Attacks on the Press, and the Specter of 2020, in LA

An Australian TV journalist was covering a protest on US soil when law enforcement violently assaulted her. It was caught live on camera for the world to see. The prime minister of Australia expressed concern. The journalist said that she was “a bit sore,” but doing okay. The incident unfolded against the backdrop of what was widely decried as a Trumpian stunt.

All this happened in June 2020, when officers with the Park Police in Washington, DC, charged at Amelia Brace, a reporter with the Australian network 7News, and her cameraman Tim Myers as they cleared protesters from an area outside the White House so that Trump could walk to a nearby church to do a photo op with a Bible, accompanied by Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Milley soon apologized, acknowledging that his involvement had “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics”; Brace and Myers were also struck with rubber bullets.) And all this happened again in June 2025. On Sunday, Lauren Tomasi, a reporter with 9News, was talking to camera in Los Angeles when a law enforcement officer behind her visibly turned toward her and shot her in the leg with a rubber bullet, causing Tomasi to cry out in pain. (“You just fucking shot the reporter!” someone could be heard shouting.) Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, called the footage “horrific” and said that he had expressed his concern to the Trump administration. (“We don’t find it acceptable that it occurred,” he said. “We think that the role of the media is particularly important.”)