FIRE AND ICE: California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered a live television address last night confronting President Donald Trump and his deployment of troops to Los Angeles to quell continuing unrest over federal immigration sweeps. Speaking not only to his state but to the nation, Newsom said, “Democracy is under assault right before our eyes. The moment we’ve feared has arrived.”

  Critics immediately dismissed Newsom’s speech as a kickoff to running for president even while armed members of the National Guard took part in immigration arrests. “Trump is pulling a military dragnet across LA, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals,” Newsom said. “His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses – That’s just weakness. Weakness, masquerading as strength.”

  The President has deployed 4,700 Troops to deal with a few hundred protesters. LA’s police chief said he doesn’t need them.

  California yesterday asked a federal court to restrict the government’s use of Marines and National Guard troops in Los Angeles to protect federal property and bar them from other law enforcement activities, including immigrant roundups.

  Meanwhile, President Trump delivered a purely political speech to soldiers at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina yesterday inspiring cheers about immigration policy, transgender athletes in women’s sports, and calling for a one-year sentence for anyone who burns the America flag. He said that if he had not sent troops to Los Angeles the city “would be burning today just like their city was burning a number of months ago,” referring to the wildfires.

  Trump repeated his claim that the immigrants and rioters in Los Angeles are “invaders,” bolstering his decision to send in troops and possibly invoke the insurrection act.

  In testimony to the House Appropriations Committee, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “We ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country,” although it’s a question whether it is legal for the Defense Department to enforce it.  Hegseth said the deployments would last 60 days, deflecting questions about their cost until a Pentagon official said the price tag is $134 million.

  Demonstrations against immigration arrests have spread to cities like San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, and New York. At least 150 people have been arrested in Los Angeles since Friday. Trump told reporters, “You’d be reporting on a lot of death, and a lot of destruction that’s not going to take place” … because he sent in troops.

  Gov. Newsom said in his speech: “What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty. Your silence. To be complicit in this moment. Do NOT give in to him.”

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: 

— President Trump said yesterday that any protesters who “hate our country” at Saturday’s parade marking the 250^th  anniversary of the Army  would be met with “very heavy force.” It’s like one of his cheerful holiday greetings.

  Columns of armored vehicles have been pouring into Washington for the parade that will feature 28 Abrams tanks, 58 various armored fighting vehicles, 50 helicopters, mobile artillery, and 6,700 soldiers, some of them in period uniforms.

— The President yesterday told soldiers at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina that his administration will restore the names of a list of military bases previously named for Confederate officers, including Robert E. Lee. Ft. Bragg, previously named for rebel Gen. Braxton Bragg, was changed to Ft. Liberty under the Biden administration and changed back to Ft. Bragg, earlier this year, honoring an otherwise unknown soldier named Bragg.

  The Pentagon said it will do the same with other bases, renaming them for previously unknown veterans with names such as Hill, Hood, and Pickett.

— A legal opinion from the Department of Justice says that President Trump has the power to abolish or shrink national monuments established under previous administrations. National monuments encompass millions of acres of preserved natural land, much of it in the West. According to the opinion, titled “Revocation of Prior Monument Designations,” the president can find that previously declared monuments “either never were or no longer are deserving of the Act’s protections.”

  President Trump is looking at federal land for mining and oil drilling.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK: ABC News yesterday fired veteran Washington correspondent Terry Moran for his Saturday night social media outburst calling President Trump and his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller  “world class haters.”

  Moran is 65 and was with ABC for 28 years.

  Moran spoke truth, but he should not have spoken at all. Reporters need to keep their opinions and biases to themselves, particularly with the entire press under attack by Donald Trump.

  Moran mostly targeted Miller saying:  “Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.”

  ABC did not report Moran’s firing on last night’s “World News.”

IT’S POLITICAL: Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a former navy helicopter party, won the Democratic party’s primary to run for governor of her state. She is expected to run against Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman in his third run for governor. New Jersey has had a Democratic governor since 2018.

THE SPIN RACK: Michigan State University agreed to pay a total of nearly $30 million to three students seriously wounded in a 2023 campus shooting in which three others were killed. One of the three wounded was shot in the head and another was paralyzed by a bullet to the chest. — At least 11 people are now dead after a shooting yesterday at a school in Graz, Germany. The original count was 8, including the shooter. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Rapper Kanye West, who legally changed his name to “Ye,” is changing it again to “Ye Ye.” He’s trying to get attention but nobody really cares what Kanye says or does because they are all looking at his wife Bianca Censori appearing nearly naked in public.

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