By Senator Alex Padilla

[I'm] proud to have been born and raised in Los Angeles, and I can tell you that Angelenos have a long history of speaking up for ourselves and for our communities, and for the most vulnerable in our community. We've seen that tradition continue this past week as Angelenos have spoken up against the extreme actions of the Trump administration.

And, yes, while a small number of bad actors have sought to exploit the peaceful protest and have engaged in violence and vandalism, the overwhelming majority of activity has been peaceful and protected by the First Amendment. Even law enforcement officials will tell you the folks they see doing maybe some looting at night is a very different group of people than the organizers and activists and marchers that they see peacefully protesting during the day. So it is important for us to condemn all forms of violence, and to urge everyone listening to keep peacefully protesting, keep raising your voices against this administration's unprecedented overreach. But let's not play into Trump's hands.

See, Donald Trump created this chaos. He inflamed this violence, and he did it intentionally. He sent federal agents in to terrorize communities and then turned around and blamed state and local leaders for the very chaos that he unleashed.

So today I wanted to be clear not only about what is going on, but why it's happening. See, last week marked one of the lowest points in the Trump administration. His trade wars are failing in court, while American families continue to get crushed by rising costs. He's failed miserably to make good on his promise to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine on day one. He's been handed loss after loss in federal court on a number of issues. His signature tax bill, one to give the tax breaks to billionaires at the expense of working families is hitting a wall of public resistance. As more Americans learn about the proposals, massive cuts to healthcare, nutrition assistance, and more, and most embarrassing of all, maybe the personal one, his breakup with his billionaire best friend, Elon Musk.

By last Friday, Trump was drowning in negative headlines. And so, just as he's done throughout the years, when all else fails, when everything is going bad, he turns to the same tired playbook: attack immigrants, blame immigrants, and manufacture a crisis to try to change the news cycle. So on Friday, he ordered these ICE raids across California. Think about it. You saw the images: Agents in full combat gear, not just targeting violent criminals. That's what he talked about during the campaign. What he's done in practice is very different.

They're sweeping through workplaces and small businesses in communities throughout Los Angeles and elsewhere. And so, yes, when Californians took to the streets to peacefully protest, he then escalated the situation, bypassing the governor and local leaders by federalizing and deploying the National Guard the first time a president has done so since 1965 — think President Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Movement. And since then, Trump has arrested SEIU California President David Huerta for peacefully protesting, and charging him with conspiracy to impede an officer. That's not what happened. We all saw the video. He's threatened to arrest the governor of California, and now he's mobilized hundreds of Marines to deploy to Los Angeles without providing any factual or valid justification to do so. This is dangerous territory. Servicewomen and men are trained to fight wars overseas, not to police communities here in the United States, but that's exactly what Donald Trump wants. He wants to create theatrics. He wants a viral clip of a protest to turn chaotic so he can justify his crackdown on immigrants and distract from his own failures. He's testing the boundaries of his power.

And my message to the country today is this: What's happening in California is not just a threat to California. It's not just a threat to immigrant communities. It's a threat to everybody because an attack on anyone's rights is an attack on everyone's rights. And no matter where you live or what your background, don't think that anybody is insulated from Trump's actions. If Donald Trump can bypass the Governor of California to activate the National Guard and suppress immigrant rights, he'll do whatever he wants to suppress other rights, too. And if he can deploy Marines to Los Angeles, he can deploy them to any city in America. And if you can bypass due process, declare lawful residents, criminals, subject to deportation, and disappear them to foreign countries without even giving them an opportunity to make their case, what's to stop him from doing the same to any of us?

California is nothing but Trump's test case for the rest of the country. We can't let him get away with it. We won't let him get away with it. So we need to push back and demand accountability before it's too late.