By now it’s abundantly clear that the Trump 2 administration/Project 2025/MAGA GOP’s chief aim is to push presidential power past constitutional and legal limits (as generally accepted, certainly prior to 2016, by constitutional scholars across the political spectrum). From the DOGE wrecking ball, to the attacks on universities and law firms, to masked agents in tactical gear making arrests on the street, to deportations to foreign prisons, to stonewalling the courts, to open self-dealing on a massive scale: almost all of this has been lawless, though facilitated by the Roberts Court’s 2024Trump v. United States, which championed a “bold and unhesitating” chieftain and exempted him and him alone from the rule of law.
Donald Trump has been eager to employ military forces against Americans who oppose him and his policies since at least the summer of 2020. The then first-term president was enraged by the Black Lives Matter protests. He wanted to deploy 10,000 active duty troops to clamp down on the protesters. His then Defense Secretary relates that Trump asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Can’t you just shoot them in the legs or something?
More recently, during his 2024 campaign, Trump mused about employing the military to reign in his political enemies. When asked by Maria Bartiromo last October about his concerns about chaos on election day, Trump responded:
I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country and by the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages, they’re being inundated.
But I don’t think they have the problem in terms of Election Day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.
He’s clearly thinking about political opponents. That same week, Trump referenced then-Congressman, now Senator Adam Schiff as “the enemy from within.”
January 6, 2021 — United States Capitol
Let’s recall: On January 6, 2021 Donald Trump declined to call out the national guard when the folks that he had summoned to the Capitol viciously assaulted police officers, injuring 140 of them (while one officer, who rioters had pepper-sprayed, collapsed and died hours later); broke through doors, windows, and barricades to enter the building; trashed and vandalized offices; and threatened the safety of the Vice President, members of both branches of Congress, and their staffs. The second-term president followed up by pardoning the whole lot, including the most violent among them (including the more than 500 convicted of assaulting or interfering with police officers). Five Proud Boys — Enrique Tarrio, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola, in recognition of the new regime, have filed a $100 million suit against the federal government. Four of these five men were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The President approves of violence when it serves his interests.
June 6, 2025 — Los Angeles, California
Homeland Security and ICE agents conducting immigration raids arrested a reported 44 people at a Home Depot in Paramount (a small city south of downtown Los Angeles) and a business in the city’s Fashion District. Peaceful protesters gathered, including more than a hundred by early evening at the Metropolitan Detention Center (near the Federal Building) downtown. But by 7:00 p.m. crowds clashed with the LAPD, which declared an unlawful assembly. Violent clashes amid protests ensued in Paramount into Saturday morning and, that evening, in downtown L.A.
Agitators (often masked and hooded) threw rocks, bottles, and fireworks at officers (then ducked into hiding amidst the protesters). These criminals set cars afire, graffitied buildings, and looted businesses. Police responded in force with an arsenal that included rubber bullets, tear gas, and flash bangs to disperse crowds.
The scope of civil unrest, while deplorable, has thus far been minimal. The Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not reach out to the Governor for additional resources (though he has subsequently sent the California Highway Patrol to assist in keeping open the 101 freeway, which travels through downtown). Local law enforcement was well prepared to handle things.
Trump had other ideas.
On Saturday, Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum nationalizing 2,000 members of the California National Guard. He did so without even consulting Governor Gavin Newsom. The last time a president federalized a state’s Guard without the consent of a governor was in 1965, when the President Lyndon Johnson did so to protect protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. Alabama Governor George Wallace opposed voting rights for Black folks and refused to ensure the peaceful marchers’ protection.
Insurrection
“Insurrection.” That’s the lie — from the White House’s point man for dispensing cruelty (most especially to people of every color but white), Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller — that serves as the MAGA rationale for the deployment.
Last month the Washington Examiner offered an account of Miller’s hand in directing the mass deportations:
ICE’s top 50 field officials were given roughly a week’s notice of an emergency meeting in Washington.
ICE’s 25 Enforcement Removal Operations, or ERO, field office directors and 25 Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, special agents in charge flew into Washington and descended on the agency’s Washington headquarters last Tuesday, May 20. There, they were met by Miller, ICE confirmed to the Washington Examiner.
“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day.
“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recited.
The actual on the ground tactics belie Homeland Security’s claim to be focusing on “the worst of the worst illegal alien criminals.” This regime is targeting folks — including residents here legally — in a host of peaceful places (neighborhoods, schools, immigration centers, courtrooms, Home Depots …) This brings the arrest and detention count nearer to Miller’s 3,000/day quota — but it’s far, far from the criminals, murderers, and drug smugglers that Trump promised to protect us from.
Kristi Noem, the cosplaying Homeland Security Secretary, defended the decision to federalize the troops by trashing Gavin Newsom: “Governor Newsom has proven that he makes bad decisions. The President knows that he makes bad decisions…,” as if a policy disagreement — absent an emergency or a governor’s defiance of the constitution and the rule of law — could justify federal military force against the authority of a state of the union. (Nothing Noem utters should be taken at face value.)
Donald Trump weighed in repeatedly on Truth Social, inveighing against Governor Newscum and Mayor Bass, who “can’t do their jobs,” while pledging to do so to “solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS.”
The President lamented, “A once great American city, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals.”
More from Truth Social: The celebration of military power: “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” The deranged fabrication: “Paid Insurrectionists!” The grandiose: “We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California. If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.…”
Presidential incitement of violence
The grounds, the actual state of affairs through the weekend, for Trump’s actions were flimsy. The stated rationale and defenses offered are fraudulent; the bad faith is transparent. The thuggish campaign against immigrants that we have seen unfold in all its ugliness over several months instills fear and inflicts pains by design. It creates a spectacle (which celebrity Trump ally, an embedded Dr. Phil, given an ‘exclusive,’ will profit from). Fox News, trumpeting “the Los Angeles riots,” has had a field day boosting Trump’s pretend crisis (before his intervention).
Last Friday and Saturday, when there was inevitable pushback — overwhelmingly with peaceful protest — against the indiscriminate immigration raids, the Trump administration leapt at the modicum of vandalism and violence experienced as a pretext for grasping power from a blue state governor, federalizing the National Guard, and on Monday sending in the Marines.
The United States Marines!
The Constitution and democracy are at stake.
Trump does not respect democratic debate. He cannot tolerate dissent. When speaking about the military parade –“It’s going to be an amazing day. We have tanks. We have planes. We have all sorts of things. And I think it’s going to be great.” — that his administration will stage on his birthday, the President brought up (without being asked) the possibility of protest:
“If there’s any protester that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force. For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.
And I haven’t even heard about a protest, but, you know, this is people that hate our country. But they will be met with very heavy force.”
The First Amendment be damned. Political dissent must be suppressed. Trump disparages Americans who disagree with him and the Project 2025/MAGA GOP agenda. They “are people that hate our country.”
The United Sates of America is experiencing firsthand an authoritarian campaign to diminish our freedom and damage our democracy. Force and fear are Trump’s tools of choice.
This is straight out of the authoritarian handbook:
For social scientists who study the intersection of protests, politics and law enforcement, the scenes unfolding in California broadly follow a script that has played out many times in many other countries. A strong government response to demonstrations that initially start peacefully, they say, often produce increasingly violent confrontations. In some instances, they add, leaders have used the prospect of civil unrest to use heavy-handed tactics or create pretexts to expand their grip on power.
The Trump White House is eager to grasp another fig leaf of a pretext to go even further in its power grab. It craves a violent confrontation, which city and state authorities are doing their best to ward off. Trump’s actions have escalated the situation, rather than calmed things down. Deliberately. That’s not law and order; this is an authoritarian assault directed at political enemies and constraints on a rogue White House.
Even if Trump doesn’t get the explosion of violence he is egging on, and the fig leaf of a plausible excuse for violent suppression by the military, he has already damaged the Constitution, federalism, state sovereignty, checks and balances, and the rule of law.
This rampage — even if this round ends peacefully — will continue and won’t be confined to California. The Trump 2 administration has four-years to impose its will on the nation.