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DC Under Siege: One Year of Military Occupation
We don't need billions of dollars going toward policing our neighbors and Social Schedulingmilitarization of our streets to make our communities safer—we need housing, education, healthcare, and a commitment to climate justice for true national security.
Aug 12, 2026
One year ago, the Trump administration brought 800 National Guard troops to occupy the streets of Washington, DC, part of the "Safe and Beautiful Task Force." There are now approximately 5,000 troops from 15 states deployed here, with some officially moved in and set to stay through 2029.
This does not include the alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies swarming our neighborhoods across the city, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Agency, Park Police, and more.
The National Guard can be found meandering around metro stations, museums, and grocery stores there for mere posture. Despite crime being down before they were deployed here. A new analysis from the Center for American Progress found the Guard deployment has not had a measurable impact on violent crime. They are not even trained in "civilian policing," and are unable to make actual arrests.
“This was never about reducing crime, especially not violent crime,” said Chandler Hall, who wrote the study. “This has been a show of force without any evidence to bear that it’s actually working."
"If my neighbors could experience military protection as something imposed upon them, what did civilians overseas think when American forces arrived in their communities?"
The cost of the Guard is estimated at $3 million a day, with some troops said to make close to $9,000 a month, including salary, lodging, and food per diem. It is hard to track the multi-year total in billions of dollars as the administration is far from transparent with the process.
The wasteful spending from the Department of War is unsurprising. Despite the Pentagon never passing an audit, the Department of War's proposed budget is record-breaking at $1.5 trillion for one year and does not include the recent billions for the Iran war and additional billions to Israel to further the genocide in Gaza and ongoing destruction in Lebanon.
Some of the reasoning for more troops in DC was for the Freedom 250 nationalism events, beginning with a UFC fight, State Fair, and Fourth of July festivities, all of which were disastrous, from cancellations, evacuations, and heat strokes to stage parts falling, nearly killing performers. The millions of dollars that went into these spectacles strained the local community. On July 4, my friend Nicky, a 71-year-old EMT, worked an 18-hour double shift for $27 an hour while constant military flyovers cost over $1.2 million.
Karen Degraphenreid, a veteran of the US Air Force as a Major of 10 years, got involved with Free DC when the military occupation in DC began. She describes her reflections from her time overseas to experiencing the guard takeover here at home.
"Washington is the only place in the country where more than 700,000 American citizens can have troops deployed to their streets by leaders they have no voting representation in choosing. We pay federal taxes, serve in the military, and fulfill every obligation of citizenship, yet Congress can override our local government and impose decisions that fundamentally reshape life in our city. That reality forced me to reconsider what 'protection' actually means," she said.
She continued:
Many of my neighbors never asked for soldiers outside their neighborhoods. Many openly opposed their presence. To them, the deployment did not feel like reassurance. It felt like a federal government exercising power over a city that has long been denied full democratic self-government.
And that realization led me to a question I had never seriously asked during my years in uniform.
If my neighbors could experience military protection as something imposed upon them, what did civilians overseas think when American forces arrived in their communities? When we said we were bringing security and stability, did they experience it as protection? Or did they see armed strangers exercising power over places that belonged to them?
Karen is also a member of Common Defense, which holds trainings for veterans to verbally confront the National Guard. Other veterans are speaking out to encourage their fellows and active-duty members to do the same. Groups like About Face have been welcoming anti-war veterans to become more organized for years, many of whom were deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and are actively opposed to the genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran.
At a press conference commemorating one year of the occupation, Luke Filomena, a registered nurse with National Nurses United, expressed the imperialist boomerang we are all witnessing
I’ve seen this administration and every administration prior instead choose to spend hundreds of billions, now trillions of dollars, yearly, to go toward countless amounts of death and destruction through endless imperialist wars overseas and the funding and arming of a genocide in Gaza. I’ve been forced to watch as hospitals filled with patients and fellow healthcare workers, as well as schools filled with children, are indiscriminately bombed in Gaza and in Iran, and as the US blockade of Cuba leaves hospitals without fuel and supplies to power lifesaving medical equipment and provide care for their patients.
"Over the past year, under the Trump regime, we’re now seeing the imperialist boomerang come back, with its sights locked on the Black, brown, and immigrant communities here in DC; those who I see each day at the bedside," Filomena explained.
It's one thing to be aware of connecting the dots, and it's another to act on it. DC has been public about its opposition to the military takeover of the city. When the occupation first launched, we disrupted Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's photo op at Shake Shack in Union Station. A month later, Trump and almost his entire cabinet went out to dinner at a restaurant near the White House, and we disrupted it, chanting, "Free DC, Free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time." We later drowned out a public appearance by Hegseth, Stephen Miller, and hundreds of National Guard at Malcolm X Park.
Opportunities to confront the administration are rarer than daily encounters with the Guard. The same week budget cuts to Supplemental and Nutrition Assistance Program were being discussed in Congress, I asked a group of troops, who often appear to be aimlessly wandering our neighborhoods in groups of four, if people in their communities would be hit by this. I've asked them if they know their neighbors and what services they could use and be funded versus them being deployed here to hang outside of a convenience store. When the forest fires created thick smoke across DC, I asked why they were here and not putting out the fires.
In these conversations, they almost always nod their head and reach for their pamphlet, telling me and others who confront them to contact their supervisor. They come from states from Mississippi to Michigan, and there have been state-by-state campaigns to get the Guard to go home. Many of them are here voluntarily, not simply "following orders" as we are led to believe.
While we have 800 military bases abroad, the war economy is inescapable for most people within the United States as well. The predatory trap the military-industrial complex has on young people of color or those in poverty means they are heavily recruited to join the various branches of the military. The increased amount of data centers across the country is also making the war economy ever more apparent.
But the state can't use the excuse of job creation anymore. The Climate and Communities Institute shows us that employment at military contractors has plummeted over the past three decades, from an estimated 3.2 million workers during the Reagan military-spending peak in the mid-1980s to 1.1 million workers in 2020. The drop occurred despite Pentagon budgets rising 22% over the same period (not accounting for inflation costs). The alternative is a care economy, a system of paid and unpaid labor, services, and relationships that support human health, well-being, and daily life, that moves away from dirty, violent jobs that rely on weapons manufacturers and the fossil fuel industry.
We cannot normalize troops on our streets. But we must address the roots that cause normalization. We've been taught to salute combat veterans for their service no matter their history; we're used to discounts for military personnel and TV shows and Hollywood movies glorifying lower-level cadets to high-ranking commanders. While militarized superheroes are a common staple in US popular culture, teachers are buying their own school supplies for their classrooms, social workers have overwhelming caseloads, EMTs are working overtime while underpaid, and many veterans are unhoused or waitlisted at the VA.
Washington, DC does not need occupation; it needs fair representation. We don't need billions of dollars going toward policing our neighbors and militarization of our streets to make our communities safer—we need housing, education, healthcare, and a commitment to climate justice for true national security. In the meantime, we have only seen our community grow stronger to protect each other—more trainings, skill sharing, documenting, court support, fundraising, and more. Every day we are supporting each other by radically building community through getting to know our neighbors more deeply in real life.
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Warren Decries $1.4 Billion Cost of Trump's National Guard Deployment in DC
"The National Guard are not pawns, and taxpayer dollars are not a piggy bank for Trump’s political stunts."
Aug 04, 2026
Information provided to Sen. Elizabeth Warren's office revealed that the deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC is projected to cost taxpayers an extra $1.4 billion through the end of President Donald Trump's term.
As The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, Warren (D-Mass.) obtained the cost estimate for the National Guard deployment from Jules Hurst III, who is Trump’s nominee to become the comptroller for the US Department of Defense.
Hurst's estimate assumes there will be roughly 2,500 National Guard personnel deployed in the city through January 2029, when Trump is constitutionally mandated to leave office.
The estimate imagines a drawdown from the current 4,600 National Guard members deployed in the nation's capital, many of whom were sent to the city to oversee security at the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
In a social media post, Warren slammed the Trump administration for continuing to spend money on deploying the National Guard in the capital while ignoring the economic pain being felt across the country.
"While American families are getting flattened by skyrocketing costs, Donald Trump is spending $1.4 billion to keep troops on the streets in Washington for years on end," wrote Warren. "The National Guard are not pawns, and taxpayer dollars are not a piggy bank for Trump’s political stunts."
Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) also pointed to the opportunity cost of the service members' deployment.
"Trump says there's no money for healthcare or childcare," wrote Brown, "but he wants to spend billions to have the National Guard roaming around DC."
The Free DC campaign, which was founded last year to oppose the National Guard deployment in the city, warned that the continued presence of military forces was an ominous sign for Trump's future intentions.
"Trump is entrenching his power," the group wrote. "This is what that looks like in real time. It's tempting to call this money 'a waste,' but Trump has a clear reason he wants to spend this money on the National Guard's presence in DC. When January 6 comes around again, this time he'll have an army on call."
Unite for Veterans, an advocacy organization focused on defending the US Department of Veterans Affairs, also condemned Trump's use of the National Guard as a domestic law enforcement group.
"Spending $1.4 billion on a deployment that shouldn't be is not spending taxpayer money wisely or is it serving the military well," the group wrote. "The National Guard should not be policing the streets of America's cities. That is not their purpose. Let's send them home."
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The Supreme Court's Pro-Trump Immigration Rulings Threaten Decades of Progress
The sitting members should consider what kind of legacy they wish to leave for future generations before siding blindly with our most autocratic president in history.
Feb 18, 2026
The justices on the Supreme Court should not favor the president who appointed them because checks and balances demand that they uphold the law without passion or prejudice. The current Supreme Court has increasingly shown a pattern of siding with the Trump administration—a result made predictable by the court’s conservative majority. Immigration cases have, with rare exception, aligned along these partisan lines.
On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court sidestepped the question of birthright citizenship and overruled lower court decisions that sought to protect it. The original plaintiffs filed suit to enjoin the enforcement of the executive order that identifies circumstances in which a person born in the United States is not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” thereby restricting the constitutionally guaranteed bestowal of birthright citizenship. The Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court, which granted review. The plaintiffs argued that the executive order violates the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, as well as sections 1 and 201 of the Nationality Act of 1940—the constitutional guarantee that birth on US soil confers citizenship.
Before the case reached the Supreme Court, the district court entered universal injunctions barring the application of the executive order to anyone, thereby preserving birthright citizenship, and the appellate court denied the government’s request to postpone the granted relief. In its application to the Supreme Court, the government argued that federal courts lacked equitable authority to issue universal injunctions under the Judiciary Act of 1789, attacking the district court’s authority in order to preserve the president’s propensity to overstep his. The Supreme Court granted the government's application and held that Congress has not granted federal courts authority to universally enjoin the enforcement of an executive order. Reaching all the way back to pre-Revolution English law and the Founding Fathers, the Supreme Court reasoned that no such authority exists. Their reasoning reads as petulant and arbitrary, an invocation of ancient doctrine to narrow modern rights.
On September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court granted an application for stay by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The decision states that the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes immigration officers to interrogate any alien (or person believed to be an alien) as to “his right to be or to remain in the United States.” They also found that they may briefly detain individuals if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that he or she is an alien illegally present in the United States, based on the “totality of the particular circumstances.”
The Supreme Court’s deep bias in favor of Trump administration policies gestures toward a reversal, through immigration cases, of the trenchant progress in civil rights litigation that the Warren Court and subsequent courts have made.
The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law, however, takes tremendous liberties with the letter of these laws, essentially recognizing ethnicity as a basis for reasonable suspicion. Specifically, the California District Court enjoined immigration officers from making investigative stops based on, among other factors, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, and race or ethnicity. In a nutshell, the lower court forbade immigration enforcement from racially profiling Latine Angelenos. The Supreme Court overruled the lower court, reasoning that, while ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion, it can be a relevant factor when considered along with other salient factors. This argument is internally incoherent and contradictory, suggesting that racial bias is at once insufficient and persuasive evidence. Citing the myriad “significant economic and social problems” caused by “illegal” immigration, the Supreme Court sided with DHS, finding that the government would suffer irreparable injury from the injunction. The relevance of socioeconomic problems to the question of racial profiling and potential excessive force in the execution thereof is tenuous at best.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion, in which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. She argued that “we should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,“ as it would be a loss to our constitutional freedom.
On December 23, 2025, however, the Supreme Court issued an noticeably restrained opinion upholding a lower court’s temporary restraining order (TRO), which barred the deployment of the National Guard in Illinois. The court found that, under the Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited from executing the laws, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress. The decision further stated that, before the president can federalize the guard under 10 USC §12406(3), he must have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be unable with those forces to perform that function.
The Supreme Court’s deep bias in favor of Trump administration policies gestures toward a reversal, through immigration cases, of the trenchant progress in civil rights litigation that the Warren Court and subsequent courts have made. The sitting members should consider what kind of legacy they wish to leave for future generations before siding blindly with our most autocratic president in history. Political expediency may be convenient in the short term, but history will judge harshly those who twisted our most sacred liberties to the advantage of an advantageous few, rather than standing with the people our Constitution was written to protect.
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Be Warned: Trump May Still Pull the Insurrection Act Trigger
During his first term, Donald Trump was reportedly dissuaded from invoking the act by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and other “grown-ups” in his first administration; this time around, there are no grown-ups in the building.
Feb 13, 2026
Donald Trump hasn’t forgotten about the Insurrection Act, and neither should you. In the face of plummeting poll numbers and public outcry over the deaths of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, Trump may appear to be retreating from his threats to deploy the military to Minneapolis and other blue state cities, but any retreat is likely to prove temporary and tactical rather than a reversal of policy.
Throughout his career, Trump has been guided by the “lessons” he learned as a young real estate hustler from his odious one-time mentor and fixer Roy Cohn: Never retreat, apologize, or admit wrongdoing, and always remain on the offensive. In keeping with Cohn’s teachings, Trump has made threats to invoke the Insurrection Act dating to June 2020, when he vowed to use it to quell mass demonstrations related to the murder of George Floyd. He was reportedly restrained at the time by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and other “grown-ups” in his first administration.
This time around, there are no grown-ups in the building.
Since retaking the White House, Trump has doubled down on this threat. On the first day of his second term, he issued a presidential proclamation declaring a state of emergency at the southern border that directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security head Kristi Noem to develop plans, including using the Insurrection Act, to combat the now-familiar fantasy “invasion” of “cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, and unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries.” The proclamation laid the groundwork for Trump’s mass-deportation program and for giving US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol the largest budgets of any police agencies in the country.
Invoking the Insurrection Act would be the biggest gambit of all, likely resulting in a historic showdown before the Supreme Court.
Trump again threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act last June, in response to protests in Los Angeles, and then again in October over demonstrations in Chicago. Although he stopped short in both instances, he has ramped up the rhetoric to new heights in reaction to the growing resistance movement in Minneapolis. Taking to Truth Social on January 15, he warned:
If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.
Despite removing Border Patrol “commander at large” Greg Bovino from Minneapolis on January 26 in a gesture some observers saw as a modest measure of conciliation, the threats have escalated.
On January 27, Trump received a letter from the House Freedom Caucus, urging him to use ”all tools necessary,” including the Insurrection Act, “to maintain order in the face of unlawful obstructions and assemblages that prevent the enforcement of the laws of the United States.” Bolstered by the endorsement, Trump returned to Truth Social three days later to denounce Pretti as an “Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.” And in another Truth Social screed on January 31, he pledged to “guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.” In a veiled reference to Pretti, he added that anyone caught “punching or kicking the headlights of our cars” or throwing bricks or rocks “at our vehicles, or at our Patriot Warriors […] will suffer an equal, or more, consequence.”
Whether Trump ultimately pulls the Insurrection Act trigger may depend on how he applies another of Roy Cohn’s lessons: Use the legal system to crush critics and opponents. Trump’s affinity for litigation is legendary. He has been involved in over 4,000 lawsuits, including several defamation actions taken against major media outlets like the New York Times, ABC, and CBS. In his second term, he has transformed the Department of Justice into his personal law firm, imposing sanctions on liberal law firms and elite universities by executive orders, and launching prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, and scores of rank-and-file anti-ICE protesters across the country. Even when the gambits fail, as they have with Comey and James, they send the chilling message that no one who defies or offends the president is safe.
Invoking the Insurrection Act would be the biggest gambit of all, likely resulting in a historic showdown before the Supreme Court. Trump has enjoyed extraordinary success in his Supreme Court cases, and with three of his nominees on the bench, he has reason to be optimistic about any final confrontation. Still, the outcome of any such move is uncertain.
In December, the court dealt Trump a surprising setback with an interim “shadow-docket” ruling (Trump v. Illinois) that blocked him from deploying National Guard troops in and around Chicago. The ruling was widely praised by liberal legal commentators, who saw it as a hopeful sign that the nation’s highest judicial body was willing to stand up to Trump’s incessant power grabs, at least on the use of the military for domestic law-enforcement purposes.
Unfortunately, the decision was temporary—all interim orders are—and narrow. It was also a split decision, with Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.
At issue in the case was the administration’s interpretation of a vague phrase in a statute that empowers the president to federalize members of the Guard if he is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” The administration argued the phrase referred to the inability of federal civilian law enforcement to maintain order during protests. The majority ruled instead that the phrase referred to the regular military, and that because Trump had not attempted to deploy the military and shown that it was unable to maintain order, he had not met the statute’s requirements.
As Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in a concurring opinion, the decision said nothing about the president’s authority to invoke the Insurrection Act. Rather, Kavanaugh suggested, it opened the door for Trump to proceed. “One apparent ramification of the court’s opinion is that it could cause the president to use the US military more than the National Guard to protect federal personnel and property in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote.
To be sure, any invocation of the Insurrection Act would face legal challenges over whether the country is facing an actual rebellion, and the extent to which the military, if activated, is subject to the same constitutional restraints as civilian law enforcement. The challenges could succeed at the district court level, but from there, all bets would be off. The mad king would no doubt follow the advice of his erstwhile mentor, refuse to retreat, and ask his friends on the Supreme Court to intervene and allow his attacks to continue.
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Give Snow Shovels, Not Bullets, to the National Guard in DC
I didn't witness one National Guard soldier help a mother with a stroller or a person walking with a cane. "That's not our job," they said.
Feb 09, 2026
I’ve been in Washington, DC for the past week battling the icy and snow piled sidewalks and streets, one week after the big snow and ice storm that immobilized the city for days.
While using the city’s buses and Metros, it was very apparent the most probable danger in DC is falling on sidewalk ice and at unshoveled bus stops.
The National Guard, the group that was brought into the city by President Trump for the soc=-called "protection" of the residents of the city, was doing nothing to protect its residents.
Of the thousands of National Guard personnel sent to Washington, every day at least 15 National Guard personnel in groups of three or four were at various corners around the Eastern Market Metro stop. These young men and women in uniform watched as residents slid, climbed over, and fell through piles of snow and ice.
Never did I see one of the young National Guard soldiers help the mothers with babies in strollers that were pushing through piles of snow to get onto a bus or help a person with a cane or walker.
I introduced myself as a retired US Army Reserve Colonel. I asked if their officers had told them not to help residents, something I would have hoped that each would have done out of uniform as pure courtesy toward others. The polite answer, “No ma’am, but that’s not our job. We are to protect you from criminals.”
Have you apprehended any criminals? “No ma’am, but we are always ready.”
Have you thought to ask if the National Guard could buy some shovels for you to help protect citizens from injury? “Yes, but no one has.”
A total of 2,188 National Guard troops have been assigned to the joint task force in Washington, DC, according to a government update reported by the Associated Press. Of those, there are 949 DC National Guard troops, as well as close to 1,200 troops from several outside states, with West Virginia having deployed 416 guardsmen.
So much for a good use of the National Guard deployment in Washington, DC.
If they're going to stay, I have a simple demand: put down the guns and pick up some shovels.
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Vets in Labor Are Standing Up to Trump
Veterans in the labor movement have played a frontline role resisting Trump administration attempts to cut government jobs and services and strip federal workers of their collective bargaining rights.
Jan 24, 2026
The US is home to 17 million military veterans. About 1.3 million of them currently work in union jobs, with women and people of color making up the fastest-growing cohorts. Veterans are more likely to join a union than non-veterans, according to the AFL-CIO. In half a dozen states, 25% or more of all actively employed veterans belong to unions.
In the heyday of industrial unionism in the decades following World War II, hundreds of thousands of former soldiers could be found on the front lines of labor struggles in auto, steel, meatpacking, electrical equipment manufacturing, mining, trucking, and the telephone industry. Many World War II vets became militant stewards, local union officers, and, in some cases, well-known union reformers in the United Mine Workers and Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers.
The late labor organizer and author Jane McAlevey argued that the post-war union movement better understood the “strategic value” of veterans than organized labor does today. In her own advice to unions about contract campaign planning, she recommended enlisting former service members whose past “experience with discipline, military formation, and overcoming fear and adversity” could be employed on picket lines and strike committees.
In addition, the high social standing of military veterans in many blue-collar communities can be a valuable PR asset when “bargaining for the public good” or trying to general greater public support for any legislative or political campaign.
A D-Day Rally In DC
The wisdom of that advice has been confirmed repeatedly by the front-line role that veterans in the labor movement have played in resisting Trump administration attempts to cut government jobs and services and strip federal workers of their collective bargaining rights. At agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), more than 100,000 former service members have been adversely affected by these right-wing Republican attacks.
In response, the AFL-CIO’s Union Veterans Council brought thousands of protestors to a June 6 rally on the Mall in Washington, DC, where they heard speakers including now retired United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, a Vietnam veteran.
"We served our country, and now they’re breaking their promise to take care of us. We can’t accept that.”
With local turnout help from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), National Nurses United, and the Federal Unionist Network (FUN), other anti-Trump activists participated in 225 simultaneous actions around the country, including in red states like Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Idaho, Kansas, and Kentucky. Some “watch parties,” organized for real-time viewing of the DC event, were held in local union halls to highlight the labor-vet overlap.
James Jones, a FUN member and Gulf War veteran from Boone, North Carolina, traveled all the way to DC on the 81st anniversary of D-Day because he wanted Congress to understand the importance of VA services to veterans like himself.
Jones now works for the National Park Service and belongs to AFGE. He’s urging all his friends who are vets, fellow VA patients, and federal workers to start “going to rallies, and join these groups that are really fighting back. The government needs to keep the promise it made to veterans. We served our country, and now they’re breaking their promise to take care of us. We can’t accept that.”
VA Not for Sale
Private-sector union activists have also been rallying their fellow veterans, inside and outside the labor movement.
Communications Workers Local 6215 Executive vice-president David Marshall, a former Marine, has joined rank-and-file lobbying in Washington, DC against Trump’s cuts in VA staffing and services, calling them “a betrayal of a promise to care for us.”
Marshall is a member of Common Defense, the progressive veterans’ group. Common Defense’s “VA Not for Sale” campaign is fighting the privatization of veterans’ healthcare, which many fear will destroy what Marshall calls the “sense of community and solidarity” that VA patients experience when they get in-house treatment, as opposed to the costly and less effective out-sourced care favored by President Trump. “Regular hospitals don’t understand PTSD or anything else about conditions specifically related to military service,” he says.
An AT&T technician in Dallas, Marshall was also a fiery and effective speaker at that city’s big “No Kings Day” rally last June, when he explained why he and other veterans in labor are opposing MAGA extremism, political and state violence, and related threats to democracy.
“We’ve seen peaceful protestors met with riot gear, and we’ve heard the threats to deploy active-duty Marines against American citizens,” he told a crowd of 10,000. “Let me be clear: Using the military to silence dissent is not strength; it’s tyranny. And no one knows that better than those who have worn the uniform.”
Veterans for Social Change
Marshall is a third-generation union member born and raised in southern West Virginia. His father and grandfather were coal miners; his grandmother Molly Marshall was active in the Black Lung Association that helped propel disabled World War II veteran Arnold Miller into the presidency of the UMW in 1972. During his own 25-year career as a CWA member, Marshall has served on his union’s safety committee, as a delegate to the national convention, and now as an officer of his local.
Marshall belongs to CWA’s Minority Caucus, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and the NAACP. Along with Britni Cuington, a Local 6215 steward and Air Force vet, he attended a founding meeting of Common Defense’s Black Veterans Caucus at the Highlander Center in Tennessee.
“We have to stay in lock-step with them and show everyone following the Constitution that we have their back.”
Both Marshall and Cuington have since lobbied against the redistricting scheme concocted by Texas Republicans to secure more House seats in the 2026 midterm elections. Testifying at a public hearing on behalf of the Texas AFL-CIO, Cuington pointed out that “minority veterans already face barriers to access to the services, benefits, and economic opportunities we have earned.” She condemned the state’s new districts as racial gerrymandering in disguise that will disenfranchise “veteran heavy, working class neighborhoods.”
In his role as a CWA organizer, Marshall has signed up 30 Common Defense field organizers around the country—almost all fellow vets—as new members of his local. He’s now helping them negotiate their first staff union contract. In addition, Marshall encourages former service members in other bargaining units to participate in the union’s Veterans for Social Change program, which has done joint Veterans Organizing Institute training with CWA.
One fellow leader of that network is Keturah Johnson, a speaker at the 2024 Labor Notes conference. After her military service, she got a job at Piedmont Airlines in 2013 as a ramp agent, and then became a flight attendant. A decade later, she became the first queer woman of color and combat veteran to serve as international vice president of the 50,000-member Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.
A National Guard Casualty
One CWA member, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, a Frontier lineman in Martinsburg, West Virginia, was seriously wounded in late November after being sent as part of the National Guard deployment to Washington, DC. A fellow Guard member was killed. (Their assailant was a mentally ill, CIA-trained former death squad member from Afghanistan, relocated to the US after the collapse of the US-backed government there in 2021.)
According to Marshall, “it’s shameful that they were ever put in that position”—by a Republican governor going along with Trump’s federalization of guard units for domestic policing purposes. “It’s all political theater,” he says. “They were just props, just standing around, with no real mission.”
Along with Common Defense, Marshall praises the six fellow veterans in Congress whose recent video statement reminding active duty service members of their “duty not to follow illegal orders” led President Trump to call them “traitors” guilty of “seditious behavior, punishable by death.”
“We have to stay in lock-step with them and show everyone following the Constitution that we have their back,” Marshall says.
This piece was first published by Labor Notes.
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Fearing Midterm Loss, Trump Once Again Says 'We Shouldn't Even Have an Election'
"Take Trump at his word here," said one Minnesota attorney. "But know his word isn’t law."
Jan 15, 2026
As armed federal agents roam the streets of American cities and amid threats to declare the Insurrection Act and use military force to quell protests in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump said once again that the next elections should be canceled because he expects his party to lose.
“It's some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don't win the midterms,” Trump said in a closed-door interview published by Reuters on Thursday. He added that because he's accomplished so much during his first term, “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.”
It's at least the second time this month that Trump has floated the idea. He previously did so less directly during a speech commemorating the five-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, during which his supporters attempted to violently overturn his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden after he told them it was the result of fraud.
During that speech at the Kennedy Center, Trump described it as an outrage that Republicans even have to contest elections against Democrats later this year, suggesting canceling the election, but later backing off the idea.
"How do we even run against these people?" Trump said. "I won't say cancel the election; they should cancel the election, because the fake news would say: 'He wants the elections canceled. He's a dictator.' They always call me a dictator."
In the same speech, he warned: "You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don't win the midterms, they'll find a reason to impeach me. I'll get impeached."
Trump is correct that sitting presidents rarely see their parties do well in midterm elections two years after being elected. No sitting president has seen their party gain seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate since 2002, when former President George W. Bush's Republican Party was able to capitalize on fears of terrorism following the September 11 attacks just over a year before.
The president's grip on a legislative trifecta is nearly as thin as it could possibly be, with Republicans holding just 218 seats to the Democrats' 213.
Democrats were already favored to retake the House in November, and now appear even more likely to do so amid Trump's consistent unpopularity. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved a total of 18 House races in the Democrats' direction in its latest assessment of the odds to win the chamber.
However, Trump is wrong that elections can be "canceled," at least legally. Under the Elections Clause in Article I, Section 4 of the US Constitution, the administration of elections is vested in the states, with Congress holding the power to "make or alter such regulations." The president has no authority to determine the timing of federal elections.
The United States has never once postponed a presidential or midterm election in its nearly 250-year history: They were carried out on schedule during periods of extraordinary crisis, including the Civil War in 1864, the influenza epidemic in 1918 and 1920, and World War II in 1942 and 1944.
Elections were also carried out on schedule in 2020, though Trump, who was then the president running for a second consecutive term, also suggested that they should be delayed then due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the time, he claimed that the widespread use of mail-in ballots, necessitated by the illness, would make it "the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history” and asked if he should "delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” But Trump never pursued the idea seriously, as it was shot down by top Republicans.
After losing the election, he wrote in 2022 that what he called “a Massive Fraud” allowed for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" in order to address the 2020 result.
Trump has more recently suggested that a war could give him the ticket to cancel elections. While speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in August of 2025, he spoke approvingly of the leader's invocation of martial law and suspension of elections following Russia's invasion three years prior.
"So during war, you can't have elections?" Trump said with a smile. "So let me just say, three and a half years from now— so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.”
Since then, Trump has notably launched a war to take over Venezuela's oil and threatened to launch several more, including with Greenland, Iran, and Mexico.
Asked on Thursday about why the president keeps talking about canceling elections, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: "The president was simply joking. He was saying, 'We're doing such a great job, we're doing everything the American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling.' But he was speaking facetiously."
Ryan Broderick, the writer of the political newsletter Garbage Day, said that with his latest comments—and "the threats of invoking the Insurrection Act in Minnesota this morning—he is very clearly exploring how to cancel the midterms."
Trump has in recent days suggested using the National Guard to seize voting machines, stating that he regretted not doing so as he attempted to overturn his loss in 2020. His handpicked election officials have previously urged him to declare a "national emergency" that they said would give the federal government unprecedented powers to override the states and write their own election rules.
On the question of canceling the midterms outright, Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and First Amendment litigator, agreed that Trump "wants to, it’s plausible he’ll try, and his people would support it," but said "it’s vastly harder and more complicated than people are suggesting and can’t be done by his fiat."
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued that even if Trump wanted to cancel the midterms, he would face many logistical hurdles in doing so.
"How does Trump force 50 separate state boards of election to cancel their midterms?" he asked on social media. "How does he convince Republican House members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?"
"[US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] can't even deal with irate middle-aged Midwesterners. How does he occupy hundreds, if not thousands, of polling sites and precincts?" he continued. "Trump v. Illinois clarified that he has no legal authority to unilaterally commandeer national guards. How does he move forward from there?"
Minnesota lawyer Andrew Rothstein encouraged people to "take Trump at his word here... but know his word isn’t law."
Even if this year's elections go forward as planned, Trump is working to influence the results by bullying Republican state legislators to rig their congressional maps for the GOP and attempting to seize sensitive voter data.
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Trump Says National Guard to Leave Chicago, LA, and Portland, But 'Will Come Back'
Accusing "a president desperate to be king" of using troops "as political pawns," California's attorney general noted the announcement followed "a stinging rebuke by the Supreme Court."
Dec 31, 2025
After a series of losses in court, President Donald Trump ended 2025 with an announcement that he is pulling the plug on legally contested National Guard deployments in three major US cities—but he also pledged that troops will return in the new year.
Trump initially sent thousands of California National Guard members to Los Angeles in June amid protests against his violent immigration operations. The remaining troops left the city earlier this month in response to a pair of orders from a district judge and the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
The president also tried to deploy National Guard members to the streets of two other Democrat-led cities—Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, Illinois—but those moves were blocked by lawsuits, including one that produced a US Supreme Court decision last week.
Throughout the president's push to deploy troops to these and other cities, he has circulated lies about crime rates. He did so again in the Wednesday announcement on his Truth Social platform, writing, "We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact."
"Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in," Trump claimed. "We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time! It is hard to believe that these Democrat Mayors and Governors, all of whom are greatly incompetent, would want us to leave, especially considering the great progress that has been made???"
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat expected to run for president in 2028, said on social media Wednesday that it is "about time Donald Trump admitted defeat. We've said it from day one: The federal takeover of California's National Guard is illegal."
Newsom and the state's attorney general, Rob Bonta, challenged the LA deployment. In that case, the US Department of Justice on Tuesday filed a brief with the 9th Circuit withdrawing its motion to keep the California troops under federal control.
"For six months, CA National Guard troops have been used as political pawns by a president desperate to be king," Bonta said Wednesday. "Now, in the face of a stinging rebuke by the Supreme Court, the Trump administration is backing away from its effort to federalize and deploy CA National Guard troops."
Although that Supreme Court decision was not directly about California, the justices' rejection of the Trump administration's request to strike down a temporary restraining order that barred the Illinois deployment was expected to inform other cases.
Trump federalized Illinois and Texas national guard troops to patrol in Chicago, but Illinois quickly sued and won a court ruling keeping them out of the city. The troops did training exercises instead. Today, Trump claims that the guard "greatly reduced" crime in Chicago. Did they do it remotely?
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— Mark Jacob (@markjacob.bsky.social) December 31, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another Democrat who may run for the Oval Office in the next cycle, also pointed to the recent ruling in his response to the president on Wednesday: "Donald Trump's lying again. He lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities with the National Guard. Now Trump is forced to stand down."
"Illinois and Chicago have reduced crime with smart investments in police and community violence reduction programs," he continued. "Meanwhile, Trump cut federal support for both. No matter how many lies he tells, we will keep standing up for truth and against his abuse of power."
Ahead of Trump's announcement, the New Republic's Greg Sargent said that the president and his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, "are actually failing in crucial ways. Deportations are lagging behind their goals, courts are mostly functioning, and their fascist, ethnonationalist cruelties have unleashed a countermobilization of unexpected scope and power."
After the new Truth Social post, Sargent added: "Trump just announced that he's pulling the National Guard out of Chicago, LA, and Portland while pretending he won some kind of big victory. Here's the reality: Their authoritarian designs have faced massive civil and popular resistance."
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Supreme Court Deals Trump Major Loss on Illinois National Guard Deployment
"Trump is losing his grip on the dictatorial power he so covets," said one legal analyst.
Dec 23, 2025
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt President Donald Trump a major loss by rejecting the administration's request to strike down a temporary restraining order that barred him from deploying the National Guard in Chicago.
In a 6-3 ruling that featured dissents from Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court determined that the Trump administration had not met statutory requirements needed to justify deploying the National Guard in a state over the objections of its own government.
The court noted that the administration justified its Illinois deployment—pursued alongside a federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants in and around the state's largest city—by pointing to a law stating that the president may federalize the National Guard in the event that he is "unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States."
However, the court found that the "regular forces" referenced in the statute refers to the US military, not civilian law enforcement officials. This is relevant because the president faces significant restrictions on his ability to deploy the military domestically under the Posse Comitatus Act.
"Because the statute requires an assessment of the military’s ability to execute the laws, it likely applies only where the military could legally execute the laws," the justices wrote. "Such circumstances are exceptional: Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited from 'execut[ing] the laws' 'except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or act of Congress.'"
The justices further said that the Trump administration so far "has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois" and has not invoked any statute that would provide an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act.
In conclusion, the court wrote that the federal government "has not carried its burden to show" that the law "permits the president to federalize the guard in the exercise of inherent authority to protect federal personnel and property in Illinois."
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who had sued the Trump administration over the deployment, cheered the ruling and said that "the extremely limited circumstances under which the federal government can call up the militia over a state's objection do not exist in Illinois."
Raoul added that he was "pleased that the streets of Illinois will remain free of armed National Guard members as our litigation continues in the courts."
Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor, celebrated the Supreme Court's ruling as a victory for the rule of law.
"Trump is losing his grip on the dictatorial power he so covets," Kirschner commented on X.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said he was "genuinely shocked" by the court's ruling, and he credited an amicus brief written by Georgetown University Law Center professor Marty Lederman with swaying the court, as it centered the definition of "regular forces" in the statute as central to determining the legality of Trump's actions.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen and co-chair of the Not Above the Law Coalition, hailed the court's ruling but warned that the danger posed by the Trump administration's authoritarian ambitions has not ended.
"With a lawful administration that understood the limits of executive power, this would be the end of the question," she said of the ruling. "Unfortunately, we are living under an authoritarian regime that persists in every possible effort to expand its power and override guardrails. With an administration that displays utter disregard for the Constitution, we must now watch diligently how it will respond to a decisive Supreme Court decision against its lawless power grab."
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'A Good Day for Our Democracy': Judge Orders Trump to End National Guard Deployment in LA
"For more than five months, the Trump administration has held California National Guard troops hostage as part of its political games," said California's attorney general. "But the president is not king."
Dec 10, 2025
In a win for Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Attorney General Rob Bonta, and the residents of Los Angeles, a federal judge on Wednesday ordered President Donald Trump to stop deploying the National Guard in the nation's second-largest city.
"The founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances," wrote US District Judge Charles Breyer, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton. "Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one."
Trump mobilized around 4,000 California National Guard troops in June amid protests against his violent crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Since then, the Republican leader has also pursued deployments in other Democrat-led cities, including Chicago, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; and Washington, DC, where two soldiers were recently shot.
The new ruling from San Francisco-based Breyer comes as the administration was cutting troops in LA from 300 to 100, according to the New York Times.
"Once again, a court has firmly rejected the president's attempt to make the National Guard a traveling national police force."
"Six months after they first federalized the California National Guard, defendants still retain control of approximately 300 guardsmen, despite no evidence that execution of federal law is impeded in any way—let alone significantly," the judge said. "What's more, defendants have sent California guardsmen into other states, effectively creating a national police force made up of state troops."
After ruling in September that Trump's deployment of Marines in Los Angeles violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, the judge on Wednesday blocked the president's federalization of California National Guard troops—but he also halted his own decision until next Monday, allowing for appeals.
Despite the prospect that the Trump administration would continue the court fight, Bonta and Newsom—who is expected to run for president in 2028—welcomed the ruling.
"Once again, a court has firmly rejected the president's attempt to make the National Guard a traveling national police force," Bonta said in a statement. "For more than five months, the Trump administration has held California National Guard troops hostage as part of its political games."
"But the president is not king. And he cannot federalize the National Guard whenever, wherever, and for however long he wants, without justification," the attorney general declared. "This is a good day for our democracy and the strength of the rule of law."
In addition to battling Trump's invasion of LA, Bonta has backed lawsuits filed by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, and DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb challenging the president's deployments in their cities and filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court for the Chicago fight.
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