The president of the United States, who seems to enjoy nothing more than playing the bully, is picking on Los Angeles. But L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, not known as a public brawler until recently, is ducking punches and throwing her own jabs and uppercuts.
She has accused President Trump of initiating the protests he condemned, and called Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a liar for suggesting L.A. was a city of mayhem.
I had a conversation with her Tuesday about what it’s like to deal with a president like this one, but before we chatted, she stepped to the podium at City Hall, flanked by labor, business and faith leaders, and defended her turf again.
“This is essentially an all-out assault against Los Angeles,” Bass said, denouncing the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit accusing her and the City Council of hindering the battle against “a crisis of illegal immigration.” It’s a political stunt, Bass said several times, denying that the city’s sanctuary city protections are unlawful.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
“We know that Los Angeles is the test case,” Bass said. “And we will stand strong, and we do so because the people snatched off city streets and chased through parking lots are our neighbors, our family members, and they are Angelenos. Let me be clear. I won’t be intimidated.”
This has not been the best year of Bass’ political career. It began with the destruction of Pacific Palisades by a wildfire that started while Bass was out of town, and continued with the second-guessing of L.A.’s disaster preparedness and questions about who would lead the rebuilding effort.
Throw in the lingering catastrophe of widespread homelessness and wrangling over a city budget deficit, and it was looking as though Bass might be vulnerable in a 2026 reelection bid.
Then came the arrival of federal agents and troops, with raids beginning June 6, and Bass started to find her footing by going against type.
“Her natural instinct is to be a coalition builder — to govern by consensus,” said Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University. But that doesn’t work with Trump, “so she’s recalibrating and saying, you know, the only thing this guy understands is confrontation.”
Pomona College politics professor Sara Sadhwani said Trump is attacking “the heart and core of Los Angeles,” and there may be unintended consequences, given the way the president’s actions are unifying many Angelenos. “I think the vast majority of folks in Los Angeles, but also throughout the state, can agree that what’s happening now is not OK and runs counter to our values,” Sadhwani continued. “And Bass is showing incredibly strong leadership.”
President Trump shook hands with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after a fire briefing in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 24.
(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)
Even a half dozen Republican state legislators have joined the opposition, sending a letter to Trump suggesting he focus on arresting actual criminals rather than going after people who make up an essential component of the economy.
As Sadhwani noted, Republican lawmakers for years have lamented federal overreach and argued in favor of state’s rights and local control. And yet the Trump Administration is set on telling California and Los Angeles how to govern themselves, most recently on sanctuary protections, despite court arguments that they’re protected under the 10th Amendment.
After Tuesday’s press conference, Bass retreated to her office and told me her support for immigrants began with her work as an activist in the 1970s.
“This is fundamentally who I am. But of course, having a blended family” also factors into her politics on immigration. “My ex-husband was a Chicano activist … I have other family members that are married to people from the Philippines, Korea, Japan. I have a Greek side to my family.”
When gathered, she said, her family “looks like the General Assembly of the United Nations.”
And that’s what Los Angeles looks like, with storylines that crisscross the globe and transcend borders.
“I don’t see anybody [here] anywhere calling for deportations, whereas you could imagine in some cities this would be a very divisive issue,” Bass said.
I told her I hear quite often from people asking: “What don’t you understand about the word illegal?” or from people arguing that their relatives waited and immigrated legally.
I understand those perspectives, I told Bass. But I also understand context — namely, the desire of people to seek better opportunities for their children, and the lure of doing so in a United States that relies upon immigrant labor and tacitly allows it while hypocritically condemning it.
While serving in Congress, Bass said, she witnessed the toll wrought by the separation of families along the border. She met people who “carried the trauma throughout their lives, the insecurity, the feeling of abandonment.”
At the very least, the mayor said, federal agents “should identify themselves and they also should have warrants, and they should stop randomly picking people up off the street. The original intent, remember, [was to go after] the hardened criminals. Where are the hardened criminals? They’re chasing them through parking lots at Home Depot? They’re washing cars? I don’t think so.”
U.S. Marines post guard at the 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 arrestees in Los Angeles have no criminal records.
As for the cost of the raids in L.A. — by an administration that made a vow to shrink government — Bass wanted to make a few points.
“You think about the young men and women in the National Guard. They leave their families, work, their school. For what?” she asked. “It’s a misuse of the troops. And the same thing with the Marines. They’re not trained to deal with anything happening on the street. They’re trained to fight to kill the enemy in foreign lands.”
While we were talking, Bass got an urgent call from her daughter, Yvette Lechuga, who works as senior administrative assistant at Mount St. Mary’s University. Lechuga said a woman was apprehended while getting off a shuttle.
“It seems like ICE grabbed our student,” Lechuga said.
Bass said her staff would look into it.
“We were on quasi-lockdown for a while,” Lechuga said.
“Jesus Christ,” said the mayor.
