Week of June 12, 2025

From the publisher’s desk

Hey, readers: Some of you may be going to the one or more of the “No Kings” protests/rallies this weekend. (RSVP and get more details here.) If you do, please … be careful, because things are getting very strange.

The National Guard and Marine deployments in downtown Los Angeles have been making worldwide news since the weekend. (According to an article in The Guardian, many of these soldiers are troubled by these deployments.) Meanwhile, in Texas, the governor deployed more than 5,000 Texas National Guard troops, as well as 2,000 state police, in advance of protests in that state,

“Peaceful protests are part of the fabric of our nation, but Texas will not tolerate the lawlessness we have seen in Los Angeles in response to President Donald Trump’s enforcement of immigration law,” Gov. Greg Abbott said, according to The Associated Press.

Driverless Waymo vehicles, coated with graffiti and engulfed in flames. Masked protesters, dancing and cavorting around burning American flags. Anonymous figures brazenly blocking streets and shutting down major freeways, raining bottles and rocks on the police, while their compatriots waved Mexican flags.

The images flowing out of Los Angeles over nearly a week of protests against federal immigration raids have cast America’s second most populous city as a terrifying hellscape, where lawbreakers rule the streets and regular citizens should fear to leave their homes.

In the relentless fever loop of online and broadcast video, it does not matter that the vast majority of Los Angeles neighborhoods remain safe and secure. Digital images create their own reality and it’s one that President Trump and his supporters have used to condemn L.A. as a place that is “out of control” and on the brink of total collapse.

Here’s what Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said today at a press conference—words that prompted U.S. Sen Alex Padilla, who was in the audience, to speak up. Per KTLA, she said: ““We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and mayor have placed on this country and what they’ve tried to insert in this city.”

(The story continues: “Padilla was then forcibly removed from the room, as shown in footage shared by Fox News correspondent Bill Megulin. He was not successfully able to ask a question, but Noem said she will contact him after the press conference. She reportedly met with the senator shortly after the conference, but not before he was reportedly taken down to the ground by law enforcement.”)

Folks, this rhetoric, these exaggerations, these deployments of the military—this all needs to be spoken out against and protested. This crap should not be happening in a free and democratic United States. But be careful and lawful, please. The forces that are OK with authoritarianism seem to be looking for an excuse. Don’t give it to them.

Take care,

—Jimmy Boegle, publisher/executive editor