"We Are Going to Have Troops Everywhere"

The war Trump wants.

Protesters shout at California National Guard troops outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Let’s keep several thoughts in our heads at the same time:

• The federalization of the National Guard in LA is a major escalation and an ominous step toward Trump’s use of the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy troops in the streets. He’s been lusting to use the military to crush protests in blue-cities since his first term.

• Notes Judd Legum: “The move violated longstanding democratic norms that prohibit military deployment on American soil absent extraordinary circumstances. The last time the National Guard was mobilized absent a request from local officials was in 1965 — to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama marching from Selma to Montgomery.”

• This (waves hands) is exactly what Trump wanted.

• Trump is not trying to pacify the situation. He wants to incite.

• For Trump — as for “Littlefinger” in Game of Thrones — “chaos is a ladder”.

• When he threatens to deploy active duty Marines in American cities, don’t assume he’s bluffing.

• When Trump & Co. threaten to arrest California’s governor and LA’s mayor, they are probably bluffing. But don’t count on it. They’ve already arrested a sitting judge.

• There are grave political risks for both sides, even though they are hardly equivalent. (Violence plays into Trump’s hands, and the Mexican flags seem distinctly unwise.)¹ Writes Ron Fournier: “Don’t take the bait, people. The surest way to embolden Trump is to be violent. The best way to neuter and defeat him is through massive and peaceful protests.”

• You are not alone if you think there is a “wag the dog” distraction vibe to what’s happening in LA.²

• It’s going to a long hot summer next three years.

Happy Monday.

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Let’s start with the hypocrisy. Because it burns.

On Saturday, Trump’s FBI director-manqué, Kash Patel, xeeted out:

A great cry went up across the sentient universe. “Hit a cop, you’re going to jail”??????

Unless, of course, you were a J6 rioter who beat, tased, and bludgeoned cops. That, as we know, was a whole different thing for the Trumpian champions of the “thin blue line.”

Lest we forget, on his first day in office, Trump pardoned every rioter, including those who assaulted officers.

In case your memory is as short as a MAGA mayfly:

Footage from a Washington, D.C., police officer's body camera captured how he was savagely beaten as he pleaded for mercy and Capitol rioters rejoiced in the assault.

The video, which CNN obtained exclusively and aired Wednesday night, shows Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone being dragged down steps of the Capitol's Lower West Terrace during the Jan. 6 riot.

As Fanone screams in agony, one rioter's voice can be heard over the noise: "I got one!"

Fanone appears to be on his back as he desperately tries to fend off crowds of rioters, one in a red "Keep America Great" baseball cap, another in a Gadsden flag T-shirt and another carrying a pro-Trump flag….

With pro-Trump rioters all over him, Fanone begs his attackers to think of his four daughters back at home.

"I have kids," Fanone can be heard yelling during the brutal beating.

Eventually a path is cleared and Fanone is taken back into the Capitol where he struggles for air, according to the footage.

Four key reads

Steve Vladeck on Trump’s move to federalize the National Guard. The law, the implications, the fallout:

The TL;DR here is that Trump has not (yet) invoked the Insurrection Act, which means that the 2000 additional troops that will soon be brought to bear will not be allowed to engage in ordinary law enforcement activities without violating a different law—the Posse Comitatus Act. All that these troops will be able to do is provide a form of force protection and other logistical support for ICE personnel. Whether that, in turn, leads to further escalation is the bigger issue (and, indeed, may be the very purpose of their deployment). But at least as I’m writing this, we’re not there yet.

**

Tom Nichols: Trump Is Using the National Guard as Bait - The Atlantic

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….

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.

**

David French: America Is No Longer a Stable Country - The New York Times

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Trump administration is spoiling for a fight on America’s streets. On Saturday, after a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests degenerated into violence, the administration reacted as if the country were on the brink of war.

The violence was unacceptable. Civil disobedience is honorable; violence is beyond the pale. But so far, thankfully, the violence has been localized and, crucially, well within the capacity of state and city officials to manage.

But don’t tell that to the Trump administration. Its language was out of control.

Stephen Miller, one of President Trump’s closest advisers and the single most important architect (aside from Trump himself) of the administration’s immigration policies, posted one word: “Insurrection.”

Vice President JD Vance wrote on X, “One of the main technical issues in the immigration judicial battles is whether Biden’s border crisis counted as an ‘invasion.’” That statement set the stage. He wants courts to believe we’re facing an invasion, and any disturbance will do to make his point. “So now,” Vance continued, “we have foreign nationals with no legal right to be in the country waving foreign flags and assaulting law enforcement. If only we had a good word for that …”

Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, posted his own screed on X, declaring that the Department of Defense “is mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles. And, if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized — they are on high alert.”

Trump posted 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!!!”

That was Saturday. On Sunday evening, he wrote on Truth Social that he was “directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant Departments and Agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots.”

**

Is this legal? Short answer: It’s more complicated than you think. The Brennan Center provides this explainer about the Posse Comitatus Act:

There are many statutory exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, but the most important one is the Insurrection Act. Under this law, in response to a state government’s request, the president may deploy the military to suppress an insurrection in that state. In addition, the Insurrection Act allows the president — with or without the state government’s consent — to use the military to enforce federal law or suppress a rebellion against federal authority in a state, or to protect a group of people’s civil rights when the state government is unable or unwilling to do so.

The Courage of ABC. And other Oxymorons.

On Sunday ABC senior correspondent, Terry Moran, dropped this truth bomb:

No lies detected, but TrumpWorld pounced, demanding a pound of flesh, which they promptly received when ABC suspended Moran. The network issued a brief ass-covering statement:

“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” the network said. “The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards — as a result, Terry Moran has been suspended pending further evaluation.”

As readers know, this is not ABC’s first trip to the knee-bending rodeo. The network inaugurated the capitulation-in-advance stampede back in December when it settled a libel suit with Trump.

A columnist at Poynter noted the irony:

How ironic that the Moran-Miller controversy happened on the same weekend that CNN aired a live version of George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck” Broadway show. The play is about legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow exposing the scare tactics and witch hunts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Author and former longtime New York Times media critic Bill Carter tweeted, “Good for CNN to take it on + Clooney to make it happen w star power. We are far from (the) day when speaking truth to power could move the nation. If Fox existed McCarthy would never have fallen. They’d have pushed him for POTUS. Still, resistance to demagogues is the American birthright.”

NPR TV critic Eric Deggans took a jab at ABC, tweeting news that Moran had been suspended and adding, “Guess execs there weren’t watching CNN’s broadcast of Good Night and Good Luck last night.”

It is also interesting to note that Murrow, the former CBS newsman, took on McCarthy, while these days CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is negotiating to settle a lawsuit filed against them by President Donald Trump, even though legal experts believe Trump has no case.

Monday dogs

Back home with my big puppy.

1. Right-wing media is eating this up: “Mexican flag-waving masked protester becomes the symbol of LA anti-ICE riots: ‘Perfect propaganda for Trump’

2. What might Trump want to distract attention from? Let us count the possibilities: 1. The Musk meltdown, 2. His looming TACO with China, 3. Problems with his Big Beautiful Bill, 4 flaccid jobs numbers…. etc.