding restaurants to snatch busboys, or Home Depot to grab stock clerks, won’t inspire a backlash. All the more so when ICE acts in heavy-handed fashion, as its agents sometimes do. Some on the pro-migrant left will do the same, and that’s when things get ugly. The political risks for Mr. Trump will grow if families are broken up, legal migrants are deported by mistake, or tales of hardship proliferate,” the board wrote. “Yet Mr. Trump can fairly say he has a mandate for mass deportation, however unwise, and he has broad legal authority to do it. That seems to include his call out of the California Guard.”

In The New York Post, Dan Cadman said “progressive states that care not for laws or the border are the ones tearing us apart.”

“Once upon a time — and not so long ago — immigration enforcement actions took place at worksites, in Los Angeles and many other locations, with such regularity that no one would have paused to bat an eye. Now they are the cause of riots and assaults on federal officers and property, while state and local governments slow-walk law enforcement responses for something as fundamental as protecting the safety of those officers,” Cadman wrote. “It is as if these levels of government have a detached notion of ‘federalism’ that runs only one way: they can levy demands on the federal government, usually involving massive amounts of money and other assistance, while recognizing no obligations in return.”

“What we are seeing, although it has become all too pervasive in progressive hot spots, is not normal. It is the confluence of permissive policies toward crime and violence in blue-run cities and states, with the flooding of the border that took place over the entire length of the Biden administration. During those four years, anywhere from 10 to 14 million aliens entered the country either illegally or under transparently bogus programs designed to facilitate their entry,” Cadman said. “This administration is not only on the right track where immigration enforcement is concerned, but that time is indeed of the essence, and the stakes are incredibly high.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

Today is one of those days where a typical take feels insufficient. So here are 11 thoughts on the situation in Los Angeles right now: 

1. Well, this was exactly what I was worried about. Since Trump announced his deportation plan, mass civil unrest and confrontations between law enforcement and citizens have seemed inevitable — too many immigrants here illegally are also loved by and embedded in their communities, too many high-profile mistakes have been made by the Trump administration in their deportation efforts, and too many activists are looking for a reason to fight the government. After federal officers arrested Newark’s mayor, I expected things to get worse — and they have. Not just in Los Angeles, either; demonstrators are clashing with law enforcement in New York and San Francisco, and I expect protests will continue to spread.
2. Would I be a hare-brained lib if I pointed out that so many of these purportedly lazy, criminal, leeching-on-society illegals are getting arrested at work or at their immigration hearings? I wouldn’t expect dangerous criminals who are invading our country to be the people ICE is arresting at their jobs or voluntary immigration hearings. I don’t know. Just a hard thing not to notice.  
3. Would I be a cold-hearted fascist if I thought the police in Los Angeles were right to clear the streets from mobs blocking major highways or lighting cars on fire? I mean, there is protesting, and then there is shutting entire city highways down, burning vehicles, vandalism, and so on. Protests seemed to be mostly controlled on Friday and Saturday, but thousands of people poured into the streets in one of America’s largest cities on Sunday, which certainly required a pretty significant police response. 
4. I believe President Trump wants this confrontation. The mayor of Los Angeles is not seeking his help. The governor of California is not seeking his help. Trump is essentially forcing a city and state to let the National Guard in, which strikes me as a borderline insane provocation. Suggesting that Los Angeles needs the Marines to dispel protesters is a definitively insane provocation. But we understand that provocation is the point, right? The last time a president deployed the National Guard against a governor’s wishes was when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent servicemembers to Alabama in 1965 — to protect civil rights demonstrators. Trump wants the fight. The protesters want the fight. So… we’ll get the fight.
5. In case you think that the protests were not “mostly peaceful” up until Trump’s deployment announcement, consider this: On Saturday, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement describing the protests as peaceful and commending people for exercising their rights responsibly. The Los Angeles Police Department — not exactly an outfit known for taking kindly to civil disobedience. On Saturday night, Trump thanked the National Guard for stabilizing the situation (even though the guard hadn’t even gotten there), and then the situation got markedly worse in basically every way on Sunday (once the National Guard did, actually, arrive). Sending the military to confront protests, unless local law enforcement is truly overwhelmed (see: Kenosha, Wisconsin), is always inflammatory. Even if you believe that Trump is earnestly trying to restore order, you must be able to concede that violent clashes with hundreds or thousands of protesters is a profound failure in his effort to get things under control.
6. I’ve been to many protests as a reporter, and they are never clashes between pure, ideologically motivated activists and peacekeeping police officers trying to protect their communities. More often than not, it’s a game of chicken — often between young men on both sides — who try to push the boundary of how much they can antagonize, how awful they can act, and how close they can get to the line before someone on the other side steps over it. I’ve literally seen protesters taunt police to the point of touching them, at which point a group of officers attack and subdue the protester, and two minutes later the same cops and protesters are talking crap to each other and laughing it up. It looks a lot like that in Los Angeles right now. It’s civilized cockfighting, really; and I don’t take the frontlines too seriously.  
7. Having been to these types of protests, I want to remind people that the city of Los Angeles isn’t on fire right now. Trump’s claim that the city is under some kind of migrant invasion and spiraling out of control is just totally overboard. News coverage of these events always makes them seem apocalyptic, but most Angelenos probably wouldn’t even know what was happening if it weren’t for the news. That’s not to minimize the damage occurring in the neighborhoods where the unrest is spilling over into destruction, just to say how big the city is and how contained the protests are. The same was true in New York in 2020 — I remember watching CNN broadcasts of an absolute war zone elsewhere in the city while I sat peacefully in my living room in Brooklyn on a quiet weekday night. 
8. I wonder, will Democrats and leftist protesters have learned anything from 2020 and the Black Lives Matter riots? Will the party try to excuse the worst of the offenders? Will the protesters continue to destroy the city they live in as some form of protest? The scenes out of Los Angeles are reminiscent of those 2020 protests — and you can expect people to react similarly. Protesters waving Mexican flags next to burning vehicles will be this weekend’s most enduring images. That will not endear neutral onlookers to the protesters, and by association to immigrants. Americans rightly want order in their streets. It’s stunning to me that so many people on the left (and these protesters) don’t understand this. 
9. I have to say, I find it rather funny (and alarming) that the “you cannot trust the government” crowd on the right is now all-in on masked, unnamed federal agents raiding homes, workplaces, and immigration centers to arrest and deport people (while the president rails against protesters wearing masks). You’d think skepticism of government power would preclude the acceptance of unidentifiable agents conducting mass arrests, even of the people that right-leaning skeptics deem threats. But everyone feels immune — nobody asks themselves, “can I prove that I’m a citizen?”
10. Are we starting to see the first signs of buyer’s remorse? In South Florida, some elected Republicans are starting to speak out against the Trump administration’s deportation actions. The cofounder of Latinas for Trump said “this is not what we voted for,” calling the president’s actions “inhumane.” Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) issued a lengthy statement criticizing the deportation of people with pending asylum cases, asking the administration to focus on criminals (but not the people in her district who fled violence to come to south Florida). It’s all very “leopards ate my face.”
11. A final message to the protesters: You could just… not do this? Not light cars on fire. Not throw rocks at police. Not try to represent the immigrant community you purport to care about by destroying the city you live in. If you are actually interested in convincing people the administration is overstepping its authority, acting inhumanely or fighting an unnecessary fight, the best way to do that would be to build sympathy for your cause. We know the people who will be most harmed — the shopkeepers whose windows get smashed, the restaurants who can’t open because roads are closed, the small mom-and-pop shops who lose business because their neighborhoods no longer seem safe. Keep them in your minds before things really spin out of control in a way that makes it impossible to turn back.

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Under the radar.

On Friday, a district judge approved a deal between the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), its major conferences, and lawyers representing all Division I athletes that will allow schools to begin paying student-athletes directly. The settlement resolves three federal antitrust lawsuits that alleged the NCAA was illegally limiting the earning power of college athletes, and it will require the organization to pay $2.8 billion over the next decade to athletes who competed in college sports from 2016 to the present day. The deal is expected to significantly affect the college sports landscape, as schools will now have an annual salary cap that they can pay players across their athletic programs. These payments are separate from earnings athletes can receive from third-party name, image, and likeness deals (which were legalized in 2021). ESPN has the story.

Numbers.

• 1992. The most recent year that the Insurrection Act has been invoked. President George H.W. Bush invoked the act in response to the Los Angeles riots, deploying thousands of members of the National Guard, U.S. Army, and Marine Corps.
• 39. The number of people arrested in connection with the Los Angeles protests on Saturday and Sunday, according to LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell. 
• 300. The number of National Guard troops in the Los Angeles area on Sunday, according to U.S. military's Northern Command. 
• 500. The number of active-duty U.S. Marines in “prepared to deploy” status on Sunday. 
• 54% and 46%. The percentage of Americans who approve and disapprove, respectively, of the Trump administration’s program to deport immigrants illegally in the United States, according to a June 2025 CBS News/YouGov poll.
• 42% and 30%. The percentage of Americans who say the administration’s deportation program is making people in the U.S. more and less safe, respectively. 
• 53% and 47%. The percentage of Americans who say the administration is prioritizing the deportation of dangerous criminals and those who aren’t dangerous criminals, respectively. 
• 49% and 41%. The percentage of Americans who say the administration is attempting to deport more people than expected and about the number expected, respectively. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just published a Friday edition from Isaac about things he was wrong about.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was the Supreme Court making “reverse discrimination” cases easier to pursue.
• Nothing to do with politics: The TSA is urging people to stop trying to use a Costco Card as a REAL ID.
• Thursday’s survey: 2,394 readers answered our survey on Elon Musk’s disagreement with House Republicans and Trump with 80% siding with Musk. “All the government cuts created a mess. Now that the mess is made it would be nice if we could at least not make it worse by drastically increasing the national debt,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Following the devastating Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year, a community in Southern California has become the first in the nation to be fully fire mitigated to prevent wildfire spread, thanks to new construction from builders KB Home. The homes are built to withstand flames and wind-blown embers, using fire-resistant materials on the outside of the home. “The fire department would really have a good chance here because all the homes are protected,” Steve Ruffner from KB Home said. Reuters has the story.

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