In the United States, the People Rule, Not Wannabe King Trump

This week President Donald Trump sent the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to control what he preposterously called a “violent occupation.”

Sending U.S. troops to act against citizens exercising their right to free speech is a chilling betrayal of American democracy. The rebellion Trump claims to be fighting is simply nonexistent.

In fact, reporters and on-site observers have documented that the protests in Los Angeles—and those spreading now to other cities—are, for the most part, nonviolent. The violence that has occurred was likely intensified by the arrival of the military.

This spectacle is looking less like a tribute to our military and more like a pageant to honor “Dear Leader.”

Late Thursday, a federal court ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in California was illegal and unconstitutional and ordered Trump to relinquish control of the California National Guard back to Governor Gavin Newsom. That ruling has been temporarily blocked by an Appeals Court and the deployment will be allowed to continue at least into next week.

Also on Thursday, In another show of authoritarian force, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was forcibly removed and handcuffed after identifying himself and attempting to ask a question of Secretary Kristi Noem at her Homeland Security press conference in Los Angeles.

Trump’s disgraceful, authoritarian move in Los Angeles over the past few days is the first, but likely not the last, effort by Trump to use the country’s military against its own citizens.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress on Tuesday that Trump is already prepared to send the National Guard and Reserves into other cities as part of Trump’s effort to, in Hegseth’s words, “secure [the] homeland.”

Using a fig-leaf justification, Trump is steamrolling over the spirit, if not the letter, of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. This act restricts the military from being used in domestic law enforcement within the United States.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman got it right when she said that Trump “wants to demonstrate absolute power.”

As historian Timothy Snyder puts it: “Tyranny is terror management.”

That is what we are seeing in myriad actions by Trump and his cronies over the past four months and especially now as he works to stoke fear without regard for constitutional rights or the rule of law.

In an address given at Fort Bragg on Tuesday, Trump absurdly (and falsely) claimed that the Los Angeles protesters were part of a “foreign invasion” and that Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass “paid troublemakers, agitators, and insurrectionists [in a] willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”

(Trump’s words must always be considered in the context of the more than 30,000 false and misleading statements he reportedly made in his first term. His serial falsehoods continue to grow in his second term.)

Trump doesn’t even try to hide his desire to have the absolute powers of a king and seems to revel in being the Commander in Chief.

Trump is staging a military parade on Saturday that’s expected to cost taxpayers $45 million. The parade is ostensibly to celebrate the Army’s birthday, but Saturday also just happens to be Trump’s 79th birthday as well. This spectacle is looking less like a tribute to our military and more like a pageant to honor “Dear Leader.”

And, in true “Dear Leader” fashion, Trump has warned that protesters at his birthday party “will be met with very big force.”

Peaceful protest is a fundamental First Amendment right, a constitutional right apparently alien to the president. This threat is yet one more attempt by Trump to intimidate and spread fear.

Protesters, however, won’t be in Washington, D.C. Instead, more than 2,000 protests around the country on Saturday will bring hundreds of thousands of Americans together to stand up against Trump and his authoritarian regime.

The “No Kings” protests, led by Indivisible, represent no disrespect to the Army. They are all about telling President Trump, who wants to be a king, that he isn’t one and never will be.

Those protesters are not alone. Some 70% of U.S. veterans oppose Trump’s vainglorious use of the military to celebrate his birthday. Last week in Washington, D.C., thousands of veterans protested the drastic cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the programs that support those who served.

They have good reason to wonder why Trump can afford a $45 million birthday parade and $134 million to send the military into Los Angeles for a political stunt, when funding for the VA and other core programs that benefit veterans are on the chopping block.

The VA has indicated that department staff will be cut by 15%, comprising some 72,000 employees, many of them veterans.

Veterans will also be seriously affected by proposed cuts to Medicaid and food programs in the pending reconciliation bill. One out of four veterans, according to 2023 data, lived in a household receiving food assistance or health coverage from Medicaid.

In the United States, the people rule.

As President Lincoln reminded us in his Gettysburg Address, we are a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Trump isn’t going to change that no matter how hard he tries.

This was adapted from a piece that appeared in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a weekly Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here to receive your copy each week via email.