Militarized Response to California Riots Seeks To Expand Federal Power
One of the dumbest memes I’ve seen recently shows a photo of a Los Angeles rioter waving a Mexican flag with the tagline, “California 2025.” Underneath that image is a photo of young, wholesome folks leaning against a Mustang with their surfboards at a Southern California beach with the words, “California 1965.” It’s absurd for various reasons, but it’s laughable that the meme picks 1965 for the comparison.
That’s the same year as the “Watts Rebellion” or “Watts Riots.”  (The differing titles are a testament to the ongoing culture-war battle over the use of language.) Sparked by frustrations about police brutality and discrimination after the arrest of an African-American man, the riots (yes, they were riots) claimed 34 lives, more than 1,000 injuries, and $40 million in property damage. State and federal officials called in the National Guard.
Seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time. The Los Angeles mayhem is inexcusable. If those protesting against ICE wanted to sway opinion, they shouldn’t be waving the flags of other countries. They should protest peacefully. But the heavy-handed nature of the ICE raids threw fuel on the fire—and the administration has used the crisis to vastly expand its power.
There’s a curfew in the small, affected part of LA. Obviously, the authorities must quash civil unrest. How they do so is important. This is the first time since 1965—that supposedly tranquil year—that a president called out the National Guard without approval of the governor. Lyndon Johnson had good reason: to protect Selma-to-Montgomery marchers, given that Alabama’s segregationist leaders couldn’t be expected to protect them.
It takes unusually bad federal policy for me to quote Gov. Gavin Newsom approvingly, but he was spot on. He called it a “serious breach of state sovereignty.” Apparently, Republicans no longer believe in federalism, but at least they’ve once again opposed riots and attacks on law enforcement—a principle many abandoned when it came to the January 6 Capitol riot.
Conservatives have complained for years about unchecked federal power and often cite the Posse Comitatus Act limiting the use of the federal military on U.S. soil. Yet they’ve mostly been supportive—often boisterously so—of the president’s recent mobilization order to send the Marines to Los Angeles. (They also rightly defend the Second Amendment, forgetting that the impetus for it was the founders’ concern about standing armies.)
Per the order, “To carry out this mission, the deployed military personnel may perform those mili
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