Tin soldiers and Trump is coming
From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Malibu. With the deployment of the U.S. Marines into Los Angeles, Donald Trump has taken another step in declaring war on Americans who didn’t vote for him.
The military is barred from law enforcement duties on American soil under the Posse Comitatus Act. The 700 Marines and now more than 4,000 federalized California National Guard troops are only legally allowed to protect federal property and personnel, like ICE agents.
Who certainly look as if they are more than capable of defending themselves.
The escalating tensions — complete with calls by “Border Czar” Tom Homan to arrest California Governor Gavin Newsom — a suggestion Trump has endorsed — clearly suggest this is all a spectacle stage-managed by the Showrunner-in-Chief.
Backed by Rupert Murdoch’s Trump-friendly media and personalities like Phil McGraw, whose media company was given ride-along rights with ICE agents sweeping through Home Depot parking lots and schools, arresting people without warrants and holding them in detention.
“Trump counts on that cheerleading squad, the very same one that helped him gain both of his terms.”
But this goes beyond being yet another Trump media production. The legality is borderline and the potential for tragedy is off-the-charts.
Let’s start with the law.
As Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, told the New York Times:
“The founders wanted to prevent the president from using federal troops against “we the people” because of the way the Red Coats used warrants to do whatever they wanted in people’s homes. But National Guard troops are local citizens; they live in their communities. So they’re allowed to help with police work — until they’re federalized. Which is what Trump did last weekend. Then they became indistinguishable from active-duty military. All they can do is defend federal workers like ICE agents, and federal buildings like an ICE detention center.”
Unless and until Trump invokes the Insurrection Act of 1807, the same applies to the U.S. Marines deployed on American soil for the first time since 1992, when President George H.W. Bush invoked the act — at the request of state and local leaders — in the aftermath of the acquittals of white LAPD officers in the beating of Rodney King, a Black man.
Neither Newsom nor LA Mayor Karen Bass requested the call up. No president has defied local authorities since 1951 when Lyndon Johnson brought in troops to protect civil rights marchers following the beating of John Lewis and others by local sheriffs in Selma, Alabama.
California is suing the regime for multiple reasons, including violation of the 10th Amendment, which clearly states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
It will be fascinating to see what the “originalist” justices on the Supreme Court — the ones who granted Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” — do if this case reaches them.
But far more immediate is the specter of overreaction, principally from the members of the Guard who were most recently deployed to help LA cope with the devastating fires.
It’s hard not to recall May 4, 1970, when poorly trained Ohio National Guard troops, armed with live ammunition, opened fire on students protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, killing four and wounding nine.
Or the killing of two students and the wounding of 12 others at Jackson State in Mississippi, this time by local and state police 11 days later, amid heightened tension after Kent State and rumors that local civil rights leader Charles Evers and his wife had been killed.
In each case, as is true in LA, violence preceded the Kent and Jackson shootings. And it’s common knowledge law enforcement is trained to use lethal force if they fear for their lives.
There are numerous non-lethal alternatives — from pepper spray to rubber bullets to batons — available to peacekeepers. But all it takes is one nervous individual carrying live ammunition to open fire.
This escalation is taking place as the Felon-in-Chief is itching to invoke the act — something he did not do on January 6, 2021 when rioters broke into the Capitol, attacked law enforcement and tried to overthrow the government on his behalf.
And to be clear, the Trump regime is keen to change the definition of that day from insurrection, so let’s oblige. Call it a failed coup.
It’s also clear he’s willing to change the narrative, by any means necessary. He’s shown no concern for the police who died or were injured in the coup, pardoned 1,500 coup participants and agreed to pay the family of a woman shot and killed by Capitol Police while trying to climb through a broken window of the House chamber.
The lives of the people protesting the increasing authoritarianism of the regime are of little concern to Trump, Homan and Deportation Ghoul Stephen Miller.
Peaceful protesting is a 1st Amendment right. LA demonstrators should remember that and not give troops any excuse to shoot.