Donald Trump has long fantasized about deploying the U.S. military to various Democratic strongholds across the country, regardless of whether the elected liberals there want him to or not. He’s finally starting to get his wish, less than six months into a second term defined by his drive to rule the nation with unchecked power.
The president authorized the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, California, over the weekend, in response to street protests against the recent federal spree of immigration raids and reports of arrests at routine immigration check-ins. On Monday, the Trump administration mobilized hundreds of Marines for deployment to the city, and doubled the number of National Guard on the ground.
The protests in Los Angeles do not appear to warrant this kind of ham-handed federal intervention or show of force. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and other local officials have repeatedly stated that there was no reason to send in armed troops, and that the Trump administration has been inflaming the situation for political reasons.
Trump has said he may invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that would allow him to deploy the military to crush protesters, if he feels like it, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has threatened to unleash Marines on the city. Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, dangled the possibility that the feds would arrest Newsom, or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, if the elected Democratic officials stood in Trump’s way. The president said on Monday that it would be “great” if his administration arrested Newsom, who earlier in the day announced California would sue Trump over the National Guard incursion.
Trump has wanted his own personal police state, with himself sitting at the top as its undisputed boss, since his first administration. The standoff on the streets of Los Angeles, which escalated late last week after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) started shooting pepper balls at protesters, shows how truly eager Trump and his administration are to turn America’s vast warmaking powers inward on the president’s domestic foes and critics.
Trump — who once instigated an actual insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, trying to overturn an election he lost to Joe Biden — is now issuing memos about a “rebellion” by unarmed protesters in a major American city and describing them as “insurrectionists,” laying the rhetorical groundwork for potentially invoking the Insurrection Act and unleashing Marines on American civilians. “We’re gonna have troops everywhere,” Trump warned on Sunday, when asked about Los Angeles.
According to The Wall Street Journal, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller recently demanded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stop worrying about targeting gang members and violent criminals and instead “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens.” He suggested agents go to Home Depot or 7-Eleven. The new approach quickly culminated in ICE arresting 40 immigrants last Friday at a Home Depot parking lot in the Los Angeles area. ICE also reportedly arrested numerous immigrants when they appeared at court hearings last week in Los Angeles.
The ICE raids and arrests led people to protest outside the Los Angeles Federal Building on Friday. DHS responded by shooting pepper balls into the crowd — driving further tensions, days of unrest, and a heavy-handed crackdown on protesters by local law enforcement.
Trump’s order federalizing thousands of National Guard troops in California stipulates 60 days of service, at Hegseth’s discretion. Two sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone that senior administration officials are planning to ramp up and expand the already tense blitz of immigration raids during the weeks that the National Guard is expected to be mobilized in the Los Angeles area. One of these sources, a Trump administration official, says it is hard to imagine that protesters would stay home for this, and that escalation in such a scenario is all but inevitable.
Asked for comment, a DHS spokesperson confirms that “ICE enforcement operations will continue to ramp up.”
Trump administration lawyers have preemptively explored and written drafts regarding Trump’s possible invocation of the Insurrection Act, and they remain similarly on standby for the aftermath of the president potentially granting the power to deploy the military.
The sources add that even at the start of his second term, Trump was discussing with multiple advisers where and when it would make sense to send in federal troops, either for supposed crime control or in response to larger-scale public activism against his agenda. Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles were frequently mentioned as potential targets. “He went over the options,” the other source familiar with the matter says.
Numerous Democratic politicians are accusing the Trump administration of intentionally exacerbating the situation on the ground to create a pretext for the kind of military deployment that Trump has always craved, but the objections haven’t bothered the president. Trump has, according to another source with knowledge of the matter, said in recent days that he’s got plenty of capable allies on the ground particularly, because the police — including in the Los Angeles Police Department — are on “my side.” (Indeed, the LAPD has responded to the anti-ICE protests with violence.)
The president has, according to that source and a person close to Trump, also ranted about what he’s seen on TV and about how depending the way things go this week, he may order several thousand more troops to Los Angeles.
Asked if Trump had a red line for invoking the Insurrection Act, the source close to the president says that Trump recently told them that if he sees any “attack” on the National Guard troops currently in L.A., that would likely cause him to “send in the Marines.”
It is worth noting that Trump and his party’s definition of an “attack” or an “assault” on law enforcement, feds, or military personnel is at times laughably elastic. Trump posted this week about protesters allegedly spitting on law enforcement, warning: “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT!”
Currently, one reason the Trump administration is not fearful of significant escalation in their California offensive is because many in the White House and elsewhere in the upper ranks of Trump’s government still think this standoff is a political winner for them. On top of that, there is an element of payback that can’t be denied.
The memory of the highly tumultuous summer of 2020, when Covid was raging and Trump was president the first time, continues to loom large in Trump and several of his top advisers’ minds. They wish they had cracked down harder on both peaceful demonstrators and rioters during the widespread George Floyd protests and, former and current Trump officials say, are determined never to make that supposed mistake again. The president and some of his most prominent lieutenants, including Miller, have viewed using the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military as a way to enable a more extreme crackdown on protests.
Miller, like Trump, has described the protesters in Los Angeles as “insurrectionists.”
The administration’s constant talk about “insurrection” on the streets of L.A., according to two Trump advisers, is at least in part intentional payback for Democrats often using the term when describing Trump’s 2020-2021 efforts to cling to power, which famously led to numerous criminal charges.
Much has changed in the past five years. For all the scandals, abuses, corruption, and authoritarian impulse that defined the first Trump administration, there were at least a handful of top officials surrounding the president who would, sometimes, push back on Trump’s most dictator-wannabe-sounding suggestions or demands. For instance, when Trump, according to then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, wanted to shoot protesters in June 2020, Esper to his credit did what he could to keep that from happening. Trump’s current Pentagon chief, Hegseth, has been unwilling to make that same promise.
In the course of our reporting, Rolling Stone recently communicated with nine administration officials and Trump advisers to ask if they thought anyone in a position of power would hesitate if Trump gave the order to open fire. None would commit to a simple “yes.”
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