The nation’s priorities are actually crystal clear.
We’re including ICE and Border Patrol brokers, activating troops and invading American neighborhoods, together with L.A.’s MacArthur Park on Monday morning.
In the meantime, we’re eliminating medical researchers and climate forecasters, whilst excessive and lethal climate occasions grow to be extra widespread.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Occasions columnist since 2001. He has gained greater than a dozen nationwide journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
You’d assume — primarily based on the priorities in President Trump’s funds, tax and coverage invoice permitted final week — that immigration is the best risk to our well being and safety.
It’s not.
However billions of {dollars} have been added for border and ICE brokers whereas billions extra have been trimmed from medical, local weather and weather-related assets.
“Frankly it is outrageous and un-American that we have federal armed vehicles in our parks when nothing is going on in our parks,” Bass stated, including that she didn’t know if anybody was even detained.
“It’s a political agenda of provoking fear and terror,” she stated.
The occasion “looked like a staging for a TikTok video,” stated Metropolis Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
MacArthur Park has a large undocumented immigrant inhabitants, and lots of large issues to sort out — homelessness, a wide-open drug commerce and gang exercise. On some days areas of the park had been unusable for households. First responders rolled out on overdose calls, addicts took over an alley, and retailers struggled to remain open amid all of the mayhem.
In December, individuals sit on the nook of Alvarado Road and Wilshire Boulevard, an space identified for unlawful drug use within the Westlake neighborhood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
As I discovered final 12 months over the course of a number of months on the bottom, native officers waited too lengthy and moved too slowly in response to the long-festering disaster.
However a foolish navy parade isn’t going to assist, until they really had been going after undocumented drug lords — however there was no quick proof of that.
If the federal authorities wished to assist, L.A. might use extra help for housing, drug interdiction and therapy. It might use a extra secure and equitable financial system that’s not undermined by tariff uncertainties and the president’s taunts of buying and selling companions.
As we all know in California, numerous industries depend on undocumented laborers. It’s an open secret, and has been for many years, not simply within the Golden State however throughout the nation, and but Washington has been unable to place collectively a smart immigration reform bundle over time.
Congress received shut final fall, however do I have to remind you what occurred?
That’s proper. Trump threatened lackey GOP Congressman, ordering the spineless ninnies to drag their help.
Each time I see a helicopter now in L.A. — and as we all know, they’re like mosquitoes up there — I’m wondering if Trump has despatched within the Air Drive, with bombers coming in behind them.
My colleague Rachel Uranga just lately reported that “ICE has not released data on criminal records of detainees booked into its custody.” However nonpublic information from the Cato Institute, a libertarian assume tank, “showed about 9 out of 10 had never been convicted of a violent or property crime, and 30% have no criminal record. The most frequent crimes are immigration and traffic offenses.”
It’s nothing to warrant the terrorizing of neighborhoods and communities, nothing to warrant armed, masked brokers of unknown identities and companies roaming our streets and nabbing employees at automobile washes, Residence Depots and eating places.
Federal immigration brokers close to MacArthur Park within the Westlake space on Monday.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Occasions)
It’s nearly as terrifying as a number of different actual and existential threats:
An anti-vax crackpot is in command of the nation’s healthcare and medical analysis system.
Trump’s Large Bonehead Invoice requires an $18-billion reduce for the Nationwide Institutes of Well being.
A few of the main researchers in medication and science are leaving the nation in a pattern that might find yourself being a catastrophic mind drain.
Nevertheless it was actual, and so are the cuts to the Nationwide Climate Service, to the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to the Federal Emergency Administration Company.
Meteorologists say excessive climate occasions just like the rainstorms that led to a river surge and killed dozens of youngsters and adults in Texas’ Hill Nation over the vacation weekend are going to grow to be extra widespread.
Florida had a record-tying variety of hurricanes in 2024 with 11 of them, and $130 billion in harm.
Wildfires destroyed hundreds of properties in Southern California final 12 months and have gotten ever-more widespread all over the world.
Temperatures within the Mediterranean Sea smashed information for June, and scientists are warning of dire impacts on sea life and meals chains.
To the president and his minions, the disaster is overblown.
And the federal authorities can’t be distracted from its core mission.
The week is younger, and there’s no telling which L.A. neighborhood can be invaded subsequent.
