For the past three days, Mayor Karen Bass has been a high-profile figure across Los Angeles.
She turned up at parking lots where federal officials had conducted immigration sweeps. She posted updates on social media seeking to reassure embattled immigrants that the city would fight for them. She held a news conference at City Hall to rally her constituents and assail President Trump for deploying the National Guard.
“It’s the last thing our city needs,” Ms. Bass said. “Our city is still trying to recover from wildfires.”
Six months ago, Ms. Bass appeared to be struggling in the face of widespread criticism of her initial response to the fires that destroyed parts of Los Angeles. Polls showed that a rising number of residents were unhappy with her performance, and she faced the prospect of a challenge in any re-election bid from Rick Caruso, the wealthy developer she defeated to win the mayoralty.
But these past few days have offered Ms. Bass an opportunity, analysts say. She has presented herself as a defender of a city under siege, a Democratic mayor in a Democratic city confronting a Republican president. She has drawn on her years as a community organizer to reassure immigrant families struggling with “fear and terror,” and has walked a line at once defending the rights of constituents to demonstrate and denouncing protesters who are “creating the violence.”
“I do think this goes to her strength,” said Fernando Guerra, the head of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “She is in complete and total concert with the Democratic office holders across the state and with her constituents. This is the perfect environment to exercise her leadership.”
And several analysts suggested that Ms. Bass, like Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, could be lifted by a rallying of support among normally fractious Democrats, as opposition grows over Mr. Trump’s decision to mobilize the National Guard in Los Angeles.
“When Trump takes on people and situations, he has a lot of resources to bring to the table — but it also generates a unifying reaction on the other side,” said Raphael J. Sonenshein, the executive director of the Haynes Foundation, a Los Angeles civic research organization. “There is probably going to be a rebounding that has a unifying effect on Democrats in California on the state and the local level.”
Still, just a few days in, the confrontation shows few signs of easing. If it is an opportunity for the mayor, several Democrats said, it may be a slim one.
After the fires, a poll by the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that Ms. Bass’s popularity had plummeted from the year before. Forty-nine percent of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of the mayor, compared with 32 percent the year before. Mr. Caruso, a Democrat, has not said whether he will challenge her again, assuming Ms. Bass seeks re-election in 2026, but he has been a high-profile and constant critic of her performance in managing the aftermath of the fires.
Ms. Bass came under criticism not only because she was on a visit to Ghana when the fires broke out, but also because of her halting responses, in the hours after she returned to Los Angeles, to questions about why she was gone and what she might do next.
The challenges ahead for Ms. Bass would entangle even the most experienced politician. That became clear as she sought at one recent news conference to be empathetic to undocumented immigrants and peaceful protesters while warning that those who committed illegal acts would be arrested.
And Ms. Bass is in many ways a secondary player in this battle that has been dominated by Mr. Trump and Mr. Newsom: She has neither the platform nor the authority of a president or a governor.
But she has made the most of her stature — something she didn’t do in the aftermath of the fires — filling her schedule with national TV interviews and visits to the front lines of the fight unfolding in her city. The federal immigration raids across Los Angeles have “left the city in fear,” Ms. Bass said in an interview on MSNBC on Monday night.
And, unlike the days after the fire, this time she is speaking to a receptive audience.
“The supermajority of Angelenos support what Bass and Newsom are doing,” Mr. Guerra said. “Their base wants them to resist Trump.”
Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.
Adam Nagourney is a Times reporter covering government, political and cultural stories in California, focusing on the effort to rebuild Los Angeles after the fires. He also writes about national politics.
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