Trump Is Using the National Guard as Bait
Don’t give him the pretext he wants.
President Donald Trump is about to launch yet another assault on democracy, the Constitution, and American traditions of civil-military relations, this time in Los Angeles. Under a dubious legal rationale, he is activating 2,000 members of the National Guard to confront protests against actions by ICE, the immigration police who have used thuggish tactics against citizens and foreigners alike in the United States.
By militarizing the situation in L.A., Trump is goading Americans more generally to take him on in the streets of their own cities, thus enabling his attacks on their constitutional freedoms. As I’ve listened to him and his advisers over the past several days, they seem almost eager for public violence that would justify the use of armed force against Americans.
The president and the men and women around him are acting with great ambition in this moment, and they are likely hoping to achieve three goals in one dramatic action.
First, they will turn America’s attention away from Trump’s many failures and inane feuds, and reestablish his campaign persona as a strongman who will brush aside the law if that’s what it takes to keep order in the streets. Perhaps nothing would please Trump more than to replace weird stories about Elon Musk with video of masked protesters burning cars as lines of helmeted police and soldiers march over them and impose draconian silence in one of the nation’s largest and most diverse cities.
Second, as my colleague David Frum warned this morning, Trump is establishing that he is willing to use the military any way he pleases, perhaps as a proof of concept for suppressing free elections in 2026 or 2028. Trump sees the U.S. military as his personal honor guard and his private muscle. Those are his toy soldiers, and he’s going to get a show from his honor guard in a birthday parade next weekend. In the meantime, he’s going to flex that muscle, and prove that the officers and service members who will do whatever he orders are the real military. The rest are suckers and losers.
During the George Floyd protests in 2020, Trump was furious at what he saw as the fecklessness of military leaders determined to thwart his attempts to use deadly force against protesters. He’s learned his lesson: This time, he has installed a hapless sycophant at the Pentagon who is itching to execute the boss’s orders.
Third, Trump may be hoping to radicalize the citizen-soldiers drawn from the community who serve in the National Guard. (Seizing the California Guard is also a convenient way to humiliate California Governor Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, with the president’s often-used narrative that liberals can’t control their own cities.) Trump has the right to “federalize” Guard forces, which is how they were deployed overseas in America’s various conflicts. He has never respected the traditions of American civil-military relations, which regard the domestic deployment of the military as an extreme measure to be avoided whenever possible. Using the Guard could be a devious tactic: He may be hoping to set neighbor against neighbor, so that the people called to duty return to their home and workplace with stories of violence and injuries.
In the longer run, Trump may be trying to create a national emergency that will enable him to exercise authoritarian control. (Such an emergency was a rationalization, for example, for the tariffs that he has mostly had to abandon.) He has for years been trying to desensitize the citizens of the United States to un-American ideas and unconstitutional actions.
The American system of government was never meant to cope with a rogue president. Yet Trump is not unstoppable. Thwarting his authoritarianism will require restraint on the part of the public, some steely nerves on the part of state and local authorities, and vigilant action from national elected representatives, who should be stepping in to raise the alarm and to demand explanations about the president’s misuse of the military.
As unsatisfying as it may be for some citizens to hear, the last thing anyone should do is take to the streets of Los Angeles and try to confront the military or any of California’s law-enforcement authorities. ICE is on a rampage, but physically assaulting or obstructing its agents—and thus causing a confrontation with the cops who have to protect them, whether those police officers like it or not—will provide precisely the pretext that some of the people in Trump’s White House are trying to create. The president and his coterie want people walking around taking selfies in gas clouds, waving Mexican flags, holding up traffic, and burning cars. Judging by reactions on social media and interviews on television, a lot of people seem to think such performances are heroic—which means they’re poised to give Trump’s enforcers what they’re hoping for.
Be warned: Trump is expecting resistance. You will not be heroes. You will be the pretext.
Instead, the most dramatic public action the residents of Southern California could take right now would be to ensure that Trump’s forces arrive on calm streets. Imagine the reactions of the Guard members as they look around and wonder what, exactly, the commander in chief was thinking. Why are they carrying their rifles in the streets of downtown America? What does anyone expect them to do? Put another way: What if the president throws a crackdown and nobody comes?
This kind of restraint will deny Trump the political oxygen he’s trying to generate. He is resorting to the grand theater of militarism because he is losing on multiple fronts in the courts—and he knows it. The law, for most people, is dreary to hear about, but one of the most important stories of Trump’s second term is that lawyers and judges are so far holding a vital line against the administration, sometimes at great personal risk.
Trump is also losing public support, which is another reason he’s zeroing in on California. He is resolutely ignorant in many ways, but he has an excellent instinct for picking the right fights. The fact of the matter is that tens of millions of Americans believe that almost everything about immigration in the United States has long been deeply dysfunctional. (I’m one of them.) If he sends the military into L.A. and Guard members end up clashing in high-definition video with wannabe resistance gladiators in balaclavas, many people who have not been paying attention to his other ghastly antics will support him. (For the record, I am not one of them.)
So far, even the Los Angeles Police Department—not exactly a bastion of squishy suburban book-club liberals—has emphasized that the protests have been mostly peaceful. Trump is apparently trying to change that. Sending in the National Guard is meant to provoke, not pacify, and his power will only grow if he succeeds in tempting Americans to intemperate reactions that give him the authoritarian opening he’s seeking.
Escalating ICE raids pull California Democrats back into immigration fight
Donald Trump on Saturday announced he is deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to the area.
06/08/2025 01:33 PM EDT
SAN FRANCISCO — The Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive moves on immigration are pulling Democrats back into a border security debate they had tried to ignore.
For months, Democrats scarred by the politics of the issue sought to sidestep President Donald Trump’s immigration wars — focusing instead on the economy, tariffs or, in the case of deportations, due process concerns.
But in the span of a week, that calculation was jolted in California, after a series of high-profile raids and arrests, including of a labor union leader and dozens of other people in Los Angeles, and with President Donald Trump on Saturday announcing the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to the area.
In this citadel of Democratic politics, party officials from the governor’s mansion to city halls are suddenly tearing into Trump on immigration again, inflaming a debate that worked to Trump’s benefit in 2024 — but where Democrats believe they now have a political opening.
“We were wrong on the border,” said Rep. Scott Peters, a Democrat from San Diego who chided Immigration and Customs Enforcement over a raid at a popular restaurant in the city. “But it is not hard to explain to average Americans why what’s happening here is unproductive. It’s so un-American, and it’s so cruel.”
Peters and other San Diego leaders — including Democratic Reps. Juan Vargas, Sara Jacobs and Mike Levin — were quick to condemn the recent raid on an Italian restaurant in the trendy South Park neighborhood, where around 20 masked agents stormed the restaurant and handcuffed workers as a rattled crowd looked on. Four undocumented immigrants were arrested.
The
lawmakers called the agents’ tactics “needlessly reckless” and said the
heavy-handed approach “terrorized” residents, noting agents used flash-bang grenades to disperse those who gathered outside to protest.
But if the enforcement action was aggressive, the response from Democrats represented an escalation in their engagement on immigration, too. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, a Democrat, had previously said little about Trump or his immigration policies in the early months of his second term — similar to other blue-city mayors in California who’ve sought to avoid drawing the president’s ire. But in recent days, Gloria sharply criticized federal officials over the raids.
And then came the immigration sweeps in Los Angeles, where union officials said the Service Employees International Union’s state president, David Huerta, was injured and arrested. Rep. Derek Tran, a Democrat from Orange County, who last fall flipped a hotly contested GOP seat, said on X that he was “appalled by this clear violation of first amendment rights,” while Rep. Jimmy Gomez called it part of a “nationwide pattern of suppression.” Protests erupted in the city, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass decried immigration enforcement tactics she said “sow terror in our communities.”
“These are fear-driven, military-style operations that have no place in a democratic society,” said Mark Gonzalez, a Democratic state Assemblymember whose downtown LA district was the epicenter of Friday's raids.
The next day, when Trump announced the Guard’s deployment, Democrats rushed to take a stand in a fight shifting from deportations to the deployment of the Guard. Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted the measure as “purposefully inflammatory.” And when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to deploy the U.S. military, too, Newsom posted on social media, “This is deranged behavior.”
In a note to his super PAC list, he said, “These are not people who have some deep conviction about protecting law enforcement. This is a President who failed to call up the National Guard when it was actually needed — on January 6th — and then pardoned the participants as one of his first acts as president. They want a spectacle. They want the violence.”
For the party at large, it’s a notable swing from the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory in November, when many Democratic leaders in California and elsewhere sought to moderate on the issue — or at least strike a more muted tone than they did during Trump’s first term. Polling suggests that voter frustration over Democrats’ handling of border security and crime played a strong role in Trump’s sweeping return to power, and many elected officials adjusted in response.
Newsom was among them. He has avoided using the word “sanctuary” to defend the state’s immigration laws that limit police cooperation with ICE. He also vowed to veto a Democratic-led bill that would have applied such restrictions to state prisons and is now proposing steep cuts to a health care program for undocumented immigrants. Earlier this year, he suggested the legal fight over Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident mistakenly deported by the Trump administration and imprisoned in El Salvador — he is now back in U.S. custody and facing federal human trafficking charges — was a “distraction” intended to take Democrats’ focus away from other parts of Trump’s agenda (Newsom’s office later said his remarks were misconstrued).
But in recent days, the governor has criticized federal deportation efforts, including reports that federal authorities threatened the family of a Bakersfield girl with a rare, life-threatening medical condition with deportation, despite the family earlier being granted humanitarian protection.
“The @GOP are sending a 4 year old off to her death without a care in the world. It’s sick,” Newsom posted on X.
The Trump administration has accused Democrats and the media of distorting the facts of the case, noting the girl wasn’t actively being deported. Department of Homeland Security Officials said the family has since been approved to stay in the U.S. while she receives medical care.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email that the left’s “unhinged smears” of immigration-enforcement tactics have led to a surge of assaults on ICE agents.
“President Trump is keeping his promise to the American people to deport illegal aliens,” she said. “It’s disturbing that Democrats would side with illegal aliens over Americans and stoke hatred against American law enforcement.”
In a social media post, Trump said, “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
ICE officials have also defended the agency’s actions in the San Diego raids, saying agents wear masks due to escalating death threats and online harassment. The agency said it deployed flash-bang grenades when the crowd outside the restaurant “became unruly” and posed a potential danger. Regarding the arrest of SEIU’s leader, federal authorities said Huerta had blocked an ICE vehicle while agents were serving a warrant.
Still, the headline-grabbing incidents and images of residents clashing with ICE agents have provided an opening for Democrats to put the Trump administration on the defensive — over raids, accounts of children being separated from their parents during ICE detentions and migrants being arrested in federal courthouses while attending legal proceedings. Recent polling suggests that after making gains with Latino voters in 2024, Trump’s support among Latinos is falling off.
“It’s one thing when you’re talking about illegal aliens in the abstract,” said Mike Madrid, a veteran political consultant and anti-Trump Republican. “It moved from the abstract to the real. It’s cruelty for cruelty's sake, and that’s where you’re going to lose support.”
Chris Newman, legal director with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said while Democrats were hurt in the 2024 election by the Biden administration's handling of immigration, the politics are shifting as Trump tries to carry out his promise of mass deportations.
“When
you see these types of Gestapo-style tactics playing out in real life,
the whole country is recoiling to that,” said Newman, who represents the
family of Abrego Garcia. He has criticized Democrats, including Newsom,
over their response to the Abrego Garcia case, which captured national
headlines due to Trump’s defiance of multiple federal court orders.
In that case, Democrats focused their messaging not on the humanitarian
toll of deportations, but due process and the rule of law.
Newman said the latest raids show Democrats hesitant to attack Republicans over their immigration policies have misread the moment: “The wrong lesson (from the 2024 election) is that immigration is inherently a losing issue for Democrats at the top level. The right lesson is that what … the American public wants is a clear, legible immigration policy.”
Among the most outspoken California Democrats in recent days has been San Diego Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who was pilloried by conservative media outlets over his Instagram post that included a photo labeling ICE agents as “terrorists” in the restaurant raid.
The post drew national attention, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller accusing politicians on the left of “openly encouraging violence against law enforcement to aid and abet the invasion of America.”
Elo-Rivera, who’s also a member of the progressive Working Families Party, said while the restaurant incident made headlines, it was indicative of more aggressive ICE actions that have rattled his district near the U.S.-Mexico border — tactics he argues are designed to stoke fear.
He said while Democrats did a lot of “hemming and hawing” post-election over the party’s stance on immigration, they now have a chance to make a sharp contrast with the GOP by consistently advocating for the dignity and rights of migrants.
“Immigration is not a distraction for Democrats. We just need to have the conversation on our terms,” Elo-Rivera said. “Unfortunately, there’s folks that think they need to see a poll first before they take a position.”
Trump Border Czar Threatens to Arrest Newsom and LA Mayor
Tom Homan also warned that if violent “rhetoric against ICE” continues, “someone’s going to lose their life.”
Border Czar Tom Homan threatened to arrest California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass if they interfere with federal immigration enforcement.
President Donald Trump has taken the extraordinary step of deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in L.A.—despite objections from Newsom and Bass—characterizing demonstrators as out-of-control and violent.
As troops began arriving in the city Sunday morning, Homan spoke with NBC News’ Jacob Soboroff Sunday and issued a message about the consequences of continued “rhetoric against ICE.”
“I have absolutely no respect for this governor,” Homan said. “He’s an embarrassment to his state.”
When Soboroff asked if Newsom and Bass face the risk of arrest, Homan said, “I’ll say this about anybody—if you cross that line, it’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal illegal aliens, it’s a felony to impede law enforcement from doing their job.”
Homan warned that the protests could escalate.
“If this rhetoric continues, this violence continues, someone’s going to lose their life,” Homan said. “It’s an anti-Trump agenda, anti-ICE agenda, and they’re going to keep coming. But we got help coming.”
He noted he had prayed that officers and protestors would stay safe before going to bed. “But when you cross that line and you cause this type of violence, it’s only common sense—the rhetoric keeps rising, and rising and rising—someone’s going to get hurt.”
In turn, Soboroff pointed out that Newsom—who slammed the deployment of the National Guard to L.A. as “purposefully inflammatory”—has accused the Trump administration of escalating tensions.
Speaking specifically about Bass, he added, “If she crossed that line, we’ll ask DOJ to prosecute,” though he noted he didn’t believe Bass had “crossed that line” yet.
Demonstrators have clashed with federal agents over the sweeping immigration raids ICE has conducted this weekend. Both Newsom and Bass have condemned the raids while calling for protests to remain peaceful.
“These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city,” Bass said Friday. “We will not stand for this.”
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Critics Rip ‘Wannabe Dictator’ Trump for LA Troop Deployment
The move marks the first time since the 1960s that a president has federalized a state’s National Guard without a governor’s request.
Critics of the administration have lined up to bash President Donald Trump as an “authoritarian” after he sent the National Guard to quash protests in Los Angeles against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We have a president who is moving this country rapidly toward authoritarianism,” Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said on CNN Sunday morning. “This guy wants all of the power. He does not believe in the constitution, he does not believe in the rule of law.”
Trump announced Saturday that he was federalizing the California National Guard and deploying 2,000 troops to Los Angeles, where protests against ICE raids erupted this week—a move California Governor Gavin Newsom blasted as “purposefully inflammatory” and warned would “only escalate tensions.”
The last time a president overrode a governor to seize control of a state’s National Guard was in 1965, when former President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights marchers, according to The New York Times.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) branded Trump as a “wannabe dictator” in a statement, while California Senator Adam Schiff of Los Angeles blasted Trump’s deployment of National Guard members as a politically motivated stunt with far-reaching consequences.
“If the Guard is needed to restore peace, the Governor will ask for it. But continuing down this path will erode trust in the National Guard and set a dangerous precedent for unilateral misuse of the Guard across the country,” Schiff said.
Former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, who served in the first Trump administration, said Trump’s latest move is “the most significant act you’ve seen yet in the Trump administration” and puts him one step closer to what Taylor claims he’s always wanted to do: “taking control of national law enforcement.”
Speaking on MSNBC’s The Weekend, Taylor said that during Trump’s first term, “his own lieutenants were worried he would create a de facto police state if he was going to be deploying the military on U.S. soil.”
“That was our fear, and we are seeing potentially the early innings of that play out in real-time,” he added.
The National Guard was last federalized in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush deployed troops to respond to the L.A. riots—at the request of then-Governor Pete Wilson and then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.
This time, neither Newsom nor Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass requested federal intervention, and officials from the LAPD and sheriff’s department said the demonstrations, despite some flare-ups of violence, were under control, according to The Washington Post.
“Sending federalized guard troops to Southern California, without regard for the authority or approval of local or state officials, is a tactic we associate with authoritarian regimes, not the United States,” said Roman Palomares, president and board chairman of League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a civil rights group.
“For the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and a leading scholar on constitutional law, told the Los Angeles Times.
“It is using the military domestically to stop dissent. It certainly sends a message as to how this administration is going to respond to protests. It is very frightening to see this done,” he said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt justified the deployment by claiming that “violent mobs have attacked ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles.”
“These operations are essential to halting and reversing the invasion of illegal criminals into the United States. In the wake of this violence, California’s feckless Democrat leaders have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens,” she told the Daily Beast in a statement.
“The Trump Administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs. These criminals will be arrested and swiftly brought to justice. The Commander-in-Chief will ensure the laws of the United States are executed fully and completely.”
Echoing a similar narrative, Trump has attacked Newsom on Truth Social: “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
of course ... as most of us have seen, and have long cautioned is THE PLAN (all caps in keeping with current **style**)For Trump, This Is a Dress Rehearsal
Ordering the National Guard to deploy in Los Angeles is a warning of what to expect when his hold on power is threatened.
June 8, 2025, 10 AM ETBy David FrumYesterday, President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard to quell disorderly protests against immigration-enforcement personnel in Los Angeles. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared his readiness to obey Trump by mobilizing the U.S. Marines as well. These threats look theatrical and pointless. The state, counties, and cities of California employ more than 75,000 uniformed law-enforcement personnel with arrest powers. The Los Angeles Police Department alone numbers nearly 9,000 uniformed officers. They can surely handle some dozens of agitators throwing rocks, shooting fireworks, and impeding vehicular traffic.
If and when those 75,000 uniformed personnel feel overmatched by the agitators, California can request federal help of its own volition. When California has asked for needed federal help—during the wildfires earlier this year, for example—Trump has begrudged that help and played politics with it. Trump is now forcing help that the city and state do not need and do not want, not to restore law but to assert his personal dominance over the normal procedures to enforce the law.
But if the Trump-Hegseth threats have little purpose as law enforcement, they signify great purpose as political strategy. Since Trump’s reelection, close observers of his presidency have feared a specific sequence of events that could play out ahead of midterm voting in 2026:
Step 1: Use federal powers in ways to provoke some kind of made-for-TV disturbance—flames, smoke, loud noises, waving of foreign flags.
Step 2: Invoke the disturbance to declare a state of emergency and deploy federal troops.
Step 3: Seize control of local operations of government—policing in June 2025; voting in November 2026.
Some of Trump’s most fervent supporters urged him to follow this plan in November 2020. But in 2020, they waited too long—until after the votes were cast. Using the military to overturn an election already completed was too extreme a step for a Department of Defense headed by a law-respecting Cabinet secretary such as Mark Esper. Trump looked to the courts instead. Only after the courts disappointed him did Trump attempt violence, and then the only available tool of violence was the lightly armed mob he summoned to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021. Harrowing as those events were, they never stood much chance of success: Without the support of any element of the military, Trump’s rioters could not impose the outcome Trump wanted.
But the methods Trump threatened in Los Angeles this weekend could be much more effective in November 2026 than the attempted civilian coup of January 2021.
If Trump can incite disturbances in blue states before the midterm elections, he can assert emergency powers to impose federal control over the voting process, which is to say his control. Or he might suspend voting until, in his opinion, order has been restored. Either way, blue-state seats could be rendered vacant for some time.
Precedents do exist for such action. In autumn 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant imposed martial law on counties in South Carolina to suppress Ku Klux Klan disturbances that were interfering with legal voting. More recently, the governor of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands delayed elections, including the election of the islands’ nonvoting delegate in the United States House of Representatives, after Saipan was struck by a super-typhoon in October 2018. In that same month, Trump himself claimed that a caravan of undocumented immigrants heading north toward the U.S. constituted a “national emergency” that would justify suspending civil authority and deploying the military in border states.
In his first term, Trump repeatedly talked more radically than he acted. He was usually constrained by his own appointees. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley rebuffed Trump’s suggestion during the George Floyd unrest that the military shoot protesters, which sufficed to dissuade Trump from upgrading the suggestion into a direct order.
But instead of Esper and Milley, the second Trump administration’s military is headed by a former talk-show host facing troubling allegations of heavy drinking and sexual misconduct. (He denies these claims.) Hegseth owes everything to Trump. The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are likewise headed by radical partisans with dubious records, abjectly beholden to Trump. This Trump administration is sending masked agents into the streets to seize and detain people—and, in some cases, sending detainees to a prison in El Salvador without a hearing—on the basis of a 1798 law originally designed to defend the United States against invasion by the army and navy of revolutionary France. The presidency of 2025 has available a wide and messy array of emergency powers, as the legal scholar Elizabeth Goitein has described.
Second-term Trump and his new team are avidly using those powers in ways never intended or imagined.
Since Trump’s return to the presidency in January, many political observers have puzzled over a seeming paradox. On the one hand, Trump keeps doing corrupt and illegal things. If and when his party loses its majorities in Congress—and thus the ability to protect Trump from investigation and accountability—he will likely face severe legal danger. On the other hand, Trump is doing extreme and unpopular things that seem certain to doom his party’s majorities in the 2026 elections. Doesn’t Trump know that the midterms are coming? Why isn’t he more worried?
This weekend’s events suggest an answer. Trump knows full well that the midterms are coming. He is worried. But he might already be testing ways to protect himself that could end in subverting those elections’ integrity. So far, the results must be gratifying to him—and deeply ominous to anyone who hopes to preserve free and fair elections in the United States under this corrupt, authoritarian, and lawless presidency.