Her segment aired across Australia. A foreign government asked for answers. This is completely unacceptable, said Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, demanding an investigation. Reporters Without Borders issued a statement condemning the violence. This incident serves as a stark reminder of the dangers journalists face, it read.
And Tomasi wasn’t the only one. Over just three days—June 6 to June 8—at least 27 other journalists were assaulted, detained, or harassed in greater Los Angeles. That count comes from Reporters Without Borders, who tracked everything from rubber bullets to flash-bangs to brief detainments. A Reuters photojournalist was hit in the back while documenting an ICE operation in Paramount. Other reporters were forced to the ground, told they didn’t “look like press,” and had their equipment confiscated.
These weren’t accidents. These were warnings.
It’s not the tanks that mark the turn. It’s the silence when they roll in.
This is how the free press dies: not in court, but in the street, with no one held accountable.
We want to believe we’d recognize the beginning of authoritarianism. We think it would come with a declaration or a flag or a man in a funny uniform. But in practice, it doesn’t start with censorship. It starts with plausible deniability. It starts with phrases like “national security,” “immigration enforcement,” and “public safety.”
The White House didn’t call the troop deployment martial law. They called it “necessary federal assistance.” The press didn’t get banned. It got shot, questioned, and ignored.
Federal courts ordered the Guard out. The administration didn’t comply. No contempt hearings followed. No marshals enforced the ruling. The judiciary spoke and the executive shrugged.
If the president can ignore court rulings with no consequences, what’s left? A system can survive overreach. It can’t survive irrelevance.
And still, people said: It’s not that bad. It’s just a protest. It’s just for immigration. Just this once.
But we’ve seen this before.
Hungary used “migration emergencies” to militarize policing and restrict press access. Venezuela rewrote its laws to label dissenters as terrorists. Turkey purged its judiciary after a coup attempt, then criminalized critical journalists. Russia used “foreign agent” laws to choke out independent reporting and label NGOs subversive.
In each of those cases, elections continued. Courts remained open. But the state no longer answered to anyone. And it always started the same way—by declaring some group dangerous, some protest illegitimate, some journalists expendable.
The trick isn’t breaking the system. It’s getting the system to break itself.
In the U.S., that trick is well underway. Earlier this year, the Trump administration removed 17 inspectors general in one coordinated sweep. The Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section—the division meant to prosecute political corruption—has quietly been dismantled, with most of its senior staff removed or reassigned.