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After the recent protests in Los Angeles sparked by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) at workplaces to arrest suspected undocumented workers, President Trump dispatched approximately 4,000 California National Guard troops to the city. Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth followed up announcing that active-duty soldiers would be sent to LA to supplement the National Guard troops. True to his word, Hegseth dispatched 700 Marines to LA from their base in nearby Twentynine Palms. Both steps—especially Hegseth’s—provoked back-and-forth recriminations between California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass on one side and Trump and senior members of his administration on the other.
To be clear, American presidents do have the authority to federalize National Guard units—but when state and local authorities prove unable to stop or even contain outbreaks of disorder and violence. National Guard troops (except those based in Washington, D.C., which are controlled exclusively by the president) report to state authorities, and Newsom could therefore have deployed California’s National Guard in response to the unrest. He did not; nor did he ask President Trump to federalize California’s Guard and deploy it to LA. And Mayor Bass didn’t call on Newsom to send Guard troops to assist city police. President Trump acted unilaterally—without even consulting Newsom or asking him for a briefing on the situation on the ground. Newsom and Bass had been relying on the LAPD because conditions had hardly deteriorated to an extent that the police were being overwhelmed. The protests were confined to a small area of LA, and the disturbances that occurred did not, contrary to claims by Trump and other senior officials, amount to an invasion of the city or even a wave of violence that coursed through it. In most of LA, life went on as usual. While the protests were directed at ICE, its personnel were not in peril. The President’s insistence that LA was in danger of “burning to the ground” had he not sent the National Guard and Marines to “liberate” it was simply false.
After deploying California’s National Guard to LA, the President did condemn the protestors as “insurrectionists,” but did not invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act (IA), which enables the executive to bypass the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act (PCA). (The latter, incidentally, was adopted during Reconstruction to prevent the federal government from using the military to prevent the implementation of Jim Crow racial segregation laws in the postbellum South.) The IA enables presidents to utilize the military for domestic law enforcement when rebellions or insurrections endanger public safety or obstruct the enforcement of federal laws, even without a request from a state government or indeed against its will.
Trump chose to rely on Section 12406 within Title 10 of the U.S. Code—odd because its provisions aren’t any more permissive than those of the IA. Section 12406 permits presidents to order the deployment of states’ National Guard troops in the event of “an invasion by a foreign nation,” “a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States,” or when either scenario appears likely and stipulates that the order “shall be issued by the governors of the States.” None of these conditions existed in LA when Trump acted. Nor did the President call on Newsom to issue the order—the governor would have refused—and once Trump made his decision, he did not coordinate with the governor, even though that would have helped the administration (and certainly National Guard officers) to better understand the situation in LA’s protest-affected parts.
Hegseth’s rush to send active-duty Marines to California—a decision the President doubtless approved—was far more egregious in sidestepping the PCA. The LA protests didn’t remotely meet the Insurrection Act’s threshold for circumventing the PCA to use the active-duty military for domestic missions that involve the possible or actual use of force. The LA protests were confined to a small part of the city. Plus, as the LAPD’s chief Jim McDonnel attested while rejecting Trump’s claim that he, McDonnel, welcomed the deployment of the National Guard, such additional help wasn’t needed because the situation was not beyond the control of the city’s cops. Hegseth made a rapid decision to deploy active-duty Marines to LA, and thus circumventing the PCA, despite the absence of an insurrection or foreign invasion that prevented the enforcement of federal laws—the conditions mentioned in the IA. The protesters were wrong to deface walls with graffiti, burn vehicles, and engage in vandalism and looting, but these actions were limited in scale and scope, didn’t occur citywide, and weren’t regular features of the demonstrations.
Set aside the question of whether Trump acted within the law and adhered to the Constitution. His handling of the LA protests is troubling for other reasons. Consider his interactions with Newsom. It’s fine for governors and presidents to disagree; it happens all the time and is part of our political process. It’s even desirable, given the Constitution’s division of powers between the states and the federal government. But Trump’s repeated mockery of Newsom as “Newscum” is not the kind of conduct Americans expect from their presidents. (Can anyone imagine, say, Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan directing such trash talk at a state governor?)
Far more disturbing was Trump’s remark that Newsom deserved to be arrested for allegedly failing to maintain law and order in LA. The United States is already deeply polarized, and social media, once seen as an innovation that would improve democracy by fostering civic engagement, has turned out to be a breeding ground for venomous personal attacks, off-the-charts conspiracy theories, misogyny, and even threats. Our presidents ought to stand above these poisonous practices, not legitimize or encourage them.
The worst part of Trump’s use of the National Guard and the military in LA is that it may that repeated elsewhere. The protests against ICE raids have spread to more than a dozen cities, including New York and Chicago. Trump has made clear that what he did in LA will not be an exception, even going so far as to declare that “we will have troops everywhere.” That may have been a typical Trumpian bravado. Still, the reflexive deployment of the armed forces in non-exceptional circumstances is more than egregious presidential overreach; it could politicize the military and produce violent confrontations between soldiers and civilians. Rather than restoring order, such clashes could provoke outrage and lead to even greater unrest, injuries, even deaths. Besides, American soldiers didn’t sign up to confront their fellow citizens, nor are they trained for domestic law enforcement.
But that won’t dissuade Trump from using them to quash protests, which he believes strong leaders should suppress—by force, if necessary. Recall that he praised the Chinese government’s brutal suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which killed thousands, opining during a 1990 interview with Playboy that China’s leaders “almost blew it” by hesitating, but ultimately “put it down with strength.” “That,” he added, “shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world.” Those words make Trump’s assertion that his deployment of the National Guard and military in LA will not be a one-off all the more worrisome.
Well, you might say, that was decades ago, and Trump wasn’t president back then, so stop talking like Chicken Little. But consider what Secretary of Defense Mark Esper recounted about Trump’s reaction to the protests in LA that followed the killing of George Floyd in 2020. The president, frustrated that the government looked weak, wanted to deploy the military to demonstrate his resolve. As for the protesters, he asked, “Can’t you just shoot them, shoot them in the leg or something?” Esper refused to follow through. But that was during Trump 1.0, when some independent-minded senior officials, like Esper and retired General John Kelly, were still in place.