Vice President Vance is traveling to Los Angeles on Friday to meet with the National Guard troops and U.S. Marines that President Trump deployed to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Vance will tour operations and mobile command centers, and give brief remarks to military officials and Marines, the White House said.
The anti-ICE protests in Southern California, which were at times marred by looting, vandalism and clashes with police, have largely abated.
Still, tempers are running hot between California's Democratic leadership and the Trump administration over Trump's move to deploy thousands of California National Guard troops to keep the peace. The president also dispatched hundreds of U.S. Marines.
A federal appeals court ruled late Thursday that Trump could keep the National Guard deployed in Los Angeles, for now, after the move was challenged by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in court.
"We emphasize, however, that our decision addresses only the facts before us. And although we hold that the President likely has authority to federalize the National Guard, nothing in our decision addresses the nature of the activities in which the federalized National Guard may engage," the appeals panel wrote in its 38-page decision.
Trump celebrated the ruling on social media:
"The Judges obviously realized that Gavin Newscum is incompetent and ill prepared, but this is much bigger than Gavin, because all over the United States, if our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should State and Local Police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done," he posted on Truth Social.
The Hill's Zach Schonfeld reports:
"Though the 9th Circuit's decision marks a victory for Trump in the legal battle, it may be short-lived. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who issued last week's decision invalidating the deployment, is set to hold a hearing Friday on whether to issue an indefinite injunction."
Separately, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pushed back on claims made by the Los Angeles Dodgers that the baseball team had turned away ICE agents who had "requested permission to access the parking lots."
ICE called the allegations "false."
Rather, DHS said Customs and Border Protection (CBP) "vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement."
"This had nothing to do with the Dodgers," DHS said.
Also on Friday, the Trump administration gave California a 60-day deadline to overhaul its sex education program or risk losing federal funding.
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Rahm Emanuel, former President Obama's chief of staff, appears to be inching closer to running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
"I have something I think I can offer," Emanuel said on CNN. "But I haven't made that decision."
Emanuel, who has fashioned himself as a blunt truth teller, has criticized Democrats for being "weak and woke."
Democrats are seeking a new identity after their sweeping losses and the nation's rightward shift in 2024.
Hillary Clinton's former campaign chief Patti Solis Doyle told Mark Halperin that the Democratic Party is "leaderless," "message-less," and "agenda-less."
"We don't have any alternative ideas to the president and the Republicans right now," she said. "So, you know, I'm concerned, to say the least."
Democratic strategist James Carville said Thursday that part of the party's problem was that they acted as if Trump's base of working class voters "didn't exist."
A similar debate is happening among factions on the right about how the Republican Party has changed in the age of Trump.
Former Vice President Pence warned in a new essay that the conservative movement is being threatened by a "populist fervor" and the "transformation into the anti-woke movement."
"An existential identity crisis now grips the American right," Pence wrote in the essay, which was co-authored by a founder of the Heritage Foundation conservative think tank. "A political movement once united by a commitment to limited government, moral order, and a robust defense of American ideals now appears fractured, its purpose clouded by populist grievances and ideological drift."
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