Trump deploys troops to crush dissent — and escalate his war on America

Robert Reich
June 8, 2025 

What is our moral responsibility as citizens of the United States when the President of the United States moves to deploy thousands of American soldiers against us?

Trump signed a memo late yesterday ordering 2,000 members of the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles County after federal immigration agents in riot gear squared off with hundreds of protesters for a second consecutive day.

Trump’s action is extreme although technically legal. Governor Gavin Newsom did not call in the Guard. Title 10 of the United States Code allows a president to federalize the National Guard units of states to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” In a presidential memo, Trump said, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”


Why is he doing it, and why now?


Because Trump can’t stand to be humiliated — as he has been in the last two weeks. By senate Republicans refusal to quickly enact his so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. By Xi Jinping’s refusal to back down on trade (and restrict shipments of China’s rare earths, which American industry depends on). By Putin’s refusal to end the war in Ukraine. By the federal courts pushing back against his immigration policy. And, now, by insults and smears from the richest person in the world, who has a larger social media following than does Trump.

So what does Trump do when he’s humiliated? He deflects public attention. Like any bully, he tries to find another way to display his power — especially over people whom he doesn’t consider “his” people.

He has despised California since the 2016 election when the state overwhelmingly voted against him.

And what better Ground Zero for him to try out his police state than Los Angeles — a city teaming with immigrants, with Hollywood celebrities who demonize him, and wealthy moguls who despise him?

He is calling out the National Guard to provoke violence. As Governor Newsom said, “that move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”

Trump wants to escalate tensions. He wants a replay of the violence that occurred in the wake of the George Floyd murder — riots, mayhem, and destruction that allow him to escalate his police state further — imposing curfews, closing down parts of Los Angeles, perhaps seeking to subdue the entire state. And beyond.


Please do not give him this. Don’t fall into his trap.

We cannot be silent in the face of Trump’s dictatorial move. Silence is acquiescence. We must be brave in resisting him. But we must not succumb to violence.

What is needed is peaceful civil disobedience. Americans locking arms to protect those who need protection. Americans sitting in the way of armored cars. Americans singing and chanting in the face of the Americans whom Trump is drafting into his handmade civil war.

Americans who do not attempt to strike back, but who do what many of us did during the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements — peacefully but unambiguously reject tyranny. To be brave and non-violent in the face of tyranny, to be strong and restrained, to resist with our hearts filled with anger but not succumb to that anger — is difficult. But Martin Luther King Jr. taught us its importance, and George Lewis taught us how.

A humiliated Trump is the most dangerous Trump. But he will overreach. He already has. And this overreach will ultimately be his undoing.

As long as we keep our heads.

May we look back on this hellish time and feel proud of what we did.

Be strong. Be safe. Hug your loved ones.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

'This is the big one': Ex-DHS official raises alarm over Trump's plans for LA

Tom Boggioni
June 8, 2025 
RAW STORY



A former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official during Donald Trump's first term as president claimed that what is happening in Los Angeles is exactly what the president has been hoping for so he can unleash the military on Americans.

Speaking on MSNBC's "The Weekend," former DHS chief of staff Miles Taylor stated the protests in Los Angles against militarized ICE agents do not rise to the level of insurrection that Trump's inner circle is claiming, but it has handed him the pretext to do what he has always wanted to do.

As he explained, "This is, in my opinion, the single most significant act you've seen yet in the Trump administration. People are going to start to come to that realization over the next few days. This is the big one, this is the one that people like me were warning about when I came forward first in 2020 and started talking about the things I was most worried about that I saw in the first Trump administration that the president wanted to do."

"At the top of that list was deploying the U.S. military on U.S. soil to enforce domestic law," he recalled. "We had stopped Donald Trump in 2019 from invoking the Insurrection Act because we and our lawyers didn't think the way he wanted to do it was legal. In fact, I rushed to the White House as he was planning to make the State of the Union address and he wanted to insert a line about how he was invoking the act and deploying the U.S. military on U.S. soil. We felt like that was a dangerous slippery slope so that Donald Trump would end up taking control of national law enforcement."

"Make no mistake, his own lieutenants were worried he would create a de facto police state if he was going to be deploying the military on U.S. soil," he added.

"What is happening in Los Angeles is not a rational response to what they're seeing on the ground," he pointed out. "This is indeed, in my view, pre-planned to be able to give the president justification to invoke the Insurrection Act and it made sense that where they decided to do these raids was Los Angeles."

"I very firmly believe in the White House they suspected the response would be protests, and then they could use the protests as a response to use the Insurrection Act," he elaborated. "But this is much, much bigger than Los Angeles. I'm telling you, from the first term, if Donald Trump had gotten the authority to use the military on U.S. soil to enforce domestic law, it was going to go much beyond enforcement of immigration law. That was our fear and we are seeing potentially the early innings of that play out in real-time."


You can watch below or at the link.

'Order will be restored': Trump drops major new action to 'liberate Los Angeles'

David McAfee
June 8, 2025

RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump walks with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi as he visits the Department of Justice to address its workers, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 14, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Donald Trump on Sunday lashed out at protests in California, and ordered his top officials to "liberate Los Angeles."

The president took to his own social media site, Truth Social, over the weekend to unleash the escalation in tensions surrounding the protests involving the administration's policies surrounding immigration enforcement.

"A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals," Trump claimed without citing any specific data. "Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations — But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve."

Going even further, Trump ordered "all such action" be taken to stop protesters.

"I am directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant Departments and Agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots," the president wrote. "Order will be restored, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

See the full post here.

'How can you justify it?' CBS host grills Kristi Noem on masked officers

David Edwards
June 8, 2025 

RAW STORY

CBS/screen grab

CBS host Margaret Brennan pressed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about how she could justify enforcing a no-mask rule on protesters when her officers were allowed to hide their faces

"President Trump said masks will not be allowed to be worn at protests," Brennan told Noem in a Sunday interview. "Who's going to enforce that and how? And how can you justify it when law enforcement officials have their faces covered?"

"You know, what I would say is that the law is going to be enforced and that what the laws are in this country is what we are doing and our ICE officers and our law officers out there that are in these situations where people have questioned why they have their faces covered," Noem replied. "It's for the safety of those individuals or the work that they're doing as far as protecting their identity, so they can continue to do investigative work."

"But are you tasking the National Guard soldiers with removing masks from protesters?" Brennan asked.

"No," Noem remarked. "National Guard soldiers are there to provide security for operations and to make sure that we have peaceful protests. So, that's what their work is. And I won't get more specific on that just because we never do when it comes to law enforcement operations."

"We're doing the same standard procedures we always do and have for years in this country with our National Guard and with our, you know, law enforcement folks that are on the ground working with these communities," she added.

Watch the video below from CBS or at the link. .

'No, no, no, no, no': GOP lawmaker shut down over LA protest violence blame

Tom Boggioni
June 8, 2025 

RAW STORY


Nicole Malliotakis, Xochitl Hinojosa (CNN screenshot)

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) got a lesson on how the government works on CNN on Sunday when a former DOJ official explained to her that the escalation of violence in Los Angeles can solely be linked back to Donald Trump's firing spree since taking office.

During the panel segment on CNN's "State of the Union," the New York Republican claimed that the president had no choice but to send the National Guard to Los Angeles to quell the protests of ICE immigrant sweeps despite Califonia lawmakers saying there is no need.

With the pro-immigrant, anti-ICE protests growing, Malliotakis asserted, , "You see an ICE agents attacked, you've seen their cars put on fire, stones thrown at them –– this is unacceptable and you're also talking about enforcement of our immigration laws."

As she stated people who have been taken into custody have been, "... gang members, these were drug traffickers, human smugglers, people who committed robbery, child abuse, sex, offense, the worst of the worst," she was interrupted with, "Are you sure that they were?" to which she responded, "Well that's what the reporting says."


After adding, "The fact that, look, we would not have this situation in Los Angeles if it were not that they had this sanctuary status that refuses cooperation with ICE agents. It makes it more dangerous for everyone, the agents and the community when the ICE agents have to go in there and find these criminals instead of the city and state turning them over," former DOJ Public Affairs Director Xochitl Hinojosa took exception.

"Well, it was also children and mothers, and there's video of violence against these ––are mothers and small children and the videos are terrible," she told the GOP lawmaker. "What I'll say is it is a president's responsibility to de-escalate a situation anytime there is violence in our country. Then they should work with local law enforcement to do that."

"What happened here is sending in the National Guard only escalates it," she continued. "Hegseth saying that he wants to send in the Marines that are equipped for war only escalates it. You know, arresting the president of SEIU and going in and conducting raids only escalates. The interesting part about this is the Department of Justice would normally go in through the Community Relations Service; they did this with George Floyd. They've done this with a whole bunch of other instances where they go in and they work with state and local law enforcement to de-escalate what is happening."

"The problem here is that Trump essentially fired everyone in the Community Relations Service, he did, I worked there" she continued as the GOP lawmaker objected. No, no, no, no, no! The federal government's role is to help state and. local law enforcement, to deescalate. He essentially got rid of all of those employees because he does not believe in civil rights, and instead he's escalating it by sending in the National Guard."

You can watch below or at the link.

LA unrest marks latest clash of US presidents, states over National Guard


By AFP
June 8, 2025

US President Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles to address unrest over raids by federal immigration agents - Copyright AFP ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
Michael Mathes

Donald Trump’s deployment of California’s National Guard marks the first time in decades that a US president openly defied a state governor and sent troops to an emergency zone.

By ordering 2,000 guardsmen to Los Angeles to help quell protests against raids by US immigration agents, Trump essentially mounted a takeover of the state’s military regiments to address “lawlessness” on the city’s streets.

The National Guard is a reserve military rooted in the 17th century local militias created in the American colonies before the country’s founding.

Since then the guard has had multiple responsibilities: domestic disaster relief and security, homeland defense and prevention of civil unrest; and acting as reserve forces for US military deployments overseas.

Presidential orders to deploy guardsmen domestically are not uncommon.

But clashes between a president and governor over deployments — or the lack thereof, such as during the US Capitol riot by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021 while he was still in office — have been rare.



– Los Angeles, 2025 –



The White House said Trump relied on a seldom used law, known as Title 10, that permits National Guard federalization in times of “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom called the decision “purposefully inflammatory.” But Trump’s order proceeded, and the guard troops were on LA streets Sunday.

“This is the first time since 1965 that a president has deployed the National Guard without a request by a state governor,” Kenneth Roth, a longtime former Human Rights Watch executive director, posted on X.

“Then it was (president Lyndon) Johnson protecting civil rights protesters. Now it’s Trump creating a spectacle so he can continue his immigration raids.”

Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice warned of a “shocking abuse of power” by Trump, whose memorandum authorizes federalization of National Guard troops “at locations where protests against (federal immigration) functions are occurring or are likely to occur.”

“Trump has authorized the deployment of troops anywhere in the country where protests against ICE activity might occur,” Goitein posted on X. “That is a huge red flag.”



– Alabama, 1965 –



A landmark civil rights moment led to a National Guard clash between a president and a segregationist governor.

With demonstrators led by Martin Luther King Jr on a five-day march from Selma to Alabama’s capital Montgomery, governor George Wallace pledged National Guard security — but then reneged.

The U-turn incensed Johnson who, in defiance of Wallace, called up the guard. The march was protected by thousands of Army soldiers and federalized guard members.



– Arkansas, 1957 –



When the Little Rock school system was ordered desegregated, Arkansas’ pro-segregationist governor Orval Faubus deployed the National Guard to surround a high school and prevent nine Black students from entering.

President Dwight Eisenhower bristled at the standoff and told Faubus the guard must maintain order so the Black students could attend. Instead, Faubus pulled the guardsmen, leaving security to local forces.

Eisenhower issued an executive order federalizing the Arkansas National Guard, and ordered 1,000 US Army troops to join them.



– Kent State, 1970 –



Perhaps no anti-Vietnam war protest was more pivotal than at Ohio’s Kent State University, where students slammed Richard Nixon’s war expansion.

As unrest swelled, the National Guard opened fire, killing four students and wounding nine others.

The shootings sparked outrage, but also led to reforms regarding how the guard handles civil unrest and use of force.



– Hurricane Katrina, 2005 –



The massive hurricane left much of New Orleans underwater, leading to the largest-ever peacetime deployment of the National Guard.

But critics accused then-president George W Bush of favoring a militaristic response over humanitarian relief.

Louisiana’s governor, Kathleen Blanco, warned that many among the thousands of National Guard and federal troops were battle-tested Iraq war veterans.

“These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will,” she reportedly said.



– Outside White House, 2020 –



June 1, 2020 saw a brutal crackdown on demonstrators following the police murder of African-American George Floyd.

With people aggressively protesting near the White House, the National Guard joined police to maintain order. Flash grenades and tear gas were deployed.

Unlike in the nation’s 50 states, the DC National Guard is under direct command of the US president, who at the time was Trump.