USA | High Noon in Los Angeles

The uprising against the US immigration authority ICE in Los Angeles represents the first real domestic political crisis of Trump's second term, primarily due to the Trump administration's disproportionate response in deploying US Marines to California. When protesters shut down Highway 101 in Los Angeles by throwing chunks of concrete from a bridge, the mood was similar to that of the demonstrations following the death of George Floyd in 2020. Then, too, Trump called for military intervention, but was blocked by his own Secretary of Defense, who argued that deploying troops would be unconstitutional.

Now Trump has deployed the special forces anyway. Even though the Marines haven't fired a shot yet, the US is entering uncharted territory, because these elite troops for overseas deployments are particularly unsuitable for domestic operations, says Rachel VanLandingham, law professor and former Air Force lieutenant colonel. "The Marines aren't trained to patrol the streets of our cities. They may have some basic crowd control skills, but they use them in combat zones, not in Los Angeles."

Not only the presence of 700 Marines in Los Angeles or the expected spread of demonstrations on Wednesday in several US cities demonstrate the escalation of the situation; the arrest and injury of prominent union leader David Huerta is also highly unusual. Crises on the streets of US cities are rarely as highly politicized as this one. Trump is seeking open confrontation with California Governor Gavin Newsom, and conversely, Newsom is positioning himself as the leading opposition figure in the country and thus as Joe Biden's heir.

For Newsom and his supporters, especially Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, the ability of the local police to calm the protesters was beyond question. Therefore, the overreaction from Washington was a blatant attempt to initiate an authoritarian shift in US history . Newsom portrays himself as a liberal constitutional patriot – and rightly so: Initial polls give him reason for cautious hope. According to a YouGov survey, only 45 percent of Americans see themselves as opponents of the current demonstrations, but at the same time, 49 percent oppose the forced ICE deportations. Above all, a majority opposes the deployment of the Marines domestically.

And indeed, after deploying the special forces, Trump appears to be trying to remain calm. But this is precisely what demonstrates strategic considerations, because Trump, too, believes that this crisis will benefit him. If the opposition continues to riot, Trump believes that the American majority will ultimately want an authoritarian solution. Should such a majority emerge, the crisis would parallel the politics of 1963, when President John F. Kennedy placed the National Guard in Georgia under federal control and deployed it against Governor George Wallace because Wallace refused to integrate the schools for whites and blacks. If public opinion develops favorably for Trump in the coming weeks, any legal questions surrounding his methods would be relegated to the realm of theory, at least for the time being.

Another reason Donald Trump will exercise caution in the coming days: To reach the majority of Americans, he must, above all, reach the many Latinos. His election victory last year clearly demonstrated that sufficient Latino voters were both necessary and achievable for him to win the majority of votes. For too long, the Democrats assumed that Latinos would maintain their traditional closeness to the Democrats, even though this closeness has eroded with each passing year. Therefore, Trump will now, as he did during the election campaign, refrain from using ethnic insults and probably also from using violence to counteract any Latino solidarity with the deportees.

Trump's main thrust is therefore different: His opponents are less the demonstrators than California's political elite. He accuses Governor Newsom of gross incompetence. Trump's border commissioner, Thomas Homan, has already declared his intention to arrest the 58-year-old Newsom, saying that the Democratic leadership in California, as well as Californian Kamala Harris, are not popular with Americans. Even though Newsom has recently attempted to shift to the center – the governor boasts of having handed over 10,500 illegal immigrants to ICE and even sought contact with Trump's longtime advisor, Steve Bannon – the riots in Los Angeles were not immediately quelled, according to Trump's interpretation, because the Californian government wanted to place critics of ICE and the government under the highest protection.

Will the Democrats now unleash a wave of outrage against the authoritarianism of the Trump administration ? Or have they once again misjudged themselves and the nation? Is Newsom primed for attack, or is he running into a well-prepared snare? Trump wants to redeploy his successful strategy from the 2024 election campaign and believes the Democrats will make the same mistakes. California has long been a target of the right; Trump's longtime immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, went to a famous, left-liberal school in Santa Monica but then became the reactionary drummer for the MAGA movement , which declared war on Californians' liberalism on immigration years ago.

Oddly enough, the richest and most populous state is also in the sights of hi-tech moguls like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who have long and increasingly denounced the conditions in California – for the poverty, the homelessness, the lack of affordable housing, the shrinking middle class, the crime and despair on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco. For all the conditions that the tech billionaires have caused rather than prevented. Rightly or wrongly, all of this is blamed on the Democratic elite in California. For a long time, the ills in New York City were central to the national psyche. These days, Californians are finally finding themselves in the crosshairs of the right.