Trump says business leaders telling him mass deportations are taking good workers away
Donald Trump has said that he has heard from business leaders that his mass deportation agenda “is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace”.
The president wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform that “changes are coming”, but it’s unclear if he means he’s going to heed what farmers and hospitality businesses are telling him, as in the same post he claims “criminals … are applying for those jobs”.
Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.
In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!
Trump didn’t say which business leaders and farmers have spoken to him and his administration about this.
Immigration officials carried out further “enforcement activity” in California’s agricultural heartland and the Los Angeles area yesterday. Across the state an estimated 255,700 farm workers are undocumented.
Immigrant advocacy groups reported multiple actions across California and said agents pursued workers through blueberry fields and staged operations at agricultural facilities.
“When our workforce’s lives are in fear, the fields will go unharvested, the impact is felt not only at the local level, but it will also be felt at the national level,” said Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios, the mayor of Ventura, a coastal city just north of Los Angeles. “Everything will be affected and every American who is here and relies on the labor of these individuals will be affected.”
Key events
Trump praises Tesla after Musk backtracks in feud
Donald Trump, who at the peak of his recent feud with Elon Musk had threatened to sell his red Tesla, has now praised the car brand, Reuters reprots.
“I like Tesla,” he said at a White House event targeting California’s EV rules, in a further sign of detente between the two billionaires, a day after Musk backed off his criticism of the president.
The Tesla chief posted on X at 3am on Wednesday that he “regrets” some of the things he posted as he and Trump traded insults on social media last week, saying “they went too far”.
The tech billionaire didn’t explain why he’d had the sudden change of heart, nor did he elaborate on which posts exactly he regretted (he has many to choose from), but it did follow his decision to delete a number of his most shocking posts, including the Jeffrey Epstein one.
The New York Times also reported yesterday that Musk had called Trump on Monday night, before his regret post.
US immigration agency flies Predator drones over LA protests
Johana Bhuiyan
US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) is flying surveillance drones over the Los Angeles protests, the agency confirmed in a statement Thursday. The drones in question are MQ-9 Predators, some models of which are equipped with technology that would enable high-altitude surveillance. In a statement to 404 Media, which first reported the presence of the drones, CBP said the drones were deployed to support “our federal law enforcement partners in the Greater Los Angeles area, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with aerial support of their operations”. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts raids and arrests, activity that has ramped up under Donald Trump’s administration and against which protesters in Los Angeles have been demonstrating.
CBP also said in a statement that its air and marine operations were “not engaged in the surveillance of first amendment activities” but that they are “providing officer safety surveillance when requested by officers”.
The Department of Homeland Security on Monday posted a video on X that the agency said was DHS drone footage and bore a CBP air and marine operations watermark. It included zoomed in clips of protestors on the streets.
CBP’s confirmation of its drone usage comes after the LA Times also reported that an LAPD helicopter flying over protestors announced to them: “I have all of you on camera. I’m going to come to your house.” The Guardian US reached out to the LAPD and has not heard back.
This is not the first time DHS has flown drones over protests. In 2020, DHS dispatched drones over at least 15 cities across the US where people gathered to protest the murder of George Floyd and logged more than 270 hours of surveillance footage. The LAPD has also ramped up surveillance in response to first amendment activity. During the city’s George Floyd protests, LAPD sent requests to Amazon for Ring doorbell footage that specifically sought videos of the protests.
Texas governor says more than 5,000 national guard troops deployed
Texas governor Greg Abbott said more than 5,000 Texas national guard soldiers and 2,000 Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers have been deployed ahead of planned Ice protests across the state over the weekend.
In a statement shared by CBS Austin, Abbott said:
Today, I deployed over 2,000 Texas DPS troopers and over 5,000 Texas National Guard soldiers across the state to assist local law enforcement response to these protests and to maintain law and order.
Anyone engaging in acts of violence or damaging property will be arrested and held accountable to the full extent of the law.
Don’t mess with Texas – and don’t mess with Texas law enforcement.
Donald Trump said he would not fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, who he called a “numbskull” during an event at the White House on Thursday.
Trump urged Powell to lower interest rates, and said he told him that “if you think there’s inflation, let’s find out.”
“Let’s say there was inflation in a year from now. Raise your rates. I don’t mind,” he said.
Hegseth says Pentagon has drafted plans for potential Greenland, Panama invasions
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is facing questions from the House armed services committee this morning, his third appearance at a congressional hearing this week to discuss the Pentagon’s budget request.
Hegseth faced questions from Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the committee, over whether the US military had plans to take Greenland and Panama by force.
“Is it the policy of the department of defense that we need to be prepared to take Greenland and Panama by force, if necessary?” Smith asked. “Is this a policy that you have within the department of defense in accordance with the president’s wishes?”
Hegseth did not answer the question directly, instead pivoting to talking about US concerns over China’s influence in Panama and Greenland.
Panama is very key terrain that we’ve focused on and we’ve been willing to focus on, as is Greenland.
Smith pushed on, asking whether the US is trying to take over the countries by force.
“Our job at the DOD is to have plans,” Hegseth said.
“Do you have a plan for that?” Smith asked. Hegseth replied:
Our job at the defense department is to have plans for any particular contingency.
“To be clear, you do have plans to take Panama and Greenland by force if necessary,” Smith said.
Hegseth replied:
I think the American people would want the Pentagon to have plans for any particular contingency.
The White House’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller will brief Senate Republicans behind closed doors this morning about the GOP tax policy bill, NBC News is reporting, citing a source.
The meeting was expected to take place at about 11am ET, according to the report.
The Senate is then scheduled to hold a confirmation vote for former Missouri congressman Billy Long to serve as IRS commissioner, as well as a vote to advance the crypto regulation “Genius” bill.
Sanctuary states testify on impact of Trump immigration policies
Joseph Gedeon
House oversight committee chair James Comer kicked off what is sure to be a contentious congressional hearing on sanctuary states by repeatedly describing Kilmar Ábrego García as a “foreign MS-13 gang member”, despite a federal judge finding no evidence linking him to the criminal organization.
Comer used his opening remarks to attack senator Chris Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador, mockingly describing it as a “wellness check” that “ended with a photo op and margaritas on the rocks”. The Kentucky Republican was referring to Van Hollen’s April visit to secure the release of Ábrego García, a Salvadoran man who was mistakenly and unlawfully deported to a mega-prison in that country despite a court order barring his removal.
Ábrego García was eventually returned to the US on 6 June after spending months in detention, with the Trump administration now indicting him on counts for illegal smuggling and conspiracy.
The hearing will feature testimony from three high-profile Democratic governors – JB Pritzker of Illinois, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Kathy Hochul of New York – as Republicans seek to challenge sanctuary state policies.
Trump says business leaders telling him mass deportations are taking good workers away
Donald Trump has said that he has heard from business leaders that his mass deportation agenda “is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace”.
The president wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform that “changes are coming”, but it’s unclear if he means he’s going to heed what farmers and hospitality businesses are telling him, as in the same post he claims “criminals … are applying for those jobs”.
Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.
In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!
Trump didn’t say which business leaders and farmers have spoken to him and his administration about this.
Immigration officials carried out further “enforcement activity” in California’s agricultural heartland and the Los Angeles area yesterday. Across the state an estimated 255,700 farm workers are undocumented.
Immigrant advocacy groups reported multiple actions across California and said agents pursued workers through blueberry fields and staged operations at agricultural facilities.
“When our workforce’s lives are in fear, the fields will go unharvested, the impact is felt not only at the local level, but it will also be felt at the national level,” said Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios, the mayor of Ventura, a coastal city just north of Los Angeles. “Everything will be affected and every American who is here and relies on the labor of these individuals will be affected.”
Key takeaways from Gavin Newsom this morning on Trump’s use of national guard in LA
‘Stone cold liar’
Gavin Newsom has called Donald Trump a “stone cold liar” as the federalization of national guard troops didn’t come up when he spoke with the president on the phone last Friday night. “He never brought it up. Period. Full stop. He lied about that,” Newsom said on Thursday morning in an interview with the New York Times podcast The Daily.
Trump has said he spoke to Newsom about sending troops before he did so. “He lied, he lied,” said Newsom. “My mother and dad’s grave, I don’t mess around when I say this. he lied. Stone cold liar. Don’t think for a second he told the truth … he continues to lie.” Newsom said he would not go further into the details of “a private conversation with the president”.
‘Theater, madness, unconstitutional’
“It’s theatre, it’s madness, it’s unconstitutional,” the California governor said condemning the use of federal troops called into action in Los Angeles by Trump over the Democratic governor’s explicit objections.
He said that the more than 1,600 police he had ordered to control the streets of Los Angeles were more than capable of handling the limited-area protests.
Trump has ‘weaponized’ the troops
Newsom said the president has “weaponized” the deployment of troops amid a handful of incidents of vandalism and some looting that happened on the fringes of larger peaceful protests in certain parts of the LA area over the weekend, which inevitably made a big splash in mainstream media images and on social media. “It’s concentrated in just a small complex, in a very small footprint in a very large downtown in Los Angeles,” he said.
Newsom said that federalized troops “were weaponized by the Trump administration, and they’ve exacerbated the problem. Those people should be ashamed of themselves, and they will be held to account.”
He said there were “about 315 [federalised national guard] who were mission-tasked, the rest were sitting around, about 1,700, for days, you saw them sitting quite literally on the ground, with out fuel, without food, without training.” All the while it is law enforcement making arrests, not the national guard, Newsom said.
‘Immoral’
Newsom said that the national guard men and women were being “used as pawns” by Trump and it was local police who were actually protecting the national guard, not the other way around. “The first night they were deployed our police officers had to protect the national guard. They became a destination for the protests and it was local police that had to protect them. This is how ridiculous this whole thing is,” he said.
“I’ve said it’s immoral, it puts people’s lives at risk, they are using these men and women as pawns,” Newsom added.
Newsom told the outlet that he had had to take state-controlled troops away from the US-Mexico border, where they fight drug smuggling, and state forests, where they are clearing brush to prevent wildfire, and add them to enforcement in LA – not to deal with protests per se but to protect the federalised troops from the protesters.
Donald Trump has said that “of course” senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is invited to tonight’s White House picnic, one day after the senator said he and his family had been uninvited.
Paul has frequently criticized Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, which is projected to massively increase the federal deficit, and has said he plans to vote no on the legislation. This week he also voiced opposition to the military parade taking place on Saturday, saying: “I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Of course Senator Rand Paul and his beautiful wife and family are invited to the BIG White House Party tonight. He’s the toughest vote in the history of the U.S. Senate, but why wouldn’t he be?” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“Besides, it gives me more time to get his Vote on the Great, Big, Beautiful Bill, one of the greatest and most important pieces of legislation ever put before our Senators & Congressmen/women,” Trump added. “I look forward to seeing Rand. The Party will be Great!”
Per NBC News, Paul told reporters yesterday that he called the White House to secure tickets to the annual picnic but was told he was not invited. He said he had family members flying to DC to attend the event, including his son, daughter-in-law and Maga-hat-owning 6-month-old grandson.
I just find this incredibly petty. I have been, I think, nothing but polite to the president. I have been an intellectual opponent, a public policy opponent, and he’s chosen now to uninvite me from the picnic and to say my grandson can’t come to the picnic.
Paul said his un-invitation was “petty vindictiveness” for his opposition to key aspects of Trump’s agenda.
They’re afraid of what I’m saying, so they think they’re going to punish me, I can’t go to the picnic, as if somehow that’s going to make me more conciliatory.
So it’s silly, in a way, but it’s also just really sad that this is what it’s come to. But petty vindictiveness like this, it makes you — it makes you wonder about the quality of people you’re dealing with.
Newsom calls Trump a ‘stone cold liar’ and says president didn’t speak to him about sending troops to LA
Joanna Walters
California governor Gavin Newsom has called Donald Trump a liar in an interview, talking about phone calls he had with the US president over the very rare deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles over the governor’s wishes.
Newsom said the president has “weaponized” the deployment of troops amid a handful of incidents of vandalism and some looting that happened on the fringes of larger peaceful protests in certain parts of the LA area over the weekend, which inevitably made a big splash in mainstream media images and on social media.
Newsom was asked by The Daily podcast if the protests got out of control. “Well, that looting was unacceptable. There have been hundreds and hundreds of arrests [by local law enforcement].” He said and there would be prosecutions at the “full extent of the law”.
“It’s concentrated in just a small complex, in a very small footprint in a very large downtown in Los Angeles,” he said. Newsom said that federalized troops “were weaponized by the Trump administration, and they’ve exacerbated the problem. Those people should be ashamed of themselves, and they will be held to account.”
But he said the federalization of the national guard did not come up when he spoke with Trump on the phone last Friday night.
He never brought it up. Period. Full stop. He lied about that.
Trump has said he spoke to Newsom about sending troops.
“He lied, he lied. My mother and dad’s grave, I don’t mess around when I say this. he lied. Stone cold liar. Don’t think for a second he told the truth … he continues to lie.” Newsom said he would not go further into the details of “a private conversation with the president”.
David Smith
Donald Trump was met with boos, cheers and a heavy dose of irony as he took in Les Mis at the Kennedy Center against the backdrop of continuing protests in LA last night, my colleague David Smith writes.
It was Trump’s first production at the Kennedy Center, the performing arts complex where he pulled a Viktor Orbán and seized control in February. He pushed out the centre’s former chair, fired its longtime president and pledged to overhaul an institution that he criticized as too woke.
But ticket sales have fallen since and some performers have cancelled shows. On Wednesday, as he took his seat, 78-year-old Trump was greeted with a high-octane mix of cheers and boos that stopped after a round of “USA” chants.
Several drag queens in full regalia sat in the audience, presumably in response to Trump’s criticism of the venue for hosting drag shows. One person shouted “Viva Los Angeles!” as Trump stepped out of the presidential box at the intermission.
The president’s appearance was meant to boost fundraising for the Kennedy Center and he said donors raised more than $10m. But Maga’s efforts to break into the thespian world went about as well as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
Here are some pictures from the protests in downtown LA yesterday.
‘This isn’t an isolated incident’: Trump’s show of military force in LA was years in the making
Rachel Leingang and Lauren Gambino in Los Angeles
Donald Trump is targeting Los Angeles, the biggest city in deep-blue California – a sprawling metropolis shaped by immigrant communities that the president described on Tuesday as a “trash heap” – with a show of force many years in the making.
After his first term, Trump expressed regret for not taking a more heavy-handed approach to the 2020 protests over George Floyd’s murder by police. So when demonstrations against his immigration crackdown erupted last week in Los Angeles, he turned to the playbook he wished he had used then – federalizing the national guard and deploying hundreds of US marines to confront what Democratic officials insist was a manageable situation, escalated by a president who the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has warned is increasingly behaving like a “dictator”.
It’s the made-for-TV clash Trump has been waiting for: visually gripping scenes of unrest in a Democratic-run city furious over his administration’s mass deportation agenda.
“Chaos is exactly what Trump wanted, and now California is left to clean up the mess,” Newsom said on X.
The showdown in Los Angeles brings together longtime overlapping goals of the Trump regime: bringing state and local officials to heel; trying to tap as many resources as possible for his deportation program; and going after protesters who speak or act against him, all while stretching the boundaries of legality.
Sending troops into an American city to stifle largely peaceful protests is a “test case” that, depending on how it plays out in Los Angeles, could be a strategy the administration replicates in other cities, said Sarah Mehta, the deputy director of government affairs at the ACLU.
This isn’t an isolated incident.
I think what we’re seeing in Los Angeles is this culmination of several weeks of incredibly aggressive immigration policing, the federal government asking the military to get further involved in immigration enforcement, including the transportation of unaccompanied children and attention and riot control, and then on top of that, again, these really targeted attacks against cities and states that are not going along with Trump’s aggressive deportation regime.
Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, said her city was being used as a proving ground for how the federal government might exert its authority over other local governments that resist the president’s agenda. “I feel like we are part of an experiment that we did not ask to be a part of,” she said, speaking at a press conference in downtown LA on Monday.
While Trump sows chaos in the streets, the mayor said, the city’s immigrant communities were gripped by a “level of fear and terror” over the administration’s escalating enforcement efforts, with some undocumented workers staying home and mixed-status families afraid to attend school graduation ceremonies.
Joanna Walters
Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, has further criticized Donald Trump’s decision to order troops into LA, in an interview today with the New York Times podcast.
The president a number of days ago commanded 2,000 National Guard. I want to put that in perspective. In California I command 18,000. Two days later there were about 315 [federalised national guard] who were mission-tasked, the rest were sitting around, about 1,700, for days, you saw them sitting quite literally on the ground, with out fuel, without food, without training. Last night we had 1,600 local law enforcement … that are trained for these activities, they are the ones making arrests [of protesters], not the national guard.
Newsom said of the national guard: “I revere these guys.” He said he had several hundred “down at the border doing counter-drug operations” and others known as rattlesnake crews.
These are the ones doing forest management, they are raking the forest, preparing for wildfire season, these are men and women … working for local police enforcement agencies in many instances, they are police officers in their day job….[many] have now been redeployed [to LA].
Newsom then said:
The first night they were deployed our police officers had to protect the national guard. They became a destination for the protests and it was local police that had to protect them. This is how ridiculous this whole thing is … I’ve said it’s immoral, it puts people’s lives at risk, they are using these men and women as pawns.
Joanna Walters
Gavin Newsom has made fresh comments condemning the use of federal troops called into action in Los Angeles by Donald Trump over the Democratic governor’s explicit objections in a very rare move.
“It’s theatre, it’s madness, it’s unconstitutional,” the California governor said on Thursday morning in an interview with the New York Times podcast The Daily.
The governor said that the more than 1,600 police he had ordered to control the streets of Los Angeles were more than capable of handling the limited-area protests.
He has accused the US president of not just escalating but provoking the situation in LA, where protesters first came out on to the streets in some areas to demonstrate against aggressive immigration raids but then further protested against the federal government taking charge of national guard troops and also ordering US Marines to go to LA.
Newsom told the outlet that he had had to take state-controlled troops away from the US-Mexico border, where they fight drug smuggling, and state forests, where they are clearing brush to prevent wildfire, and add them to enforcement in LA – not to deal with protests per se but to protect the federalised troops from the protesters.
California will face off with Washington in court on Thursday over Donald Trump’s deployment of US troops in Los Angeles after demonstrators again took to the streets in major cities to protest Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Some 700 US Marines will be on the streets of Los Angeles by Thursday or Friday, the military said, to support up to 4,000 national guard troops in protecting federal property and federal agents, including on immigration raids, Reuters reported.
Trump’s decision to dispatch troops to Los Angeles over the objections of California governor Gavin Newsom has sparked a national debate about the use of the military on US soil and further polarized the country.
Street protests have broken out in multiple cities besides Los Angeles including New York, Chicago, Washington and San Antonio, Texas.
A federal judge in San Francisco will hear arguments Thursday as part of California’s lawsuit against Trump. The state is requesting a temporary restraining order to block the troops’ participation in law enforcement activities.
California ultimately wants a court ruling that returns its national guard to the state’s control and declares that Trump’s action was illegal.
