Skip to content
Project 2025
Donate to support
diverse voices
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
​Performer Bad Bunny on stage.

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Sparks National Controversy As Trump Announces Boycott

Trump’s Plan to Gather Data on Every Voter Will Cripple Democracy

Trump’s Plan to Gather Data on Every Voter Will Cripple Democracy

The Insurrection Act, Revisited: Power That Waits in the Margins

The Insurrection Act, Revisited: Power That Waits in the Margins

​Donald Trump speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting.

America Stands Alone As Trump Undermines NATO and Our Allies

Alex Pretti’s Death Is a Code Blue for the U.S.

Alex Pretti’s Death Is a Code Blue for the U.S.

Marines Sent to Los Angeles “Presents a Significant Logistical and Operational Challenge”

News

Marines Sent to Los Angeles “Presents a Significant Logistical and Operational Challenge”

Protesters confront National Guard soldiers and police outside of a federal building as protests continue in Los Angeles following three days of clashes with police after a series of immigration raids on June 09, 2025, in Los Angeles, California.

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Hugo Balta
By Hugo BaltaJun 10, 2025
Hugo Balta
Hugo Balta is a journalist, educator, and communicator. Hugo is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and a board member of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, the parent organization of The Fulcrum. He is the publisher of the Latino News Network, a trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network, and an adjunct professor teaching journalism courses.
See More Writings by author

LOS ANGELES, CA - An estimated 700 U.S. Marines are being mobilized from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, approximately 140 miles east of Los Angeles, to Camp Pendleton in San Diego County. This mobilization will position the troops closer to Los Angeles, where they may potentially work alongside National Guard units to protect federal resources and personnel, according to NBC News.

The latest figures from police, nearly 70 individuals were arrested over the weekend during protests. This total includes 29 people arrested on Saturday for failure to disperse and 21 individuals arrested on Sunday on charges ranging from attempted murder involving a Molotov cocktail to looting and failure to disperse, as reported by the LAPD.

President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday: “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”

In response to the Marines' deployment, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell expressed concerns, stating that the "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."

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who opposed Trump sending the state's National Guard, strongly criticized Trump's activation of Marines in the Los Angeles area. In a post on X, he says that Marines are "heroes" who "shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial president. This is un-American."

Gavin also posted that he was informed "Trump is deploying another 2,000 Guard troops to L.A."

Increasing tensions, California sued the Trump administration on Monday over its order to deploy National Guard troops without the governor’s consent. The lawsuit argues that the President overstepped his authority when he called up the National Guard in defiance of Newsom, invoking a law that allows the president to do so under specific conditions.

So, when can a president deploy the National Guard? Here is the answer and more in a recent edition of the Fulcrum series, Just the Facts:

Just the Facts: Standoff Between National Guard and L.A. Protesters

Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum. He is the publisher of the Latino News Network and an accredited Solutions Journalism and Complicating the Narratives trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network.



Latest news

Marco Rubio: 2028 Presidential Contender?
Ethics & Leadership

Marco Rubio: 2028 Presidential Contender?

Word Kill: Politics Can Be Murder on Poetry
Pop Culture

Word Kill: Politics Can Be Murder on Poetry

Read More

The Danger Isn’t History Repeating—It’s Us Ignoring the Echoes

Nazi troops arrest civilians in Warsaw, Poland, 1943.

The Danger Isn’t History Repeating—It’s Us Ignoring the Echoes

The instinct to look away is one of the most enduring patterns in democratic backsliding. History rarely announces itself with a single rupture; it accumulates through a series of choices—some deliberate, many passive—that allow state power to harden against the people it is meant to serve.

As federal immigration enforcement escalates across American cities today, historians are warning that the public reactions we are witnessing bear uncomfortable similarities to the way many Germans responded to Adolf Hitler’s early rise in the 1930s. The comparison is not about equating leaders or eras. It is about recognizing how societies normalize state violence when it is directed at those deemed “other.”

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. capitol.

The current continuing resolution, which keeps the government funded, ends this Friday, January 30.

Getty Images

Probably Another Shutdown

The current continuing resolution, which keeps the government funded, ends this Friday, January 30.

It passed in November and ended the last shutdown. In addition to passage of the continuing resolution, some regular appropriations were also passed at the same time. It included funding for the remainder of the fiscal year for the food assistance program SNAP, the Department of Agriculture, the FDA, military construction, Veterans Affairs, and Congress itself (that is, through Sept. 30, 2026).

Keep ReadingShow less
The Escalation Is Institutional: One Year Into Trump’s Return to Power

U.S. President Donald Trump on January 22, 2026

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Escalation Is Institutional: One Year Into Trump’s Return to Power

One year after Donald Trump returned to the White House, the defining feature of his presidency is not turbulence or rhetorical provocation, but escalation as a mode of governance. Escalation, in this sense, does not simply mean doing more or acting faster. It refers to a sustained pattern of exercising power in ways that bypass, compress, or sideline democratic intermediaries, including Congress, courts, local governments, civil society, and even international partners.

Rather than treating institutional friction as a constraint, the administration has increasingly treated it as an obstacle to be overcome. The result is a presidency that appears more orderly than Trump’s first term, but more consequential in how it tests the guardrails of American democracy.

Keep ReadingShow less
Virginia voters will decide the future of abortion access

Virginia has long been a haven for abortion care in the South, where many states have near-total bans.

(Konstantin L/Shutterstock/Cage Rivera/Rewire News Group)

Virginia voters will decide the future of abortion access

Virginia lawmakers have approved a constitutional amendment that would protect reproductive rights in the Commonwealth. The proposed amendment—which passed 64-34 in the House of Delegates on Wednesday and 21-18 in the state Senate two days later—will be presented to voters later this year.

“Residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia can no longer allow politicians to dominate their bodies and their personal decisions,” said House of Delegates Majority Leader Charniele Herring, the resolution’s sponsor, during a committee debate before the final vote.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026