This article was originally published by Vanity Fair.
National Guard troops descended upon Los Angeles on Sunday morning after President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum to "address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester," the White House said in a statement.
The president employed a rare federal power to send troops to quell protests against his administration’s immigration raids in the city without the permission of California governor Gavin Newsom, who is against the move.
The Democratic governor called the decision “purposefully inflammatory.” He took to X to add that Trump was deploying the National Guard "not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle.”
According to House Representative Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), whose district includes one of the areas where protests have taken place, state leaders have been told by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to “get ready for 30 days of enforcement.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told local news KTLA that she is “very disappointed” in Trump’s decision.
“I’ve spoken to the governor several times,” she said, adding that she has not yet talked to the president. “But I have talked to officials high up in his administration, and I expressed to them that things were not out of control in the City of Los Angeles.”
“To me,” Bass said, “this is just political.”
Sunday's escalation follows two days of protests across Los Angeles, which started after law enforcement officials in full riot gear came into the city and rounded up day laborers at a building supply shop. The Los Angeles Police Department said Saturday’s demonstrations were peaceful and that “the day concluded without incident.” Later in the evening, in Compton and Paramount, two cities south of Los Angeles, street battles broke out between protesters and police who used tear gas and flashbangs to disperse the crowds, as reported by Al Jazeera.
Governors nearly always control the deployment of National Guard troops in their states, but, because Trump used a specific provision within Title 10 of the US Code on Armed Services, he was able to bypass local government officials to send in the troops. The provision allows a president to deploy the National Guard if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” It also notes that the president can call “members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws.”
Trump’s directive also authorized Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.” In an X post on Saturday evening, Hegseth wrote that active duty Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton could “also be mobilized” and were “on high alert.”
“The Secretary of Defense is now threatening to deploy active-duty Marines on American soil against its own citizens,” Newsom wrote, also on X. “This is deranged behavior.”
Before the troops even arrived in Los Angeles, Trump was already thanking them. “Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest,” he wrote on Truth Social, adding, “These Radical Left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will NOT BE TOLERATED. Also, from now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why???”
“For those keeping track,” Newsom wrote over a screenshot of Trump’s post, “Donald Trump's National Guard had not been deployed on the ground when he posted this.”
During his first term in 2020, Trump suggested, but didn’t follow through on, deploying the US military to suppress nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin.
According to reporting from The New York Times, this is the first time in approximately 60 years that a president has activated a state’s National Guard force without a request from that state’s governor. President Lyndon B. Johnson was the last leader to do so, sending troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators in 1965.
The last time the National Guard was federalized was also in Los Angeles in 1992, per the Times, when President George H.W. Bush sent troops to crush protests and unrest after police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.
While on the campaign trail, Trump said he would do precisely what he did this weekend. At a 2023 rally in Iowa, he said he planned to unilaterally send troops into Democratic-run cities. The then-candidate Trump called cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco crime dens, saying, “We cannot let it happen any longer.”
“And one of the other things I’ll do—because you’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in—the next time, I’m not waiting.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, called Trump’s decision to deploy troops to the state “chilling.”
“For the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling,” Chemerinsky told the Times. “It is using the military domestically to stop dissent.”
