Trump’s Threat to Unleash Troops in Cities Just Got Darker and Scarier
On Thursday, President Donald Trump won a temporary victory after a court of appeal ruled that he could continue to deploy the National Guard as part of his Watch-Me-Play-Fascist-TV response to anti-Glaces demonstrations in Los Angeles. The decision accepted Trump’s premise that the conditions allow it to take control of the custody, but it rejected its assertion that such decisions should be entirely invisible by the courts.
This last part of the decision is important. This is potentially something of an obstacle to its continuous effort to assume almost dictatorial powers for itself-for now, anyway.
Trump apparently only treated the first part. He published the following, in a reference to the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who continues to prevent Trump from taking control of his state custody (added highlight):
The judges obviously realized that Gavin Newscum is incompetent and badly prepared, but it is much bigger than Gavin, because All in the United States, if our cities and employees need protection, we are those who give them If the state and the local police cannot, for any reason, do the work.
In short, Trump seized this mixed decision to threaten the national guard anywhere in the United States and when he decrees it “necessary”. The frightening quotes are mine, because on many fronts, Trump tests how much he can obtain by inventing ways to claim that such actions are “necessary”, a power that he and his advisers consider to be without limits.
All this highlights a deeper enigma here: what the courts can – and the rest of us – faced with a president whose bad faith and the desire to concoct the pretexts to abuse his powers have essentially no substance?
The new decision is not encouraging. The relevant law says that Trump can only federalize the National Guard if we are under foreign invasion or the threat of rebellion, or if the president cannot execute federal laws otherwise. A lower court had concluded, among others, that Trump had not satisfied this requirement – because what is happening in Los Angeles is not close to these criteria.
But the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has now ruled. He found that Trump lawyers have presented sufficient evidence that demonstrations and violence in fact hinder the law. It’s a shame: as Elizabeth Goitein explains, the facts on the ground do not support this assertion at a distance, and the court reached this position in part by granting Trump, as president, too large a deference to simply declare the case.
