Brooks: As Trump cracks down on L.A. protests, Minnesota looks back — and ahead

What happened in Los Angeles over the weekend was a funhouse mirror version of a clash between federal agents and protesters in Minneapolis a few days before.

Both started with rumors of an immigration raid. The kind of raid that whisks people away to fast-track deportation without due process. The kind of rumor that can draw a crowd of sympathetic neighbors and angry protesters into the path of heavily armed federal agents.

On a rainy, smoky Tuesday in south Minneapolis, federal agents surrounded a Mexican restaurant on Lake Street to serve what turned out to be a search warrant. On a sunny Friday in L.A., ICE agents detained at least 40 day laborers in a Home Depot parking lot and employees at a garment factory.

Two cities, two rapidly mobilized protests, one major difference: The president only deployed the military against one of them.

Shouts, chants and clouds of tear gas filled Lake Street last Tuesday, bringing back traumatic memories of 2020, when George Floyd was murdered and Lake Street burned. Protesters made work difficult for the agents, with some fighting with law enforcement. Everybody was angry, everybody got soaked in the downpour and the protest was mostly over by the end of the day. In the aftermath of raid, one man was charged with allegedly assaulting a Minneapolis police officer.

The California protest started small on Friday, then spiraled into day after day of mass arrests, violence and the total destruction of a small fleet of autonomous taxis. President Donald Trump jumped into the fray, explaining to reporters over the weekend that the federal government had to get involved. Protesters were torching cars and apparently spitting at law enforcement.

“They spit, we hit,” Trump told reporters at Camp David on Sunday, apparently forgetting that he had just pardoned 1,500 rioters who spit, hit and battered Capitol Police bloody on Jan. 6, 2021. “Nobody’s going to spit on our police officers. Nobody’s going to spit on our military.”

So here America sits, with a president who’s deploying the National Guard (not his job) and calling in the Marines against the people of Los Angeles (not his enemy).

It’s hard not to put Minneapolis at the center of this moment. In many ways, Trump’s response feels like more evidence of the long shadow of George Floyd’s murder on our streets five years ago.

Trump and his aides have long believed Gov. Tim Walz didn’t do enough to quiet the rioting that erupted following Floyd’s death, the New York Times reported over the weekend. With that thought in his head, Trump appears to have decided to show Walz and the rest of the country what a heavy-handed show of military weaponry could do to a heated situation.

“We’re not going to let a repeat of 2020 happen,” Homeland Defense Secretary Kristi Noem said on Face the Nation on Sunday, possibly forgetting who was president in 2020.

The Minnesotans who took to the streets last Tuesday remember. The alphabet soup of government agencies who rolled up Lake Street in tactical gear and armored vehicles brought the memories of 2020 back. Smoke in the air, broken glass underfoot, terrified neighbors soaking their roofs with garden hoses. The relentless thump-thump-thump of military helicopters all night.

Watching tanks roll onto the streets of your city isn’t a moment to celebrate. Not unless you’re the president of the United States throwing a big military birthday parade this coming Saturday.

The president has kept up a running commentary on Truth Social, his own personal social media platform. He was like a sports fan weighing in on the big game, except this fan of tanks and violence has the power to kick the coach off the bench and start calling the shots.

“Well, we’re going to have troops everywhere,” Trump told reporters at one point. There had already been talk that he would activate 700 Marines to deploy to Los Angeles County — population 9.8 million, larger than 40 states, including Minnesota.

“What’s the bar for sending in the Marines?” a reporter asked him.

“The bar,” Trump said, “is what I think it is.”