LA County for Trump: Eight Years Later, What Happened?

From early 2017 until mid-2018, I was active with a large coalition of Angelenos fighting the good fight for President Trump.

We went to protests, we led rallies, and we participated in marches in and around Los Angeles to support the President and advocate for his policies.

Some of the biggest movers and shakers in the movement got together for multiple Independence Day bashes throughout Southern California, including Genevieve Peter's home in the Sherman Oaks area.

Here's the group photo:

From back to front, left to right: Jesse Suave, Charles Beltran, David Hernandez, Joseph Cheng, Rachelle Mand, Megan Dowling, Patricia (?), Raphael Hwong, Mama Leonor, Roxanne, Elsa Aldeguer, Arthur Schaper, Harim Uzziel Vargas, Genevieve Peters Scott

A lot of people have followed up with me to ask what happened to the team. Where is everyone now?

Here's a basic rundown, as best as I can remember or relate.

I see Rachelle Mand (the lady with curly hair and glasses) at the Torrance-Lomita-Palos Verdes Republican Assembly meetings all the time. She's still in the fight.

Harim Uzziel Vargas (the guy at the front wearing a black shirt and a black MAGA hat) turned on all of us. He insisted that we could not be friends with people whom he did not like, which betrays a deep lack of maturity. He cut me off as he cut off many others.

Mama Leonor (the lady with long white hair and the stars and stripes on her shirt) is still kicking butt, but I have not seen her in years. I did connect with her briefly at an event earlier this year, but we didn't talk that much.

Genevieve Peters (on the right, in front of me) lives in Michigan now. She was born there, but moved to California to help with the George W. Bush campaign. She lived in the Golden State for years, and she was such a great help to all of us. After moving back to Michigan, he got married in 2023! Her husband, John Scott, is very supportive of the MAGA cause, too!

Elsa Aldeguer and I connect from time to time. We both supported Bianco for governor. I saw her late March, when I gave a speech to the Hollywood Republican Assembly. She has always been so supportive of me.

Joseph Cheng (the Asian guy with the shaved head) still connects with me from time to time, too. He supports me on social media. Unlike some in the MAGA-verse, he didn't get angry with me when I supported Governor Ron DeSantis for President in 2024. Yes, I voted for Trump in the general election. I am glad that I did, and I am glad that he is keeping promises this time, which he had made last time,

Megan Dowling was a hard-core Trump supporter. She attended lots of Tea Party rallies, was active in the local Republican clubs, and she attended lots of city council meetings to protest the sanctuary state law SB 54 in 2018.

Then she went to the dark side, celebrating all things Palestinian. All of this came out after the October 7th, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel. From that time on, she started blathering about how she opposed Zionism, hated Israel, and supported the "Palestinian" cause. She now spends every Sunday in Redondo Beach protesting Israel along with the local group of left-wing activists.

Patricia (can't remember her last name. UGH!) is still active, but I don't really talk to her. She was really helpful when I didn't have a car (or a lot of money!), so she would drive me to events.

I haven't seen Charles Beltran in a while. We had a falling out. It's a long story that I don't want to get into.

Lots of people don't know the story behind Raphael, but I feel safe sharing some of the details now. Raphael was a good friend, very close to me. He helped me when I had suffered a stroke in 2019, and then when I had another health scare two years later. Unfortunately, he became dark and cynical about everything. He would just complain about all the problems, and it was so draining. The last time I sat down with him, the day before Independence Day 2023, all he would do was perseverate about the end of the conservative movement and how everything was falling apart. I couldn't deal with his constant complaining and negativity anymore. I had to let him go, and I have not spoken to him since. It is very sad what happened to him.

I still see David Hernandez all the time. He is doing great work for the Trump and Republican cause in Los Angeles. He is fighting the good fight and really thinking big for the state of California. In fact, he is a Vice Chair for the California Republican Party, and he recently got re-elected to the position.

Jesse Suave is still active, doing great stuff. He registers voters and shows up to protests from time to time. I had dinner with him and a few others earlier this year.  I have talked with him a few times, and I see him at a lot of Christian events.

Roxanne (I forget her last name, UGH!) was well-known as an awesome biker chick. I attended her birthday a fear years ago in South Orange County. It was great to see her again, along with her kids. She is living somewhere in the Inland Empire now. We haven't talked lately, but she supports my work with MassResistance, which means a lot to me.

So, what happened to LA County for Trump?

Life happened, hard times happened, and new challenges came up.

I was working as a freelance journalist and activist for a year and a half. Time and money were growing tight, and I needed to find stable work. MassResistance, the international pro-family group that makes a difference, hired me in July 2018. I am celebrating my eighth year with the organization! That work has taken me to all sorts of places, and it has also required so much of my time that I no longer had time for Trump events.

During COVID-19, I was focused on the health freedom fight as well as exposing all the corruption in the public school system, which became so evident after kids were forced to stay home and get their education virtually. Parents finally witnessed all the grooming and corruption taking place in the government schools, and they demanded change!

From there, after Trump left office (Stolen Election!), I started doing other health freedom-related activism as well as my full-time work for MassResistance.

I soured on Trump in late 2022, when all of his US Senate picks failed and he chanted about protecting "gay rights." A lot of MAGA backed away from me in those days because I supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. I stepped away from a lot of other activism in those days, too, because I was tired of just doing the rallies. I wanted results, and I witnessed how just attending local government meetings and yelling at politicians wasn't getting the job done.

President Trump 2.0 has been a vast improvement over his first term, and he is setting the stage for great reforms and restoration in this country. I am hoping that more citizens get involved in the political process as well as the culture war. My main focus is MassResistance, but I am also writing more, getting published by American Thinker, American Greatness, Townhall.com, Canada Free Press, 2 Urban Girls, and other sites.

There's the basic rundown for now. Hope everyone is doing well, and let's not stop fighting for MAGA every day we can!

Response to RLn on "Charter Reform Massacre"

It’s charter reform season in Los Angeles, and once again, LA City chose virtue-signaling over virtue.

The city council rejected the proposal to expand city council seats to twenty-five. Of course they did! City councilmembers don’t want to limit or share their power with more colleagues, but it’s a reform much-needed, all the same. Perhaps Mr. Allen and RLn could launch a citizen initiative to add seats to the LA City Council. Supervisor Hahn and the LA County Board majority initiated, and voters approved the county reforms to expand the number of seats to nine members. Ask Aunt Janice to help you!

Rank-choice voting? Bad move, LA. Don’t do it! It will eliminate your vote, and it’s so complicated and convoluted that even Governor Gavin Newsom, the Washington DC Democratic Party, and activists in Alameda County have rejected it or called for its repeal.

One interesting (i.e., disturbing) reform passed: allowing non-citizens to vote.

Progressive President FDR declared: "The right to vote must be open to our citizens irrespective of race, color, or creed—without tax or artificial restriction of any kind." Progressive President LBJ, when he signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, stated: “Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.” Americans, not non-citizens!

To his credit, City Councilman Tim McOsker voted against this charter reform, along with four of his colleagues. Let’s hope Los Angeles voters (i.e., citizens!) reject it, too.

The Last Public Execution in France (1939)

Eugen Weidmann, the last condemned person executed 
publicly in France

What do you think?

Should European countries bring back the death penalty? 

Should the death penalty be administered in public?

Why do you think the death penalty was secluded from public view in the 20th century? Many found the final death blows unsettling, so the offense or extreme nature of the proceedings alone cannot explain why capital punishment was removed from public view.

Why have we seen more countries abolish the death penalty in the first place?

Here's a dramatization of the final public execution in France:

In 1939, France carried out its last public guillotine execution.

This is a video reproduction made in the 1960s. pic.twitter.com/G1SntsPPzZ

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 7, 2026

Many will be shocked to learn that European countries still administered the death penalty via guillotine in the late 20th century, and not just France:

(Result from Google AI search)

The guillotine was primarily used in France until capital punishment was abolished there in 1981. However, several other nations and territories also adopted the device for executions before completely abolishing the death penalty (or before abandoning the guillotine for other execution methods): [1, 2, 3]

• Germany: Used extensively (particularly during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich). West Germany abolished the death penalty in 1949, and East Germany used the guillotine until 1967. [1]
Switzerland: Used for executions until the abolition of the death penalty for civil crimes in 1942. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Belgium: Utilized as a standard execution method until 1916. [1]
Sweden: Replaced manual beheading with the guillotine in 1906, executing only one person with it in 1910 before abolishing capital punishment in 1921. [1]
Greece: Used the device from 1834 to 1913. [1]
Luxembourg: Used the guillotine between 1798 and 1821. [1, 2]
Monaco: Utilized the device until 1847. [1]
Vietnam: Employed the machine during the French colonial era and by the Republic of Vietnam until 1961. [1]
The Papal States: Used a guillotine (introduced in 1810) until the capture of Rome in 1870. [1]

For a long time, I had believed that the death penalty was abolished in France in 1977, but that form of punishment was outlawed in 1981. France's final execution by guillotine took place in 1977. In fact, it was the last execution by guillotine ever to take place!

The Socialist Insurgence of Pramila Jayapal

The Democratic Party is in full civil war mode now.

This is not the time for such fighting, however, if the Democratic Party hopes to regain control of either chamber of Congress or hold onto key governships throughout the country.

But I say let the Democratic Party implode. The leadership have appeased the most destructive, anti-American, vile elements within their conference. They have stood by and allowed communists and Nazis to invest, infiltrate, and invade their party.

They have embraced this Cultural Marxist subtely, and they deserve to reap the wind for their hateful failures.

And Jayapal is all in on the destruction:

Arthur Christopher,

Right now there’s a lot of talk about what Democrats need to do to win back power — and more importantly, what we’ll do when we actually have power.

But to answer both of these questions, what the Democratic Party is going to have to decide is “what do we stand for?”

Because we can’t just be against Donald Trump. We have to be for something.

Yet even now there are already pundits, and some of my colleagues in Congress, who want to push to the center. They want us to become Trump-lite instead of articulating the vision of what we stand for on our own terms, informed by what we see in our conversations and hear on the ground and see in the data.

I couldn’t disagree more.

I believe we need to clearly stand up for our principles. We need to respond to the urgency of people’s economic concerns. And we need to offer a real contrast to the Republican Party.

So here’s what I stand for:

• Medicare for All.
• Living wages for all.
• Universal childcare.
• An economy that works for everyone.

And I am so proud of the progressive candidates who are standing up and saying loudly and clearly what they believe in as they run in Democratic primary elections across the country. Over the past few months, they’ve been winning races in state after state — and we need to learn from their success.

I’m going to continue using my voice to push our party to take bold action that centers the real, pressing concerns that poor and working people across this country are dealing with right now.

But since my very first campaign, I’ve never taken a dime of corporate PAC money. Which means I’m counting on your grassroots support to keep fighting for our progressive vision for the future.

So Arthur Christopher, if you’re with me, can I count on you to pitch in $3 or any amount today to help power this movement?

Contribute $3

In solidarity,

Pramila Jayapal

Contribute

Email us: info@pramilaforcongress.com

This email was sent to arthurschaper@hotmail.com. Email is the most important way we keep in touch with people like you, and small-dollar contributions sustain our movement for transformative change. To contribute by check, please address to Pramila for Congress, PO Box 21912, Seattle, WA 98111.