In the last seven months, conventional thinking about American politics has been tested and it has proven inadequate to describe what is going on. All the cliches about three co-equal branches of government and checks and balances have not come close to describing and naming the Trump power drive. He has hollowed out federal agencies and largely gotten the okay from the U.S. Supreme Court while turning law enforcement into his private army.
Most alarming has been his calling out the National Guard first in Los Angeles and now in Washington D.C. Trump said Washington D.C. has been overtaken by “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.” Stephen Miller, his aide, said “D.C. was more violent than Baghdad.”
These allegations are entirely false, even ridiculous. According to the Justice Department’s own data from the Metropolitan Police Department, Washington D.C. recorded its lowest crime rates in over 30 years with a 20% decrease in total violent crimes compared to the previous year.
In both Los Angeles and Washington D.C., we have seen military troops meandering around with no mission. In his first term, we saw him do something similar in Portland, Oregon. Trump’s calling the troops out is a stunt, an attention-grabber and an obvious effort to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal but he is threatening to repeat this in other cities like New York, Boston and Chicago.
The point is partly about intimidation but it is also about laying the groundwork for more and worse. Trump is testing the American public to see if we will accept authoritarian rule. How the public reacts may well influence his next moves. He is using a manufactured crisis to justify a crackdown, the erosion of civil liberties and increased power for the Executive branch.
Trump is following a well-established authoritarian playbook of power consolidation. Becoming a dictator requires neutralization and submission of competing power centers. Trump had tried unsuccessfully to overturn an election and violently halt the counting of electoral votes. Now he is seeking to chip away at all institutional, legal and political constraints on his power. Too many universities, law firms, media companies and legislators have voluntarily capitulated with minimal fight back. As was clear at his inauguration, the billionaires are on board.
Neither the creation of a network of concentration camps nor the fact that thousands of immigrants are being wrongfully detained in horrible conditions without due process have roused enough Americans. It is summer and people prefer distraction and vacation before fall reality hits.
What has to be a major concern is Trump using the bogus excuse of an invasion, a rebellion or a crime wave to institute martial law. He has raised the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. That law could allow the use of active-duty military personnel to perform law enforcement duties inside the U.S. Of course, there is no rebellion or invasion so the justification is entirely lacking.
Still, we are talking about someone who spins webs of disinformation. Whatever he says, most of his followers will believe him.
The law is not on Trump’s side. The Posse Comitatus Act criminalizes the use of federal armed forces to conduct civilian law enforcement. The military mission of officers and soldiers is to defend the country against foreign enemies, not be a cop on the beat. There is a trial in California going on now where the state of California is raising the Posse Comitatus Act as grounds for why Trump’s actions are illegal.
California is also correctly arguing that Trump is violating the Tenth Amendment which reserves to the states all powers not expressly given to the federal government. Policing is typically a use of state and local power. Trump has shown no regard for state sovereignty.
This case will land at the U.S. Supreme Court like so many other Trump initiatives and it is impossible to have confidence in the majority of that entity. If Trump does declare a national emergency and martial law, I would expect him to suspend the Constitution.
At that point, all bets are off. Authoritarian leaders do not typically want to give up power. In so many countries like Russia and Turkey, they have proven difficult to dislodge. They often ignore legal limits on terms of office and find a way around that. Trump has joked about staying on. Just the profitability and his monetizing the presidency are factors that might lead him to want to stay on. He has plenty of other reasons too, like possible prosecution for his own corruption. If he has suspended the Constitution, the 22nd Amendment which forbids more than two terms would carry no weight.
Among things Trump does care about, retribution would appear and questions abound about how aggressively he would pursue vengeance. Would he jail Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or others like Jack Smith? Would he go after a much wider swath of opponents like fascists in other regimes have done? It is hard to know what goes on in that mind. We know he cares about winning the Nobel Peace Prize and getting his head on Mount Rushmore but what else is not clear.
In his first term, he famously wanted the military to shoot protesters in the leg after the George Floyd protests but he was stopped by sensible advisors like Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. With advisors like Pete Hegseth, Trump in 2025 might take a far more aggressive approach.
I fear that Trump is looking for his Reichstag fire moment where a protest or event he can dress up will give him a green light to demolish the democracy that remains. With such an excuse, he would cancel mid-term elections and possibly any future elections. He would say there is a national emergency of some kind no matter how incongruous that was.
The MAGA movement has multiple components including far right extremists, evangelical Christians and tech billionaires. All would stand behind an authoritarian takeover that marginalizes people of color, subjugates women and forces gay people back in the closet.
Sugarcoating and pretending there is no authoritarian threat could not be more dangerous. There has never been a greater need for American patriots who will stand up to fascism and fight back.
Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.