DAVID FRENCH
We find it hard not to conclude that the Trump administration is eager to incite battles on American streets. On Saturday, a protest against the arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement turned violent, and the government's response made it seem as if the country is on the brink of war.
Violence is unacceptable. Nonviolent resistance is honorable; violence is intolerable. But fortunately, so far, the violence has been localized, and crucially, these violent incidents are entirely within the management capability of state and local officials.
But don’t tell that to the Trump administration. Its rhetoric has become reckless.
Stephen Miller is one of President Trump's closest advisors and is one of the most important architects of government immigration policy (aside from Trump himself). His post contained only one word: "Riot."
Vice President JD Vance wrote on X: "A key technical issue in the immigration judicial struggle is whether Biden's border crisis counts as an 'invasion.'" This statement lays the foundation. He wants the courts to believe we are facing an invasion, and any riot can prove his point. "So now," Vance continued, "we have some foreign nationals who have not entered this country legally waving foreign flags and attacking law enforcement. If only we had an appropriate word to describe it..."
Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth published a lengthy post on X, claiming that the Department of Defense "is immediately mobilizing the National Guard to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles." If violence continues, active-duty Marines from Camp Pendleton, who are on high alert, can also be deployed.
Trump posted on Truth Social: "If California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass cannot do their jobs, and everyone knows they can't, then the federal government will intervene to resolve the riots and looting in the way that should be done!!"
That was on Saturday. On Sunday night, he wrote on Truth Social that he had "directed Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi to coordinate with all other relevant departments and agencies to take all necessary actions to liberate Los Angeles from the immigration invasion and end these immigrant riots."
Trump ordered 2,000 National Guard members into federal service and deployed them to Los Angeles. Bass and Newsom did not request this intervention. California has vast resources to address urban unrest, and Trump gave it little chance to try.
In fact, on Sunday night, Newsom asked Trump to rescind the deployment, calling it a "serious infringement on state sovereignty."
However, if you look closely, the actions of the Trump administration do not entirely match its alarmist rhetoric. Trump deployed the National Guard, but he did not invoke the (Insurrection Act), which is a very important legal distinction.
Georgetown University law professor Steven Vladek published a detailed and insightful article on Substack, noting that Trump ordered the National Guard to Los Angeles under another directive that allows the president to call up the National Guard when "insurrection occurs or there is a danger of rebellion against the authority of the United States government."
Under this order, the military has the authority to "suppress insurrections," but they do not have the full law enforcement authority that soldiers deployed by the president under the (Insurrection Act) possess.
Vladek pointed out that "for example, everything the president did on Saturday night would not authorize these federal National Guard members to initiate immigration searches and arrests on their own." Instead, Trump's order "federalized 2,000 California National Guard soldiers for the sole purpose of protecting Homeland Security personnel from attack."
The rhetoric of the Trump administration is extreme. And its actions so far have been relatively limited. But this is only a small comfort. The potential next step is obvious. If the government (unilaterally) believes this first limited deployment is insufficient, it will escalate. It will shout: "Insurrection!" and "Immigration invasion!" to justify more military control and perhaps invoke the (Insurrection Act).
As I have written before, the dangerously broad language of the (Insurrection Act) gives the president all the legal power he needs to deploy tens of thousands of troops on the streets nationwide. Trump has publicly lamented not using more force to suppress the chaos in 2020, and reports indicate his allies are planning for him to invoke the (Insurrection Act) in a second term.
It is worth asking: Does Trump want to harm the protesters? Recall that Trump's former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that in 2020, Trump asked then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or somewhere else?" Esper believed this was both a suggestion and a question.
We must also not forget that this conflict unfolded against the backdrop of a spat between Trump and Newsom. The Trump administration is considering a complete withdrawal of federal funds to California, and Newsom has also floated the idea of California stopping its tax payments to the federal government. (Californians pay more in taxes to the federal government than the state receives in federal funding.)
It is too early to declare a constitutional crisis, and in any case, discussing what label to put on every event that occurs will only distract us from the events themselves. However, we are receiving new evidence every day of a deeply troubling trend: America is no longer a stable country and is becoming increasingly unstable.
