With Los Angeles reeling from immigration sweeps and unsettled by nightly clashes between protesters and police, Mayor Karen Bass was asked by a reporter: What she did she have to say to President Trump?
Bass, standing before a bank of news cameras, did not hold back.
“I want to tell him to stop the raids,” she said. “I want to tell him that this is a city of immigrants. I want to tell him that if you want to devastate the economy of the city of Los Angeles, then attack the immigrant population.”
After taking office in 2022, L.A.’s 43rd mayor carefully avoided public disputes with other elected officials, instead highlighting her well-known penchant for collaboration and coalition-building.
The high-profile Democrat, who spent a dozen years in Congress, largely steered clear of direct confrontation with Trump, responding diplomatically even as he attacked her over her handling of the Palisades fire earlier this year.
Those days of tiptoeing around Trump, and avoiding head-to-head conflict, are over.
Bass is now sparring with the president and his administration at a perilous moment for her city and possibly for democracy.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers point non-lethal weapons at protesters.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
At the same time, the tumultuous events of the past week have given her a crucial opportunity for a reset after the Palisades fire, recalibrating her public image while leading her city through another historic crisis.
“Having two moments of crisis during the first six months of this year has really tested her mettle as mayor,” said GOP political strategist Mike Madrid, a long-standing Trump critic. “I think it’s fair to say she did not perform to expectations during the fires. I think she’s considerably improved during the current situation.”
Since agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal authorities fanned out across the region, searching for undocumented immigrants at courthouses, car washes and Home Depot parking lots, Bass has accused Trump of creating a “terrible sense of fear” in her city.
Bass said Trump is on track to waste more than $100 million on troops who were neither requested nor needed. On multiple occasions, she said Trump wrongly gave credit to the National Guard for bringing calm to downtown L.A. on Saturday, when those troops had not even arrived yet.
In many ways, Trump has emerged as the ideal foil for a mayor who, for much of the past six months, had been on her back feet.
In the immediate aftermath of the Palisades fire, which erupted when she was out of the country, Bass struggled to show a command of the details and was savaged by critics over what they viewed as her lack of leadership. Months later, she released a budget that called for the layoffs of 1,600 workers, drawing an outcry from labor leaders, youth advocates and many others.
Bass has been quicker to respond this time around, announcing a nightly curfew for downtown, warning of consequences for those who vandalize or commit violence and spelling out the real-world impacts of the ICE arrests on her constituents.
The pushback reached a crescendo on Thursday, when — with just a few hours notice — Bass assembled more than 100 people from religious, community, business and civic groups to denounce the raids. It made for a potent tableau: a multi-ethnic, multiracial crowd of Angelenos cheering on the mayor as she declared that “peace begins with ICE leaving Los Angeles.”
An ICE agent during a news conference in Los Angeles.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
Bass said she had received reports of ICE agents entering hospitals, workers not showing up to their jobs, parents afraid to attend their own children’s graduations. An immigrant rights advocate said Trump had brought cruelty and chaos to Los Angeles. A church pastor from Boyle Heights said his parishioners “feel hunted.”
Trump and his administration have disparaged Bass and her city since the raids began. Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff, accused Bass on X of using “the language of the insurrectionist mob” while discussing her city. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called L.A. “a city of criminals” whose law breakers have been protected by Bass.
Republicans have begun threatening reprisals against outspoken Democrats, including Bass, with some hinting at criminal prosecution.
Asked about Bass’ comments over the past week, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said ICE agents would not be “deterred from carrying out their mission.”
“We will not apologize for enforcing immigration law and carrying out the mandate the American people gave President Trump in November: Deport illegal aliens,” she said.
Fernando Guerra, who heads the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said Angelenos fully expect their mayor to confront the president head on. Democrat Kamala Harris secured more than 70% of the vote in L.A. during last year’s presidential election, while Trump received less than 27%.
“I’m not surprised by what she’s doing,” Guerra said. “I would even suggest she push a little more. I don’t think there’s a cost to her politically, or even socially, to taking on Trump.”
Mayor Karen Bass speaks to the media at City Hall.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
The mayor is regularly calling in to TV and radio stations, as well as securing prime-time hits on national cable shows. In appearance after appearance, she has warned that L.A. is becoming “a grand experiment” — a testing ground for Trump to see if he can usurp the authority of Democratic mayors or governors in other states.
On Tuesday, while addressing troops at Fort Bragg, Trump described L.A. as “a trash heap,” with entire neighborhoods being controlled by “transnational gangs and criminal networks.” Hours later, Bass clapped back on MSNBC, saying: “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Bass has spoken repeatedly about traumatized Angelenos who could not locate loved ones caught up in the ICE raids.
“For the most part, the people that have been detained have been denied access to legal representation,” Bass said during an appearance at the city’s Emergency Operations Center. “This is unprecedented.”
The raids, and their impact on families and children, are deeply personal for a mayor who cut her teeth organizing with immigrant rights activists decades ago.
Bass’ own family reflects the multiethnic nature of her city. Her late ex-husband was the son of immigrants from Chihuahua, Mexico. Her extended family includes immigrants from Korea, Japan and the Philippines. Immigration agents were recently seen making arrests outside her grandson’s Los Angeles school, she said.
The arrival of ICE, then the National Guard, then the U.S. Marines has caused not just Bass but several other Democrats to step out in ways they might have previously avoided.
Sen. Alex Padilla is removed from a news conference with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the Wilshire Federal Building.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a soft-spoken political figure for decades, was handcuffed and forcibly removed from a news conference in Westwood on Thursday after interrupting Noem’s remarks.
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently accused Trump of a “brazen abuse of power,” calling him “unhinged” and filing a lawsuit to block the deployment of the National Guard — not a huge departure for Newsom, who relishes both confrontation and the spotlight.
Head-to-head accusations are much more out of character for Bass, who spent her first two years at City Hall boasting of her success in “locking arms” with her fellow elected officials on homelessness and other issues. In recent months, the mayor has praised Trump for the speedy arrival of federal resources as the city began cleaning up and rebuilding from the Palisades fire.
Long before winning city office, Bass prided herself on her ability to work with other politicians, regardless of party affiliation, from her early days as a co-founder of the South L.A.-based Community Coalition to her years in Congress.
Bass’ strategy of avoiding public spats with Trump during the first few months of his administration was no accident, according to someone with knowledge of her thinking who was not authorized to speak publicly. The mayor, that person said, viewed an extended tit-for-tat as an impediment to securing federal funding for wildfire relief and other urgent needs.
“That’s more her brand — to get things done with whoever she needs to get them done with,” said Ange-Marie Hancock, who leads Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.
Mike Bonin, who heads the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A., said he thinks that Bass’ career of building multiracial, multiethnic coalitions makes her uniquely suited to the moment.
Now that Trump has “all but declared war on Los Angeles,” Bass has no choice but to punch back, said Bonin, who served on the City Council for nearly a decade.
“I don’t see that she had any political or moral alternative,” he said.
