-Analysis-
PARIS — It’s hard not to see this as authoritarian drift.
The U.S. National Guard has been deployed to scenes of civil unrest in the past, but this marks the first time in 60 years that the President of the United States has decided to deploy it against the wishes of the Governor of the state in question — in this case California.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
More seriously still, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has declared that Marines, and therefore the Army, are on alert, and ready to be sent in if needed.
It all began Friday with protests, then riots, against the heavy-handed intervention of ICE, the immigration police, against illegal immigrants in certain neighborhoods of Los Angeles. These raids have become frequent since Donald Trump made them the centerpiece of his election platform and return to the White House.
While Trump is failing on other aspects of his policies — the economy, trade wars, diplomacy or his dramatic public rift with Elon Musk — the arrests and deportations of migrants have become the only way to show his disoriented voters that he is keeping his campaign promises.
This backdrop explains his overreaction on Saturday, when he sent 2,000 National Guard troops to California, political “enemy territory,” a Democratic stronghold and a sanctuary state when it comes to immigration.
Abuse of authority
The first consequence of this decision is that it puts the president in direct opposition to Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, and one of the leading politicians in the Democratic camp. Newsom described the decision to send the National Guard as “purposefully inflammatory” and likely to exacerbate tensions: something that hadn’t happened since the unrest of the Vietnam War era.
Trump cited a law that only applies in cases of threat of invasion, rebellion or the risk of rebellion against the authority of the United States government. In any case, it’s clear that we’re far from that. This is therefore an abuse of authority, especially when it comes to the threat of using the Marines against the American population.
Trump sees this as a political opportunity, but in the process, he is fueling the worst fears of Americans who dread this administration’s drift away from respecting the rule of law.
Chaos and contagion
For the past four-plus months in the White House, Trump has been testing the limits of his own power. He has issued numerous executive orders and decrees, marginalizing the legislative branch and abusing the judiciary.
Trump is playing a high-stakes game.
Today, the U.S. president is escalating the situation further with this controversial deployment of troops. But the main risk is that he will accentuate the chaotic nature of his administration, which many Americans are already suffering from with his erratic trade war that is set to revive inflation; or with the disastrous saga of his relationship with Elon Musk, once praised in the Oval Office and now vilified.
Trump is playing a high-stakes game with the deployment of the National Guard, which could fuel to the fire, setting neighborhoods of Los Angeles ablaze and provoking contagion to other places around the country. If this is the case, far from having diverted attention from other problems, he will have created yet one more, with the risk of an authoritarian spiral. This is a moment for the United States that could not be more serious.
