Trump Calls Up the Marines. Democracy Is in Danger.

Early this afternoon, the Pentagon activated 700 Marines out of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, to join the federalized National Guard’s military occupation of parts of Los Angeles. As of mid-afternoon, the written orders hadn’t been made public, but staff at US Senator Alex Padilla’s office and in the offices of some of the state’s congressional delegation, had been told by contacts on the House and Senate Armed Forces Committees that the deployment was confirmed.

Sources in conversation with the governor’s office told me that local Marine commanders were “pushing back” and letting the Pentagon know that they didn’t think the deployment into Los Angeles was justified. As of 3 pm, there was no indication that they were on the streets of the country’s second-largest city. But President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem determined to rope the military into enforcing their ugly political agenda.

The Marines will, if they become involved in active law enforcement actions, be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act—the 1878 law that generally prevents the US military from participating in domestic law enforcement. Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would usurp that, and the president would have a steep mountain to climb to prove that the LA protests constituted a genuine insurrection. The Marines are clearly being deployed against a nonexistent emergency and a nonexistent insurrection and a nonexistent invasion as a political stunt to bolster Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.

The last time Marines were deployed on the streets of LA was in 1992, in response to the Rodney King riots in which many square miles of the city were set ablaze and dozens of people were killed. By contrast, today the Marines are being activated against the wishes of the mayor of Los Angeles and the governor of California, in a situation in which local law enforcement had a clear handle on the situation, and on a day in which California announced that it was suing the federal government to end the federalization of its National Guard.

Having used the provocation of a National Guard deployment to turn largely peaceful protests against ICE workplace raids into a chaotic uprising, Trump and Hegseth have now upped the ante once more. They have started the process of introducing the US military into a crowd-control situation in a dense urban environment. As Trump seems to know and relish, that raises the likelihood of significant bloodshed.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the president of the United States, for political point-scoring, is willing to goad residents into a violent confrontation, creating the sort of chaos that would justify a massacre.

Using the US military to deal with domestic opponents is something that used to happen on a regular basis on US soil, with, for example, the Army being used to kill union organizers and Native Americans resisting the conquest of their land, but it’s not something that has occurred in recent decades. Indeed, there’s been a consensus for generations that the US military, unlike that of totalitarian regimes such as Russia and China, should not be used as a domestic murder squad and that countries that do use the military to quell domestic dissent are doing so in clear violation of international norms.

Further raising the stakes, Trump replied on Monday afternoon to a question by Peter Doocy, a Fox News correspondent, about whether border czar Tom Homan ought to arrest California Governor Gavin Newsom by saying that he should and that it would be a “great” move on Homan’s part. “I like Gavin Newsom. He’s a nice guy, but he’s grossly incompetent. Everybody knows,” the gangster-president, convicted on 34 felonies and charged with dozens more, said.

Sources in communication with Newsom’s staff told me that Newsom was taking the threat seriously and had been discussing with top aides about how to respond should he be arrested.

I’ll say it again: The march toward totalitarianism is happening here, and it is happening now. Trump is stealing from the playbook of every modern leader who has ever attempted an authoritarian putsch. He is creating fake emergencies and then implementing real military interventions. Los Angeles is the victim today; you can bet that it will not be the only one over the weeks, months, and years to come.