The mayor of Los Angeles is unwilling to quarrel and aims at the ace in the immigration raid

As Los Angeles swept away from immigrants, the nightly clash between protesters and police was disturbing, and reporters asked Mayor Karen Bass: What must she say to President Trump?

Bass stood in front of the library of the news camera, not retreating.

“I want to tell him to stop the raids,” she said. “I want to tell him that it is a city of immigrants. I want to tell him that if you want to destroy the city’s economy and then attack the immigrant population.”

After taking office in 2022, Los Angeles’ 43rd mayor carefully avoided public disputes with other elected officials, and instead emphasized her famous preference for cooperation and alliance building.

The high-profile Democrat, who spent twelve years in Congress, largely avoided direct confrontation with Trump, responded to diplomacy even as he attacked her in his handling of Palisades Fire earlier this year.

Those days of tip-footing around Trump, avoiding head-to-head conflicts have ended.

Bass is now quarreling with the president and his administration, a dangerous moment for her city and democracy.

Meanwhile, the turbulent events of the past week have given her a key opportunity for resetting, recalibrating her public image after Palisades opened fire while leading her city into another historic crisis.

“In the first six months of the year, there were two instantaneous crises that did test her courage as mayor,” said Republican political strategist Mike Madrid. “I think it’s possible to say she didn’t meet expectations during the fire. I think she’s improved a lot in the current situation.”

Bass accused Trump of creating a “terrible sense of fear” in her city as U.S. immigration and customs law enforcement officers and other federal authorities radiate across the region, searching for undocumented immigrants in courts, car washes and Home Depot parking lots.

Buss said Trump is expected to waste more than $100 million, neither demanding nor requiring troops. She repeatedly said Trump hadn’t arrived in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday when he hadn’t arrived on Saturday, and was wrongly credited to the National Guard.

In many ways, Trump has become the ideal foil for the mayor, and has been standing on her back foot for most of the past six months.

After the Palisades fire broke out while Palisades went abroad, Bass tried to show command of detail and was frightened by critics for their perception that they lacked leadership. A few months later, she released a budget that required 1,600 workers to be laid off, with strong protests from labor leaders, youth advocates and others.

This time Beth responded faster, declaring a nightly curfew as downtown, warning those who sabotage or commit violence and articulate the consequences of ice arresting its voters.

The regression arrived on Thursday, when only a few hours of notice, bass called over 100 people from religious, community, business and civic groups to condemn the raid. It offers a powerful chart: a multi-ethnic, multi-ethnic Angelenoans cheered among the mayor, who declared that “peace began when ice left Los Angeles.”

Icefield Agents at a press conference in Los Angeles.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

Bass said she had received reports from ice field agents entering the hospital, and that the workers who did not show up were afraid to attend the graduation of their children. Immigration rights advocates say Trump has brought cruelty and chaos to Los Angeles. A church pastor from Boyle Heights said his parishioners “feeled hunted.”

Since the raid began, Trump and his administration have devalued Beth and her city. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the president, used the “language of rebel mobs” to accuse the bass of using “language of rebels” when discussing her city. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Los Angeles a “city of criminals” and its legal vandals are protected by bass.

Republicans have begun threatening revenge on outspoken Democrats, including Beth, and have suggested criminal prosecution.

Asked about Bass’ comments over the past week, White House spokesman Abigail Jackson said ice sheet agents would not “stop the mission.”

“We will not apologize for enforcing immigration laws and fulfilling the mandate that the American people gave to President Trump in November: expelling illegal foreigners,” she said.

Fernando Guerra, who heads the Loyola Marymount Loyola Marymount Center for Research, said Angelenos completely wants their mayor to face-to-face with the president. In last year’s presidential election, Democrat Kamala Harris won more than 70% of the vote in Los Angeles, while Trump won less than 27%.

“I’m not surprised by what she did,” Gra said. “I even suggested that she push more. I think it’s been a price politically and even socially.”

Mayor Karen Bass addressed the media at the town hall.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

The mayor regularly calls on television and radio stations and get prime time on national cable shows. In another appearance, she warned that Los Angeles is becoming a “big experiment”, a test ground for Trump to see if he can usurp the authority of a Democratic mayor or other state governor.

Trump described Los Angeles as a “trash dump” in a speech to the troops at Fort Bragg on Tuesday, with the entire community controlled by “transnational gangs and criminal networks.” A few hours later, Beth clapped on MSNBC and said, “I don’t know what he is talking about.”

Bass talks repeatedly about the traumatized Angelenos, who were unable to find loved ones trapped in the raid on the ice.

“In most cases, detainees are denied legal representation,” Bass said during his appearance at the city’s emergency operations center. “It’s unprecedented.”

For a mayor, the attack and its impact on families and children is deeply personalized, who organized teeth decades ago with immigration rights activists.

Bass’ own family reflects the multi-ethnic nature of her city. Her late ex-husband is the son of an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico. Her extended family includes immigrants from South Korea, Japan and the Philippines. She said she recently saw immigration agents arrested outside their grandson’s Los Angeles school.

The arrival of ice, then the National Guard, and then the U.S. Marines not only created bass, but also led several other ways Democrats had avoided before going out.

Senator Alex Padilla was removed from a press conference at the Wilshire Federal Building, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

For decades, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, a soft politician, was handcuffed Thursday after interrupting Noem’s remarks and forced to be removed from a press conference in Westwood.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently accused Trump of “waning abuse of power”, calling him “Wu Lin” and filed a lawsuit to stop the deployment of the National Guard, which is not a huge departure for Newsom, who loves to confront and gets the spotlight as well as people’s focus.

For Beth, head-to-head accusations were even more out of place, with Bath spending her first two years at City Hall of her successful “lock-to-arm” on “lock-to-arm”, homelessness and other issues with her elected officials. In recent months, the mayor praised Trump for the rapid arrival of federal resources when New York City began cleaning and rebuilding the Palisade fire.

Long before winning the City Office, Bass has her ability to work with other politicians (regardless of party affiliation) from her time as co-founder of the South La Los Angeles Community Alliance to her years in Congress.

According to people who know her mind is not authorized to speak publicly, the bass strategy of avoiding public arguments with Trump is not accidental. The person said the mayor believes that the extended tits are a barrier to federal relief and other urgent needs for federal funding.

“It’s more about her brand – anyone who wants to do the job with her,” said Ange-Marie Hancock, who chairs the Kirwan Institute for Race and Race, who is also hosting Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for Race and Race.

Mike Bonin, head of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University in Los Angeles, said he believes Bass’ career in building a multiracial, multiethnic alliance makes her very suitable for the moment.

Boning, who served in the city council for nearly a decade, said Trump now has no choice but to “almost all the war against Los Angeles”.

“I didn’t see her having any political or moral choices,” he said.