Since the LA riots are in my neck of the woods I'll add to the conversation. I didn't know it had all kicked off until a friend in Edinburgh text me asking what was happening on Sunday. I put on the news to see chaos in DTLA. Torched cars, buildings vandalised, businesses looted, police overwhelmed taking shelter under a freeway overpass etc. The reporting I see will not be much different to what you see. However, I did get to see a minivan being driven by an overweight shirtless guy go tearing around DTLA, doing donuts, running red lights etc with no police pursuit (po-po probably busy). Very, very dangerous behavior. It could have ended really badly but remarkably it didn't
Anyway, it appears the protests did start out being peaceful by well intentioned people. However, towards late afternoon things started to get spicy as the usual rent-a-mob and malcontents started to show up and they started to get more animated. Apparently it went south pretty quick when they saw the national guard inside the federal buildings. On Sunday evening I actually passed by DTLA on the way to LAX and all I saw was press helicopters but I didn't see any obvious signs of trouble. Traffic was unusually bad on the 5 south which may have been protest related.
The head of ICE was on the radio explaining what was going on. ICE had warrants, signed by a federal judge to search certain businesses, mainly in the fashion district to go after money laundering and other illegal business activity. The ICE agents were to be backed up and protected by the national guard because LAPD are not part of the federal law enforcement and probably wouldn't help anyway. Los Angeles being a "sanctuary city" refuse to cooperate with ICE. In fact LA will do what it can to protect even violent criminals being handed over to ICE for deportation. They are asked to notify ICE if they arrest any naughty illegals so ICE can get them but they won't, they would rather release them back into the community. The head of ICE states they are not indiscriminately rounding up illegals and citizens. It was believed by some that a Home Depot had been raided to pick up day laborers who may or may not be here illegally. Apparently this was not the case. The ICE guy said that they have a list of people who were denied asylum or whatever and told to leave. These are the people they are going after. I don't know if any of this is being reported, probably not because it doesn't have the theater of Newsom v Trump. And that is what it is between these two, theater. The LAPD chief has admitted his force was overwhelmed during these times, you can see some of them pinned down under a freeway overpass trapped as a mob hurl concrete at them. He didn't quite say it but he seemed relieved to have the National Guard in attendance. LAPD was victim of the defund the police nonsense from former mayor Garcetti and current mayor Karen Bass is much the same, useless. We just had the Palisades raized to the ground on her watch in January.
Anyway, for the past ten years or so, Los Angeles (and many other cities in California) have become cesspits of lawlessness due to dopey democratic policies. And this is the result. It is still pretty mild by the BLM standards but frankly, I'm sick of the disruption to our daily lives and the destruction to the city these asshole "protestors" bring while Gavin Newsom postures in front of the cameras yelling "come arrest me." Is Trump within the law sending in the National Guard? I don't know, possibly, possibly not but if the NG weren't in attendance things could probably have got even more out of hand.