Trump's brownshirts deploy in DC
It's happening here.
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If it wasn’t Big Balls almost getting carjacked, Donald Trump would have figured out a different excuse for deploying the National Guard in Washington DC. He was always going to come up with a pretext to send in the troops.
On Monday, Trump dropped two executive orders, two fact sheets, and two “articles” (who knew that the White House issues articles?) about his decision to federalize the DC police and deploy the National Guard. Then, he held a bonkers press conference where he gave Attorney General Pam Bondi control of the DC police “as of this moment,” at which point Bondi took the podium to declare that “crime in DC is ending and ending today.”
It’s important to be precise about what’s happening in DC and why. As Chris Geidner explains at Law Dork, calling this a “takeover” of DC itself or the DC police is inaccurate.
DC’s Home Rule Act has a provision that lets the president direct the mayor to provide District police force service for federal purposes if he deems it necessary and determines an emergency exists. He can do that for 48 hours without informing Congress. Once he informs Congress, he gets 30 days. Past that, Congress needs to enact a joint resolution to extend it.
In theory, the legislative branch should act as a check on a lawless president. But given that the GOP majorities in both the House and Senate have willfully abdicated their responsibility to do so, there’s no reason to think lawmakers won’t let Trump’s brownshirts occupy DC as long as he wants.
There are no real impediments to the president calling up the DC National Guard. Unlike state National Guards, which are under the control of state governors, DC’s Guard is commanded by the president. Further, the position of the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel is that the DC National Guard can be used for federal work without being federalized, unlike state National Guards. This means it can be used for law enforcement purposes without running afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, which otherwise prohibits the use of federal troops for civilian enforcement efforts.
So, the DC Home Rule Act, combined with the structure of its National Guard, gives the president a perfectly legal and relatively friction-free way to make local police do his bidding and to have the National Guard roam the streets.
At the moment, there’s a pretense that the DC National Guard will not be performing law enforcement duties. Instead, they have the authority to detain people temporarily until federal agents arrive. But as any first-year law student can tell you, if someone cloaked in the authority of the government has the power to detain you, they are engaged in law enforcement duties. It doesn’t matter that they eventually hand you off to someone else with the proper authority to detain you.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth must be so hyped for this. He can pretend he’s a five-star general in charge of a vast array of troops rather than a doofus civilian whose main achievement currently consists of posting misogynist and eugenicist garbage on his social media accounts — well, and sharing classified military plans in the group chat. He’s pretty good at that. But now, Hegseth gets to do Fox hits and bray about how the DC Guard “will be strong, they will be tough and they will stand with their law enforcement partners.”
Ultimately, the developments this week in the nation’s capital serve as proof of concept for everywhere else Trump would like to unleash the military — cities where white people are no longer the majority. During his press conference, Trump first threatened to deploy troops to New York City, Baltimore, and Oakland, then some 45 minutes later added Chicago and Los Angeles to the list.
These are just cities Trump hates because they have an insufficient amount of racist white people who vote for him, and he wants them punished. Los Angeles is on pace for its lowest homicide rate in 60 years, homicides in Oakland have plummeted, and Baltimore has done incredible work in decreasing homicides there. In the first quarter of 2025, New York City saw the fewest shootings in recorded history, while the first half of the year saw a historic dropoff in homicides in Chicago.
The only thing that is surprising about this is that Trump didn’t namecheck one of his usual faves: Minneapolis. Trump has been dying to send troops into that city since May 2020, during the uprising following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. He apparently fantasized about it so much that he convinced himself that he, not Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, called up the Minnesota National Guard back then.
Of course Trump believes that. Not just because he’s a raging narcissist who has to make himself the center of attention or because he’s gotten so addled that he can’t track what he did or didn’t do. In his mind, Walz has to be a weakling who didn’t act to control the unrest, someone who needs Trump to step in and restore law and order. And much like the other blue cities Trump is mad at, Minneapolis is not a hotbed of crime but instead is seeing significant drops in crime rates.
A template
So what does it look like if Trump pivots from DC to the rest of the country? It’s clear the administration has already thought this through, with a plan to create a military “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” comprised of 600 National Guard members who would be on call 24/7 so they could deploy within an hour and be sent to cities with protests or unrest.
Here, Trump is building on what happened in 2020, when 600 National Guard troops were placed on alert in Arizona and Alabama in the event of political violence during the election. Of course, Trump and his supporters did make sure there was deadly political violence in January 2021, but somehow that didn’t warrant the president calling out the National Guard in a timely fashion as the Capitol was overrun by insurrectionists.
The 2020 plan was a specific, targeted one, designed to address political violence during the election. The current plan reads more like a strike force that Trump gets to deploy in any city he feels like. It’s not far-fetched to speculate that’s the intent. When Trump issued his memo that purported to federalize the California National Guard, he didn’t limit it to Los Angeles. Instead, it said the president could federalize state National Guards “at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.”
Prior to that illegal federalization of the California National Guard and deployment of active-duty Marines in Los Angeles, it might have seemed farfetched to think Trump could just drop troops into major American cities. But Republicans in Congress didn’t bat an eye over it, and while a lower court blocked Trump’s efforts to violate the Posse Comitatus Act by deploying active-duty troops, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided it’s so important Trump get to absolutely shatter democracy ASAP that it stayed the lower court’s decision, meaning the troops stuck around.
Now, the case is back in the lower court, with a trial that started Monday. Thus far, it has featured things like the head of the military task force in Los Angeles, Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, explaining there was a “constitutional exception” where active-duty troops could violate the restrictions on performing domestic law enforcement duties. When the judge explained he was unaware of such an exception, the general explained that if prohibited acts were “in line” with Trump’s orders to protect federal property and personnel, then it was totally cool.
Sherman also told the judge that troops could accompany local law enforcement, even if there were no threats or protesters violating any laws, because a threat might arise. It’s ominous that military commanders in this administration don’t see a problem with active duty uniformed troops riding along with local cops for a little extra oomph anytime they feel like it.
It’s the Ninth Circuit’s behavior here that causes the most concern — well, other than Congress abdicating all responsibility thanks to Republican sycophancy. The appellate court stayed the lower court’s decision back on June 19, so the administration has been able to do whatever it wants with the troops in the meantime. No, literally, whatever it wants.
The administration couldn’t really keep up the fiction troops were necessary for very long and spent July drawing down most of the National Guard members and Marines, but not before they sent active-duty troops over 100 miles from Los Angeles to assist the Drug Enforcement Agency with raids on cannabis farms. Sure, perhaps after a trial concludes and all appeals are exhausted, there might be a court determination that Trump was never allowed to do this in the first place, but so what? He already did it.
And why wouldn’t he keep going? He’s got his list of cities. He’s teeing up his strike force. He’s seen the courts sit on their hands, owns the Republican majorities in Congress, and has military leaders who won’t balk at his abuses of power.
Who’s stopping him?
Much like the debate over whether Trump is a fascist or Israel’s actions in Gaza are a genocide, we’re about to start fighting over what it means to have active-duty troops deployed in cities based on the flimsiest of pretenses.
Is it martial law? Genuinely no, because the military isn’t given broad authority over the civilian populace. Is it a federal takeover? Not quite as much of a “no” as the martial law question, but to be scrupulously fair, there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism where the federal government could take over a civilian police force like it can in DC. But Trump’s directives undoubtedly violate the Posse Comitatus Act, extend the authority of the president far beyond anything contemplated by the Founders or the Constitution, and are designed to terrorize people in blue cities, particularly migrants and people of color.
Unfortunately, the fact that his actions are blatantly illegal isn’t nearly enough to stop Trump these days. He’s smashing checks and balances, rubbing it in our faces, and pushing the country rapidly toward dictatorship. If anyone thought last January that our democratic system could withstand Trump 2.0, that the courts and political opposition would be strong enough to hold him in check, they’re quickly learning how wrongheaded they were.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate this edition, please do your part to keep Public Notice free by signing up for a paid subscription.
Thanks for reading.
If Pam Bondi really can stop all crime in a big city (indefinitely it seems) immediately on her say so then she'll be in demand by a lot of cities....and pigs will fly and Satan will skate to work.
Points well taken, Lisa. Trump using the predicate of an emergency is not present in DC or LA or in using the Alien Enemies Act. Then in real emergencies like State flooding in NC, FEMA is held back by Trump. We need to put a stop to Trump’s BS. Let’s see what Putin advises.