(COVER PHOTO: Daniel Cole/Reuters via CNN Newsource)
(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s deployment of military troops to California is forcing Democrats back onto politically perilous turf, as they look for ways to condemn his actions without being drawn into a broad debate over immigration or tying themselves to the chaotic scenes emerging from Los Angeles.
Republicans are relishing a fight that directs attention away from their monthslong, intraparty debate over tax and spending legislation, and the messy political breakup of Trump and Elon Musk, and toward what they view as Democrats’ biggest vulnerabilities: immigration, law enforcement and public disorder.
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman warned his fellow Democrats about the images emerging from California, where protests erupted Friday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and escalated into outbreaks of violence. Some protesters have thrown objects at law enforcement, looted businesses, blocked a major freeway and set self-driving cars ablaze — while police in riot gear fired rubber bullets to disperse crowds. While much of the protest activity has been peaceful, images of burning cars and chaos have been widespread across social media and traditional news coverage.
“You can’t defend when people start setting things on fire or they start damaging buildings or going after members of law enforcement. That’s not free speech. That is not peaceful protest,” Fetterman said Tuesday.
Fetterman, who was lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania during racial justice protests around the country in 2020, said Democrats “should have learned the lesson back in 2020. Absolutely, there was righteous outrage over what happened to George Floyd, but that never means that you can support or be quiet if there’s destruction or rioting and destroying and looting and those kinds of things.”
He said he was “not judging any of my other colleagues in my party,” but warned: “You can’t be quiet on those things. You have to just call it really what it is.”
Debate over law enforcement
Some Democrats privately agree with Fetterman, saying their party’s leaders must be more forceful in condemning the rioters’ behavior. Lawmakers in competitive swing districts also worry about the political ramifications down the road, particularly if party activists resurrect a years-old battle cry for abolishing ICE.
And in the meantime, they believe Democrats will be forced to grapple with an existential question: Do they support federal law enforcement officials actually enforcing federal immigration law?
In a clear sign of the fraught political moment, lawmakers from across the Democratic Party’s ideological spectrum issued warnings Tuesday against violence.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a progressive independent who caucuses with Democrats, urged protesters to exhibit the same “disciplined non-violent resistance” to Trump that civil rights leaders used to end segregation.
“Violent protests are counterproductive and play right into Trump’s playbook,” he said on X.
Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, a conservative Democrat who has long represented a Rio Grande Valley district, said in a statement that “when people start throwing bricks and hammers at law enforcement, that’s no longer protest — that’s criminal.”
“We can debate policy without attacking the people who wear the badge and work to keep us safe,” Cuellar said.
Trump, for his part, has blamed Democrats broadly and California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Karen Bass specifically for mishandling the situation, saying on Truth Social the city “would be burning to the ground right now” had he not deployed troops there.
And Republicans have delighted in pitting Trump against Newsom. House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday that Newsom — who has aggressively criticized the Trump administration’s moves — “ought to be tarred and feathered.”
“He’s standing in the way of the administration carrying out the federal law. He is applauding the bad guys and standing in the way of good guys,” Johnson said.
‘Throwing a match onto the kindling’
Trump’s actions have put Democrats in a complicated political spot. The party has struggled to navigate the issue of immigration since the president’s victory in November — split between the moral outrage of the Democratic base over Trump’s unprecedented deportation efforts, and polls that have largely reflected public support for the president on the issue overall. In particular, surveys have shown that most voters want tougher border security than the Biden administration put in place for much of the previous four years.
But the politics get murkier when Americans are asked about the details of how Trump is carrying out his campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history.
In the past — particularly when federal law enforcement cleared Lafayette Square, near the White House, amid 2020 protests — polls found that Americans opposed the use of rubber bullets and tear gas, and opposed deploying the US military in response to protests within the country.
A CBS News/YouGov survey conducted before the protests in Los Angeles broke out found somewhat contradictory results: Fifty-four percent of Americans support Trump’s deportation program, and 55% like its “goals.” However, 56% said they dislike “the way you think [Trump] is going about” the deportations.
Democrats this week argued that Trump’s actions have only worsened tensions in California.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly said the president’s deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles is “like throwing the match onto the kindling.”
“He took some actions that escalated an issue — a problem, but it was under control. And now the problem is bigger because of the actions he took,” Kelly told CNN.
Democrats also accused Trump of hypocrisy, pointing out that he was slow to deploy the National Guard on January 6, 2021, when his supporters were rioting and attacking police officers at the US Capitol.
“We begged the president of the United States to send in the National Guard. He would not do it,” California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was the House speaker at the time, said Tuesday.
Using the military
California Rep. Ro Khanna told CNN outside the Capitol on Monday that Democrats “need to continue to unequivocally condemn the violence, the threats or attacks on law enforcement agents — I mean, that has no place.”
But, the progressive congressman added, Trump’s actions are unconstitutional.
“One can hold two thoughts — that political violence should be absolutely condemned, vandalism needs to be condemned, but that the appropriate remedy are state and local police — that you can’t deploy the military against our own people, unless there’s a real crisis,” Khanna said.
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton similarly said that “there’s no excuse for violence.”
“If you’re protesting the fact that ICE officers are sometimes too violent, doing that with violence doesn’t make the point,” he said.
However, Moulton also said Trump is using the US military to achieve political aims at home.
“This is not an opportunity to turn active-duty Marines against the American people. And that’s what Trump is doing,” Moulton said.
Trump vs. Democratic governors
Trump has used Newsom as a foil as he deploys troops to the Los Angeles area — even suggesting Monday that border czar Tom Homan should arrest the governor. Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, has embraced the clash and publicly dared Homan to arrest him.
Newsom himself has been in regular touch with lawmakers on the Hill, and held a briefing with his state’s delegation and the leader of the California National Guard on Monday to update them on Trump’s actions, according to two people familiar with the call. Newsom’s office has also been distributing copies of some of attacks on him, including Trump’s calls to arrest him, to House Democrats’ offices, those people said.
The scenes unfolding in California are also leading Democrats elsewhere to grapple with what they would do if Trump took similar actions in their states. And they fear they’d be powerless to stop it.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, one of the Democratic candidates in Tuesday’s New Jersey gubernatorial primary, said Trump’s move “shows the further incompetence coming from Washington and the constant level of chaos that is almost intentionally generated there.” Sherrill also warned that military missions are much different from those of law enforcement in the United States.
Another New Jersey gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, highlighted Trump’s actions in a speech. He said the scenes in California make clear “just what’s on the line in this election and why it’s so important that we have a governor who’s willing to stand up and fight.”
The Democratic Governors Association, in a statement signed by 22 governors, called Trump’s deployment of troops to California “an alarming abuse of power.” But the statement did not address the president’s handling of his deportation program.
“It’s important we respect the executive authority of our country’s governors to manage their National Guards — and we stand with Governor Newsom who has made it clear that violence is unacceptable and that local authorities should be able to do their jobs without the chaos of this federal interference and intimidation,” the Democratic governors’ statement said.
CNN’s Arlette Saenz, Ted Barrett, David Wright and Manu Raju contributed to this report.
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