President Donald Trump further tightened his grip on Los Angeles on Monday by deploying a fresh batch of National Guard troops to quell protests.
Trump mobilized an additional 2,000 National Guard as protests against immigration raids dragged into their fourth day, according to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.
“At the order of the President, the Department of Defense is mobilizing an additional 2,000 California National Guard to be called into federal service to support ICE & to enable federal law-enforcement officers to safely conduct their duties,” Parnell said on X Monday night.
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The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
The first batch of 2,000 Guard troops ordered by Trump began arriving on Sunday.
Tensions continued to rise between authorities and protesters as the sun set on Monday. Police in riot gear, who appeared to be from the Los Angeles Police Department, attempted to push back the crowds that numbered a couple hundred, according to the Associated Press. Authorities used flash bangs and fired projectiles to disperse the protesters, who hit back by throwing water bottles and yelling, “Shame.”
Newsom was quick to blast Trump’s latest order as an act of vanity.
“This isn’t about public safety. It’s about stroking a dangerous President’s ego,” he said. “This is Reckless. Pointless. And Disrespectful to our troops.”
Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have repeatedly slammed Trump’s initial deployment of 2,000 troops to the city on Sunday as an incitement of chaos intended to “manufacture” a crisis over the protests.
“It makes me feel like our city is actually a test case for what happens when the federal government moves in and takes the authority away from the state or away from local government,” Bass said in a press conference.
Earlier on Monday, Trump dramatically escalated the Los Angeles standoff by announcing the deployment of about 700 active-duty Marines to help protect federal agents and buildings.
A senior Trump administration official told the Daily Beast—and the U.S. Northern Command later confirmed—that Marines from Camp Pendleton in Southern California would be sent to Los Angeles.
“Do you know what the National Guard is doing now? They are guarding two buildings,” Bass said. “That’s what they’re doing. So they need Marines on top of it? I don’t understand that. That’s why I feel like we are part of an experiment that we did not ask to be a part of.”
Newsom similarly claimed on X that the initial batch of troops deployed to Los Angeles were “given no food or water” and were mostly “sitting, unused, in federal buildings without orders,” but the Pentagon swiftly shut it down as a “bald-faced lie.”
Tensions in Los Angeles reached a fever pitch over the weekend over Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The protests quickly devolved into chaos as demonstrators vandalized buildings and set cars on fire, and law enforcement lobbed rubber bullets and tear gas indiscriminately into the crowds.
Trump was quick to accuse Newsom and Bass of failing to rein in protesters, which he cited as a justification for calling in the National Guard.
Both the California governor and the Los Angeles mayor have urged protesters: “Don’t give Donald Trump what he wants.”
“You can’t possibly be supporting immigrants and vandalize our city,” Bass said even as she blamed the protests squarely on the Trump administration. “This was chaos that was started in Washington, D.C. On Thursday, the city was peaceful. On Friday, it was not because of the intervention of the federal government.”
