Trump federalizing the California National Guard to put down protests
Trump is calling out the California National Guard in Los Angeles and environs to deal with protests of the immigration raids of workplaces Friday and Saturday. Usually it's the governor who calls out the guard as it's a state institution, but under Title 10 of the US Code the president can call out the guard without the governor's consent.
This isn't unprecedented, but in the current circumstances it's incendiary. The last time the National Guard was called out to deal with protestors was in Los Angeles in 1992, for the Rodney King uprising and riots; this was at the request of the state and came after there was widespread unrest, rioting, and looting for several days, and after a number of people had died. The last time a president federalized a state national guard was 60 years ago, when Johnson activated troops to protect civil rights protestors in Alabama.
Frankly, I think Trump is doing this because people talked him out of calling out the military during the George Floyd protests in 2020 and he wants a do-over, and because of California's image as a liberal state. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is talking about calling up the Marines from Camp Pendleton, a base in northern San Diego County 80-some miles south of LA.
Calling out the military to quell the protests of citizens -- protest leaders advise non-citizens to stay home and not risk arrest -- is fascist. I'm not surprised, to be honest. I just wanted to mark this step in the destruction of American democracy.
The Guardian has good coverage. It talks about Paramount, which won't be familiar to people here; it's a small city in LA County about 9 miles from me that is predominantly Latino and very working class.
This isn't unprecedented, but in the current circumstances it's incendiary. The last time the National Guard was called out to deal with protestors was in Los Angeles in 1992, for the Rodney King uprising and riots; this was at the request of the state and came after there was widespread unrest, rioting, and looting for several days, and after a number of people had died. The last time a president federalized a state national guard was 60 years ago, when Johnson activated troops to protect civil rights protestors in Alabama.
Frankly, I think Trump is doing this because people talked him out of calling out the military during the George Floyd protests in 2020 and he wants a do-over, and because of California's image as a liberal state. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is talking about calling up the Marines from Camp Pendleton, a base in northern San Diego County 80-some miles south of LA.
Calling out the military to quell the protests of citizens -- protest leaders advise non-citizens to stay home and not risk arrest -- is fascist. I'm not surprised, to be honest. I just wanted to mark this step in the destruction of American democracy.
The Guardian has good coverage. It talks about Paramount, which won't be familiar to people here; it's a small city in LA County about 9 miles from me that is predominantly Latino and very working class.
Comments
Thanks for the Guardian link @Ruth - I keep an eye on that particular news outlet, and will look out for further coverage.
I didn't say this in the OP, but overnight someone said what I'm afraid of. In an article titled "For Trump, This Is a Dress Rehearsal" in The Atlantic (free link) David Frum writes,
I hope this is needless worry, but this is what I'm worried about.
Thanks @Ruth - worrying, indeed.
I think he's definitely trying to pick fights with blue states. Whether it is, as Frum suggests, a long-game strategy to take control of elections in those states, OR just to win the midterms more-or-less legitimately by making himself look like the champion of law-and-order, I couldn't say.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/09/trump-police-state-robert-reich
I don't know much about Mr Reich, but he often contributes to the Guardian, and I take it that he knows whereof he speaks.
Thank you.
In terms of economics, I think he was most closely identified as a neo-keynesian.
The question is: what happens next?
Yet more National Guards, according to the Guardian, but ISWYM.
There appears to be no stopping Trump in his desire to impose a dictatorship, though. How far will he go?
At the other end of the political scale, Bill Kristol* dubs Trump's memorandum authorizing the deployment of the National Guard the Usurpation Proclamation. He makes the important note that the memo does not have any geographic or temporal bounds.
It still feels vaguely wrong to be on the same side of any issue as Bill Kristol, but apparently here we are.
*Bill Kristol is a conservative commentator best known for his whole-hearted support of the Iraq War. As far as I know the only job within government that he ever held was as Dan Quayle's chief of staff.
LAPD and LASD are also both insulted, but it hasn't stopped them from rioting.
Is Trump about to invoke this Act? If he does, it's a slippery slope downwards, as Bill Kristol suggests.
We Brits are finding it hard to keep up with events in the US, though the Guardian is doing its best, so I apologise if I'm asking stupid questions.
Chicago PD, is always on the side of fascism though. How's LA's generally? It's hard to see from a quick search whether LAPD is on that scale*, but generally I tend to assume most U.S. big city police are somewhat fascist. It's only a question of how much. The marines tend conservative and very obedient, but I don't know that they tend fascist?
*So I will trust your opinion above others as someone closer to the situation
From the UK Guardian, a few minutes ago:
Trump on Insurrection Act: 'If there’s an insurrection I would certainly invoke it'
Asked whether he would invoke the Insurrection Act in response to protests in LA, Trump has just told reporters in the Oval Office:
If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We’ll see.
He continued, calling the past two days in LA “terrible”.
Asked how he would determine if there was an “insurrection”, Trump said he would “take a look at what’s happening”, adding that he believed there were certain areas of LA that seemed to experience where “you could’ve called it an insurrection”
He seems to be spoiling for a fight, and looking for an excuse.
Kyrie, eleison.
Oddly enough, there was a video on YouTube earlier today, which described how various well-known dictators died...
Not sure if it's a calculated distraction from other issues, as you hypothesize, but more that he wants to be seen as hard-assed on immigration(the only major issue on which he has positive approval ratings), while not disrupting the economies of red and especially purple states.
Mind you, this assumes he's been pulling his punches on crackdowns on businesses that employ migrants in red and purple states. Which is something I've seen speculated about in the media, but no hard stats.
In Trump's opinion, he's the president, and the law is whatever he says it is. He's not interested in the rule of law - he's interested in the rule of Trump. He's basically a mobster writ large - show him respect, and go along with what he wants, and he dispenses occasional largesse. Oppose him, and he'll decide that you aren't his friend, and he'll look for a way to screw you over.
And then you've got David Frum, the neocon author of the Axis Of Evil Speech, who has been against Trump since well before the 2016 election.
Though I suspect his initial hostility was based on Trump originally taking decidedly non-neocon positions on the Iraq War and the status of Jerusalem, and it just dovetailed nicely with Frum's later opposition to Trump's overall bonkerism.
John Bolton is the neo-con guru I find the most interesting as a Trump critic. As with Frum, I think he probably has disreputable motivations, but he paints a pretty convincing picture of Trump's personal psychology, based on his own up-close observations.
I think that Trump has become a line in the sand for various far-right and other conservatives, and I’m glad to see that at least some of them have seen this and said “No, I can’t support this.”
I don't think a scale of how fascist they are is a helpful way to think about LAPD and LASD (sheriff's dept, polices a lot of the smaller cities in LA County). Both tend to escalate confrontations - they provoke protesters just by how they handle protests - so a lot of times we say they started the riot. And LASD is full of gangs, really scary shit. LAPD is overall better, but that's not saying a lot.
I don't think the lens of fascism helps explain why either dept is the way it is. I think the us v them culture is far more to blame, plus the poverty of the areas they police and all the things that come with that, plus the fact that we expect them to show up for too many calls they're not equipped to handle, plus their level of trauma, plus they're understaffed, plus qualified immunity, plus multiple changes in leadership, plus LA is very badly run overall, as is Long Beach... It's way more complicated than "How fascist are they?"
Couple of other tidbits:
LAPD is headed by a guy who used to be chief of Long Beach PD, where I live, and he was also head of LASD. He's only been on the current job 7 months. In LB and as County Sheriff, and previously as an LAPD officer, he was seen as a reformer who did really want good ties to the community. Crime went down when he was chief of LBPD, but officer shootings of civilians went up.
LAPD has had a policy for decades, like over 40 years, of not stopping people just to discern their immigration status and they're largely unconcerned about it. They know in a city where something like 40% of the population is foreign-born they can't expect people to call 911 or cooperate with investigations if the cops are trying to police immigration status. So they don't want to touch it. But they really don't like certain kinds of protesters. The first LA women's march in 2017 had 3/4 of million people, and I saw no cops. But a few brown people show up to protest ICE, and LAPD comes out in riot gear.
Per The Guardian, Trump has just posted on Truth Social that he's been getting complaints from "[o]ur great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business" that his crackdown is "taking very good, long time workers, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace". But based on the rest of the post, it's unclear what, if anything, he plans to do about this.
Continue to keep immigrant labour scared, unsettled and more easily exploitable.
Right. But if they're so scared that they leave the country or stay away from workplaces, that defeats the purpose.
In earlier reports, the judge was reported as saying that an injunction regarding the Marines was likely premature as they haven’t actually been deployed yet.
The exception to Posse Comitatus is the Insurrection Act (codified in Title 10) but according to reports that specific section wasn't used in Trump's Executive Order, rather a different section permitting a federalized Guard to guard federal property and personel (but not perform law enforcement) was used.
It seems to me that there is a tussle between the DOJ, DOD and the White House over using the Insurection Act provisions as they are extreme.
Trump immediately appealed to the 9th Circuit. The 9th circuit has stayed the order and scheduled a hearing on Tuesday. Trump is still in control of the guard troops in LA