NEW YORK — Fresh off winning New York City’s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that a team including former city and federal officials — all women — would steer his transition to City Hall, and that he would “work every day to honor the trust that I now hold.”
“I and my team will build a City Hall capable of delivering on the promises of this campaign,” the mayor-elect said at a news conference, vowing that his administration would be both compassionate and capable.
He named political strategist Elana Leopold as executive director of the transition team. She will work with United Way of New York City President Grace Bonilla; former Deputy Mayor Melanie Hartzog, who was also a city budget official; former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan; and former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer.
With his win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, the 34-year-old democratic socialist will soon become the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage, the first born in Africa and the youngest mayor in more than a century.
He now faces the task of following through on his ambitious affordability agenda while navigating the bureaucratic challenges of City Hall and a hostile Trump administration.
“I’m confident in delivering these same policies that we ran on for the last year,” he said in an interview earlier Wednesday on cable news channel NY1.
More than 2 million New Yorkers cast ballots in the contest, the largest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years, according to the city’s Board of Elections. With roughly 90% of the votes counted, Mamdani held an approximately 9 percentage point lead over Cuomo.
Mamdani, who was criticized throughout the campaign for his thin resume, will now have to begin staffing his incoming administration and planning how to accomplish the ambitious but polarizing agenda that drove him to victory.
Among the campaign’s promises are free child care, free city bus service, city-run grocery stores and a new Department of Community Safety that would expand on an existing city initiative that sends mental health care workers, rather than police, to handle certain emergency calls. It is unclear how Mamdani will pay for such initiatives, given Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s steadfast opposition to his calls to raise taxes on wealthy people.
On Wednesday, he touted his support from Hochul and other state leaders as “endorsements of an agenda of affordability.”
His decisions around the leadership of the New York Police Department will also be closely watched. Mamdani was a fierce critic of the department in 2020, calling for “this rogue agency” to be defunded and slamming it as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” He has since apologized for those comments and has said he will ask the current NYPD commissioner to stay on the job.
Mamdani has already faced scrutiny from national Republicans, including President Trump, who have eagerly cast him as a threat and the face of a more radical Democratic Party that is out of step with mainstream America. Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding to the city — and even take it over — if Mamdani won.
”…AND SO IT BEGINS!” the president posted late Tuesday to his Truth Social site.
Mamdani, for his part, said at his news conference that “New Yorkers are facing twin crises in this moment: an authoritarian administration and an affordability crisis,” and that he would tackle both.
While saying he was committed to “Trump-proofing” the city — to protect poor residents against “the man who has the most power in this country,” as he explained — the mayor-elect also reiterated that he was interested in talking to the president about ”ways that we can work together to serve New Yorkers.” That could mean discussing the cost of living or the effect of cuts to the SNAP food aid program amid the federal government shutdown, Mamdani suggested.
“I will not mince my words when it comes to President Trump … and I will also always do so while leaving a door open to have that conversation,” Mamdani added.
Mamdani also said during his news conference and interviews that he had not heard from Cuomo or the city’s outgoing mayor, Eric Adams. He did speak with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said he would “let their respective speeches be the measuring stick for grace and leave it at that.”
In his victory speech to supporters, Mamdani wished Cuomo the best in private life, before adding: “Let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few.”
Asked about the comments Wednesday on NY1, Mamdani said he was “quite disappointed in the nature of the bigotry and the racism we saw in the final weeks.” He noted the millions of dollars in attack ads that were spent against him, some of which played into Islamophobic tropes.
Izaguirre and Colvin write for the Associated Press. AP writers Jake Offenhartz and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
BEIRUT — A U.S. diplomat apologized Thursday for using the word “animalistic” while calling for a gaggle of reporters to quiet down during a news conference in Lebanon earlier this week.
Tom Barrack, who is the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and envoy to Syria and has also been on a temporary assignment in Lebanon, said he didn’t intend to use the word “in a derogatory manner” but that his comments had been “inappropriate.”
Barrack visited Beirut along with a delegation of U.S. officials on Tuesday to discuss efforts by the Lebanese government to disarm the Hezbollah militant group and implementation of the ceasefire agreement that ended the latest war between Israel and the Hezbollah in November.
At the start of a news conference at the presidential palace, journalists shouted at Barrack to move to the podium after he started speaking from another spot in the room. After taking the podium Barrack told the crowd of journalists to “act civilized, act kind, act tolerant.” He threatened to end the conference early otherwise.
“The moment that this starts becoming chaotic, like animalistic, we’re gone,” said Barrack.
The comment sparked an outcry, with the Lebanese press syndicate calling for an apology and calling for a boycott of Barrack’s visits if none was issued. The Presidential Palace also issued a statement expressing regret for the comments made by “one of our guests” and thanking journalists for their “hard work.”
In an interview with Mario Nawfal, a media personality on the X platform, an excerpt of which was published Thursday, Barrack said, “Animalistic was a word that I didn’t use in a derogatory manner, I was just saying ‘can we calm down, can we find some tolerance and kindness, let’s be civilized.’ But it was inappropriate to do when the media was just doing their job.”
He added, “I should have been more generous with my time and more tolerant myself.”
Barrack’s visit came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces could begin withdrawing from territory they hold in southern Lebanon after the Lebanese government’s decision to disarm Hezbollah. When, how and in what order the Hezbollah disarmament and Israeli withdrawal would take place remain in dispute.
The Israeli army on Thursday launched airstrikes in southern Lebanon that it said were targeting “terrorist infrastructure and a rocket platform” belonging to Hezbollah.
Several hours later the Lebanese army announced that two of its soldiers had been killed while investigating an Israeli drone that had crashed in the area of Naqoura on the southern coast, which then exploded. It was not clear why the drone had fallen or what caused the explosion.
The strawberry delivery driver was making his last drop-off in Little Tokyo, unloading nearly a dozen boxes onto the sidewalk outside the Japanese American National Museum.
Inside the building, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies were holding a news conference about a Democratic Party plan to fight back against President Trump’s efforts to maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives through redistricting in Texas.
Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios knew nothing of the powerful men’s clash as he stacked cardboard boxes filled with ripe, red fruit Thursday morning. He also didn’t know that dozens of Border Patrol agents were massing nearby.
Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios at his 48th birthday celebration this year.
(Courtesy of the family)
Minguela was caught between the two spectacles. His life was about to be upended.
In the days that followed, Newsom accused the Trump administration of trying to intimidate the president’s political opponents by sending the immigration agents. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin has said the agents were “focused on enforcing the law” not on Newsom.
Newsom has since submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records from the administration about why agents arrived at the museum as he was announcing his latest skirmish with the president.
For Minguela, who has been in the country for close to a decade, that day felt a lot more personal. He was arrested by Border Patrol agents and now faces deportation back to Mexico. Speaking from behind a plexiglass window at the “B-18” federal detention center in downtown L.A. on Monday, Minguela stressed that he is not a criminal.
“One comes here to work, not commit crimes,” said Minguela, who wore the same red T-shirt and jeans he’d been arrested in four days prior.
When asked last week whether the person arrested outside the news conference had a criminal record, a Homeland Security spokesperson said the agency would share a criminal rap sheet when it was available. After four follow-up emails from a reporter, McLaughlin on Saturday said agents had arrested “two illegal aliens” in the vicinity of Newsom’s news conference — including “an alleged Tren de Aragua gang member and narcotics trafficker.”
Asked twice to clarify whether the alleged gang member and narcotics trafficker were the same person, Homeland Security officials did not respond. But when presented with Minguela’s biographical information Monday, the department said he had been arrested because he overstayed his visa — a civil, not criminal, offense.
Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told Fox News on Aug. 15 that operations were based on intelligence about the alleged Tren de Aragua gang member. They arrested that man two blocks away from Newsom’s news conference.
Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios took this image of a federal agent looking at his identification outside the Japanese American National Museum on Aug. 14.
(Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios)
Two law enforcement sources who asked to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to speak with the media told The Times they had received word from federal authorities that Little Tokyo had been targeted because of its proximity to the Newsom event.
For those who know Minguela, it felt like mala suerte — bad luck.
As Martha Franco, one of Minguela’s employers, put it, “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
::
Like every other weekday, Minguela rose before the sun to start his 2 a.m. delivery route Thursday. He had around eight places to hit.
He’d worked for the same produce company for around eight years and never missed a day.
That day, Minguela left his partner and their three children — ages 15, 12 and 7 — asleep in their home, hours before the kids would head off for their first day of school. His partner, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, had worked the night before as a cashier at a liquor store. She did not get off work until about 12:30 a.m. She brought him coffee as he started his day.
Shortly before 6 a.m., Minguela called his partner to wake her up so she could take the kids to school. Throughout the morning, they checked in with each other on how the day was progressing.
She called to warn him about immigration agents at Slauson and Miles avenues in Huntington Park. Over the last couple of months, as immigration raids became a part of daily life, the couple’s world had slowly shrunk.
Minguela had overstayed a tourist visa after fleeing the Mexican state of Coahuila in 2015 because of violence he faced there, his partner said. She said he had worked servicing ATMs there, was kidnapped twice and at one point was stabbed by people intent on stealing the money. After his employers cut staff, she said, he lost his job, helping drive his decision to leave.
Because he was undocumented, he rarely went out, leaving the house only for work and errands. Minguela began wondering whether it was even safe for him to pick up the kids from school, his partner said. He planned ahead, made copies of his keys and left money for his family in the event that he was grabbed by immigration agents.
That morning, he reassured his partner he was fine. He was heading to his last stop at a tea room in Little Tokyo.
“Ten mucho cuidado,” his partner told him.
Be very careful.
::
The Border Patrol agents descended on 1st Street in Little Tokyo about 11:30 a.m., just as Newsom’s news conference got underway.
They were decked out in camouflage and helmets, their faces obscured by black masks. One wore an American flag neck gaiter. They were armed, some with AR-15-style weapons.
Nearby, Minguela was busy unloading several boxes of strawberries and a box of apples. He didn’t notice the agents until they were close behind him. Then, he ducked back inside the van.
A video shared with The Times shows at least eight Border Patrol agents as they passed the van, its side door wide-open. They did not stop. Then, one appeared to double back and peek inside.
Minguela said he feels he was targeted based on his physical appearance.
When the agent began asking him questions, Minguela said he pulled a red “know your rights” card out of his wallet and handed it to the agent.
“This is of no use to me,” he said the agent told him. Another agent soon joined them.
Minguela told them he didn’t have to talk. But they kept asking questions, he said. What was his nationality? What was his name? Did he have papers?
“They demanded I show them some kind of identification,” he said. “Insisting, insisting.”
The agents were armed, and Minguela said he grew scared. Believing he had no choice, Minguela said, he gave one of the agents his California driver’s license.
Minguela tried to call his partner twice, but she was at a doctor’s appointment and couldn’t answer. At 11:22 a.m., he sent her three WhatsApp messages:
“Amor ya me agarró la migra..no te preocupes.”
“Todo va a estar bien.”
“Diosito nos va a ayudar mucho.”
Federal agents produced a show of force outside the Japanese American National Museum, where Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a redistricting news conference on Aug. 14.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
Immigration had gotten him, he said, but everything would be fine. God would help them, he assured her.
Minguela sent her a picture of an agent holding his license and seemingly plugging the information from it into a phone. Then, the agent arrested him.
Video captured Minguela, hands cuffed behind his back, as the agent linked an arm through his. He walked Minguela away from the van, toward Bovino.
After conferring with colleagues, the agent walked Minguela back toward his delivery van. Bovino patted the agent on the back and said, “Well done.”
At about the same time, one of Minguela’s employers, Isaias Franco, received a call from Little Tokyo warning him about the immigration activity. He immediately called Minguela, whose cell number is saved in his phone under “paisa,” countryman. Both hail from the Mexican city of Torreón.
No answer.
Franco texted him, trying to tell him what was unfolding.
By that time, though, Minguela was already in handcuffs.
::
Hours before visitation began at the detention center in downtown L.A. on Monday, families began lining up along a driveway where “B-18” was stamped in black on a concrete wall.
Someone had scrawled on the ground in chalk: “Abolish ICE” and “Viva La Raza.” Another message read, “Civil disobedience becomes a duty when the state becomes lawless and corrupt.”
By 11:30 a.m., 18 people were waiting for visitation to start at 1 p.m. In less than an hour, that number had ballooned to 33.
Three siblings there to visit their uncle who had been arrested at a car wash in Long Beach the day before. A woman whose uncle was taken from a Home Depot in Pasadena. Two sisters whose loved one had been arrested at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in.
They carried bags of medication and sweaters for detained loved ones, because they’d heard it was cold inside. Each person hoped to get in before visitation ended at 4 p.m., although it seemed increasingly unlikely for those at the back of the line.
Martha and Isaias, Minguela’s employers, were among the hopeful. It was their third attempt to see him. The day of Minguela’s arrest, they got there too late.
The next day, they arrived earlier and were in luck. On the advice of others in line, they brought a jacket to keep Minguela warm.
In the years they’ve employed Minguela, they’ve only ever seen his serious, professional side. But during the five minutes they got to visit with him Friday, he spent most of it in tears, hardly able to speak.
The couple assured him they would help however they could.
They returned on Monday, this time bringing a blue Ralph Lauren shirt and a pair of black New Balance socks so he could change clothing. Isaias and the couple’s son, Carlos, had both come, despite starting their workday at 2 a.m.
“We’re going to be with him until the end,” Martha said. “He’s part of our family. He’s one of us.”
As the hours wore on, people in line squatted or sat on the concrete to rest their aching legs. Martha flitted around, advising people to bring sweaters for loved ones and letting them know the officers allowed in only one item of clothing for each detained person.
By the start of visitation, 44 people were in line. Martha was No. 19. Families exited red-eyed, tears dripping down their cheeks after getting only a few minutes with their loved ones.
Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios several years ago, with his son.
(Courtesy of the family)
About 3 p.m., after waiting three and a half hours, the Francos handed the officer their passports and identification, before finally making it inside. They had to turn off their phones. They could give Minguela only the T-shirt. The officer said no to the socks, a prohibited second item of clothing.
Minguela beamed when he saw the Francos, who greeted him through the plexiglass window. He was trying to maintain his spirits, but said he felt “impotente.” Powerless.
The Francos told him not to sign anything.
“Vamos a estar con usted,” Isaias told Minguela, letting him know they would be with him. He and Carlos fist bumped Minguela through the Plexiglass.
“Échale ganas,” Isaias added, keep going.
::
Minguela’s children have hardly stopped crying since his arrest.
During the eight years he and his partner have been together, he’s helped raise her two children and their 7-year-old son, who is autistic.
Minguela’s lawyer, Alex Galvez, said the hope is that his client will be released on bond, as he initially entered the country lawfully and is the primary breadwinner for the family. The lawyer said he believes Minguela was arrested in defiance of a federal judge’s order that immigration authorities cannot racially profile people or use roving patrols to target immigrants.
“It was a political opportunity. He was one of the two guys picked up right during Newsom’s press conference,” Galvez said. “They had to show something for it.”
Just days before his arrest, Minguela’s family had celebrated his 48th birthday. His partner made him his favorite dish, shrimp ceviche.
Her birthday was Tuesday. The family had planned to go on a rare outing for a dinner of enchiladas de mole.
But they spent the day without him. There was no celebration.
The children asked their mother, as they have every day for nearly a week: When is papá coming home?
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO — In a common insult the Trump administration uses against dissidents of federal policy, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called a California judge a “communist” after she blocked roving immigration arrests based on race alone.
The MAGA-embraced epithet from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official press office in response, however, was hardly typical for a Democratic politician.
“This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution, and his attempt to replace the sovereignty of the people with autocracy,” the California governor’s office posted on social media. “Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder.”
Popular among the far right and the gutters of social media, the term is used to insult liberals as weak and is also short for “cuckold,” which refers to the husband of an unfaithful wife.
The low blow sanctioned by a potential 2028 presidential candidate set a new paradigm for the political left that has long embraced Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” motto to rise above the callousness of Trump and his acolytes.
It’s also an example of Newsom’s more aggressive social media strategy.
This week the governor posted memes of Trump with child molester and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Shortly after the Department of Homeland Security detained and handcuffed U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla at a news conference in June, state Assemblymember Joe Patterson (R-Rockland) alleged on X that he would be treated the same way if he interrupted an event held by the governor.
“I’d politely ask you to leave,” retorted Newsom’s communications director, Izzy Gardon. “Though you do not deserve politeness in this moment for this grotesque tweet, you bald little man.” (Patterson later added “Bald little man” to his profile on the social media site.)
The governor defended the more combative posture at a recent news conference. He noted that Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, had used the word last month when he called Newsom “the biggest cuck in politics.”
“I don’t think they understand any other kind of language, so I have no apologies for standing tall and firm and pushing back against their cruelty,” Newsom said.
The governor said publicly said that the decision to militarize Los Angeles showed him that you can’t work with the president, only for him. With federal troops on the ground, his aides said, Newsom also wanted to stand up for California, concerned about what would happen if he didn’t.
The directive was to match the tactics emanating from the White House and meet Trump and his allies where they are. Forget the high road.
Over the last month, they’ve taken on more fights with Newsom’s critics, reacted more quickly to shoot down misinformation about the governor or California, challenged narratives they find to be untrue, or unfair, and taken many of their own shots.
“Sometimes the best way to challenge a bully is to punch them in the metaphorical face,” said Bob Salladay, Newsom’s top communications advisor. “These tactics may seem extreme to some and they are, but there’s a significant difference here: We’re targeting powerful forces that are ripping apart this country, using their own words and tactics. Trump and Stephen Miller are attacking the powerless like every fascist bully before them.”
Newsom’s aides say the strategy is working.
The governor’s personal social media accounts gained 2.3 million new followers, including over 1 million each on TikTok and Instagram, and more than 883 million views from June 6 to July 6, according to his tallies.
Podcasters and social media influencers, such as Fred Wellman and Brian Tyler Cohen, boosted the interest with their own posts about the governor. On TikTok in particular, there’s a growing ecosystem of people who make videos about his videos.
Newsom’s official state accounts also experienced an exponential rise in followers and engagement in June.
The attention bodes well for a politician considering a bid for president. His aides argue that the strategy benefits California by shutting down misinformation and helping people understand what’s really going on.
“The thing that he does so well these days is that he responds rapidly, and he responds rapidly in a way that’s very snackable to the average consumer of news,” said Karen North, a professor of digital social media at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.
North pointed to the adage that “it takes a minute to say a sound bite, but an hour to explain why it is false.”
Republicans have been considered masters of sound bites for decades, and Democrats are often criticized for trying to explain the details of policies when people just want to hear the bottom line.
Newsom is breaking that mold, she said.
“He has emerged as the person willing and able to take on the president, but in some ways, they use the same playbook of quick, engaging responses that are easy for people to understand without any analysis,” North said. “Newsom has the advantage of playing defense as an offense. So when the president says something that is problematic to California or problematic to everyday citizens, Gavin Newsom is laser-focused and ready to strike back without any hesitation, and in a way that’s very simple and very engaging.”
In some ways, the governor learned the hard way after Trump used his platforms to label Newsom as “incompetent” and blame him for the Los Angeles wildfires in January. The president made a barrage of claims at news conferences and on the social media site Truth Social about dry reservoirs, the need to transfer more water from Northern to Southern California, a lack of forest management and empty fire hydrants that went viral, leaving Newsom on the back foot defending himself.
When Trump sent the National Guard into Los Angeles, the governor almost immediately went on the attack to counter the president’s claims that he deployed troops to control lawlessness that Newsom had allowed. The governor’s office said his June 10 speech, which framed Trump as unnecessarily invading an American city for his own political gain, received 41 million views.
Although Newsom’s aggression has received praise from some Democrats, it’s also a “a massive pivot from being a Bannon bro,” said Eric Jaye, a former senior advisor to Newsom turned critic who opposed his 2018 gubernatorial bid.
Jaye is referring to the “This is Gavin Newsom” podcast, where the governor flummoxed Democrats who thought he appeared too chummy with Trump campaign architect Steve Bannon, conservative personality Charlie Kirk and others close to the president.
Jaye credited Newsom with “a very quick turnaround,” which “saved himself.”
But now, with his amped-up social media presence, Newsom runs the risk of offending voters who miss respectful political discourse.
Trump’s derogatory nicknames for his opponents, such as calling Newsom “Newscum” or Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” have not appeared to cause the president much political harm. He embraced “lock her up” chants about Hillary Clinton in 2016 and constantly mocked Joe Biden before the former president dropped out of the 2024 presidential contest. Trump still won both races.
North said Trump also has the benefit of saying things that appear “passionate and reckless,” but people don’t believe he’s going to follow through.
As a potential presidential contender, the question is whether Newsom can use words such as “cuck” and say he wants to change laws to redistrict California to benefit Democrats in the midterm elections without worrying people and seeming too Trump-like to be palatable to voters who detest the president’s antics.
“It has to be disturbing to a lot of people if the new era of politics involves hostile personal attacks,” North said.
Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
Sen. Alex Padilla blasted the Trump administration Saturday, calling it “petty and unserious” after Vice President JD Vance referred to him as “Jose” during a news conference in Los Angeles the previous day.
“He knows my name,” Padilla said in an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday morning.
Vance visited Los Angeles on Friday for less than five hours after several weeks of federal immigration raids in the city and surrounding areas, sparking protests and backlash from state and local officials.
Padilla was thrown into the heated nationwide immigration debate when he was dragged to the ground by federal law enforcement officers and briefly detained when he attempted to ask U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question during a news conference earlier this month.
Vance characterized the move by California’s first Latino senator as “political theater” in his remarks.
“I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t a theater, and that’s all it is,” Vance said.
Vance served alongside Padilla in the Senate and is now the president of the upper chamber of Congress. Vance’s press secretary, Taylor Van Kirk, told Politico that the vice president misspoke and “must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.”
Padilla, in his TV interview, said he broke no laws.
He suggested the misnaming was intentional — and a reflection of the administration’s skewed priorities.
“He’s the vice president of the United States.” Padilla said. “You think he’d take the the situation in Los Angeles more seriously.”
Padilla said Vance might instead have taken the opportunity to talk to families or employers affected by raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Other California Democrats rallied behind Padilla after the misnaming incident.
“Calling him ‘Jose Padilla’ is not an accident,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a Friday post on the social media platform X.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass highlighted racial undertones in Vance’s comments.
“I guess he just looked like anybody to you, but he’s not just anybody to us,” she said during a press conference on Friday. “He is our senator.”
This will strike the literal-minded as illogical, but I think Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, had a righteous point when he declared at a news conference with Southern California mayors that immigrants being rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in communities like his “are Americans, whether they have a document or they don’t.”
“The president keeps talking about a foreign invasion,” Flores told me Thursday. “He keeps trying to paint us as the other. I say, ‘No, you are dealing with Americans.’”
California’s estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who have lived among us for years, for decades, who work and pay taxes here, who have sent their American-born children to schools here, have all the responsibilities of citizens minus many of the rights. Yes, technically, they have broken the law. (For that matter, so has President Trump, a felon, and he continues to violate the Constitution day after day, as his mounting court losses attest.)
But our region’s undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants are inextricably embedded in our lives. They care for our children, build our homes, dig our ditches, trim our trees, clean our homes, hotels and businesses, wash our dishes, pick our crops, sew our clothes. Lots own small businesses, are paying mortgages, attend universities, rise in their professions. In 2013, I wrote about Sergio Garcia, the first undocumented immigrant admitted to the California Bar. Since then, he has become a U.S. citizen and owns a personal injury law firm.
These Californians are far less likely to break the law than native-born Americans, and they do not deserve the reign of terror being inflicted on them by the Trump administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has pointlessly but theatrically called in the Marines.
“So we started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons gang members, drug dealers,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who organized the mayors’ news conference last week, “but when you raid Home Depot and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe. You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”
And please, let’s not forget that when Congress came together and hammered out a bipartisan immigration reform bill under President Biden, Trump demanded Republicans kill it because he did not want a rational policy, he wanted to be able to keep hammering Democrats on the issue.
But it seems there is more going on here than rounding up undocumented immigrants and terrorizing their families. We seem to have entered the “punish California” phase of Trump 2.0.
“Trump has a hyperfocus on California, on how to hurt the economy and cause chaos, and he is really doubling down on that campaign,” Flores told me. He has a point.
“We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor placed on this country,” Noem told reporters Thursday at a news conference in the Westwood federal building, during which California Sen. Alex Padilla was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed face down for daring to ask her a question. “We are not going away.”
So now we’re talking about regime change? (As former Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe put it on Bluesky, the use of military force aimed at displacing democratically elected leaders “is the very definition of a coup.”)
Noem’s noxious mix of willful ignorance and inflammatory rhetoric is almost too ludicrous to mock. It goes hand in hand with Trump’s silly declaration that our city has been set aflame by rioters, that without the military patrolling our streets, Los Angeles “would be a crime scene like we haven’t seen in years,” and that “paid insurrectionists” have fueled the anti-ICE protests.
What we are seeing play out in the news and in our neighborhoods is the willful infliction of fear, trauma and intimidation designed to spark a violent response, and the warping of reality to soften the ground for further Trump administration incursions into blue states, America’s bulwark against his autocratic aspirations.
For weeks, Trump has been scheming to deprive California — probably illegally — of federal funding for public schools and universities, citing resistance to his executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, on immigration, on environmental regulations, etc.
And yet, because he is perhaps the world’s most ignorant head of state, he seems to have suddenly realized that crippling the California economy might be bad politics for him. On Thursday, he suggested in his own jumbled way that perhaps deporting thousands of the state’s farm and hospitality workers might cause pain to his friends, their employers. (Central Valley growers and agribusiness PACs, for example, overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2024.)
“Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers. They’ve worked for them for 20 years,” Trump said. “They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that.”
Like a lot of Californians, I feel helpless in the face of this assault on immigrants.
I thought about a Guatemalan, a father of three young American-born children, who has a thriving business hauling junk. I met him a couple of years ago at my local Home Depot, and have hired him a few times to haul away household detritus. Once, after I couldn’t get the city to help, he hauled off a small dune’s worth of sand at the end of my street that had become the local dogs’ pee pad.
I called him this week — I have more stuff that I need to get rid of, and I was pretty sure he could use the work. Early Friday morning, he arrived on time with two workers. He said hadn’t been able to work in two weeks but was hopeful he’d be able to return to Home Depot soon.
“How are your kids doing?” I asked.
“They worry,” he said. “They ask, ‘What will we do if you’re deported?’”
He tells them not to fret, that things will soon be back to normal. After he drove off, he texted: “Thank you so much for helping me today. God bless you.”
No, God bless him. For working hard. For being a good dad. And for still believing, against the odds, in the American dream.
Times photographer Luke Johnson captured the moment when authorities tackled and handcuffed Sen. Alex Padilla on Thursday when he interrupted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles.
Johnson’s images document many of the key moments of an encounter that has sparked controversy amid President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Padilla attempts to speak
The senator was standing near a wall on one side of the room, then tried to interrupt Noem to ask a question.
“I’m Senator Alex Padilla,” he said, as one agent grabbed his jacket and shoved him backward on the chest and arm. “I have questions for the secretary, because the fact of the matter is that half a dozen violent criminals that you’re rotating on your — on your …”
“Hands off!” Padilla said, as three agents pushed him into a separate room.
Agent grabs him
Padilla is taken down
Videos from the press conference show agents forcing Padilla to his knees and handcuffing him.
Padilla speaks out
The senator later held a press conference to describe what happened.
“I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed,” Padilla said. “I was not arrested. I was not detained.”
If this is how the Trump administration treats a “senator with a question,” Padilla said, with tears in his eyes, “I can only imagine what they’re doing to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community.”
