Trump’s Military Escalation in Los Angeles

Trump is deploying the Marines—risking further confrontation in L.A. with protesters and pushing the limits on Presidential power.

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Caroline Mimbs Nyce
Newsletter editor

Parts of downtown Los Angeles are currently under lockdown. Police cars are everywhere and some blocks are cordoned off, my colleague E. Tammy Kim reports from on the ground. Helicopters are patrolling overhead, but it is otherwise mostly quiet. The city is, for now, by no means out of control.

This weekend, in response to protests against federal immigration raids, President Donald Trump ordered two thousand National Guard troops to L.A., over the objections of the California Governor, Gavin Newsom, marking the first time in decades that the National Guard has been deployed without a governor’s request. On Sunday, demonstrators threw rocks and police fired rubber bullets. Kim told me it was one of the most “aggressive” protests she’d recently covered. Still, the flareups were mostly contained to a few hot spots; elsewhere, business continued as usual, as people brunched and celebrated Pride.

And, yet, today the Trump Administration is continuing to push the narrative that California has fallen into chaos. Hundreds of marines are reportedly being prepared to deploy to the area, to quell protests that—at least at the moment—do not seem to be in particular need of quelling. The city, meanwhile, is on edge, waiting to see what happens next. I spoke with Ruth Marcus, who writes about politics and the law, about what Trump risks by sending in troops.

How bad is it? “The President has been itching to do this—find a way to use the military to help quell domestic disturbances—since his first term,” Marcus told me over the phone. She pointed out that, on the campaign trail, Trump said he would not wait for state leaders to request assistance before deploying forces to control protests. “The thing that should worry us is, Why is he going to these extraordinary and seemingly extreme lengths to portray Los Angeles as out of control? As he said, he’s not waiting to be asked in. He wants to show himself to be in control, and he’s really just pushing the envelope, as always, of Presidential power. We might not be at the three-alarm fire of invoking the Insurrection Act, but we clearly have a President who wants ‘my generals, my military’ working to impose law and order in ways that are, if not unprecedented, highly unusual and very unnerving.”