Pam Bondi Says L.A. Protesters Nothing Like Jan. 6 Rioters
Attorney General Pam Bondi has insisted that protesters in Los Angeles are 'very different' from Jan. 6 rioters in justifying the administration's response to the unrest in California.
California Governor Gavin Newsom had slammed Trump's decision to deploy 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, claiming the president 'is not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him.'
'What more evidence do we need than January 6th?' Newsom said during a Tuesday night address.
To that point, a reporter asked Bondi if there was a double standard between how the Trump administration was treating protesters in Los Angeles and the Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol to try to stop the certification of the 2020 election. Trump pardoned nearly all of the insurrectionists on his first day back in office.
'This is very different,' Bondi said on Wednesday. 'These are people out there hurting people in California right now. This is ongoing.'
'California is burning,' she added. 'You have people waving Mexican flags, yet they don't want anyone to go back to Mexico. They're burning American flags. This is the United States of America, and we're going to protect Americans.'
Demonstrations first broke out last weekend and have since spread to other cities. Not since 1965—when former President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators—has a president sent National Guard troops over the objections of the governor.
Bondi said the deployment of troops was 'working' and claimed the administration was 'not scared to go further.'
'We're not frightened to do something else if we need to,' she added.
President Donald Trump touted his administration's response on Truth Social Thursday.
'Los Angeles was safe and sound for the last two nights. Our great National Guard, with a little help from the Marines, put the L.A. Police in a position to effectively do their job,' Trump said. 'They all worked well together, but without the Military, Los Angeles would be a crime scene like we haven't seen in years.'
An 8 p.m. curfew was imposed in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday for the second night in a row, which Mayor Karen Bass said was designed to 'stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the president's chaotic escalation.'
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43 minutes ago
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‘We're seeing the best of LA': as Ice raids haunt the city, Angelenos show up for each other
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Half the total population is Latino. 'Our economy is being destroyed, our culture is being destroyed,' said Odilia Yego, the executive director of Cielo, an advocacy group focused on local Indigenous migrant communities. 'The buzzing feeling of being an Angeleno is under attack.' When Yego went out with Cielo workers earlier this month to deliver food to 200 families, she said, the streets were eerily quiet, and restaurants were half-empty, raising concerns about how small businesses already battered by Covid, Hollywood strikes and the wildfires will weather this new crisis. It's not only undocumented residents who fear being snatched up by masked federal agents in raids community members say look and feel like kidnappings, Yego said. 'Even with documents, people are afraid to go out. Even citizens are afraid to go out. People are afraid to encounter an Ice agent regardless of their status, because of the level of violence they have seen on social media or on TV,' she said. Multiple US citizens in the Los Angeles area have reportedly been detained as part of immigration raids this month. As Cielo and similar advocacy groups help frightened immigrant families, other people are stepping up to help them. In early June, one of the city's most popular taquerias and an immigrant-owned coffee shop in West Hollywood held fundraisers for Cielo. 'We own a business, so we can't go protest,' one of the West Hollywood coffee shop's owners said. The Guardian is not identifying the businesses or its owners for fear of reprisal. Helping raise funds for Cielo was 'a way for us to show up to be a voice with our community'. 'In LA, we support each other during times of crisis,' Yego said. 'Someone sent us $100 and said: 'You helped me during the pandemic, and today, I'm able to give back.''
