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Why Trump's Troop Surge on US Streets Is a Blueprint for Authoritarian Power
This is not just about Los Angeles. It is about whether a president can override a state to deploy troops in support of domestic policy. It is about whether dissent is still protected in practice, not just in principle.
Jun 16, 2025
The images coming from Los Angeles in June 2025 are not without precedent. But the precedents are not American. They are global, and they are troubling. Military convoys rolling into a city over the objections of its elected leaders. Peaceful protest recast as a public threat. Immigrant communities targeted with sweeping enforcement actions and then blamed for resisting. What unfolded in Los Angeles this summer looked less like the United States of 1992 and more like Beijing in 1989 or Paris under curfew in 1961. These were moments when governments exploited protest as pretext and used the language of order to justify repression. What makes Los Angeles so alarming is not just the imagery of troops on domestic streets, but the quiet dismantling of legal guardrails that once kept that imagery exceptional.
This is not just a story about immigration raids. It is about the redefinition of dissent as rebellion and the deployment of military force to enforce that fiction. For the first time in modern U.S. history, active-duty federal troops were sent into a state not to uphold civil rights or restore public safety, but to enforce domestic policy over the objection of state leaders. There was no invocation of the Insurrection Act. Instead, the Trump administration relied on a lesser-known statute, 10 U.S.C. §12406, and vague assertions of inherent executive power to federalize California’s National Guard and deploy 700 Marines across Los Angeles. Governor Gavin Newsom objected. The Pentagon bypassed him.
For the first time in modern U.S. history, active-duty federal troops were sent into a state not to uphold civil rights or restore public safety, but to enforce domestic policy over the objection of state leaders.
The White House framed the move as necessary to restore order. But there was no large-scale disorder. There were protests, including vigils outside detention centers, marches through working-class neighborhoods, and union leaders acting as legal observers. There were curfew violations and some scattered vandalism. But there was no insurrection. The destabilizing force was not public protest. It was the decision to respond to it with troops.
Defenders of the administration reached quickly for precedent, citing the Rodney King riots in 1992 and the civil rights showdowns of Little Rock and Selma. But these comparisons obscure more than they clarify. In 1992, California’s governor requested help after riots erupted. In 1957 and 1965, Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson used the military to enforce federal court orders and protect constitutional rights that states had refused to uphold. In all of those cases, the goal was the expansion of rights. In Los Angeles in 2025, troops were sent not to defend civil liberties but to suppress protest against their erosion.
If the domestic record fails to explain this moment, the international one does. In Beijing in 1989, peaceful student demonstrators were labeled counterrevolutionaries. Martial law was declared. Troops rolled in. Thousands were killed or disappeared. In the years since, the Chinese state has denied, distorted, and buried the events of Tiananmen Square. The repression was not only physical. It was historical. Dissent itself was erased.
In Paris in 1961, Algerian immigrants marched peacefully against a discriminatory curfew. Police responded with overwhelming violence. More than a hundred were killed, many beaten and dumped into the Seine. The government minimized the incident for decades, calling it a minor clash. Only in recent years has the truth surfaced, slowly and incompletely, with no accountability.
In Myanmar in 2017, a stateless Muslim minority, the Rohingya, was framed as a terrorist threat after a small-scale insurgent attack. The state launched what it called a clearance campaign. Entire villages were destroyed. More than 700,000 people were forced into exile. The military denied responsibility and described the operation as a legitimate anti-terror response. The world called it ethnic cleansing. The government called it counterinsurgency.
What these cases share is a structure. A marginalized population asserts its presence, through protest, through migration, through visibility. The state reframes that assertion as rebellion. Force follows. Then comes denial or strategic ambiguity, and often historical erasure. Violence becomes policy. Policy becomes precedent.
What happened in Los Angeles has not reached that level of brutality. But the logic is already in place. Peaceful resistance was framed as a rebellion. The deployment of troops was not a last resort. It was a political maneuver. The administration used the machinery of national defense to discipline domestic opposition, and to do so under legal theories that dissolve long-held constraints on federal power.
Critics may call this comparison alarmist. They argue that America is not China, not Myanmar, not an authoritarian regime. We have elections, courts, and a free press. But the danger is not that the United States has already crossed the threshold into authoritarianism. It is that we are normalizing the tools that allow such a shift to happen incrementally and under cover of law.
Authoritarianism does not begin with the mass suspension of rights. It begins with the narrowing of who those rights apply to. It begins with the quiet reclassification of dissent as danger. It begins with language: radicals, illegals, rebels. It begins with the claim that protest is disorder, and that order must be restored by force if necessary. And it gains ground not only through coercion, but through public fatigue. If the streets are quiet, if the media coverage fades, if the courts stall, the logic settles into the baseline of governance.
That is why this moment matters. The deployment in Los Angeles is not just provocative. It is precedent-setting. It redefines the legal thresholds for domestic military use. It challenges the role of states in checking federal authority. And it reframes protest against government action not as a civic right, but as a federal security risk.
We have seen, around the world, how easily protest can be recast as provocation. How immigrants, minorities, and political dissidents can be treated not as citizens, but as threats. How democratic states can adopt authoritarian tools, first in exceptional cases, then in ordinary ones.
We are not there yet. But we are closer than we think.
This is not just about Los Angeles. It is about whether a president can override a state to deploy troops in support of domestic policy. It is about whether dissent is still protected in practice, not just in principle. It is about whether the line between order and oppression has already begun to blur, and whether we will recognize it in time.
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Trump’s Illiberal Democracy Threatens Our Foundational Moral Principles
This administration rejects American values as it embraces bribes from foreign dictators, harasses journalists, imprisons op-ed writers, and threatens judges.
May 19, 2025
At its deepest level, government is a moral force grounded in a moral view of the world.
It may not comport with morality as most of us view it; the Saudi oppression of women, the Russian violence against the queer community, and the Iranian brutal suppression of that nation’s democracy movement are all examples of things most Americans consider immoral.
But each is grounded in a particular moral worldview that those governments and their leaders have adopted.
While America has experienced many dark moral episodes throughout our history, we’ve always held or at least espoused a basic set of moral principles:
- That all people are born equal under the law; that power should flow up from the people rather than down from elected leaders;
- That a free press, free speech, and freedom from religion are essential to liberty; and
- That defending the basic rights of all people to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is the core function of a democratic republic.
Until now.
Republicans in the House of Representatives just inserted into their must-pass “Big, Beautiful” multi-trillion-dollar-tax-break-for-billionaires legislation a provision that would enable the president to designate any nonprofit—from Harvard to the American Civil Liberties Union to your local Democratic Party—a “terrorist-supporting organization” that then loses their tax-exempt status, effectively putting them out of business.
And who decides who gets that designation? The president. And he gets do to it in secret.
When we abandon our own stated principles in foreign relations, those first laid out in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the results are almost uniformly bad for us, for them, and for democracy around the world.
This is exactly how both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán first destroyed dissent and free speech in Russia and Hungary.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been pursuing this for a decade, from his trying to designate Antifa a “terrorist organization” to his attacks on our universities to his use of Stalin’s phrase “enemy of the people” to describe journalists and opinion writers like me.
One level above these core democratic principles—of free speech, the right to protest, and the power of the people in free and fair elections to change our leadership—are two major reformations that came about after major national upheavals.
The first was after the Civil War, when the nation (at least in principle) embraced the humanity and citizenship of nonwhite people with Reconstruction and the 13th through the 15th Amendments to the Constitution. The second was during the Republican Great Depression, when FDR rebooted our republic to become the supporter of last resort for the working class, producing the world’s first more-than-half-of-us middle class.
Now Trump, Elon Musk, and their cabal of right-wing billionaires are trying to dissolve virtually all of this, replacing it with the sort of “illiberal democracy” we see in Russia and Hungary, where there are still elections (but their outcome is pre-determined), still legal protections for the press and free speech (but only when that speech doesn’t challenge those in power), and only the wealthy can truly enjoy safety and security.
After the Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari governments each gave the Trump family massive gifts in the form of billion-dollar development and Trump hotel or golf course licensing deals, Trump made a speech in which he abandoned our 250-year history of advocating democracy around the world.
Of course, as mentioned, we’ve often failed at that mission in the past. Former President Ronald Reagan’s support for the death squads in Central America haunt our southern border to this day; former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s embrace of the Shah of Iran still rattles the Middle East; and former President Richard Nixon’s tolerance of Chinese brutality led us to, in the name of capitalism, help that nation’s communist leaders create the most powerful and medieval surveillance state in world history.
But these exceptions prove the rule: When we abandon our own stated principles in foreign relations, those first laid out in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the results are almost uniformly bad for us, for them, and for democracy around the world. And it becomes even more destructive when this administration rejects American values as it embraces bribes from foreign dictators, harasses journalists, imprisons op-ed writers, and threatens judges.
This issue of morality in government has been at the core of our political debate for centuries. Then-President Harry Truman was explicit about it way back in 1952:
Now, I want to say something very important to you about this issue of morality in government.
I stand for honest government… To me, morality in government means more than a mere absence of wrongdoing. It means a government that is fair to all. I think it is just as immoral for the Congress to enact special tax favors into law as it is for a tax official to connive in a crooked tax return. It is just as immoral to use the lawmaking power of the government to enrich the few at the expense of the many, as it is to steal money from the public treasury. That is stealing money from the public treasury…
Legislation that favored the greed of monopoly and the trickery of Wall Street was a form of corruption that did the country four times as much harm as Teapot Dome ever did. Private selfish interests are always trying to corrupt the government in this way. Powerful financial groups are always trying to get favors for themselves.
Tragically, for both America and democracy around the world, this is not how Donald Trump was raised and does not comport with the GOP’s current worldview. Fred Trump built a real estate empire through racism, fraud, and deceit. He raised Donald to view every transaction as necessarily win-lose, every rule or regulation as something to get around, and every government official as somebody to be influenced with threats or money.
The GOP embraced a similar worldview with the Reagan Revolution as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich notes in his must-read Substack newsletter:
But starting with Reagan, America went off the rails. Deregulation, privatization, free trade, wild gambling by Wall Street, union-busting, record levels of inequality, near-stagnant wages for most, staggering wealth for a few, big money taking over our politics.
Stock buybacks and the well-being of investors became more important than good jobs with good wages. Corporate profits more important than the common good.
Greed is a type of moral stance. It’s not one that open, pluralistic, democratic societies embrace beyond their tolerance of regulated capitalism, but it is a position that expresses a certain type of morality, one most famously expounded by David Koch and Ayn Rand.
It’s inconsistent with the history of humanity itself, as I document in detail in The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living. From Margaret Mead pointing out how healed leg bones in hundred-thousand-year-old skeletons show that ancient societies cared for their wounded to the ways Native American tribes dealt with people who stole or hoarded even without the use of police or prisons, the triumph of greed has historically been the exception rather the rule.
When Donald Trump said, “My whole life I’ve been greedy,” it was one of the few honest bits of self-appraisal he’s ever tendered. And it should have warned all of us.
Greed and hunger for power are, ultimately, anathema to our traditional American values.
And it’s high time we began to say so, and to teach our children the difference between a moral nation that protects its weakest citizens while promoting democracy around the world and an “illiberal democracy” like Russia, Hungary, and the vision of today’s GOP.
We’ve been better than this in the past, and it’s high time we return to those moral positions that truly made America great.
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GOP Advances 'Nonprofit Killer' Provision in Budget Bill to 'Crush Dissent'
"This measure would undoubtedly be weaponized by a White House with a track record of attacks against any speech that displeases our authoritarian president," warned one critic.
May 14, 2025
Free press, civil liberties, and community groups on Wednesday sounded the alarm after House Republicans added a provision in their budget reconciliation package that would empower U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit the executive branch deems supportive of a terrorist organization.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted along party lines to advance Republicans' reconciliation bill, which contains an amendment based on the language of the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or H.R. 9495.
The ACLU warned Tuesday that the provision—dubbed the "nonprofit killer" by critics—would grant the executive branch the power to "effectively shut down" entities including independent media like Common Dreams, universities, religious institutions, political organizations, advocacy groups, and charities under the guise of combating terrorism. The contentious language was buried on page 380 of the reconciliation bill prior to its markup.
"No president should have the right to destroy nonprofits for no reason."
More than 200 groups collectively condemned the proposal in a Wednesday statement, warning, "Charities that feed the hungry, churches and faith communities that comfort the grieving, veterans' groups that care for our heroes, and countless other service providing organizations are at risk today because of this legislation."
"Nonprofits are on the frontlines of meeting every community need," the coalition continued. "Whether it's an organization providing healthcare in a disaster, a small rural church, or a local food bank, no organization is safe if this becomes law."
H.R. 9495 was first introduced in the previous Congress but failed to receive a Senate vote before the legislative term expired last year. It allows the treasury secretary "to accuse any nonprofit of supporting terrorism—and to terminate its tax-exempt status without due process," the advocacy group Free Press Action explained in statement, warning the ostensibly anti-terror provision would be used to "crush dissent."
Civil liberties groups say its lack of clarity regarding the determination of whether or how a nonprofit supports terrorism would enable Trump to follow through on his threats to cancel the tax-exempt status for organizations he does not like.
"Today, the legislation formerly known as H.R. 9495 has returned to wreak havoc against dissenting voices across the country's nonprofit sector," Free Press Action advocacy director Jenna Ruddock said Wednesday.
"Like too many other overbroad and easily abused powers, this measure would undoubtedly be weaponized by a White House with a track record of attacks against any speech that displeases our authoritarian president," Ruddock continued.
"The bill would have a widespread chilling effect not only on nonprofit groups but on the millions of people across the United States who rely on these organizations to help them access crucial services and engage in the political process," she added.
"We've already seen the Trump administration falsely conflate students protesting in support of Palestinian rights with Hamas, deport immigrants to a [Salvadoran] prison without due process, and detain students thousands of miles away from their loved ones for criticizing U.S. foreign policy," ACLU senior policy counsel Kia Hamadanchy said Tuesday.
"It is not a stretch to imagine how this bill could be used to pressure universities to shut down student groups, scare human rights organizations away from working with vulnerable communities, and further stifle dissent in this country," Hamadanchy added.
Ruddock of Free Press Action said that "it's not hard to imagine how the Trump administration would use [the bill] to exact revenge on groups that have raised questions about or simply angered the president and other officials in his orbit."
Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at the digital rights group Fight for the Future, called the proposal "a five-alarm fire for nonprofits nationwide."
"This is a First Amendment issue—no president should have the right to destroy nonprofits for no reason," Holland added.
While the provision's proponents argue it is necessary to crack down on nonprofits that raise money to fund terrorism, Holland said that is "a bald-faced lie, as there are already laws that prohibit and punish such activities without taking away our civil liberties."
Ruddock warned: "Chilling free speech doesn't keep Americans safe. Instead, it gives an authoritarian regime another tool to violate the rights that form the foundation of a healthy democracy."
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