Thursday, June 12, 2025
Like alithium battery on fire, the ferocity of the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles willinevitably come to your city with the same or even greater intensity. Whatwe’ve witnessed earlier this week is merely a warm-up to a meltdown during ablistering summer.
The realtarget of the protestors' wrath is not ICE, rather Donald Trump, whosepresidential victory last November and aggressive and sometimes unilateral (albeitlegal) fulfilment of his campaign promises, has enraged the Democrats.
TheShadow Civil War
Trump,by federalizing the California National Guard, undertook the rare action whenCalifornia Governor Gavin Newsom (D) refused to request their services despitegrowing violence and looting in the streets of downtown Los Angeles.
Supportedby extensive video footage by citizen journalists, the National Guard’s ordersare to protect federal buildings, not crowd control in supplement local lawenforcement. Soon after US Marines were sent to support the National Guard.
Thepresence of the National Guard and Marines unburdened the responsibility oflocal law enforcement so that they can apply all their human and equipmentresources in containing the urban mayhem. Governor Newsom even attempted tohalt the arrival of the military but backed down after a California SupremeCourt judge rejected his request.
Althoughconstitutionally this crisis appears to be an issue of federal vs state rights,the toxic political chasm between the Democrats and Republicans, pushes thestakes to another far more dangerous level.
Withrespect to economic heft, according to the IMF’s 2024 World Economic Outlook, ifCalifornia were a separate country, it would be the 4th highest nominalGDP in the world at $4.1 trillion behind the US, China and Germany, greaterthan Japan’s $4.02 trillion.
PowderKeg Weekend: A Troika of Trouble
The websiteof a protest/defiance group called “No Kings”,is organizing an anti ICE/anti-Trump protests nationwide called 50501Movement (50 protests, 50 states, one movement) this Saturday, June 14 notcoincidentally happens to be:
1. Flag Day
2. The US military’s 250thanniversary
3. President Trump’s 70thbirthday
Theirwebsite includes dozens of cities, locales and hours they plan to organize theseprotests. The map below is an overview; all particulars can be found on theaforementioned website link.
How theseprotests play out is anyone’s guess. It may be nothing more than a lot of noiseor a series of full-blown riots. Either way, I’m sure that law enforcement andlocal businesses have dusted off the BLM playbook to contain and/or minimizedamage to their establishments respectively.
TempestSpinoffs
Oftentimes the protestors are loud and contained by law enforcement with minimalissues. However, powerful storms, especially tornados, spawn an unpredictable numberof smaller ones.
Thesesmaller groups include the omnipresent paid and unpaid agitators and looters,none of whom care about the protesting issues. With law enforcement stretchedto the max, sometimes smaller storms spawn during or shortly after the mainprotest making it a challenge to contain like a fiery device with lithium batteries.
Conclusion& Takeaways
Theseprotests and their consequences in Los Angeles are merely the warm-up trailersto a possible sustained level of protests throughout the summer. The next bigdate is the Fourth of July, a potentially brutal weekend since the holidayfalls on a Friday.
Worseyet, during the summer there’s no shortage of potential young protestors fromthe universities, nomad workers, the unemployed and under-employed.
Economically,businesses that are devastated by violent protests are unlikely to return deprivingthe community of essential resources and workers of employment.
As majorretailers pull out permanently, these areas will be fallow and potentially beclassified as “eminent domain”. Present-day or future going concerns will find doingbusiness in these areas unaffordable with respect to insurance or even uninsurable.It’s the creation of another urban desert, not caused by climate change.
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The Cerulean Council is a NYC-based think-tank thatprovides prescient, beyond-the-horizon, contrarian perspectives and riskassessments on geopolitical dynamics and global urban security.