The Defense secretary said he’d comply with a Supreme Court order blocking Trump’s domestic deployment, but did not commit to the other courts.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that he would obey a Supreme Court order to remove troops from Los Angeles but declined to show similar deference to other courts considering the issue.
The Pentagon chief initially deflected when asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing whether he would abide by a court’s decision if it determined President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and Marines was unlawful.
“What I can say is we should not have local judges determining foreign policy or national security policy for the country,” Hegseth said.
But the Defense secretary later clarified that he would obey a decision from the high court.
“We’re not here to defy a Supreme Court ruling,” he said.
The comments mirror other officials who have criticized court rulings that go against the Trump administration, often directing withering criticism at lower-court judges while vowing deference to the justices.
The troops and their commanders might need a reminder that their oath is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not the ego of a drunk O-3 wife-beater. Soldiers can be prosecuted for following illegal orders, i.e. being ordered to ignore a legitimate decision of a circuit or appellate court. Any arrests and charges by the troops under such circumstances should be null & void.
Hegseth won’t commit to obeying courts on Marines in Los Angeles
The Defense secretary said he’d comply with a Supreme Court order blocking Trump’s domestic deployment, but did not commit to the other courts.
ICE Thug are Indiscriminately Grabbing Brown People off the Streets
Masked ICE agents attempted to arrest a man in Downey during one of three reported raids Wednesday morning, but they let him go after community members intervened.
In a video obtained by Eyewitness News, the man is seen on the ground next to his bike surrounded by federal police.
Community members filmed the attempted arrest and after calling out the federal agents, the man was let go.
According to Downey councilman Mario Trujillo, the man was working when he noticed ICE was at his job. He immediately started riding his bike toward the apartments.
That’s when one of the agents stopped him by grabbing one of the tires, causing him to fall to the ground.
People began shouting for the agents to leave him alone and told the man not to sign anything.
Moments later, the agents let the man go and left.
Melyssa Rivas, who lives in the area, captured the whole thing on camera.
“It looked like a full on kidnapping scene out of a movie, it was scary,” Rivas said. “”My dad has papers, he has his citizenship but he looks just like that man. He’s a full citizen. They stereotyped that man.”
Masked ICE agents let man go after community members intervene during raid in Downey
Masked ICE agents attempted to arrest a man in Downey during one of three reported raids Wednesday morning, but they let him go after community members intervened.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said Floridians have a right to hit protesters with their car if they need to “flee for your safety.”
DeSantis was speaking on The Rubin Report on Wednesday, when he said: “We also have a policy that if you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle, and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety.
“And so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you. You don’t have to just sit there and be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets.”
Note that “policy” is not the same as “law”. Don’t count on DeSantis’s bad advice to save your sorry ass if you drive over someone:
Civil rights activist Heather Heyer was killed after James Alex Fields Jr., drove his car into counter protesters at the Unite the Right Rally in 2017. Fields argued self-defense but was found guilty of first degree murder.
Ron DeSantis says Floridians have right to hit protesters with cars
“That’s their fault for impinging on you,” Florida’s governor said.
Vincent Scardina supported Donald Trump’s tough stance on immigration at the ballot box. But that decision came back to bite the roofing boss when ICE detained a third of his workforce.
The six men, all from Nicaragua, were pulled over in a work truck on May 27 while heading to a job—and carted off to jail.
According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, deputies helped transport the men to a local detention facility “for deportation.”
Scardina, who runs a small roofing business in Florida’s Lower Keys, cannot believe it. “It’s quite a shock. You get to know these guys, you become their friends—not just an employer but a friend,” he told NBC6, visibly emotional.
Adding to Scardina’s annoyance, the men had valid work permits and pending asylum applications, according to their attorney Regilucia Smith. “They are legally here,” she said. “Valid work permit, not even close to expired… again, no criminal records—not here, not in Nicaragua.”
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The detained men represented a third of his total staff—devastating in a small labor pool like Key West. “We’re not able…to just replace people as easily as, say, a big city, [with] very limited people to pull from, and then you would have to train them, and that takes sometimes years,” he said.
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Scardina isn’t alone. He says other contractors in the area are being hit hard too. “I know of one landscaper that lost nine or 10 of his whole crew he had and he’s just totally out of business all of a sudden, just like that.”
You voted for him! Suck it up, buddy!
Trump Voter Gets Choked Up After ICE Detains a Third of His Staff
A Florida roofing boss backed the president’s tough immigration policies. Then six of his workers were taken away…
California Governor Gavin Newsom slammed President Donald Trump on Tuesday night as federal troops remained in Los Angeles amid protests against Trump’s immigration raids.
The latest demonstrations began on Friday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carried out raids in the city looking for undocumented immigrants. Trump responded by federalizing 4,000 California National Guard soldiers and deploying 700 Marines to the area over Newsom’s objection. It is the first time a president has done so since 1965.
After a largely uneventful day among the protests, Newsom delivered remarks in a televised address.
“On Saturday morning, when federal agents jumped out of an unmarked van near a Home Depot parking lot, they began grabbing people, a deliberate targeting of a heavily Latino suburb,” he said. “A similar scene played out when a clothing company was raided downtown. In other actions, a U.S. citizen nine months pregnant was arrested. A four-year-old girl taken, families separated, friends quite literally disappearing. In response. Every day, Angelenos came out to exercise their constitutional right to free speech and assembly to protest their government’s actions.”
Newsom went on to say that Los Angeles deployed police to help maintain order and that they did so “with some exceptions.”
“Like many states, California is no stranger to this sort of unrest,” he went on. “We manage it regularly and with our own law enforcement. But this, again, was different. What then ensued was the use of tear gas, flash bang grenades, rubber bullets, federal agents detaining people and undermining their due process rights.”
The governor then took Trump to task for federalizing the state’s National Guard.
“This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers, and even our National Guard at risk,” he said. “That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder. And the president, he did it on purpose. As the news spread throughout L.A., anxiety for family and friends ramped up. Protests started again. By night, several dozen lawbreakers became violent and destructive. They vandalized property. They tried to assault police officers.”
“Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control,” he added. “And by the way, Trump, he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. What more evidence do we need than January 6th?”
He concluded:
It’s time for all of us to stand up. Justice Brandeis – who said it best – in a democracy, the most important office, with all due respect, Mr. President, is not the presidency. And it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen at this moment. At this moment, we all need to stand up and be held to a higher level of accountability.
If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please, please do it peacefully. I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him.
Gavin Newsom Hits Back at Trump in Primetime Address
California Governor Gavin Newsom slammed President Donald Trump on Tuesday night as federal troops remained in Los Angeles.
The interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina [Bimbo #4] Habba, said the Democratic lawmaker, who plans to plead not guilty, was indicted on three counts of interfering with law enforcement.
The interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina [Bimbo #4] Habba, said on X that a federal grand jury indicted McIver on three counts of “forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law enforcement officers.”
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McIver called the legal proceedings “a brazen attempt at political intimidation” and said she will plead not guilty.
Rep. LaMonica McIver indicted on federal charges over clash with law enforcement at ICE facility in New Jersey
The interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, said the Democratic lawmaker, who plans to plead not guilty, was indicted on three counts of interfering with law enforcement.
Los Angeles police swiftly enforced a downtown curfew, making arrests moments after it took effect, while deploying officers on horseback and using crowd control projectiles to break up a group of hundreds demonstrating against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Members of the National Guard stood watch behind plastic shields, but did not appear to participate in the arrests Tuesday night.
Hours later, many of the protesters had dispersed, although sporadic confrontations continued that were much smaller than in previous nights. Officials said the curfew was necessary to stop vandalism and theft by agitators looking to cause trouble.
The demonstrations have been mostly concentrated downtown and the curfew covers a 1-square-mile (2.5-square-kilometer) section that includes an area where protests have occurred since Friday in the sprawling city of 4 million. The city of Los Angeles encompasses roughly 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers).
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[Gov. Gavin] Newsom asked a court to put an emergency stop to the military helping federal immigration agents, with some guardsmen now standing in protection around agents as they carried out arrests. He said it would only heighten tensions and civil unrest. The judge set a hearing for Thursday, giving the administration several days to continue those activities.
LA police swiftly enforce downtown curfew as protests against Trump’s immigration crackdown continue
Donald Trump is set to deploy ICE tactical units to five Democrat-run cities amid the riots in Los Angeles as Gavin Newsom nearly broke into tears while blaming his administration for inciting the California chaos.
The military-style units are set to storm New York City, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia and northern Virginia, MSNBC reported. Four of those five are heavily blue cities, while northern Virginia contains the Democrat enclave of Alexandria.
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‘Look, this isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles, when Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. He made that order apply to every state in this nation,’ Newsom said, as he teared up.
‘This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived.’
Newsom accused Trump of ‘taking a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project’ of three co-equal branches of government.
ICE prepares full assault on five Democrat cities as LA goes into lockdown amid immigration riots
In disputes over protests, deportations and tariffs, the president has invoked statutes that may not provide him with the authority he claims.
To hear President Trump tell it, the nation is facing a rebellion in Los Angeles, an invasion by a Venezuelan gang and extraordinary foreign threats to its economy.
Citing this series of crises, he has sought to draw on emergency powers that Congress has scattered throughout the United States Code over the centuries, summoning the National Guard to Los Angeles over the objections of California’s governor, sending scores of migrants to El Salvador without the barest hint of due process and upending the global economy with steep tariffs.
Legal scholars say the president’s actions are not authorized by the statutes he has cited and are, instead, animated by a different goal.
“He is declaring utterly bogus emergencies for the sake of trying to expand his power, undermine the Constitution and destroy civil liberties,” said Ilya Somin, a libertarian professor at Antonin Scalia Law School who represents a wine importer and other businesses challenging some of Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
Trump Declares Dubious Emergencies to Amass Power, Scholars Say
