The nation’s priorities are actually crystal clear.
We’re including ICE and Border Patrol brokers, activating troops and invading American neighborhoods, together with L.A.’s MacArthur Park on Monday morning.
In the meantime, we’re eliminating medical researchers and climate forecasters, at the same time as excessive and lethal climate occasions develop into extra widespread.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Instances columnist since 2001. He has gained greater than a dozen nationwide journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
You’d suppose — primarily based on the priorities in President Trump’s finances, tax and coverage invoice authorized final week — that immigration is the best risk to our well being and safety.
It’s not.
However billions of {dollars} have been added for border and ICE brokers whereas billions extra have been trimmed from medical, local weather and weather-related sources.
On Monday morning, federal brokers on horseback and in armored autos descended on MacArthur Park in a present of pressure. Youngsters taking part in within the park had been ushered to safer floor, Mayor Karen Bass mentioned at a information convention.
“Frankly it’s outrageous and un-American that we’ve federal armed autos in our parks when nothing is happening in our parks,” Bass mentioned, including that she didn’t know if anybody was even detained.
“It’s a political agenda of scary worry and terror,” she mentioned.
The occasion “regarded like a staging for a TikTok video,” mentioned Metropolis Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
MacArthur Park has a large undocumented immigrant inhabitants, and a variety of huge issues to sort out — homelessness, a wide-open drug commerce and gang exercise. On some days areas of the park had been unusable for households. First responders rolled out on overdose calls, addicts took over an alley, and retailers struggled to remain open amid all of the mayhem.
In December, individuals sit on the nook of Alvarado Road and Wilshire Boulevard, an space identified for unlawful drug use within the Westlake neighborhood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
As I discovered final yr over the course of a number of months on the bottom, native officers waited too lengthy and moved too slowly in response to the long-festering disaster.
However a foolish army parade isn’t going to assist, until they really had been going after undocumented drug lords — however there was no speedy proof of that.
If the federal authorities needed to assist, L.A. might use extra assist for housing, drug interdiction and therapy. It might use a extra steady and equitable economic system that’s not undermined by tariff uncertainties and the president’s taunts of buying and selling companions.
As we all know in California, numerous industries depend on undocumented laborers. It’s an open secret, and has been for many years, not simply within the Golden State however throughout the nation, and but Washington has been unable to place collectively a smart immigration reform bundle through the years.
Congress bought shut final fall, however do I have to remind you what occurred?
That’s proper. Trump threatened lackey GOP Congressman, ordering the spineless ninnies to tug their assist.
Each time I see a helicopter now in L.A. — and as we all know, they’re like mosquitoes up there — I’m wondering if Trump has despatched within the Air Drive, with bombers coming in behind them.
My colleague Rachel Uranga lately reported that “ICE has not launched information on legal data of detainees booked into its custody.” However nonpublic information from the Cato Institute, a libertarian suppose tank, “confirmed about 9 out of 10 had by no means been convicted of a violent or property crime, and 30% haven’t any legal document. Probably the most frequent crimes are immigration and site visitors offenses.”
It’s nothing to warrant the terrorizing of neighborhoods and communities, nothing to warrant armed, masked brokers of unknown identities and businesses roaming our streets and nabbing staff at automobile washes, Dwelling Depots and eating places.
Federal immigration brokers close to MacArthur Park within the Westlake space on Monday.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Instances)
It’s nearly as terrifying as a number of different actual and existential threats:
An anti-vax crackpot is in control of the nation’s healthcare and medical analysis system.
Trump’s Huge Bonehead Invoice requires an $18-billion reduce for the Nationwide Institutes of Well being.
A number of the main researchers in medication and science are leaving the nation in a pattern that would find yourself being a catastrophic mind drain.
I bought an e-mail the opposite day from the Social Safety Administration informing me the “(SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Huge, Stunning Invoice.” I believed it was a joke at first — a satirical tackle the rise of an authoritarian regime.
However it was actual, and so are the cuts to the Nationwide Climate Service, to the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to the Federal Emergency Administration Company.
Meteorologists say excessive climate occasions just like the rainstorms that led to a river surge and killed dozens of youngsters and adults in Texas’ Hill Nation over the vacation weekend are going to develop into extra widespread.
Florida had a record-tying variety of hurricanes in 2024 with 11 of them, and $130 billion in harm.
Wildfires destroyed hundreds of properties in Southern California final yr and have gotten ever-more widespread world wide.
Temperatures within the Mediterranean Sea smashed data for June, and scientists are warning of dire impacts on sea life and meals chains.
To the president and his minions, the disaster is overblown.
It’s faux information.
And the federal authorities can’t be distracted from its core mission.
The week is younger, and there’s no telling which L.A. neighborhood might be invaded subsequent.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
