Issue: Crime

Welcome to Day 6 of the Los Angeles’ pro-illegal immigration riots. Are we in for another gory summer of love?

Well, Los Angeles charities are handing out gas masks, face shields, and anti-ICE gear to make rioting easier. A news story elaborates:

Leftwing non-profit groups are openly helping to fuel anti-ICE riots here by handing out “F–k ICE” packs with protective equipment — as protesters continue to take over downtown every night and engage in rolling battles with cops, federal agents and National Guard troops. 

Chilling footage revealed one unidentified group handing out a truckload of face shields and other riot gear to protesters in downtown Los Angeles. 

The “F–k ICE” packages — which include goggles, facemasks, gloves and a phone number for “jail support” — are being assembled and distributed by a non-profit called Operation Healthy Hearts.

Among the items available at the museum were anarchist pamphlets that advocate for setting cops cars on fire, burning down police precincts and targeting banks and ATMs as part of “direct action” against police.

It would be impossible to claim that California Governor Gavin Newsom’s address to the nation last night was aimed at calming things down:

“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Mr. Newsom said. “The moment we’ve feared has arrived.”

Newsom’s recent responses to the riots are all about “leaning into the L.A. unrest” and “positioning himself as leader of the opposition” for 2028. Newsom accuses President Trump of a “brazen abuse of power.” Newsom said that he had not had “so much as a voicemail” from President Trump, but the White House had proof of calls to Newsom, one lasting a quarter of an hour:

White House director of communications Steven Cheung added in comment to Fox Digital Tuesday afternoon: “The President called Gavin Newsom to tell him to get his ass in gear. The Governor has clearly decided to disgustingly side with the violent rioters instead of protecting Californians. The only liar here is Newsom who continues to fail his state as he prioritizes doing interviews with leftist media to gaslight the public instead of helping his state.”  

The LA riots are inspiring protests in other cities. The heroic Andy Ngo, veteran of the summer of love riots, recorded an arrogant anti-ICE bully preventing a woman from getting to work. Yeah, that’s what they are like.

The position of the Democratic establishment is, by and large, that if the administration would stop trying to enforce immigration laws and allow illegals to remain in the U.S., all the “unrest” would vanish. Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas explains in a Wall Street Journal op-ed what’s wrong with that position: 

The threat from the radical left is clear: Don’t enforce immigration laws. If you do, left-wing street militias will burn down cities, and Democratic politicians will back the rioters. The president is absolutely right to reject this threat, enforce immigration laws, and restore civil order.

At the risk of again sending liberals to their fainting couches, it may indeed be time to send in the troops. Let’s look at the facts for some context….

The latest enforcement operation in Los Angeles rounded up illegal-alien criminals with lengthy rap sheets. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the operation resulted in the arrests of illegal aliens charged with crimes including second-degree murder, willful cruelty to a child, sexual battery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Democrats put such violent illegal aliens and their anarchist sympathizers ahead of the police, law-abiding citizens and legal immigrants whose communities are being terrorized.

Is anyone surprised? Democrats also stood idly by or even celebrated as the Black Lives Matter riots ransacked our cities five years ago. If anything, these riots are worse. At least the BLM rioters didn’t wave foreign flags.

The solution now is the same as I said then: an overwhelming show of force to end the riots.

Cotton is not the only eloquent defender of the need to use force this morning. Heather Mac Donald writes in City Journal of “Trump’s Unapologetic Defense of the Rule of Law“:

It is fitting that Los Angeles would be the staging ground for the White House’s affirmation of law and order. California leads the country in its contempt for immigration law in particular, and for public order more generally. …

California’s cradle-to-grave welfare subsidies for illegal aliens and its widespread sanctuary policies have made the state a magnet for border-crossing migrants…. 

Will the riots render LA unfit to host the Olympics?

The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley writes that the LA riots are handing Republicans a political advantage, although Riley, an advocate for more (legal!) immigration, believes that President Trump has overreached in his deportation efforts. “Will Illegal Immigration Break the Nation Apart?” is the headline of Matthew Continetti’s latest column. Continetti writes:

One lesson is clear: Illegal immigration is the focal point of our age. And it has the potential to break the nation apart.

America’s federalist system mediates differences among the states. But when state and federal government collide over fundamental questions—slavery, civil rights, immigration—the forces unleashed can overwhelm the entire constitutional structure.

Continetti compares what is happening now to the Nullification Crisis of the 1820s, when John C. Calhoun of South Carolina argued that states could nullify federal law. It was a prelude to the Civil War. Powerline’s John Hinderaker also invokes the Nullification Crisis with Newsom in the Calhoun role. Hinderaker compares the Mexican flags being waved at the LA riots to the Confederate battle flag. The New York Times hilariously claims that Republicans have “seized upon” these Mexican flags as “fodder” to demonstrate that the riots are un-American.

Meanwhile, The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson argues quite convincingly that Mexico’s cartel-influenced government is complicit in the LA riots. Regarding the Mexican flags, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, scion and voice of the establishment, writes:

When I see activists carrying Mexican flags as they challenge ICE raids in Los Angeles this week, I think of two possibilities: These “protesters” are deliberately working to create visuals that will help Trump, or they are well-meaning but unwise dissenters who are inadvertently accomplishing the same goal.

I can think of several other possibilities, David.

Greta’s Ship of Fools. I realize that ex-teen charmer Greta Thunberg is already safely headed home, having been deported by wise Israeli authorities, but I still can’t resist mentioning Brendan O’Neill’s delightful take on what it must have been like when Israel briefly had custody of Greta:  

One envisions the Med [Greta’s ship] ringing out with wails of ‘HOW DARE YOU’ as Greta and her muppet apostles berate Israel for foiling their messianic mission to save the people of Gaza from evil.

With Malice Towards None: President Trump orders the names of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate greats restored to military bases. Another truce? Elon Musk has apologized to President Trump, saying that some of his posts “went too far.” Tellingly, Musk did not begin with the formular, “If I have offended …”

And, Simone Biles has apologized to Riley Gaines for her strange tirade accusing Gaines of being a “loser” who should support men in women’s sports—but a USA TODAY columnist can’t deal with it.  

More Good News: Miranda Devine has a new podcast! Her first interview is with President Trump, whom she finds a bountiful host, who will offer you food off his plate. Listen to learn if Miranda ate the president’s fries off the White House china.

In other news, New Jersey primary voters picked Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Trump-backed Jack Ciattarelli as gubernatorial candidates in a race with national ramifications.

… An editorial in the Wall Street Journal encourages Republicans to take a small step to rescind $9.4 billion in spending

… President Trump announces China will supply “rare earths” in a done deal. The market is up early this morning.

… And a U.K. columnist puzzles over a royal conundrum: How long before Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle monetizes her kids?

“Spit in Our Faces,” is the New York Post headline.

You should click on the Post’s picture of the man leaning in to symbolically do just that as he aims a gob of saliva at an American flag that has been set on fire.

Yes, it appears that spitting upon and burning our flag continues to be a popular form of self-expression among LA’s anti-ICE rioters. Old Glory is not the only national flag in evidence at the riots:  

A number of the protesters held high the flags of South American countries like Mexico as the U.S. flag burned on the ground. They also chanted “F-Trump.”

As the riots enter a fourth day, anti-Americanism is a major theme:

Rioters called for the destruction of the US and spat on a flaming American flag while chanting “burn it down” in a sickening caught-on-video display — as the violent protests entered their fourth day in the City of Angels.

Images of the disturbing scene emerged Monday, along with footage of thugs looting businesses and raining bricks, scooters and other deadly missiles onto cops from a highway overpass.

Leave it to Fox’s Brit Hume to discern the disconnect in desecrating the flag of the country in which the illegal immigrants say they have a right to remain. But don’t believe your lyin’ eyes. The New York Times “reports” that there are misleading pictures retailing “misinformation.” The New York Times specifically harumphs about the “numerous scenes of protesters throwing rocks or other objects at law enforcement officers.

Rep. Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, showed up to taunt the National Guard who were sent by President Trump to try to maintain order, hollering something about shooting her. They resisted what must have been a momentary temptation.

President Trump has beefed up the National Guard already present by sending 700 Marines to Los Angeles after what the New York Times termed “a night of scattered protests.” President Trump has the legal right to suppress the siege in Los Angeles, according to Andrew McCarthy. In “You Picked the Wrong Time to Riot,” National Review’s Dan McLaughlin explains why President Trump’s response this time will be very different from the 2020 riots.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is challenging President Trump’s efforts to assert order, and legal sage Jonathan Turley believes this could be a big mistake for Newsom. Newsom has been begging Border Czar Tom Homan to arrest him. Again, tempting. A California sheriff slams Newsom for churning up violence with his remarks.

One of the signs at the riots that caught my attention was “Education. Not Deportation.” The Federalist, a few days ago, had some fascinating statistics that have a bearing on this demand:

A few simple calculations indicate that as much as one-quarter of U.S. public school enrollment could be anchor babies, meaning children with at least one parent illegally present in the United States. This alone amounts to at least $145.6 billion in public resources diverted from U.S. citizens every year.

By what spurious “right” do illegal aliens demand that the American taxpayer take on this burden?

Another excellent Federalist piece, by Eddie Scarry, is headlined “Illegal Aliens Violently Rioting in L.A. Is the Natural Consequence of Democratic Rule.” Kudos to the FBI for tracking down the “masked brute” who was hurling “cinderblock” rocks at federal officers. Don’t miss a simple act of kindness amid the violence.

Powerline explains how we know that the riots will be bad for the Democrats. Maverick Democrat Ruy Teixeira of The Free Press adds that the LA riots are “a Trump ad.” This will accentuate headaches for DNC Chairman Ken Martin, who, in a leaked conversation, pretty much admitted that the DNC job might be too much for him.

Rich Lowry writes that Americans are getting to know “Maryland Dad” and human trafficking suspect Kilmar Abrego Garcia better. Lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who’s represented a lot of bad hombres, says Abrego Garcia’s lawyers made a big mistake:

Dershowitz described the move as “a big mistake, big blunder by his lawyers,” when it comes to Abrego Garcia. “His lawyers never, ever should have tried to bring him back to the United States. They should have filed a motion, having him transferred from El Salvador or Nicaragua, where maybe there was some fear, to another place, say Argentina or Brazil. He might be a free man today, if they had done that,” Dershowitz continued to stress.

Can Abrego Garcia sue his lawyers?

Abrego Gardia may not be the only one self-destructing. Nicole Russell of USA TODAY writes about former Biden White House Press Secretary turned memoirist Karine Jean-Pierre:

Knives are out among Democrats for one of their own who has now betrayed them. …

[The timing of the book] also calls into question Jean-Pierre’s honesty: Why did she wait until now, when she can profit from it, to tell the truth about the former commander in chief?

Far too many Democrats, Jean-Pierre included, worked hard to deceive Americans. Their willful lack of self-awareness about their gaslighting and dishonesty is why the party has shown no signs of recovering from the last disastrous election cycle.

Speaking of the former president, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, suggests that we must get to the bottom of what Jean-Pierre and others refused to tell us:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted that the Biden cognitive cover-up could become the “biggest scandal in American history,” telling “My View” host Lara Trump that having unknown forces exercising presidential powers behind the scenes would dwarf even the Watergate scandal that doomed Richard Nixon.

“The reason is, sometime, I’d think it’s probably in 2023… Joe Biden was no longer there, and that means that other people were exercising the power of the presidency without any constitutional limitations, and I really think the key is not to look at Biden, but to look the various Obama people who had infiltrated that system…” Gingrich said.

Sometimes, good people do tell us the truth at great personal risk. A Nigerian Catholic Bishop has been attacked and threatened after coming to the U.S. and testifying before Congress about the killings of Christians in Nigeria:

Nigeria is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a Christian, according to NGO Open Doors International’s 2025 World Watch List (WWL). Of the 4,476 Christians killed worldwide in WWL’s latest reporting period, 3,100 of those who died – 69% – were in Nigeria. 

Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. takes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to explain why he is reconstituting an advisory board and why he hopes the move will restore public trust in agencies. The underlying issue is vaccines. Kennedy writes:

A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science. In the 1960s, the world sought guidance from America’s health regulators, who had a reputation for integrity, scientific impartiality and zealous defense of patient welfare. Public trust has since collapsed, but we will earn it back.

The penny drops. The light goes on. A story in the Washington Post headlined “Empty Desks” ties the District’s failure to enforce truancy laws in middle schools to the biggest surge in youth crime in a generation. The Post cites, by name, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the City Council for failing to follow through on initiatives designed to keep kids in school and out of trouble.

As long as we’re on the subject of the ill-run District of Columbia, how about “affordable housing” D.C.-style? The Washington Post reported Sunday that publicly funded houses for the poor in Adams Morgan are costing $1.2 million each to build. The Washington Post observed:

The 52-unit building under construction will house people making far below the area’s median income. Half will be newly released from incarceration.

[The] tab will be picked up in large part by taxpayers, most of whom could not afford to live in such a place.

Jim Knight, Jubilee’s president and CEO, declined to be interviewed about the buildings’ costs but said in a statement that they should be measured against their impact on the lives of the tenants.

In other words, money is no object when the taxpayer picks up the tab.

The oldest hatred has come to America.

The suspect in the terror attack on Jews in a Boulder mall, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, explains his motive (as if we didn’t already know):

During an interview with investigators after his arrest, Soliman voiced hateful views about Jewish people, stating he wanted to “kill all Zionist people” and that he “wished they all were dead.” However, he said he kept a lid on his murderous urges until his daughter’s high school graduation, at which point he allegedly went through with the plot.

He hates Jews. Who knew? Soliman, who appeared in court yesterday, is being charged with a federal hate crime, and bond was set at $10 million. A former FBI profiler has interesting things to say about Soliman. According to the New York Times, the suspect “lived a low-key life” in Colorado Springs. A friend of the Soliman family complained about the lack of diversity in Colorado Springs! The New York Times also reported that Soliman’s “uncertain immigration status … highlights visa overstays.”

Soliman’s immigration status was not “uncertain.” He was here illegally. This horrible attack doesn’t “highlight” visa overstays—it definitively establishes how dangerous they are. Soliman’s attack does indeed highlight two issues: illegal immigration and antisemitism. The New York Times also says that “anxiety is heightened among American Jews.” It’s considerably more than “anxiety”—it’s justified fear.

Danielle Pletka writes on Substack that it is “open season” on Jews in America.” Pletka gives the FBI credit for immediately calling the attack what it was:

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the local police chief refused to speculate whether the attack was an act of terrorism, a cautiousness of a piece with the hordes who rush to protect the First Amendment rights of terrorist sympathizers calling for the murder of Jews. The FBI was less politically correct, believing the evidence of their eyes and ears — flames, victims, a march for the hostages, “free Palestine” — that this was indeed a terrorist attack.

“This Is What Intifada Looks Like” is the headline on a City Journal piece by Charles Fain Lehman:

The point, rather, is that the American radical anti-Israel movement has built the intellectual scaffolding for—and in many cases all but invited—the violence now playing out in places like Boulder. When you call for “Intifada,” you cannot feign surprise when someone takes that call literally. Whatever your legal right to speak, that is the outcome you invoked.

“The Intifada in America Moves West” is the headline of a National Review editorial:

It should be no surprise that people who glorify the actions of Hamas would seek to emulate its tactics, but that is all the more reason to be alarmed about the prospect of more to come.

Guy Benson was great last night on the Special Report panel, calling out the pro-Palestine movement as being intrinsically and essentially violent.

The hatred of Israel and the Jews is fed by a leftist media that takes “facts” from Hamas as true and thus spreads Hamas propaganda about Israel. The U.S. media ran with a story that Israeli soldiers attacked a humanitarian aid center in Gaza, despite there being no evidence. The Washington Post has been especially egregious. Border Czar Tom Homan is convinced that we’ll see a major attack because of the lax border under the Biden administration.

Let Them Eat Symbols: None other than Greta Thunberg, suitably attired in a keffiyeh draped about her head, has shown up in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid—but not much:

The crew of volunteers, including climate activist Greta Thunberg and Irish actor Liam Cunningham, set sail on the Madleen, carrying barrels of what the group called “limited amounts, though symbolic”, of relief supplies.

“We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying, because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity,” Thunberg told reporters at a conference before the departure.

Anything to keep Greta from losing her tenuous humanity.

Academia is a hotbed of pro-Hamas activism. With this in mind, I was interested in Gerard Baker’s Wall Street Journal column, which poses the question, “Which is Worse, Trump or Harvard?” Baker writes:

Readers of this column know that I am not an enthusiast for many of President Trump’s policies or methods. Economic self-harm through tariffs, strategic self-harm by undermining alliances, and a blithe disregard for governing norms undermines much of what makes America great.

But on higher education, I say bring it on. Mr. Trump is right to have identified the system as having corrupted our sense of national cohesion and purpose and right again to target Harvard as the symbolic and substantive summit of that system. …

The rot in many American universities is so deep and so extensive that a four-year presidency will be nowhere near enough to begin to reverse it through suasion, incentives and dialogue. Ben Sasse argued on these pages last week that the best outcome would be if these threats induced wider change. As Voltaire’s Candide noted, the British used to think it was useful to shoot an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others.

Speaking of institutions of higher learning, Philip Hamburger writes that education has a bigger problem than Donald Trump. It must be completely restructured.

That Jonathan Turley can sure as heck write a bang-up lead-in to frame his topic, as he does in a column headlined “Marco Rubio Declares War on the Global Censors“:

Winston Churchill once warned that “appeasement is feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last.” When it comes to the crocodile of censorship, history is strewn with defenders who later became digestives. Censorship produces an insatiable appetite for greater and greater speech limits, and today’s censorship supporters often become tomorrow’s censored subjects.

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stopped feeding the crocodile….

Rubio is taking action to address Europe’s horrendous assaults on free speech.

If we thought that common sense and reality (men and women have physical differences) would prevail easily in women’s and girls’ sports, we underestimated transgender activism and propaganda. The New York Post reports:

Trans athletes have been dominating high school girls’ sports in the US — and dominating the news, with more than a dozen cases making headlines this school year.

Over the weekend, biologically male athletes placed in track and field championships in Oregon, Washington and California, despite President Trump’s February executive order banning trans athletes in women’s sports.

Participation continues in many states where ongoing legal challenges and state-level policies contradict the federal directive. Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ pledge to defy the order resulted in several months of frozen federal funding, and California’s defiance of the order triggered a DOJ investigation into whether its state law violates Title IX.

The lengthy report gives a state-by-state breakdown, and it’s shocking.

Meanwhile, USA TODAY columnist Ingrid Jaques writes that “transgender athletes [are turning] girls’ track meets into farce“:

This insanity has to end.

On May 31, transgender high school athletes in California and Washington outperformed the girls they competed against in two state championship track and field meets. 

In other words, two biological males beat the girls. Shocker, right? 

There’s a reason that high school boys and girls and men and women have played on different teams for decades. They’re not the same physically. And once puberty hits, boys have advantages that girls never will because of testosterone.

Yet Democrats, by pushing in recent years to allow transgender athletes to play on women’s teams, have created a wholly unfair playing field for girls and women. …

Were you surprised that so many on the left picked men playing in women’s sports as a hill to die on? Maybe issues like this contribute to the Dem’s current historically bad polling. The party’s “horrendous polling” leaves a CNN numbers cruncher, Harry Enten, gasping, “Are you kidding?” Enten says Dems are no longer the party of the middle class. But hugely trans-popular.