The commander in chief of the mightiest military in the world did something a United States president should rarely do: Unleash the machinery of the federal government against America's cities, including its second most populous city, Los Angeles.

Against the will of our elected leaders and our people, Los Angeles became the first city President Donald Trump occupied with the military since returning to office. Federal agents poured into our neighborhoods ‒ masked men, shoulder to shoulder, in plain clothes, armed and unidentified.

They weren’t pursuing criminals. They were targeting Angelenos based on how they looked, where they worked or the language they spoke. Worse, some of those targeted, according to recent reporting, were U.S. citizens in this country legally.

While Los Angeles was the first test case, it has been far from the last. From our streets, the National Guard has already spread to Washington, DC, Chicago, Portland, Oregon, and Memphis, Tennessee ‒ in each case with eerily similar tactics. Masked men flooding neighborhoods, patrolling without accountability, seizing citizens and noncitizens alike without due process.

Simply put, what started in Los Angeles is no longer just about Los Angeles. Unchecked federal power now threatens every American. If Washington can descend on a community of nearly

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