Trump inflamed the scene. “Violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents,” he wrote. He was determined to “liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion.”
It’s a Trump political attack on the Democrat stronghold through the proxy of deportation and immigration. Asked if he would order the arrest of Californian officials who tried to interfere with the immigrant round-up, Trump replied: “Officials who stand in the way of law and order, yea, they will face judges.” Newsom’s response: “Arrest me, let’s go.”
And Trump a little later: “We’re gonna have troops everywhere,” he told reporters.
Despite the pleas of the governor and the mayor to ask that protesters remain peaceful, by Monday afternoon (Australian time) the streets had turned decidedly violent.
“This violence I’ve seen is disgusting. It’s escalated now,” said LAPD’s McDonnell. “We are overwhelmed as far as the number of people out there engaged in this type of activity.”
The Trump provocation worked. He’s been spoiling for a fight. For years. In his first term, he asked the country’s most senior military officer to shoot unarmed civilian protesters in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, refused.
A protester confronts National Guard soldiers outside a federal building during a demonstration in LA on Sunday.Credit: Bloomberg
In 2020, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to justify ordering the military to shoot civilians. According to a book by former Wall Street Journal and now New York Times reporter Michael Bender, Milley pointed to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, the president who led the Union in the Civil War, and told Trump: “That guy had an insurrection. What we have, Mr President, is a protest.”
Trump stayed his hand then; he’s intent on playing now. “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” he wrote on Monday afternoon (Australian time). Hegseth said that 500 Marines were preparing to deploy.
Soldiers who had enlisted, trained and, in many cases, fought to protect the US, its Constitution and its people from foreign enemies, were to be brought into action against civilians on the streets of a major US city. Which had been calm just three days earlier.
There’s been much commentary on Trump’s use of a particular legal authority to support sending in the militia and also the military, which he justifies because the protests “constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the government”.
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But perhaps the most telling point of Trump’s executive order is its unconditional breadth. It is not specific to Los Angeles or to California. It is generic. It could be applied to the entire country. And it is not limited in duration. The length of any deployment is at the discretion of the defence secretary.
Trump gave himself the scope to deploy the militia and/or the military “where protests against these [federal] functions are occurring or are likely to occur”. Likely to occur? He once claimed to be a very stable genius, but now, apparently, he is also clairvoyant.
In addition, says his order, “the secretary of defence may employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion”.
It’s not difficult to see how this could be used as the basis for an authoritarian takeover attempt of the US. Asked a couple of weeks ago whether it was his job to uphold the US Constitution, Trump answered: “I don’t know.”
His deportation program will prove harmful to investment, growth and stability. The US economy has always relied on millions of undocumented immigrants to do the low-wage work that locals will not touch. As LA mayor Bass says: “You can’t terrify the workforce and expect the job to get done”.
Trump’s power grab, his wanton authorisation of the use of armed force on American soil and his autocratic tendencies all suggest that the FBI’s Bongino was only half right. More accurately, “we bring the chaos and we bring the handcuffs”.
Peter Hartcher is international editor.
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