Commentary: Bass defends her turf: ‘Let me be clear: I won’t be intimidated’ by Trump

The President of the United States, who seems to appreciate anything that playing the intimidator, joins Los Angeles. But the mayor of Karen Bass, not known as a public brawler until recentlyis punches and launch his own shots and uppercuts.

She accused President Trump of having launched the demonstrations he condemned and called the Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, a liar for suggesting Was a city of chaos.

I had a conversation with her on Tuesday on what it is to face a president like this, but before discussing, she went up on the podium at the town hall, flanked by labor, business and faith, and defended his lawn again.

“It is essentially a total aggression against Los Angeles,” said Bass, denouncing the trial of the American Ministry of Justice accusing him as well as the municipal council of hindering the battle against “an illegal immigration crisis”. It is a political blow, said Bass on several occasions, denying that the protections of the city of the city are illegal.

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is from California who has been a columnist for Los Angeles Times since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a quadruple finalist in Pulitzer.

“We know that Los Angeles is the case with a test,” said Bass. “And we will stay strong, and we do it because people have torn off the streets of the city and driven out in the parking lots are our neighbors, family members, and they are Angelenos. Let me be clear. I will not be intimidated.”

It is not the best year of Bass political career. It started with the destruction of the Pacific palisades With a forest fire that started while Bass was outside the city, and continued with the second guessing of the preparation for the Los Angeles disasters and the questions on which the reconstruction effort would.

Throw persistent disaster of generalized homelessness And compete for a budget deficit in the cityAnd it seemed that Bass could be vulnerable in a re -election offer in 2026.

Then came the arrival of federal agents and troops, with raids from June 6, and Bass began to find its foot by going against the type.

“Its natural instinct is to be a coalition manufacturer – to govern by consensus,” said Fernando Guerra, professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University. But that doesn’t work with Trump, “so she recalibrates and says, you know, the only thing this guy includes is confrontation.”

Professor of Pomona College Politics, Sara Sadhwani, said that Trump attacked “the heart and the nucleus of Los Angeles”, and that there can be involuntary consequences, given the way in which the actions of the unifying president of many Angelenos. “I think the vast majority of people in Los Angeles, but also in the whole state, may agree that what is happening now is not correct and goes against our values,” said Sadhwani. “And Bass shows incredibly strong leadership.”

President Trump shakes the hand of the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, after a fire briefing in Pacific Palisades on January 24.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

Even a half a dozen legislators from the Republican States joined the opposition, sending a letter to Trump suggesting that it focuses on stopping real criminals rather than the people who make up an essential component of the economy.

As Sadhwani noted, republican legislators for years deplored the federal department and have argued in favor of state rights and local control. And yet, the Trump administration is about to tell California and Los Angeles how to govern themselves, more recently on the protections of the sanctuary, despite the judicial arguments that they are protected under the 10th amendment.

After Tuesday’s press conference, Bass retired to his office and told me that his support for immigrants had started with his work as an activist in the 1970s.

“It is fundamentally who I am. But of course, have A mixed family“Factors also in his immigration policy.” My ex-husband was a chicano activist … I have other married family members to people from the Philippines, Korea, Japan. I have a Greek side to my family.

Once brought together, she said, her family “resembles the United Nations General Assembly”.

And that’s what Los Angeles looks like, with scenarios that crisscross the globe and transcend borders.

“I don’t see anyone [here] Everywhere, calling for deportations, when you could imagine in certain cities, it would be a very divisor problem, “said Bass.

I told him that I heard people quite often asking: “What don’t you understand about the illegal word?” or people arguing that their relatives have legally waited and immigrants.

I understand these perspectives, I said to Bass. But I also understand the context – namely the desire of people to seek better opportunities for their children, and the attraction of doing so in the United States which is based on the work of immigrants and tacitly allows it while condemning it hypocritically.

While serving at Congress, said Bass, she witnessed the toll carried out by the separation of families along the border. She met people who “have trauma throughout their lives, insecurity, the feeling of abandonment”.

At the very least, said the mayor, federal agents “should identify themselves and they should also have mandates, and they should stop recovering people on the street. The original intention, remember, [was to go after] Hardened criminals. Where are the hardened criminals? They pursue them through parking lots in Home Depot? They wash the cars? I don’t think. “

US Marines Post Guard at Federal Building at the corner of Veteran avenue and Wilshire boulevard in Los Angeles on June 19.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

In fact, the vast majority of orders in Los Angeles No criminal record.

As for the cost of raids to – by an administration which made the wish to reduce the government – Bass wanted to make a few points.

“You are thinking of young men and women in the National Guard. They leave their family, work, school. For what?” She asked. “It is improper use of the troops. And the same with the Marines. They are not trained to face everything that is happening in the street. They are trained to fight to kill the enemy abroad. ”

While we were talking about, Bass received an urgent call from her daughter, Yvette Lechuga, who works as main administrative assistant at Mount St. Mary University. Lechuga said that a woman was apprehended from a shuttle.

“It seems that Ice has caught our student,” said Lechuga.

Bass said her staff would examine it.

“We were in quasi-blockages for a while,” said Lechuga.

“Jesus Christ,” said the mayor.

Steve.lopez@latimes.com