Downtown Los Angeles remained under curfew early Thursday morning, the protests that began last Friday still in play. Demonstrators are protesting the raids of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to round up illegal immigrants as part of President Donald Trump's mass deportations plan. However, some say there's much more to the riots than angry illegals.
Some media accounts describe them as peaceful though punctuated by occasional violence. What peace might exist has been encouraged by approximately 4,000 federalized National Guard troops and 700 U.S. Marines put in place by Trump.
The protests have spurred similar events in cities across the country, though none of the related protests are a week old.
Where are the funds coming from? Signs point to foreign nations and deep-pocketed Democratic donors, Representative Brian Babin (R-Texas) said on Washington Watch Wednesday.
“There are indications and evidence that foreign nations are funding some of this. Quite frankly, we know George Soros and some of these leftist groups are as well and unbelievably, our own federal government. We've found evidence that USAID funding has gone to some of this kind of stuff, too,” Babin told show host Tony Perkins.
Others in government are beginning to shine light on the rioters' funding. The FBI has begun “examining the monetary connections,” Director Kash Patel said in a statement to 'Just The News.'
Flying a flag, not 'the' flag
Social media over the weekend was dotted with video clips of rioters assaulting immigration officers, burning vehicles, blocking at least one city highway and throwing concrete rocks at law enforcement officers. Often the rioters were standing atop cars, some abandoned and graffiti-littered, waving the flag of Mexico.
“This is what the Left wants to do. This is the globalists who hate America, hate Christianity, hate our Constitution, hate Israel. They are the ones who simply want to destroy this country, the greatest in the history of our great planet. They want to start it over from the ground up with a socialist anti-state or Communism,” Babin said.
Related op-ed by Ben Shapiro: The scavenger mentality
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has begun his own investigation into the funding sources.
“These LA riots aren't spontaneous. They're about as authentic as astroturf. Someone is buying and paying for them – and I want to know who. That's why I've launched an investigation into who's funding them,” Hawley said on Fox News Wednesday evening.
Hawley has written letters to representatives of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Union del Barrio requesting all internal communications, donor lists and financial documents related to protests, demonstrations and mobilization efforts dating back to Nov. 5 – election day.
“Credible reporting now suggests that your organization has provided logistical support and financial resources to individuals engaged in these disruptive actions. Let me be clear: bankrolling civil unrest is not protected speech. It is aiding and abetting criminal conduct,” the letters state.
Glenn Beck, of Blaze Media, told his 2 million-plus followers on X that the unrest goes much deeper than ICE.
“The LA riots were never about ICE, deportations, or Donald Trump. They're exactly what I predicted back on Fox: Marxists, anarchists, radical leftists, and Islamists working together to destroy capitalism and the West,” he wrote Wednesday.
Four years later, a different Trump strategy
Trump has taken a more aggressive approach to the LA riots than he did with the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis in 2020.
Trump, in his first term then, never federalized Minnesota National Guard troops. They remained under the state control of Governor Tim Walz who, four years later, would be on the losing presidential ticket with Kamala Harris against Trump.
Trump threatened to send in military troops in 2020 but ultimately did not. It's a support level for law and order that Babin says LA Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom have not provided.
“We just have seen a loss of disciplinary action on the part of our society. The Democratic Party, we've seen them go soft on crime, open borders to the extreme of 10-million plus coming over in the last four years. They've defunded the police departments. They've coddled criminals.
“Now their streets are on fire with the mobs burning the cars and attacking cops. What really gets you is they're waving foreign flags,” Babin said.
