Condemning the Violent June 2025 Riots in Los Angeles, California

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAMLAGER-DOVE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in fierce opposition to this performative and misleading resolution that reads like a cheap script treatment looking for a second-rate director.

H. Res. 516 is not about public safety. It is about fear, scapegoating immigrants, and gaslighting the American people into believing that Los Angeles is some so-called hellscape. If it is such a hellscape, I want to know why Republican Members of Congress have been flying into Los Angeles over the past few weeks attending fundraisers. Nobody is showing up in a hazmat suit or combat gear.

If it is such a hellscape, pull back the cameras and release the drone footage so we can see what is happening across the entire city.

This resolution ignores the fact that the violence didn't start in a vacuum. It was sparked by the Trump administration's provocative, aggressive immigration raids across the State.

ICE agents were in neighborhoods, grocery stores, and churches. I have never seen a segment on TV about an MS-13 cartel boss in the third grade. That is what we are seeing.

Of course, we came out and protested. That is what democracy looks like. Of course, our communities are terrified across Los Angeles, across the State, and across the country.

Instead of listening to us, the people from L.A., the President escalated this drama, deploying the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles without a request from local law enforcement, the Governor, or the mayor.

Why? To launch a pathetic, made-for-TV reality TV show to justify authoritarian crackdowns and to divert from the real violence, the violence of cutting $880 billion from Medicaid, the violence of kicking people off of healthcare, and the violence of tanking our economy into the gold toilet.

That is what we should be talking about. That is what this President doesn't want us to talk about, so he turned the cameras and the manufactured, fabricated violence onto Los Angeles.

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Ms. KAMLAGER-DOVE. Mr. Speaker, this audacity in blaming local leaders is about optics, power, control, and stoking the ego of Republicans and king daddy.

We are tanking the California economy, the fourth-largest economy in the world and the largest donor State. I refuse to support this resolution.

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