Suggesting More Troops in More Cities, Trump Bends Military’s Role (NYT)

The most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world.

Suggesting More Troops in More Cities, Trump Bends Military’s Role (NYT)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/politics/trump-domesti...

Mainlining the $ecret Truth of the Univer$e

06/11/25

He also said that if anyone protests the military parade he ...

Mainlining the $ecret Truth of the Univer$e

06/11/25

BL Illinois 4h ago Trump is playing with fire. Neve...

Mainlining the $ecret Truth of the Univer$e

06/11/25

Poast new message in this thread

Favorite

Date: June 11th, 2025 11:23 PM
Author: Mainlining the $ecret Truth of the Univer$e (You = Privy to The Great Becumming™ & Yet You Recognize Nothing)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/politics/trump-domestic-military-expansion.html

President Trump has expanded domestic use of the armed forces, testing the limits on involving troops at protests and the border.

By Luke Broadwater

Reporting from Washington

June 11, 2025, 6:36 p.m. ET

First, President Trump drastically ramped up the number of active-duty troops at America’s southwestern border.

Then, as protests over deportations broke out last week in Los Angeles, he dispatched the National Guard to help put them down.

When California’s governor objected, Mr. Trump dug in, sending Marines and even more National Guard troops.

Since taking office in January, Mr. Trump has, step by step, expanded domestic use of the military, testing the legal and political limits on involving troops trained to fight foreign wars in roles traditionally carried out by the local police or Border Patrol.

There are now more U.S. troops deployed to Los Angeles than serving in Syria and Iraq, a fact the chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, promoted on social media on Wednesday.

“This is exactly what the American people voted for,” Mr. Parnell wrote. “Defense of our people & our homeland.”

The goal, said some former military officials and experts on civilian-military relations, may be to get Americans used to seeing troops in the streets of major cities, opening the door for Mr. Trump to use his powers as commander in chief more aggressively to quell unrest and dissent.

Mr. Trump’s aides and allies see his domestic use of the military as an overdue measure necessary to maintain order. His critics see it as a worrying step toward politicizing the armed forces and creeping authoritarianism.

“What worries me most are the normalization of political involvement by troops, and novel and expansive interpretations of executive power,” said Kori Schake, who was a defense official in the George W. Bush administration and now directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

There was no clearer example of how quickly Mr. Trump can seek to expand the military’s use within America’s borders than his actions in Los Angeles in recent days.

As protests broke out there over his aggressive deportation crackdown, Mr. Trump quickly authorized the deployment of 2,000 National Guard members. The mayor and governor objected, saying local law enforcement agencies were well equipped to handle the demonstrations.

It was the first time in more than half a century that a president mobilized National Guard troops without a governor’s consent.

Despite the objections, Mr. Trump pressed on, relishing a political fight with Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and pointing to examples of vandalism, assaults on the police and cars set on fire. With each passing day, the president ramped up the number of troops.

He dispatched hundreds of Marines. Then the president doubled the number of National Guard members. He even endorsed the arrest of Mr. Newsom after Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s “border czar,” suggested he might detain the California governor. “I would do it if I were Tom,” Mr. Trump said Monday.

And the guard’s mission was not merely limited to protecting federal buildings from vandalism. Troops began assisting the Los Angeles police, but also Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers as they carried out deportation raids.

To deploy nearly 5,000 troops to Los Angeles, Mr. Trump cited a little-used provision governing the use of U.S. military forces.

Mr. Trump invoked a statute, Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, that allows him to call National Guard members and units into federal service under certain circumstances, including during a rebellion against the authority of the federal government. California has sued, accusing Mr. Trump of exceeding his authority.

Adding to concerns is Mr. Trump’s tendency to treat the military as an arm of politics, said Stephen I. Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor. Speaking to troops at military bases, Mr. Trump often uses the occasion to bash his political rivals, liberals and the news media.

During a speech at Fort Bragg on Tuesday, Mr. Trump led troops to boo journalists.

What separates Mr. Trump’s actions from those of previous presidents, Mr. Vladeck said, is Mr. Trump’s expansive definitions of what qualifies as an emergency, occupation or invasion that would justify a legitimate use of the military. He has pledged to use American troops to “liberate” Los Angeles as though it were in the control of a foreign military.

“It’s not that we haven’t had presidents use the military domestically before,” Mr. Vladeck said. “It’s that there has been such a clear factual predicate for turning troops on our own population for deploying troops into our cities. There’s really no history of using those authorities for what really are partisan political purposes, more than they are public safety restoration purposes.”

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Wednesday described Mr. Trump’s use of the military as completing a campaign promise.

“President Trump promised to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history, and left-wing riots will not deter him in that effort,” she said.

Mr. Trump has made clear he plans to take similar actions should protests break out in other states. Speaking to reporters, he described the military deployment to Los Angeles as “the first, perhaps, of many.”

“I can inform the rest of the country that when they do it, if they do it, they’re going to be met with equal or greater force than we met right here,” he told journalists in the Oval Office Tuesday.

He also said that if anyone protests the military parade he has planned for Saturday in Washington, “they will be met with very heavy force.”

Mr. Trump has said he is also considering invoking the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that gives the president the power to use military force to quell widespread public unrest and to support civilian law enforcement.

“If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday.

He has repeatedly referred to those protesting deportations as “insurrectionists.”

While previous presidents have invoked the act, those examples included civil war, armed rebellion and deadly riots.

For instance, President Andrew Jackson used the act in 1831 to crush a rebellion of enslaved people led by Nat Turner. President Abraham Lincoln invoked it during the Civil War. President John F. Kennedy used the law to send troops to enforce the desegregation of Alabama public schools, and President Lyndon B. Johnson invoked it to protect civil rights marchers in Selma, Ala. President George H.W. Bush was the last commander in chief to put it into effect, during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Mr. Trump and his allies have long considered using the military in maximalist ways, including through invoking the Insurrection Act.

While Mr. Trump has to date never invoked the law, he threatened to do so in 2020 to have the military crack down on crowds protesting the police killing of George Floyd. Stephen Miller, one of his top advisers, also proposed using it to turn back migrants at the southwestern border, an idea that was rejected during Mr. Trump’s first term by the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper.

As Mr. Trump grasped for ways to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, some hard-right advisers encouraged him to declare martial law and deploy U.S. troops to seize voting machines, but that idea, too, was rejected.

Still, Mr. Trump has used the military in ways that previous presidents hadn’t, law professors say.

On Inauguration Day this year, he declared a national emergency at the southern border and issued an executive order “for the Armed Forces to take all appropriate action to assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control of the southern border.”

He has by now more than tripled the number of active-duty troops that were on the border at the end of the Biden administration.

The Pentagon has created two narrow strips of land along the 2,000-mile U.S. border with Mexico — a 200-mile stretch in New Mexico and 63 miles in Texas — effectively declaring the territory to be parts of nearby U.S. military bases. Migrants entering the strips are considered to be trespassing on military land and can be temporarily detained by U.S. troops until Border Patrol agents arrive.

Retired Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré said he believed Mr. Trump’s actions in Los Angeles are “a precursor to what he wants to do elsewhere around the country.”

He added: “He’s trying to break through by mobilizing the guard in California. And while it’s not illegal, it’s not normal.”

General Honoré said he didn’t see levels of violence at the protests that had overwhelmed the police and “crossed the threshold” where he felt a president would be justified to send in the troops.

“He has a political objective to this,” General Honoré said. “To set the conditions and see how far he could go.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5736454&forum_id=2#49007320)

Favorite

Date: June 11th, 2025 11:25 PM
Author: Mainlining the $ecret Truth of the Univer$e (You = Privy to The Great Becumming™ & Yet You Recognize Nothing)

He also said that if anyone protests the military parade he has planned for Saturday in Washington, “they will be met with very heavy force.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5736454&forum_id=2#49007326)