tactics

Russian forces have spread rapidly through Pokrovsk, the city in Ukraine’s east where the warring sides have concentrated their manpower and tactical ingenuity during the past week, in what may be a final culmination of a 21-month battle.

Geolocated footage placed Russian troops in central, northern and northeastern Pokrovsk, said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank.

Russia sees control of Pokrovsk and neighbouring Myrnohrad as essential to capturing the remaining unoccupied parts of the Donetsk region.

It set its sights on the city almost two years ago, after capturing Avdiivka, 39km (24 miles) to the east.

Ukraine sees the defence of the city as a means of eroding Russian manpower and buying time for the “fortress belt” of Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk, the largest remaining and most heavily defended cities of Donetsk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded their surrender as part of a land swap and ceasefire he discussed with United States President Donald Trump last August. Ukraine has refused.

A recent US intelligence assessment said Putin was more determined than ever to prevail on the battlefield in Ukraine, NBC reported.

Russia seems to have outmanoeuvred Ukraine by striking its drone operators before they had time to deploy, and cutting off resupply routes at critical points.

“Operational and tactical aircraft, backed by drones, significantly disrupted the Ukrainian army’s logistics in Pokrovsk,” said Russia’s Ministry of Defence on Friday. It said it had destroyed two out of three bridges across the Vovcha River, used by Ukrainian logistics to reach the city.

“Unfortunately, everything is sad in the Pokrovsk direction,” wrote a Ukrainian drone unit calling itself Peaky Blinders on the messaging app Telegram. “The intensity of movements is so great that drone operators simply do not have time to lift the [drone] overboard.”

On October 29, Ukrainian commanders reported only 200 Russian soldiers in Pokrovsk.

Peaky Blinders said Russia was sending as many as 300 into the city a day, “in groups of three people with the expectation that two will be destroyed”.

By neutralising Ukraine’s drone operators and using fibre optic drones immune to jamming, Russia reportedly acquired a numerical drone advantage in the city’s vicinity.

Ukrainian commanders said Russia also took advantage of wet weather, which disadvantaged the use of light, first-person-view drones.

Ukrainian military observer Konstantyn Mashovets said the Russian command had developed these new infiltration tactics to exploit Ukrainian vulnerabilities – a lack of manpower and gaps among their units.

“The Russian command ‘tried different options’ for some time,” said Mashovets.

“Russian technical innovations, such as first-person-view drones with increased ranges, thermobaric warheads, and ‘sleeper’ or ‘waiter’ drones along [ground lines of communication], allowed Russian forces to … restrict Ukrainian troop movements, evacuations, and logistics,” the ISW said.

As recently as Saturday, Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii framed the battle as one of counterattack rather than defence.

“A comprehensive operation to destroy and push out enemy forces from Pokrovsk is ongoing,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “There is no encirclement or blockade of the cities.”

Yet there was clearly alarm. Ukraine sent its intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, to the Pokrovsk area with military intelligence (GUR) forces to keep supply lines open.

Two Ukrainian military sources told the Reuters news agency that the GUR had successfully landed at least 10 operators in a Blackhawk helicopter near Pokrovsk on Friday.

On Saturday, Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed “an operation to deploy a GUR special operations group by a helicopter in 1km (0.6 miles) northwest of [Pokrovsk] was thwarted. All 11 militants who disembarked from the helicopter have been neutralised.”

It was unclear whether the two reports referred to the same group.

Deep air strikes

Russia kept up a separate campaign to destroy Ukraine’s electricity and gas infrastructure, launching 1,448 drones and 74 missiles into the rear of the country from October 30 to November 5.

Ukraine said it intercepted 86 percent of the drones but just less than half the missiles, such that 208 drones and 41 missiles found their targets.

With US help, Ukraine has responded with strikes on Russian refineries and oil export terminals.

Ukraine appeared on Sunday to strike both a Russian oil terminal and, for the first time, two foreign civilian tankers taking on oil there.

Video appeared to show the tankers at Tuapse terminal on the Black Sea on fire, and the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region confirmed the hit.

“As a result of the drone attack on the port of Tuapse on the night of November 2, two foreign civilian ships were damaged,” he said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it intercepted another 238 Ukrainian long-range drones overnight.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said it struck the Lukoil refinery in Kstovo in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow.

Russian regional authorities also said Ukraine attempted to damage a petrochemical plant in Bashkortostan, 1,500km (930 miles) east of Ukraine.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it shot down 204 Ukrainian long-range drones overnight.

According to the head of Ukraine’s State Security Service, SBU, Kyiv’s forces have struck 160 oil and energy facilities in Russia this year.

Vasyl Maliuk said a special SBU operation had destroyed a hypersonic ballistic Oreshnik missile on Russian soil.

“One of the three Oreshniks was successfully destroyed on their (Russian) territory at Kapustin Yar,” Maliuk briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday.

Russia unveiled the Oreshnik with a strike on the city of Dnipro a year ago. It says it will deploy the missile in Belarus by December.

Ukraine has been lobbying the US government for Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of 2,500km (1,550 miles). So far, Trump has refused, on the basis that “we need them too.”

The Pentagon cleared Ukraine to receive Tomahawk missiles, after determining this would not deprive the US military of the stockpile it needs, CNN reported last week, quoting unnamed US and European officials.

The political decision now rests with Trump on whether to send those missiles or not. The report did not specify how many Ukraine could have.

Oct. 20 (UPI) — Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officials are expected to appear in court on Monday to after a judge last week demanded the agency answer questions about its operations in Chicago.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis for the Northern District of Illinois on Friday ordered ICE and Border Patrol officers to wear body cameras. They were expected in court to explain their tactics, including the use of tear gas, as officers and residents have clashed across the city.

The case was brought as Operation Midway Blitz has led to the arrest of more than 1,000 people in Illinois over the past month after the Trump administration sent federal forces there.

Ellis, who was nominated for the bench by former President Barack Obama, on Thursday ordered federal agents to stop dispersing crowds from places they are legally permitted to be, stop using tear gas on people who are not a threat and start wearing the cameras.

On Friday, she reiterated these orders to both agencies and noted that “that wasn’t a suggestion … it’s not up for debate.”

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleged that the tactics used by both agencies, which have included using pepper balls and pepper spray against people with no warning, are violating their constitutional rights — and the agencies continue to use them, despite Ellis ordering them to stop in early October.

Both agencies have not followed the judicial orders, and Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin went so far as to suggest they do not exist.

“There is currently no order requiring body cameras, and any suggestion to the contrary is false reporting,” she said, adding that “were a court to enter such an order in the future, it would be an act of extreme judicial activism.”

WIMBLEDON legends are thrilled to see Thomas Tuchel go full Crazy Gang in England’s bid for World Cup glory.

The England boss is taking a leaf out of the Dons playbook by telling his Three Lions to use long throws and big goal-kicks to secure their first major trophy since 1966.

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Wimbledon were renowned for their direct and physical style of play both during the 1980s and 1990s.

As well as climbing from non-league to the top tier, they also pulled off one of football’s biggest shocks to beat Liverpool in the 1988 FA Cup final at Wembley.

Former Dons manager Dave Bassett told Sun Sport: “I think Tuchel’s on the right lines.

“The purists have been living in fantasy land. Even Manchester City use the long ball more. Our old ways are catching on.

“If you can get the ball forward — not aimlessly — and get players running in behind, it unsettles defences.

“People panic more with long throws than they ever do with corners — they become frightened to death.

“Going sideways and backwards doesn’t get you goals.

“We didn’t hang around. The ­players knew it was one-touch and going into the box. But we did not get the credit because people called it anti-football.”

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Bassett backs Tuchel’s decision to leave Jude Bellingham out of his latest squad — raising the ­possibility the Real Madrid superstar may not even feature in the USA, Canada and Mexico next summer.

The 81-year-old added: “Tuchel needs to decide what formation he wants and which players best suit his system and share his vision.

“Bellingham is a very good player but if he’s not conducive to the team spirit, then tough luck on Bellingham. One person cannot hold the team to ransom.

“When you go away, Tuchel can’t have moody, selfish people who are not sold on his ideas.

“If players are suspect he won’t take them — even if they may be great players.”

Bobby Gould took the reins after Bassett fell out with Dons owner Sam Hammam — and led them to their most famous win.

His first masterstroke after taking over the Crazy Gang was hiring ex-England coach Don Howe.

And Gould, 79, said: “England’s loss was Wimbledon’s gain with Don.

“We just added a bit more quality rather than ripping it up and starting again. It worked wonders.

“Don was Arsenal through and through and steeped in tradition — but even he got into the mind games.

“In the Wembley dressing room he told every player and staff member to put their watch back ten minutes.

“When the referee came to tell us to get into the tunnel, Don said, ‘no, not yet your watch must be wrong’. So off the ref went, we kept Kenny Dalglish & Co waiting — and that was our first ­victory of the day.”

Tuchel’s England exploits remind Gould of the Dons’ good old days.

He added: “England have scored a couple of goals under Tuchel right out of the Wimbledon playbook.

“But it showed our much-maligned tactics still work because the opposition don’t know what’s hit them when you get forward quickly and slaughter them with crosses or long throws.

“Mentally and physically you’ve got to be in it together and that gets the opposition thinking, ‘what have we got to do to stop them?’”

Wembley goal hero Lawrie Sanchez went on to use his Wimbledon experience as Northern Ireland manager.

And he masterminded a shock 1-0 victory over Sven-Goran Eriksson’s England at Windsor Park 20 years ago.

Sanchez, 65, said: “The thing the Crazy Gang had is we were greater than the sum of our parts.

“Whether you could get away with half the gamesmanship we got up to with 24 cameras focused on games is a different matter.

“But on the football side, the set-plays, strength of the characters, strong team ethic and belief in what we were doing would still stand us in good stead.

“We were stats-based well before stats came into play and our set-plays were the logical development from that stat-based stuff. We did set-plays in training ­boringly for hours on Thursdays and Fridays — but it paid off.

“Whether you can get that in an England team in a short space of time is a different matter.

“But they’ve been doing the same thing for the last 59 years and not won anything.”

Full-back Nigel Winterburn helped Wimbledon to a couple of promotions under Bassett but left for Arsenal a year before the cup glory.

He said: “No one liked us because of the way we played but we were often cast-offs with a determination to prove people wrong.

“Boy-oh-boy we intimidated a lot of teams.”

But the likes of John ­Fashanu and Vinny Jones met their match when they faced the British Army.

Winterburn, 61, said: “Dave Bassett liked to bond everyone in pre-season.

“We’d get a typed itinerary saying which five-star hotel awaited.

“But we would end up in the most basic places — usually with the army.

“Once we had to camp out overnight, attack a mock fort and rescue a so-called prisoner.

“It ended up in chaos with Fash and Vinny fighting soldiers.

“There were weird and wonderful times. It forged a togetherness that made sure we were always there to help team-mates.”

England are playing more directly whilst empowering their exciting wingers to showcase their quality, but Tuchel isn’t forgetting to use pragmatic solutions, notably in the form of long throws.

After a recent press conference, he stated “the long throw-in is back”. This is a fair conclusion considering the opening weekend of Premier League football saw an average of 3.2 long throws per game, up from 1.52 the season before.

When facing teams that stubbornly deeply defend their own box, the first goal is paramount in forcing teams to come out, opening up space to attack.

The use of throw-in situations as set-pieces give teams an additional chance to initially break that deadlock and require the appropriate attention.

Clever free-kicks and corner routines are key too, and it is clear Tuchel and his backroom staff have made this central to their system.

The opening goal against Serbia completely changed the direction of the game and from a well-worked corner.

Serbia set up to defend the corner in a zonal fashion, staying in specific zones.

Following Rice’s out-swinging cross, Serbia’s defenders were drawn to the ball but the positioning of England’s players in front of the Serbians meant they could stand in the way, blocking them from getting to the ball. Kane lingered deeper and was able to score, uncontested.

It was calculated, deliberate and effective with England trying the same routine earlier in the game prior to the goal.

BBC Sport’s Chris Sutton says Ange Postecoglou will have learned from his time at Tottenham and will adapt his playing style to suit the squad at Nottingham Forest after being named manager.

READ MORE: ‘We want trophies’ – Postecoglou replaces Nuno at Forest

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Underdog conservative channel Newsmax is challenging Rupert Murdoch’s dominant Fox News in court.

Newsmax sued Fox News parent firm Fox Corp. Wednesday, accusing Murdoch’s television company of anti-competitive behavior designed to squeeze rivals to maintain its “unlawful monopolization of the Right-leaning Pay TV News Market.”

Fox has “engaged in an exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance in the market … resulting in suppression of competition in that market that harms consumers, competition and Newsmax Broadcasting,” the Boca Raton, Fla., firm said in its federal lawsuit filed in Miami.

Politically conservative news is big business, and Murdoch has mined that lucrative niche since launching Fox News in 1996 with network architect Roger Ailes. Newsmax launched as an alternative nearly two decades later, in 2014. By that time, Fox News was well established as the go-to outlet for Republicans and other political conservatives.

In its 31-page complaint, Newsmax accused Fox of using its market clout to discourage pay-TV distributors from carrying or promoting Newsmax and other rival conservative news outlets. Fox allegedly imposed “financial penalties on distributors if they carry Newsmax” in basic cable packages, and other obstacles, including charging higher fees or requiring carriage of “little-watched channels like Fox Business,” according to the lawsuit.

“But for Fox’s anticompetitive behavior, Newsmax would have achieved greater pay TV distribution, seen its audience and ratings grow sooner, gained earlier ‘critical mass’ for major advertisers and become, overall, a more valuable media property,” Newsmax said in its lawsuit.

Newsmax became a publicly traded company earlier this year. It raised $75 million through its initial public offering, but its stock, which entered the market at about $83 a share, closed Wednesday down nearly 1% to $13.86.

Fox News scoffed at the lawsuit.

“Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers,” the network said in a statement.

Newsmax, in its complaint, argued that Fox throws its weight around when striking deals with digital media platforms, including Hulu + Live TV, DirecTV+, Sling TV and YouTube TV, which now make up about 30% of the pay-TV market. As a result, some pay-TV providers have little incentive to carry or promote Newsmax, the lawsuit alleges.

Fox’s commanding position has allowed the company to extract “supra-competitive carriage fees,” according to Newsmax. Fox charges pay-TV distributors nearly $2.20 per subscriber per month to carry Fox News. That’s double CNN’s fees and about six times MSNBC’s carriage fee, Newsmax said.

“These inflated costs have been or likely will be passed on to consumers,” Newsmax said in a statement.

Fox News consistently beats CNN and MSNBC in the Nielsen ratings. It was the No. 1 traditional TV network overall in July, beating ABC, NBC and CBS, according to Nielsen.

Newsmax also alleged Fox News resorts to intimidation campaigns, including pressuring guests not to appear on Newsmax. “It also hired private investigators targeting Newsmax executives to damage the company’s credibility,” according to a Newsmax statement.

Newsmax, in its lawsuit, contends the market is not the universe of cable news channels, including CNN and MSNBC. Instead, it contends the politically conservative news space is a market unto itself, controlled almost entirely by Fox.

“Right-leaning pay TV news has been a cornerstone of American television, drawing tens of millions of viewers who identify with, or prefer, right-leaning perspectives on politics, current events, and cultural debates,” the Newsmax lawsuit said.

“A large segment of consumers of political news and media seeks news, commentary, and analysis that aligns with or speaks to their political viewpoints,” the lawsuit said. “These right-leaning viewers treat other right-leaning news channels as their next best substitute — and do not consider left-leaning news outlets as adequate substitutes for right-leaning news channels.”

Newsmax is seeking a jury trial and unspecified financial damages. It also wants a judge to declare Fox’s conduct unlawful under the Sherman Act and Florida’s anti-competition laws and prevent Fox from striking exclusionary contracts.

“This lawsuit is about restoring fairness to the market and ensuring that Americans have real choice in the news they watch,” Newsmax Chief Executive Christopher Ruddy said in a statement.

If the world is asked in a random exercise to name leaders who have weaponized nationalism, crises, and emotional triggers in world history, the textbook examples will always consist of three defining figures in international politics: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Benito Mussolini. Nonetheless, there are other highly famous political characters as well that mastered the art of political manipulation, realpolitik, and conflict engineering. One of them, like the previous crisis constructors, was not only an ideologue or a demagogue but also a strategic architect of German unification and realpolitik, Otto Von Bismarck.From orchestrating wars to rallying political crises, applying ruthless pragmatism to tapping the public’s pulse for unification, and operating narratives to politically alienating adversaries, the pattern of urgency, manipulation, and crisis manufacturing for peace in Europe continues to synchronize with the coursebook that conflict agitators follow in the 21st century.

From Trump to Modi, using conflicts as a unifier in domestic politics and a reinforcer for global overlordship, or regional dominion, has been the coursebook that has set a solid ground for performative crisis politics to take center stage. The national or global urgency engineered around military operations, internal threats, and the adventures of geopolitical adversaries gives a cogent justification model for crisis exaggeration. The use of national security as a justified political tool to wage war has been a mainstay for regional security and strategic stability to thrive in a world of permacrisis. The adventures from perilous military maneuvers, Operation Midnight Hammer to Operation Sindoor, both act as textbook examples of how populist leaders weaponize crises and geopolitical tensions to gauge the international reaction. The political maneuvering that encircles the psychological urgency, which is constructed around a tense war climate, helps to update the scorecards for the states losing their diplomatic traction. Even if Trump continues to use tariffs and geopolitical crises to flex America’s Goliath-like posture in international politics, the looming reactive outbursts that will emanate from the staggering public debt of America might become its political doomsday. Therefore, as long as the self-proclamation of Nobel Prize seeking continues, crisis termination dynamics will remain complex, transitory, and inflamed as Bismarckian practices continue to juggle regional adversaries. Public debt, economic protectionism, coercive diplomacy, and realpolitik continue to redirect conflict agitators and Trump’s diplomatic canvas in global politics, but fracturing de-dollarization adventures frequently maim America’s global dominion.

The persistence of the world to engage in perpetual low-level conflicts with diplomatic stalemates, all while trying to avoid full-scale wars but also achieve strategic complacency, has caused an overlap of concepts in international security. From deterrence theories to compellence tactics and securitization to preventive or preemptive strikes, the world has engaged in a cyclical discourse where compellence has emerged as a dominating force to calculate the adversary’s response and outmaneuver them in psychological scorecards. The constantly pushed incremental pressure and false dilemma create a risk-prone environment for regional rivals to engage in a miscalculated scenario of multiple escalation dynamics, which Bismarck did in the Franco-Prussian War. These manipulative practices to provoke adversaries while creating urgency and using prestige politics to ignite a chain reaction of desperate political moves across the border have constructed new political strategies, marked with political aggression, to cogently engage in warmongering exercises. With Modi following similar models to consistently push Pakistan towards strategic miscalculations by incrementing national pressure, the illusion of choice offered by him to follow a predetermined pathway of peace approaches has become an outdated doctrine for South Asia, especially for Pakistan. The political overspill of Bismarckian diagrams drawn by Modi and the international reluctance to grant a ‘win’ to India both display that urgency and crisis politics, with victimhood populism and political desperation to delegitimize opponents, have lost substantial ground. Following the same model, Trump seems to be lingering at his electoral promises of terminating conflicts around the globe and reviving the abstract idea of Pax Americana for international politics, portraying America’s influence as an urgent necessity for global regulation and recalibration. The ashes of dysfunctionalities after settling conflicts through coercive diplomatic and military endeavors are a grim feature of Trump’s diplomatic and ideological doctrinal moves. From transactional diplomacy for the Gulf to a reverse Kissingerian model for the Russia-China alliance, Trump’s diplomatic model seems to be more instinctive than consistent with ideological lexicons.

The Bismarck model of using political timing, psychology, and provocation—all three strategies—designed a cogent and adept method of foreign policy of weaponizing crisis and creating urgency to shroud political cognition, which Modi seems to be institutionalizing as an accepted practice against Pakistan on domestic grounds. The political instrumentalization of regular clashes and crises in South Asia to create a justification model for counteroffensive maneuvers and warmongering narratives revolves around important political events. From electoral needs to domestic diversions, or regional dominations to international tabbing of adversaries as regional disturbances, Modi appears to desperately wrap Pakistan in a diplomatic cloak of isolation. With the Bismarckian pointer of manipulative outlines, Modi would perilously engineer another crisis to conceal national failures post-Balakot-Sindoor. If Modi follows a similar pattern of crisis construction, just like Bismarck did, the launchpad for such military and political maneuvers would be the northern areas of Pakistan, particularly Gilgit-Baltistan. Despite the previous retaliation patterns of Pakistan, creating a risk-prone conflict with reactive outcomes, Modi will invite a berserk amount of regional pressure and escalation. Theoretically and practically, igniting a conflict with new external and domestic spectacles, Modi appears to be in a desperate cycle of reviving electoral domination and regional prestige. The retaliatory approach from Islamabad and Beijing would trap the conflict from two opposite sides, with Beijing’s militaristic adventures in the northern disputed territories. Even if proxies or informants engineer something like Pulwama or Pahalgam, India would still be in a high-risk gambit that could meet unimaginable results if the Bismarckian urgency and crisis weaponizing playbook gets mishandled and cloaks foreign policy objectives with electoral overlordship gambles.

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‘Overvaluing properties massively’

WASHINGTON — National Guard troops and immigration agents on horseback, clad in green uniforms and tactical gear, trotted into MacArthur Park on Monday, surrounding the iconic square with armored vehicles in a show of force widely denounced as gratuitous. The enforcement operation produced few tangible results that day. But the purpose of the display was unmistakable.

The Trump administration’s monthlong operation in Los Angeles, which began on June 6 with flash raids at work sites and culminated days later with Trump’s deployment of Marines and the Guard, continues to pay political dividends to a president who had been in search of the perfect foil on his signature issue since retaking office, officials close to the president told The Times.

At first, officials in the West Wing thought the operation might last only a week or two. But Trump’s team now says the ongoing spectacle has proven a resounding political success with few downsides. Thus far, the administration has managed to fend off initial court challenges, maintain arrests at a steady clip, and generate images of a ruthless crackdown in a liberal bastion that delight the president’s supporters.

It may be premature for the president to declare political victory. Anger over the operation has swelled, prompting activism across California. And signs have emerged that the White House may be misreading Trump’s election mandate and the political moment, with new polls showing public sentiment turning nationwide on the president’s increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics.

The city has struggled to cope, hobbled by an unpopular mayor and a nationally divisive governor who have been unable to meaningfully respond to the unprecedented federal effort. But the raids have also provided California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, with an opportunity to fill a leadership vacuum as his party grapples to find its footing in the resistance.

Lawsuits could still change the course of the operation. A crucial hearing set for Thursday in a case that could challenge the constitutionality of the operation itself.

But critics say the pace of litigation has failed to meet the urgency of the moment, just as the president’s aides weigh whether to replicate their L.A. experiment elsewhere throughout the country.

To Trump, a gift that keeps on giving

Trump has succeeded in the most significant legal case thus far, with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing him to maintain control of the California National Guard. Troops remain on L.A. streets despite protests that the administration cited to justify their deployment in the first place ending weeks ago. And the administration has put the city on the defensive in a suit over the legality of its sanctuary city policy.

One White House official told The Times that the administration’s aggressive, experimental law enforcement tactics in Los Angeles have proven a “grand success,” in part because national media coverage of the ongoing crisis has largely moved on, normalizing what is happening there.

A spokesperson for the White House said the administration’s mission in the city is focused on detaining migrants with violent criminal records, despite reporting by The Times indicating that a majority of individuals arrested in the first weeks of the operation were not convicted criminals.

“President Trump is fulfilling his promise to remove dangerous, criminal illegal aliens from American communities — especially sanctuary cities like L.A. that provide safe harbor to criminal illegals and put American citizens at risk,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson.

“One month later it’s clear, President Trump is doing his job to protect American citizens and federal law enforcement,” Jackson added. “But Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass have enabled violent rioters who attacked federal law enforcement, protected violent criminal illegal aliens, and betrayed the trust put in them by the American people.”

Trump’s use of Los Angeles as a testing ground to demonstrate raw presidential power has shown his team just how much a unitary executive can get away with. Masked agents snatching migrants has sent a chill through the city and its economy, but there is no end in sight for the operation, with one Homeland Security official telling The Times it would only intensify going forward.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have arrested nearly 2,800 people in the L.A. area since the crackdown began.

This week, California Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat, introduced a bill with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey that would bar immigration officers from wearing masks and require them to display clear identification while on the job.

“They wouldn’t be saying that if they didn’t hate our country,” Trump said Wednesday, responding to the legislation, “and they obviously do.”

Trump could still face setbacks

The 9th Circuit ruling last month, allowing Trump to maintain temporary control over the California National Guard, thwarted momentum for Trump’s opponents hoping for a decisive early victory against the operation in federal court.

But a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and joined by the city of Los Angeles, set for arguments in court on Thursday, addresses the core of the raids themselves and could deal a significant policy blow to the Trump administration. The ACLU has found success in another case, over raids conducted earlier this year by Border Patrol in the Central Valley, using similar arguments that claimed its tactics were unconstitutional.

“It is far too early to say that challenge has been thwarted,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law.

But Arulanantham argued that city and state officials have demonstrated a lack of leadership in the pace of their response to an urgent crisis.

“There is much more local leaders could be doing to challenge the unlawful actions the federal government is taking against their residents,” he added. “The state also could have sued but did not — they sued to challenge the guard deployment, but not the ICE raids themselves.”

The raids have generated favorable coverage for the administration on right-wing media, presenting the crackdown as Trump finally bringing the fight over immigration to the heart of liberal America. But it is unclear whether Americans agree with his tactics.

Polls released last month from Economist/YouGov and NPR/PBS News/Marist found that while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believes that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts.

Newsom, speaking this week in South Carolina, a crucial state in the Democratic presidential primary calendar, suggested he saw the president’s potential overreach as a political opportunity.

“They’re now raiding the farms,” he told a crowd. “Quite literally, federal agents running through the fields.”

The governor told the story of a teenage boy from Oxnard whose parents disappeared in a federal raid, despite having no criminal records, leaving their son helpless and alone.

“That’s America,” he said, “Trump’s America.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Stephen Miller finally gets his revenge on L.A.
The deep dive: Kidnappers or ICE agents? LAPD grapples with surge in calls from concerned citizens
The L.A. Times Special: Most nabbed in L.A. raids were men with no criminal conviction, picked up off the street

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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