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insurrection act
Is Trump Inciting a Civil War 2.0 to Steal the Midterms?
Both JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom have explicitly said that they believe Trump is preparing to use troops for voter suppression in blue areas of the country during the 2026 elections to prevent Democrats from taking Congress.
Sep 08, 2025
Last week, US President Donald Trump posted a stolen valor war meme on his failing, Nazi-infested social media site, with the bonespurs-draft-dodger wearing a US Army Cavalry hat and the slogan, paraphrased from the movie Apocalypse Now:
’ I love the smell of deportations in the morning…” Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of War.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker replied on BlueSky:
The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.
So, how could this play out? It’s important to begin the conversation—and planning—for what appears to be the Civil War 2.0 that Trump’s apparently trying to incite.
First, there’s precedent for the federal government to send federal troops into a state to enforce the law as ordered by a court.
JFK did it in the 1962 Ole Miss crisis to enforce the Supreme Court’s Brown v Board decision, mobilizing up to 31,000 federal troops, including the 503rd Military Police Battalion, the 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment, and soldiers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. Kennedy also sent federal troops and readied thousands near Birmingham, Alabama during violent resistance to those same federally mandated desegregation efforts.
To accomplish this, Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807, which is actually a series of laws passed over a two-decade period, that constitute a virtual blank check for presidential power.
Particularly problematic is Section 253 of the law that allows the president to use troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”
As the Brennan Center for Justice explains:
This provision is so bafflingly broad that it cannot possibly mean what it says, or else it authorizes the president to use the military against any two people conspiring to break federal law.
Adding to Trump’s potential power, in 1827 the Supreme Court ruled that “the authority to decide whether [a crisis requiring the militia to be called out] has arisen belongs exclusively to the President, and... his decision is conclusive upon all other persons.”
Both JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom have explicitly said that they believe much of this is Trump preparing to use troops for voter suppression in blue areas of the country during the 2026 elections to prevent Democrats from taking Congress.
Pritzker said voters “should understand that he [Trump] has other aims, other than fighting crime” and that this is part of a plan to “stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections.”
Newsom pointed out, “Interestingly, we still have federalized National Guard assigned through Election Day. Is that a coincidence? Through Election Day?!”
Additionally, the governors of 19 blue states issued a statement saying:
Instead of actually addressing crime, President Trump cut federal funding for law enforcement that states rely on and continues to politicize our military by trying to undermine the executive authority of governors as commanders in chief of their state’s National Guard…
Whether it’s Illinois, Maryland, and New York or another state tomorrow, the president’s threats and efforts to deploy a state’s National Guard without the request and consent of that state’s governor is an alarming abuse of power, ineffective, and undermines the mission of our service members. This chaotic federal interference in our states’ National Guard must come to an end.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner went a step further, saying he was willing to actually arrest federal agents who exceed or break the law:
Let’s be clear: If the National Guard comes to Philadelphia and commits crimes, they will be prosecuted locally and Donald Trump cannot pardon them.
So, how does this play out?
Trump is already reportedly positioning Texas National Guard troops and other federal officers at the Naval Station Great Lakes, just north of Chicago, presumably preparing for an invasion of that city as soon as this week.
The vision of former Confederate-state troops seizing control of the largest city in a former Union state is explosive and may well provide Trump with the violence he’d hoped for but didn’t get in LA and DC. Violence he could use to justify invoking the Insurrection Act like Kennedy did, and then using that to lock down the 2026 elections.
If this happens, will Pritzker follow Krasner’s model and begin arresting federal agents and Texas National Guard members if they’re found breaking Illinois or Chicago law? Or will he sue at federal court the way Newsom did? Or both?
If he does the former, it could literally kick off a second American Civil War; if he does the latter, Trump may win Civil War 2.0 without a shot fired, particularly if the six corrupt on-the-take Republicans on the US Supreme Court overrule the lower courts and endorse Trump’s actions.
Now is the critical time for all Americans to get educated about what’s going on and prepare for the eventuality of a totally locked-down police state being imposed on multiple blue cities, particularly in states where not counting the urban vote can flip the entire state red.
And if Pritzker and Newsom are right, all of this is being done—along with extreme gerrymandering—as part of the widespread Republican effort to rig the 2026 election so Democrats can’t take back the House and begin subpoena-based investigations of Trump’s crimes from the Epstein era to his recent murder of 11 immigrants in a boat off the coast of Venezuela.
Meanwhile, as Trump pits Americans against each other, dismantles our federal government, ensures future epidemics, and grifts billions in cybercurrencies, China and Russia are pulling the rest of the world together against America. It’s almost as if Russian President Vladimir Putin was giving Trump weekly directions, a dystopian Manchurian Candidate notion that seems more credible with every passing day.
He’s systematically weakening America while boosting Vladimir Putin. By shutting down Voice of America, dismantling defenses against Russian election interference, ignoring Ukraine, and bungling diplomacy with tariffs and summits that drive allies toward Moscow, he’s handed Putin victories that come at the direct expense of US power and security.
In the face of this, Trump is doing everything he can to ramp up tensions and provoke people in blue cities to violence which he can then exploit to increase his power and further crack down on elections, particularly next year.
All, apparently, in service of converting America from a historic liberal democracy into a one-man personality-driven dictatorship that’s increasingly aligned with—and following the model of—other tyrants around the world.
As a result, now is the critical time for all Americans to get educated about what’s going on and prepare for the eventuality of a totally locked-down police state being imposed on multiple blue cities, particularly in states where not counting the urban vote can flip the entire state red (which is most Blue states).
Trump is trying to take down American democracy for good. This is not a drill. Organize, educate, call your representatives, and prepare to show up in the streets.
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Inside the Trumpian Plot to Rig the Midterms... and Every Election After
The fate of the American experiment with democracy will depend not on our institutions, but on our collective will to preserve it at the ballot box and beyond.
Aug 28, 2025
With the midterms more than a year away, US President Donald Trump and his enablers have launched a new war on voting rights. Its immediate target is November 2026; its ultimate goal is the institutionalization of one-party control of the federal government. This political “final solution” is the last step in MAGA’s quest to extinguish liberal democracy in America.
The war is being fought along legal and political fronts that stretch across the marble halls of the Supreme Court, Trump’s executive orders, Steve Bannon’s seedy podcast, the transformation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into a latter-day Praetorian Guard, and threats to invoke the Insurrection Act.
The Supreme Court, the Voting Rights Act, and Racial Gerrymandering
When it comes to voting rights, no single institution has been more destructive than the nation’s top judicial body under the hypocritical leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts.
In his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing, Roberts promised to serve as chief justice in the fashion of a baseball umpire, calling “balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” That was nonsense then, and it’s nonsense now.
Roberts has always been a Republican insider and activist, dating back to his stint in the early 1980s as a crusading young lawyer in the Justice Department, where he wrote upward of 25 memos, suggesting strategies to limit the scope of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the landmark legislation passed by Congress in 1965 to outlaw racial discrimination in voting.
Redistricting experts predict that if the GOP gambit in Texas and elsewhere succeeds, the party could hold the House until 2050.
In 2013, he made good on his lifelong mission by authoring the infamous 5-4 majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, one of the most regressive rulings in Supreme Court history. Shelby gutted sections 4 and 5 of the VRA, which had required state and local jurisdictions, mostly in the South, with histories of egregious voter suppression, to obtain advance federal approval—a process known as “preclearance”—before making changes to their election procedures. Roberts declared in Shelby that “things have changed dramatically” since the passage of the VRA and that racial discrimination in voting no longer took place.
Shelby left Section 2 of the VRA as the last remaining bulwark of the law. That section prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or language. Both the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have long recognized the right of private parties and organizations to file lawsuits under Section 2 to challenge “racial gerrymanders,” which occur when a state uses race as the primary factor in redistricting to dilute the voting power of minority populations. Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund have used Section 2 litigation to force the creation of numerous majority-Black or “majority-minority” voting districts to give minorities a fair chance to elect candidates that reflect their views.
All that could change when Roberts and his Republican benchmates hear oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais on October 15. The case stems from a complaint brought by a group of individuals who describe themselves in court filings as “non-Black voters.” They contend Louisiana violated their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection when it created a second Black-majority voting district in 2024 to give Black voters, who comprise nearly a third of the state’s electorate, proportional representation in the state’s six-member congressional delegation. If the court agrees with them, it could gut Section 2, leading to the elimination of an estimated 11 Black-majority districts, all held by Democrats, across GOP-controlled Southern states. Such a decision would neuter what little remains of the VRA.
Political Gerrymandering, Texas and California
Even if the court rules against the “non-Black” plaintiffs in Callais, it has given its blessings to another method of election rigging known as “partisan gerrymandering”—the practice of drawing state voting districts to benefit the political party in power. In 2019, by way of a 5-4 majority opinion penned by Roberts, Rucho v. Common Cause, the court held that partisan gerrymandering, no matter how disproportional or extreme, presents a “nonjusticiable political question” that lies beyond the jurisdiction of federal judges to alter or correct.
Both parties have traditionally engaged in partisan gerrymandering, but the GOP has perfected the technique in the wake of Rucho, with Texas as a prime example. Responding to a direct demand from Trump, the state has drafted a new congressional voting map designed to give Republicans an additional five House seats. Other Republican states, including Florida, Indiana, Missouri, and Ohio, are likely to heed Trump’s plea and revise their voting maps before the midterms.
The GOP’s moves have finally awakened a fighting spirit among Democrats, but the outcome of the counterattack is uncertain. Led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, California has set a special election for this November to consider a ballot proposition that would suspend the state’s current congressional map, which was drawn by an independent commission, and replace it with one that could give Democrats a five-seat boost to match the Texas power-grab. Democrats in New York, Illinois, and Maryland reportedly are exploring ways to follow Newsom’s lead.
Meantime, the Texas redo is a done deal, offering Trump and the GOP a clear path to retaining their stranglehold on federal power. Redistricting experts predict that if the GOP gambit in Texas and elsewhere succeeds, the party could hold the House until 2050.
Trump’s Executive Orders, Proclamations, and Rants
Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s 2024 Roberts-authored decision on presidential immunity (Trump v. United States), Trump has made good on his pledge to be a “dictator on Day One” of his second term, releasing a torrent of autocratic executive orders and proclamations. These include an executive order issued on March 25 with the Orwellian title of “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” Among the order’s many directives is a requirement for voter ID to prove citizenship, and a prohibition on counting mail-in ballots that are sent in by Election Day but delivered afterward.
On April 24, federal district court judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee who sits in Washington, DC, issued a preliminary injunction, blocking the ID requirement and other provisions, noting that “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states—not the president—with the authority to regulate federal elections.” Unfortunately, the judge’s order failed to address the constitutionality of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which in many respects tracks the executive order. The SAVE Act was passed by the House on April 10 and is now pending before the Senate.
A permanent one-party state controlled by Trump and the GOP will set back women’s interests indefinitely.
Undeterred by the courts, Trump has doubled down on his demands, vowing to impose nationwide voter ID by presidential fiat, ban mail-in ballots and replace voting machines with hand counting. In remarks delivered at the White House on August 18, he claimed that “mail-in ballots are corrupt,” and no other country permits them. In fact, some 34 countries allow them.
Trump has also demanded a new census that would exclude undocumented aliens to be conducted as soon as possible. The census is mandated every 10 years by the Constitution and is used to determine how many House seats are apportioned to each state. To date, no census has been conducted mid-decade, and never have the undocumented been excluded.
The Impact on Women
The election law changes demanded by Trump and the GOP will also undermine the voting power of women.
According to the Pew Research Center, despite the Democratic Party’s declining approval ratings, women remain 12 percentage points more likely than men to affiliate with the Democrats. Exit polling conducted by CNN after the last election found a similar gender gap, showing that women nationwide voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump by a 10% margin. Black women in particular have been the most reliable supporters of the Democratic Party. In 2024, a whopping 92% of Black women opted for Harris, continuing a decades-long trend.
Women also hold more liberal values than men on a variety of key political issues, such as abortion access, gun control, environmental protection, and racial justice. This is especially true of younger women between the ages 18 and 29. A permanent one-party state controlled by Trump and the GOP will set back women’s interests indefinitely.
Steve Bannon and ICE
On his War Room podcast on August 19, right-wing fulminator Steve Bannon upped the ante in the voting rights war, calling for the deployment of ICE to monitor polling places to ensure that “If you don’t have an ID—if you’re not a citizen—you’re not voting.”
It is, of course, illegal under federal law to deploy the military or armed federal troops to patrol polling places as monitors or observers unless they are needed to repel an armed invasion. A section of the US Code makes it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison to do so. The Voting Rights Act also prohibits federal agents from intimidating voters, and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1868 generally proscribes using the military as civilian law enforcement.
These safeguards could easily be circumvented by an ICE army that will be 10,000 strong by the midterms simply by staging high-profile immigration enforcement operations anywhere in blue cities on Election Day. The intimidation effect would be palpable.
The Insurrection Act and the Final Solution
Should all other options for election-rigging appear unavailing by 2026, Trump will have one final card to play: declaring a national emergency and invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to delay or even suspend the elections. The act provides an exception to the prohibitions of the Posse Comitatus Act, and as Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department will no doubt argue, all other federal statutes.
Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in 2020 in response to the George Floyd protests, and again this past June in response to protests in Los Angeles. Never in American history has the act been invoked to disrupt an election. But if Trump feels sufficiently threatened by a potential loss of power, there is little reason to believe he would not choose to become the first. Nor could we count on the Supreme Court to try to stop him.
In the end, as always, the fate of the American experiment with democracy will depend not on our institutions, but on our collective will to preserve it at the ballot box and beyond. Each of us has an obligation to spread the word and peacefully resist in whatever way we can.
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Masked Agents Snatching People Off the Street in Trump's America
If California is a sign of the future, it seems ever clearer that the courts have little appetite for standing in the way of this president.
Jul 07, 2025
“I must say,” Donald Trump commented, “I wish we had an occupying force.” It was June 1, 2020. The president, then in his first term in office, was having a phone call with the nation’s governors to discuss the ongoing Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests taking place nationwide in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman. He was urging the governors to call in the National Guard in response to BLM protests in their states. Otherwise, he threatened he would do so himself. “You have to dominate,” he told them, while labeling the protesters “terrorists.” Otherwise, he claimed, “they are going to run over you.”
Later that morning, Trump left the White House and took his infamous walk through Lafayette Park, where members of the Washington National Guard, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and several other agencies, joined by guard units from a number of states, confronted protesters. As I recounted in my book Subtle Tools, “Protesters threw eggs, candy bars, and water bottles, while law enforcement shot rubber bullets, launched pepper balls, and fired tear gas into the crowd.”
Several weeks later, protests in Portland, Oregon, tested the president’s resolve to send in an “occupying force.” Although he didn’t then go as far as to send in the National Guard, as he had threatened in that phone meeting, he did deploy federal agents to counter the protesters without consulting the governor of that state. Seven hundred and seventy-five Department of Homeland Security agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and elsewhere appeared on the streets of Portland, authorized by a presidential edict to protect federal buildings. As if to intentionally blur the borderline between military and civilian authorities, the federal agents arrived dressed in black military-looking uniforms without identifying insignia and drove unmarked vehicles. The administration justified the deployment by arguing that local law enforcement was unable to effectively control the protests.
Not surprisingly, Oregon Governor Kate Brown and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler protested, claiming that local law enforcement was perfectly capable of handling the protests without federal aid, and that the presence of federal agents, with their aggressive tactics, including the use of tear gas and rubber bullets, had only provoked the protesters, making the situation much worse.
Sound familiar? Fast forward to today in Los Angeles.
Donald Trump is once again president, and immigration raids across the country are hurrying to meet the White House target of 3,000 arrests per day. This time around, Los Angeles has become the focal point of the resulting battle over federal versus state authority. In early June, responding to an outbreak of protests challenging the administration’s brutal immigration raids, Trump sent 700 active-duty Marines and 4,100 National Guard into that city to counter the protesters. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and California Attorney General Bonta have protested resoundingly, claiming, like their Portland counterparts, that the deployment was unnecessary and counterproductive. Mayor Bass has maintained that the local authorities “had the situation under control,” concluding that “there was no need for the National Guard.” Summing up the consequences of the deployment, Governor Newsom considered them to be “intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy. It is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.” Attorney General Bonta echoed Newsom by insisting that the troops were instigating violence, not defusing it, and suing the Trump administration (unsuccessfully so far) for illegally taking over a state National Guard.
Where all of this may be headed is anyone’s guess, but Portland’s attempts in 2020 to fight back against the deployment of federal agents, despite the wishes of local authorities, provide some guidance about what to expect, as well as lessons learned when it comes to the role of the courts, of dissent by local and state leaders, and of the path down which American law may be headed in relation to the president’s ability to usurp the power of local authorities.
The Law
The battle over federal versus state authority is rooted in laws pertaining to presidential powers. The Posse Comitatus Act, as former United States Attorney Joyce Vance explains, “prohibits the federal government from using the military inside of the domestic United States for law enforcement, absent truly compelling circumstances.” But there are exceptions. Title 10 of the U.S. Code fleshes them out, authorizing the president to federalize the National Guard and deploy it to a state in rare instances of invasion, rebellion, or the need to “execute [federal] laws.”
In Portland in 2020, President Trump labelled the protesters “terrorists” and threatened to bring in the National Guard if the protests didn’t stop. Yet days later, he pulled back from that threat, telling George Stephanopoulos on ABC News that such a move would have violated the law. “We have to go by the laws,” he said then. “We can’t move in the National Guard. I can call insurrection but there’s no reason to ever do that, even in a Portland case.” He further concluded that “we can’t call in the National Guard unless we’re requested by a governor.”
My, how things have changed!
On June 7th, Trump issued a memorandum declaring his authority to deploy both the National Guard and the armed services. “In light of these incidents and credible threats of continued violence,” the memo authorized the secretary of defense to coordinate with governors to deploy both the National Guard and “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.” In other words, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was given unprecedented authority to direct events on the home front, challenging the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions.
Since then, 4,100 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines have arrived in Los Angeles. Their presence has been notably aggressive. Meanwhile, Department of Homeland Security agents have swarmed the streets, local employment places, and immigration offices, not wearing identifying insignia (as occurred in Portland). As Nick Turse reported at The Intercept, “Since June 8, there have been 561 arrests related to protests across Los Angeles; 203, for failure to disperse, were made on the night of June 10, after Trump ordered in the National Guard and Marines.” Meanwhile, Trump used the growing conflict to threaten Governor Newsom with arrest.
Justifying his deployments, the president labelled the protesters “insurrectionists,” laying the groundwork for invoking the Insurrection Act, which, as Joyce Vance explains, “allows the military to be used for domestic law enforcement, but — and it’s an important caveat — only to restore order.”
For help in pushing back against the deployments, California officials, like their Portland predecessors, have turned to the courts. This time around, however, the Trump administration has revised its reading of what is lawful and, so far, the judiciary seems to be bending the president’s way.
The Courts
On June 9th, Governor Newsom filed suit in federal court, claiming that the deployment of the Guard and the Marines violated the Constitution and exceeded the president’s Title 10 authority. The suit argued that the deployments were unwarranted and the administration had failed to try to coordinate with the governor. California Attorney General Rob Bonta elaborated on the limitations of the law: “Let me be clear: There is no invasion. There is no rebellion. The President is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends. Federalizing the California National Guard is an abuse of the President’s authority under the law — and not one we take lightly. We’re asking a court to put a stop to the unlawful, unprecedented order.”
In 2020, the Oregon attorney general had filed suit in federal court in response to the actions of the federal agents. As the New York Times reported, “The lawsuit said federal agents were violating the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution by denying the right to peacefully protest, failing to provide due process and conducting unreasonable searches and seizures.” Ultimately, the federal judge dismissed the case, claiming that “the attorney general’s office did not have standing to bring the case because it had not shown that the issue was ‘an interest that is specific to the state itself.’” The Oregon court also shied away from tackling the larger question of what powers the federal government actually had in such situations.
Suits brought by private parties, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of individuals (journalists in particular), who were injured, harassed, or “abducted” by federal agents were more successful. Initially, a judge expanded a temporary restraining order (TRO) from local law enforcement to federal agents, blocking the use of tear gas and projectiles against journalists. As the suit progressed, more weapons in the federal agents’ arsenal, including rubber bullets, were prohibited.
When the president asked for the TRO to be removed, the judge not only refused, but levied a requirement that government agents wear identifying insignia — an effort to introduce a measure of accountability into the conflict on the ground.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals raised the larger issue of federal versus local authority, resoundingly rejecting the legality of the presence of federal agents in Portland, while agreeing with the lower court’s finding of “a disturbing pattern of unwarranted force by federal agents.” That court not only reinstated the TRO against federal agents attacking journalists but underscored the fact that federal agents had gone beyond protecting federal buildings to actively confronting protesters, while widening the “perimeter” in which they could act outside those buildings and so wrongfully overstepping the authorities expressly reserved for local law enforcement.
And at that time, there was also help from within Trump’s circle. In a settlement arranged between Oregon Governor Kate Brown and Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, federal law enforcement officers were indeed replaced with members of the Oregon state police. As Nik Blosser, Brown’s chief of staff and one of the negotiators, pointed out recently, referring to Vice President Pence, “There was at least someone in the administration that knew that this violence needed to come to an end. I’m not sure who is there to negotiate with now.”
Today, in Los Angeles, the courts are similarly engaged in a suit over the administration’s deployment of federal agents to counter protests. So far, however, the outcome is trending very differently. Earlier in the month, a federal judge issued a TRO against the National Guard in that city. In a 46-page ruling, Judge Charles Breyer, the brother of retired Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, rejected the government’s characterization of the protests as “a rebellion” and excoriated the president for assuming powers beyond his constitutional and statutory authority. “That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George” was the way he put it. In addition, Judge Breyer returned the authority to deploy the National Guard to California rather than the federal government.
The administration immediately appealed. As in the Portland case, the appellate court is once again the Ninth Circuit. On June 18th, there was a hearing before a panel of three judges, two of them Trump appointees and one a Biden appointee. Repeatedly, the judges seemed to reject the notion that the law requires the active involvement of the governor in the decision to deploy such troops, appearing to side with the federal government lawyer, who told the judge again and again, “Our position is this is not subject to judicial review.” In other words, the president should have free rein to do as he pleases.
In their ruling, the appellate judges agreed with Trump and not with the state of California, overruling the district court judge and unanimously agreeing that the president had acted lawfully and that his failure to notify the governor before deploying those troops was not grounds for obstructing the president’s order. In other words, he could indeed keep control of the troops in L.A.
In short, the case has taken us another step down the road to the “maximalist” view of executive power. The ruling suggests that last year’s Supreme Court immunity decision, allowing a president to do more or less whatever he wants while in office without fear of retribution, was indeed a game changer. As a reminder, in July 2024, while Trump was running for office a third time, the court ruled that, “under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.” The court then added, “There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
In the context of recent events in Los Angeles, rather than immunity for criminal activity, it suggests that the Supreme Court might indeed support immunity from legal pushback for acts committed at the state level. And that would, of course, remove yet another of the checks and balances that once underlay the protections against untethered presidential power in the American system of government.
A Genuinely Frightening Moment
How this will play out at the Supreme Court the next time around is anyone’s guess and may turn on the issue of whether that court assesses that there really was a rebellion in Los Angeles — the government’s premise for bringing in federal troops. Nonetheless, this should certainly be considered a frightening moment. After all, that presidential memorandum authorizing the federal deployments to L.A. was in no way limited to California. In fact, there was no geographical specificity to it at all and no specific type of protest named in the memo. It was a blanket authorization for deploying federal troops, based on unspecified acts of violence, disorder, and protests. If California is a sign of the future, it seems ever clearer that the courts have little appetite for standing in the way of this president. In addition, as loyalty to him is the first requisite of government officials, any pushback from within the ranks of his administration seems essentially inconceivable.
So here we are, once again learning that the restraints Americans could rely upon in the past are fast disappearing. And while protests from democratic leaders abound, it’s the courts that, at this moment, hold the power.
It’s tempting to point to the moments in recent times when we should have seen this coming — the growing powers granted to the president in the name of the Global War on Terror, the unchecked ability of the president to repeatedly make acting appointments and fire those in his cabinet who oppose his will, the coopting of members of Congress through threats of primarying them out of office or grants of vast amounts of money should they demonstrate sufficient loyalty to the president.
But as it stands, this is probably not the time to focus on who’s to blame in the past. Instead, it’s time to consider the future and our power to strengthen the fundamentals of our democracy before all is lost. Only if our trust in the law and the courts is restored will we truly be able to turn our thoughts to the mistakes and missed opportunities of what by then would be the painful past.
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