The Protests in LA

Susan Estrich on Jun 12, 2025

I'm fine. Thanks for asking. Other than the endless and awful worries that come with caring for my daughter with long Covid, and the very real fear that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his boss will cut all the research programs that are the best and only hope for the millions (and there will be millions more) suffering from this now incurable disease, I'm OK. To tell the truth, I haven't seen a single protester, or any Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for that matter. The protests have not taken over the city. I've lived through riots. These aren't riots.

I know. You've seen the pictures of the burning Waymo taxicabs. All three of them. I've seen them too -- on TV, literally hundreds of times. What does that prove? That there are hooligans who will take advantage of any situation that will possibly give them cover for wrongdoing? The hooligans should be arrested and punished. The LAPD is fully qualified to do that. We don't need the Marines or the National Guard to round up a handful of hooligans.

The Chief of the LAPD told the City Council on Tuesday that LAPD officers arrested 114 people at protests Monday night -- 53 for allegedly failing to disperse and 15 on suspicion of looting. The potential looters were stopped. One person was arrested for alleged assault with a deadly weapon on an officer, and another was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. They will be punished. The LAPD arrested 27 people at protests on Saturday and 40 on Sunday.

The problem is not the protesters. They have every right to be protesting the wholesale roundup of people with brown skin who have committed no crimes. ICE doesn't like to release the numbers, for obvious reasons, but what's come out so far suggest that half the people ICE has detained were not subject to warrants for their arrests and have committed no crimes.

On Tuesday, the mayor of Los Angeles imposed a curfew on exactly one square mile of downtown LA in an effort to stop the hooligans who were looting. Downtown LA was quiet on Tuesday night. Los Angeles is a city of nearly 500 square miles. One-five hundredth of the city was under a curfew, hardly reason to send in an invading military force, which Trump has done.

And there is certainly no reason to attack the organizers of the peaceful protests, which is what Republican grandstanders are doing. On Wednesday, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley threatened an investigation on one of our city's most respected immigrant organizations, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, who he accused of "bankrolling the unrest." Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee of Crime and Counterterrorism, wrote to the leader of the group that they should "cease and desist any further involvement in the organization, funding, or promotion of these unlawful activities." What he called, but didn't identify, as "credible reporting now suggests that your organization has provided logistical support and financial resources to individuals engaged in these disruptive actions. Let me be clear: bankrolling civil unrest is not protected speech. It is aiding and abetting criminal conduct."

No, it's not. Organizing and supporting peaceful protests against mass, untargeted roundups and the misuse of the military is fully protected by the First Amendment.

Trump wants race riots. He wants people to be terrorized. He wants to exercise absolute authority. The protests will continue, and they will spread. Trump railed against the rapists and murderers he claimed were invading our country. He promised to remove them. Fine. Now that he's president, he can't find enough of them to fulfill his quotas. So instead, he is going after law-abiding neighbors with force and without due process. He has triggered this unrest, and it is his fault. The organizers of the protests in Los Angeles are doing everything they can to ensure that the protests are peaceful and lawful. The same cannot be said of Trump and his minions.

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