Good morning. It is June 10th. It is a rainy morning in New York City. The chill of the last few days is supposed to be on its way out into a fairly sweltering evening. And this is your indignity morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem went on Fox last night and called Los Angeles a city of criminals. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is on Capitol Hill this morning where he repeated under oath the Trump administration's imaginary claim that 21 million undocumented people entered the country under Joe Biden. 

The lead news slot on the front of this morning's New York Times, two columns wide, is NEWS ANALYSIS. “Trump Leaps at Chance For Clash in California / Driving His Agenda and Defying a Rival.” 

Dateline Washington, not dateline Los Angeles. “It is the fight President Trump had been waiting for,” the Times writes, “a showdown with a top political rival in a deep blue state over an issue core to his political agenda. In bypassing the authority of Governor Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, to call in the National Guard and mobilizing a Marine battalion to quell protests in the Los Angeles area over his administration's efforts to deport more migrants, Mr. Trump is now pushing the boundaries of presidential authority and stoking criticism that he is inflaming the situation for political gain.” That's followed by an unusual bracketed reference that just says, “[page A10].” 

What's on page A10? Well, there's a full page spread taking advantage of the fact that it's the center sheet of the paper covering A10 and A11 centered on a giant photograph of someone in a mask riding a bicycle past a row of burning and graffiti-decked Waymo cars in downtown Los Angeles. But the story on A10 under the overall heading, the “47th president” is “Pentagon mobilizes Marines to guard property in L.A.” Sub-headline “California plans to sue Trump over deploying federal forces.” This doesn't really seem to be about Trump stoking criticism, which once again showcases the way that “stoking criticism” and similar constructions are used as a buffer between the reader and blunt facts. As the story on page A10 says, “It was unclear exactly what grounds Mr. Trump and the Defense Department were using to send the Marines, based in Twentynine Palms, Calif., to American streets. Federal law generally bars active-duty forces from domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the little-used Insurrection Act — a step Mr. Trump has not taken so far.” 

The story goes on to say Governor Gavin Newsom of California condemned the deployment as a provocation, saying in an interview with the New York Times that Mr. Trump was acting to sow more fear, more anger, and to further divide. So there's a little criticism, but again, it's followed by legal substance. “California's attorney general, Rob Bonta, said earlier Monday that the state was planning to sue the Trump administration in an effort to stop Mr. Trump from deploying National Guard troops without Mr. Newsom's authorization. Mr. Bonta, a Democrat, said the lawsuit would argue that Mr. Trump's order activating the National Guard was illegal because it had bypassed the governor and had also violated the 10th Amendment, which protects states' rights.” Further along, the story says “in his order activating the troops, Mr. Trump suggested that protests against immigration and customs enforcement raids and detention facilities were interfering with federal functions and that they constituted a rebellion against the federal government's authority and its ability to enforce law. That is the standard for invoking the Insurrection Act to use the military for domestic policing. The order did not invoke the Insurrection Act. It cited a statute that allowed the president, under certain circumstances, to federalize a state's National Guard. It appeared to gesture toward a claim of inherent presidential power to use troops to protect federal functions.”

“The order,” the story continues, “raised many legal questions, including whether a rebellion against federal authority was actually taking place and whether a court could reject a president's claim that the situation rises to the level that would make it lawful to send in troops. There was also the procedural question about the legality of Mr. Hegseth's decision to cut Mr. Newsom out of the administration's decision-making process.” Then the story talks about the case of David Huerta, the head of the Service Employees International Union in California. 

“He was,” the Times writes, “arrested on Friday at a business in downtown Los Angeles, where he met federal immigration authorities executing a search warrant and joined other protesters. According to a federal complaint that cited an undercover officer in the crowd, Mr. Huerta told demonstrators to sit down and stop the vehicles. Mr. Huerta yelled at others that it's a public sidewalk, they can't stop us, the undercover officer reported, according to the complaint.

“Mr. Huerta and another man also repeatedly banged on the gate in another attempt to intimidate us, the complaint said, adding that when Mr. Huerta stood in the path of a law enforcement van trying to get into a parking lot, an agent put his hands on him. ‘I saw Huerta push back and in response, the officer pushed Huerta to the ground.’ The agent wrote,” right. What the government outlined there in its side of the story is one alleged effort to get other people to commit a traffic violation, one assertion of the fact that the public is allowed on the public sidewalk, an act of banging on a gate, an act of standing in the way of a van, and then a physical response to a federal agent physically grabbing him. Again, that's the Fed's own account of what happened. 

Then the Times writes, “video of the incident shows Mr Huerta being knocked down and lying with his head on the curb. He was hospitalized and released on Friday, the union said in a statement, but remained in custody. Federal prosecutors,” the Times continues, “said he had been charged with conspiracy to impede an officer, a felony punishable by up to six years in prison. Mr Huerta appeared in court on Friday and was to be released on a $50,000 bond, a magistrate said.” 

This, it turns out, is how a violent fascist takeover manifests itself operating in the uncanny nexus between completely made up pretexts and complaints and genuine power and violence. Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth go on TV, done up like Bratz dolls of themselves and make flamboyantly idiotic and fantastic claims about reality, while somebody's real head bangs into a real curb, and they end up locked up and facing extravagant criminal punishment, in the real criminal justice system. 

Back on page one, next to the news analysis story is a big tall photo of a crowd gathered on an overpass looking down at a highway patrol SUV as its front end goes up in flames. Burning vehicles really feature prominently so far in the iconography of what's happening in LA. 

They make nice dramatic pictures, which is presumably a large part of why people set them on fire. And they're easier to get a nice composed shot of than the crowded, chaotic and fast moving spectacle of, say, police horses trampling protesters underfoot. 

The inside photos in the paper do also include a menacing cloud of tear gas engulfing protesters and ranks of armored and helmeted police officers and National Guard troops. The caption on the photo of the police officers as “protesters and law enforcement personnel clashed Sunday near an immigration and customs enforcement facility in San Francisco,” but the “clash” consists of one set of people yelling and waving a club and apparently pushing barriers forward while the other side of people seems to be trying to keep the metal barrier from being pushed into them. And the badges are all on the more agitated looking side of that composition. 

And yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, published an op-ed announcing that he is going to fire the 17 members of the department's advisory committee for immunization practices, accusing the board of being little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine. This flatly contradicts the promises that Kennedy made under oath in his confirmation hearings, as he tried to assure Republicans who were embarrassed about having to show their support for Donald Trump by confirming an anti-vax crank to run HHS that despite his extreme personal and professional commitments to undermining vaccines, he would not use his office to demolish the federal government's vaccination work. Guess what? He was lying. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Continue sending those along if you are able, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we'll talk again tomorrow.