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The Trump Administration Wants to Turn US Cities Into Occupied Territory
The logic is imperial, and familiar. Invent an enemy. Inflate the threat. Justify the war. Except this time, the war zone is your own backyard.
Aug 07, 2025
By any rational measure, the Trump administration’s internal Department of Homeland Security memo—obtained by The New Republic—reads less like a briefing on immigration enforcement and more like a blueprint for domestic occupation.
Strip away the bureaucratic throat clearing and what you find is blunt language: “homeland defense,” “personnel detailed within ICE and CBP,” “Al Qaeda or ISIS cells operating freely inside America.” The lines are being drawn. The administration is preparing to turn American cities into zones of military containment.
Los Angeles, it turns out, was the test run. National Guard and Marines were deployed there under the excuse of protests, and the memo declares it a “good indicator of the type of operations (and resistance) we’re going to be working through for years to come.” Note the calm normalization of “resistance.” That word is doing a lot of work. It doesn’t mean gang violence. It doesn’t mean cartel shootouts. It means Americans. It means Angelenos, New Yorkers, Chicagoans, Houstonians—anyone who finds themselves in the path of a bloated, paranoid state looking inward for its next war.
This is the West Bank model imported home. Use the military, not as a last resort but as a daily presence. Coordinate the Pentagon with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection. Have Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s brother, a barely vetted MAGA functionary, walk into meetings with the Joint Chiefs and demand “urgency” and “lockstep” planning. Sell the public on the fiction that MS-13 and child smugglers are the same as jihadist cells, then treat American neighborhoods like insurgent terrain. What Israel perfected in Gaza and the West Bank—constant surveillance, movement checkpoints, raids, mass detentions—will be replicated block by block in South Central and East New York under the same justification: security.
The machinery of repression is humming—but many of the engineers are morons.
The logic is imperial, and familiar. Invent an enemy. Inflate the threat. Justify the war. Except this time, the war zone is your own backyard. The memo doesn’t describe law enforcement. It describes counterinsurgency doctrine. It imagines Department of Defense personnel “embedded” within immigration agencies, not for support, but for command and control. It uses the language of terrorism to override constitutional limits. And it pretends that dragging immigrants onto military aircraft for public spectacle is ordinary governance.
What’s most chilling isn’t the language. It’s the preparation. There is no longer an attempt to hide the playbook. DHS knows it is “skirting the line”—Carrie Lee from the German Marshall Fund said it plainly. They just do not care. In fact, they are proud of it. The document’s authors are pushing the Pentagon to discard even the pretense of legal restraint. They are testing the limits of the Posse Comitatus Act the way they once tested court orders blocking the first Muslim ban. Every limit is a speed bump. Every failure is a rehearsal.
This is how military occupations work. They start with “urgent meetings.” They escalate through “coordination” and “information sharing.” They grow bureaucratic vines until no one is accountable for anything and everyone has a mission statement. Pretty soon, you live in a city where helicopters buzz overhead at midnight and soldiers in camo check your bags at subway stops. You do not remember when it started. You just know it never ends.
And yet, there’s one bleak source of hope. The Trump administration is profoundly, deeply incompetent. This is a regime that leaks its own illegal memos to the press. That puts family members in senior policy roles not because they are clever Machiavellians, but because they are available and loyal. That spends billions building walls no one maintains and writing executive orders that collapse on contact with any judge not wearing a MAGA hat. The machinery of repression is humming—but many of the engineers are morons.
That might save us. Not rule of law. Not institutional bravery. Just a consistent failure to execute. The danger isn’t that President Donald Trump’s people are masterminds. It’s that they’re learning. And this time, they’re not planning a weekend spectacle of troops on the border. They’re planning a daily occupation of the interior. Of where we live.
They’ve already told us what they’re going to do. The only question is how long we pretend not to believe them.
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The Olympics Is the Last Thing LA Needs as It Deals With Fires and ICE
A new poll from the anti-Olympics coalition NOlympicsLA finds that public support for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics has soured significantly over time.
Aug 05, 2025
When the International Olympic Committee announced in September 2017 that Los Angeles would host the 2028 Summer Olympics, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti predicted, “The Olympics will spur a bold vision for our city.” Eight years later, enthusiasm in the City of Angels has dwindled considerably.
Current Mayor Karen Bass is under increasing pressure from locals who are concerned that LA, which is already experiencing a budget crisis, will be stiffed with a hefty Olympic bill. Under U.S. President Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is wreaking havoc on the city’s immigrant population, with masked agents in military-style garb snatching Angelenos off the streets—often violently—and cramming them into vans and ultimately into detention facilities with inhumane conditions.
Amid the mayhem, a new poll from the anti-Olympics coalition NOlympicsLA finds that public support for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics has soured significantly over time. A firm majority of respondents—some 54%—asserted a preference for spending public resources on wildfire recovery rather than the Olympics. Less than a quarter of respondents (24%) supported funding the Olympics over those still reeling from the wildfires that swept through LA in January 2025, ravaging places like the historically Black foothill community of Altadena.
The poll also found a notable age gap, with millennials and Gen Z overwhelmingly spurning the LA28 Games. A mere 22% of those polled between the ages of 18 and 29 were supportive of LA28 whereas in the 45-to-60 age bracket 53% supported the Games. The NOlympics LA survey also uncovered a gender gap: Women were more likely than men to oppose or be neutral toward hosting the LA 2028 Games (40% to 23% of men) and keener to prioritize wildfire recovery over Olympic preparations (61% to 49% for men).
The Olympics have a long and ignominious tradition of short-circuiting democracy, but it’s not too late for Los Angeles to make amends.
The Olympics tend to be popular in the abstract, but as the reality of hosting the Olympics draws closer—with overspending, gentrification, displacement, police intensification, greenwashing, and corruption coming into sharper focus—public support tends to shrink.
For instance, a few months ahead of the Paris 2024 summer Olympics, a poll found that 44% of Parisians thought the 2024 Olympics were a “bad idea.” Then, a couple weeks before the Paris 2024 Olympics kicked off, another poll discovered that the French were less than thrilled at the prospect. More than 65% of the population was either indifferent (36%), concerned (24%), or angry (5%) about hosting the Olympics.
At the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games, staged a year later in 2021 amid the coronavirus pandemic, a whopping 83% stated that the games should be either postponed again or scrapped altogether. When the public ramped up pressure on Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to take action, he was forced to admit that the host-city contract handed the power to cancel or postpone solely to the International Olympic Committee. The IOC ignored public opinion and rammed ahead, resulting in a dramatic uptick of Covid-19 rates in Tokyo during and after the games, while more than 800 people tested positive for Covid-19 inside the so-called “Olympic bubble.”
To say the Olympics has a democracy problem is to make an understatement. Where democratic practice flourishes, the Olympics tend to struggle to gain popular traction. Between 2013 and 2018 alone, more than a dozen cities rejected their Olympic bids, after either losing a public referendum, facing the mere prospect of a public vote, or succumbing to political pressure against the games.
This is precisely why the International Olympic Committee opted in September 2017 for the hail-Mary move of announcing two host cities at once, selecting Paris to stage the 2024 Summer Games and Los Angeles to host in 2028. The two cities were originally bidding for the 2024 Olympics, but after conspicupus bid withdrawals from Boston, Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome, the IOC made the unusual dual declaration. Neither Paris nor Los Angeles carried out a public referendum where voters could weigh in on whether or not to host the complicated and expensive sports mega-event.
The NOlympicsLA poll asked Angelenos their thoughts on the possibility of a democratic referendum on the games. Their results were bracing. They found that “only 54% would vote to support LA28 if there were a referendum tomorrow.”
Turns out, a referendum might be on the horizon. In Los Angeles, Unite Here Local 11, the union that represents hotel and restaurant workers, has filed paperwork to create a ballot measure that would provide LA voters a chance to weigh in on whether to develop or expand “event centers” like sports venues, convention facilities, or hotels. The union not only zeroed in on permanent facilities, but also temporary structures like ones being proposed for the 2028 Olympics. As the Los Angeles Times reported, this “could force at least five Olympic venues to go before voters for approval,” including the LA Convention Center, the John C. Argue Swim Stadium, and the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, which is slated to host Olympic events like 3-on-3 basketball and skateboarding in the San Fernando Valley.
Jonny Coleman, an organizer with NOlympicsLA, pointed out to Common Dreams that “this polling took place before the budget crisis and before the ICE incursion.” He added, “We believe our message has reached many more Angelenos since this poll was conducted, and we are confident more and more Angelenos will reject LA28 and the World Cup on the basis of the ICE collaboration alone.” He also noted that organizers with LA28 have “not made a single public comment since June 6 about the violence taking place against working class Angelenos and how that will continue to be weaponized.”
The Olympics have a long and ignominious tradition of short-circuiting democracy, but it’s not too late for Los Angeles to make amends. While it’s true that neither the word “democracy” nor “democratic” appear in the host-city contract between the IOC and LA, Angelenos could force a democratic vote on key issues. NOlympicsLA’s new poll shows that there is a fresh interest in asking big questions about the 2028 LA Games.
Comedian John Mulaney recently joked that “making LA host the Olympics… would be like if you had a friend, and she was having a nervous breakdown, and she had no money, and part of her house was on fire. And to cheer her up, you made her host the Olympics.”
Well, the joke may end up being on LA28 Olympic organizers who thought they could press ahead with status-quo thinking in a whipsaw world. A public referendum on the LA Olympics, set against the backdrop of an increasingly authoritarian country, might be just what the democracy doctor ordered.
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'Here It Comes': Leaked Hegseth Memo Suggests More US Troops on US Streets
"The worst we've been waiting for," wrote one legal scholar in response to an internal DHS-DoD document reportedly authored by Philip Hegseth.
Aug 02, 2025
New reporting based on a leaked briefing memo from a recent meeting between high-level officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Defense Department sparked fresh warnings on Saturday about the Trump administration's internal plans to increase its domestic use of the U.S. military.
According to Greg Sargent of The New Republic, which obtained the memo, the document "suggests that Trump's use of the military for domestic law enforcement on immigration could soon get worse."
The "terrifying" memo—which the outlet recreated and published online with certain redactions that concealed operational and personnel details—"provides a glimpse into the thinking of top officials as they seek to involve the Defense Department more deeply in these domestic operations, and it has unnerved experts who believe it portends a frightening escalation."
Circulated internally among top Trump officials, TNR reports the memo was authored by Philip Hegseth, the younger brother of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The younger sibling, though lesser known by the public than his controversial brother, currently serves as a senior adviser to Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and acts as DHS liaison officer to the Pentagon.
Text of the terrifying memo, written by Pete Hegseth’s little brother, with some redactions due to the agreement Sargent had with those he obtained it from. newrepublic.com/article/1986...
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— Rebecca Rauber (@defeatthefascists.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 9:17 AM
The meeting between DoD and DHS officials and the memo centers on Philip Hegseth's push for closer collaboration between the two departments, especially with regard to operations on the ground, like those that happened earlier this year in Los Angeles when National Guard units and later U.S. Marines were deployed in the city to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and local law enforcement put down local protests sparked by raids targeting immigrants and workers.
As Sargent noted in a social media post:
Strikingly, the memo says straightforwardly that what happened in Los Angeles is the sort of operation that may be necessary "for years to come." As one expert told me: "They see Los Angeles as a model to be replicated."
"To Make America Safe Again, DHS and DoD will need to be in lockstep with each other, and I hope today sets the scene for where our partnership is headed," states the memo, which also compares transnational criminal gangs and drug cartels to Al Qaeda.
Lindsay Cohn, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, was among the experts TNR spoke with who called that comparison particularly worrying. "The conflation of a low-level threat like transnational criminal organizations with Al Qaeda, which was actually attempting to topple the United States government, is a clear attempt to use excessive force for a purpose normally handled by civil authorities," said Cohn.
Sociology professor Kim Lane Scheppele, a scholar who studies the rise of autocracy at Princeton University, was among those who raised alarm in response to the published reporting and the contents of the memo.
"Here it comes," wrote Kim Lane Scheppele. "The worst we've been waiting for."
According to TNR:
The memo outlines the itinerary for a July 21 meeting between senior DHS and Pentagon officials, with the goal of better coordinating the agencies' activities in "defense of the homeland." It details goals that Philip Hegseth hopes to accomplish in the meeting and outlines points he wants DHS officials to impress on Pentagon attendees.
Participants listed comprise the very top levels of both agencies, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and several of his top advisers, Joint Chiefs chairman Dan Caine, and NORTHCOM Commander Gregory Guillot. Staff include Phil Hegseth and acting ICE commissioner Todd Lyons.
"Due to the sensitive nature of the meeting, minimal written policy or background information can be provided in this briefing memo," the memo says.
Joseph Nunn, counsel for the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told TNR it was "disturbing to see DHS officials pressuring the U.S. military to turn its focus inward even further." Nunn added that the memo suggests that "military involvement in domestic civilian law enforcement" is set to become "more common" if the policy recommendations put forth by Phillip Hegseth take hold.
Following publication of his reporting, Sargent said he wanted to flag something specific for readers.
"It looks plausible that the Hegseth brothers are trying to push military leaders further on involving military in domestic law enforcement," he noted. "Two experts I spoke with read the memo that way. There may be a bigger story here to get."
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