Notes On Now from LA

Trump’s Wager

Last month, I lived in Los Angeles with our daughter’s family.

In no way was the huge, sprawling city on the edge of ‘obliteration’. Nor did it need to be saved from an invasion of dangerous immigrants, as the President claimed. Nor did anyone need to choose between the need to “deport the invaders, or surrender to insurrection”, as asserted by the sinister White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

By violently polarising opinion, Donald Trump’s team aims to exploit public support for deporting undocumented ‘criminals’ and control of immigration. The purpose is to intimidate Republicans in Congress to pass Trump’s grotesque Big Beautiful Bill, even though its tax cuts for the rich are unpopular. The bill will deliver more than $100 billion to the ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) machinery of para-legal expulsions, incarcerations and deportations, to institutionalise military-style executive authority across the United States.

Why now? Because radical escalation, pumped by racism and imposed by bayonets and stun guns, can overwhelm the ongoing crises of incoherent tariffs, unbelievable deficits, disputes with the judiciary, defiance by Democratic state governors, conflicts with Elon Musk, showdowns with major universities, as Trump’s second administration continues its assaults on the constitution.