LA protests live updates: Trump mobilizes 4,000 National Guard to assist 700 Marines in response to anti-ICE demonstrations

California Governor Gavin Newsom, the most outspoken state official challenging the Trump administration’s response to the L.A. protests, is condemning the White House’s decision to send hundreds of Marines into the fray.

“U.S. Marines have served honorably across multiple wars in defense of democracy,” Newsom wrote on X on Monday evening. “They are heroes. They shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President. This is un-American.”

He has also sued over the administration’s separate decision to federalize California’s National Guard to respond to the demonstrations.

Los Angeles police are on “tactical alert,” meaning longer deployments and more focused operations to respond to protests, according to LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, speaking at a press conference on Monday evening.

During the address, McDonnell also raised alarms over reports that the Trump administration is sending hundreds of Marines to aid in the protest response.

“We’re also aware of reports the president intends or has deployed U.S. Marines to Los Angeles,” he said, warning that sending the troops without direct coordination “creates logistical challenges and risks infusion during critical incidents.”

The chief also vowed “many more” arrests and warned, “There is no tolerance for criminal activity under guise of protest.”

After hours of relative calm throughout Monday, tensions are rising between police and protesters.

Demonstrators have begun throwing objects like water bottles at police around a federal complex near downtown Los Angeles, while officers have fired crowd-control munitions into the throng, KTLA reports.

As we follow the unfolding nature of the Los Angeles protests, one element we are keeping track of is how the White House is describing the situation.

Increasingly, top figures have called the protests an invasion or an insurrection, the type of emergency that would theoretically warrant invoking the Insurrection Act.

The law allows the president to utilize federal military troops or federalize National Guard troops in order to suppress uncontrollable protests or other civil disturbance situations.

Federal troops are already on the ground in the L.A., but invoking the rarely used 1807 law could authorize federal troops or National Guard units to enforce domestic policies like making arrests, a power normally barred under the Posse Comitatus Act. It would mark an extreme escalation in the Trump administration’s use of emergency powers to counter the protests.

The administration has already used similar “invasion” language about members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in the U.S. to highly controversial results.

The White House declared the group a terror organization invading the country, then invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law allowing summary deportations.

It then sent hundreds of men to a notorious Salvadoran prison before they could challenge their removals, and their families now say they’re being held there incommunicado.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is blaming federal officials for chaotic protests in the city over the weekend, arguing an aggressive strategy of immigration raids was likely to trigger mass anger.

“None of this needed to happen,” she told ABC7 on Monday. “Why did we need to have raids? It was very clear that if raids happened there, the community was going to respond in a very negative way. I tried to make that case. Unfortunately I didn’t succeed.”

The mayor also condemned the subsequent decision to send National Guard troops and Marines to shore up local police.

“This is not citywide unrest like has happened in our city before,” she said, a reference to the 1992 Rodney King riots, when officials called soldiers and Marines to assist local police in restoring order.

More National Guard troops are heading to L.A., according to California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Here’s what he wrote on X about the situation:

I was just informed Trump is deploying another 2,000 Guard troops to L.A. The first 2,000? Given no food or water. Only approx. 300 are deployed — the rest are sitting, unused, in federal buildings without orders. This isn’t about public safety. It’s about stroking a dangerous President’s ego. This is Reckless. Pointless. And Disrespectful to our troops.

California is suing the Trump administration over its decision to federalize state National Guard troops as part of the response to the L.A. protests.

The suit, filed in California federal court on Monday, hammered the administration for “another unprecedented power grab, this time at the cost of the sovereignty of the State of California and in disregard of the authority and role of the Governor as commander-in-chief of the State’s National Guard. “

Read the full suit here.

More details on the state-versus-federal standoff.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has spent much of the day fuming on X, claiming protesters in Los Angeles are “insurrectionists” and Los Angeles police haven’t been allowed to arrest them.

“They are just corralling them from one location to another,” Miller wrote.

In fact, between Saturday and today, the LAPD has arrested at least 50 people.

Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, claimed on Monday that California officials told police not to assist ICE agents as they were assailed by protesters this weekend.

“Violent mobs, incited by California leaders, attacked ICE officers to keep them from removing the invaders,” Miller wrote on X. “California officials refused to send the police to rescue the ice officers, hoping the rioters would succeed in shutting down ICE raids. This is an organized insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.”

LAPD chief Jim McDonell denied this claim, saying that federal officials failed to notifying local police about their plans, leading to a delay as officers rushed to mass a sufficient force to aid their federal counterparts.

"When we heard that, I think anybody who's a police officer couldn't believe it, and certainly anyone with LAPD couldn't imagine how that could happen," McDonnell told reporters on Sunday, after similar claims that the force waited hours to respond. "Well, it didn't happen."

He said it took about 38 minutes for LAPD officers to deploy on Friday.

The head of the Los Angeles Police Department is expressing concerns over the Trump administration’s decision to send hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles to assist in response to the protests there.

“The LAPD has not received any formal notification that the Marines will be arriving in Los Angeles” LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said in a statement on X on Monday afternoon. “However, the possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles—absent clear coordination—presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.”

The chief touted his department’s “decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations,” and said the LAPD remains “confident in our ability to do so professional and effectively.”

The police chief urged “open and continuous lines of communication” and called on all parties to “avoid escalation.”