Key points:
- Morale among California National Guard troops is collapsing after deployment in Los Angeles.
- Over 75% of Guard members who upended their enlistments report they won’t reenlist due to Trump’s deployment.
- Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard without Governor Newsom’s consent is unprecedented.
A month into President Trump’s unprecedented deployment of National Guard troops and active-duty Marines in Los Angeles, morale among the ranks is reportedly collapsing.
Soldiers are questioning their orders, communities are terrified, and Americans everywhere should be alarmed.
Unfortunately, what’s happening in California is not a temporary response to unrest—it’s a test of how far a president can go in bending the military to his political will and whether the courts and the nation itself will allow it to continue.
The California National Guard was once hailed for its bravery during wildfire season. However today, those same troops are jeered as they patrol neighborhoods, accompany federal agents on immigration raids, and guard federal buildings with no clear mission or legal justification.
According to The New York Times, over 75 percent of Guard members whose enlistments were up during the deployment have indicated they won’t reenlist. At least one soldier offered to be arrested rather than take part in a raid targeting immigrant farmworkers.
“They gave Disneyland tickets to the people who worked in the wildfires,” one Guard member told the Times. “Nobody’s handing out Disneyland tickets now.”
This isn’t just about low morale of those on the front lines, but it’s about a catastrophic misuse of federal power.
“Nearly everything he has done in his second term with respect to the military appears to have been done to ensure that no order he gives will ever be questioned again, no matter how cruel, abusive, or unconstitutional.” – Radley Balko
The deployment—ordered unilaterally by Trump over the objections of Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles city officials—is not rooted in necessity. It’s rooted in fear, manufactured crisis, and authoritarian spectacle.
The problem remains: there was never an emergency in Los Angeles. There was no credible threat that justifies federalizing 4,100 California National Guard troops and dispatching 700 Marines into American streets.
Yet Trump has done it. Why? To show that he can.
Civil libertarian Radley Balko—one of the most consistent voices warning about the dangers of police militarization—writes bluntly: “Trump is creating his own personal paramilitary force — an amalgamation of border cops, ICE agents, Homeland Security, sheriff’s deputies, Guardsmen, and military (and probably soon, militia and extremist groups).”
These forces are not deployed to protect the public. They are deployed to protect the president, punish his enemies, and intimidate those who dissent.
“They celebrate brutality, racism, and cruelty,” Balko warns, “and they seem to believe that they’re on a mission from God.”
This move fundamentally represents democratic decay.
For over two centuries, a core principle of American constitutionalism has been the firewall between military power and civilian law enforcement. It’s why the Posse Comitatus Act exists. It’s why, traditionally, National Guard deployments occur at the request of state governors, not over their objections.
Even during the L.A. riots in 1992, federal troops were deployed only after being invited in by California’s governor. What Trump is doing now—federalizing the Guard and deploying troops into a state that voted overwhelmingly against him—is without precedent.
Balko calls it what it is: “Trump has never understood the tradition or the important reasons it exists. Nearly everything he has done in his second term with respect to the military appears to have been done to ensure that no order he gives will ever be questioned again, no matter how cruel, abusive, or unconstitutional.”
That includes purging the military of top brass who refused to use force on peaceful protesters in his first term, firing legal officers who might enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and elevating leaders who pledge loyalty not to the Constitution but to Trump personally.
The consequences are already visible.
In Los Angeles, Trump’s troops have backed immigration raids that have resulted in racial profiling, terrorized Latino communities, and even the death of a fleeing farmworker. Protests have followed, and in response, the administration has doubled down—tightening security, increasing surveillance, and fortifying federal buildings like war zones.
A city once burned by wildfire is now militarized by executive fiat—and the soldiers know it’s wrong.
Many are Latino themselves. Many live in the communities they’ve been ordered to occupy. Their discomfort—voiced anonymously for fear of retribution—is a testament to the moral clarity Trump is trying to extinguish.
“The moral injuries of this operation,” one Guard official said, “I think, will be enduring. This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.”
But enduring moral injury is not the goal of this deployment—it is the cost of achieving a different one: normalization.
Trump wants this to feel routine.
He wants military deployments in liberal cities to feel like just another news story. He wants Americans to stop asking why masked federal agents are dragging people into unmarked vans. He wants to dissolve the line between immigration enforcement and political persecution. And if we fail to speak out, that’s exactly what will happen.
As Balko writes, “There was a time when it was just accepted that secret police forces were a bad thing, a thing we associated with totalitarian governments. There was a broad, overwhelming consensus that masked, unaccountable agents snatching people off the street and hustling them off to secret detention centers, abusive prison camps, foreign gulags, and concentration camps surrounded by alligators was not the sort of thing we associated with a free society.”
That time must not be past. We must remember that “your papers, please” is not normal. We must remember that military parades, loyalty tests, and the persecution of political critics are not patriotic—they are fascist. We must remember that soldiers swearing oaths to a man instead of the Constitution is the beginning of something very dark.
And we must ask the same question Trump’s own troops are asking now: Why?
Why are we here? Why are we turning the military against our own cities? Why are immigrant communities living in fear of soldiers instead of feeling protected by them?
The risk here is unbelievable and it would have been unfathomable just a few years ago. Now we risk losing the republic itself.
The National Guard was not created to be a president’s private army. The U.S. military does not exist to enforce the whims of a single man. And the people of Los Angeles are not enemy combatants.
“There was a time when it was just accepted that secret police forces were a bad thing… that masked, unaccountable agents snatching people off the street… was not the sort of thing we associated with a free society,” Balko said.
He added, “There was a time when we understood that political leaders who express a desire to build secret police forces that answer only to them are dangerous demagogues who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.”
Presidents have historically utilized the National Guard without seeking the approval of state governors under certain circumstances. This practice is primarily rooted in federal law, particularly the Insurrection Act and the National Defense Act, which allow the President to deploy National Guard forces for federal purposes without state consent.
Key Points:
Insurrection Act: This act enables the President to use federal troops, including the National Guard, to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion. It has been invoked during times of significant unrest.
Federal Activation: When the National Guard is federalized, it operates under the command of the President, which can bypass the governor’s authority.
Historical Instances: Notable examples include President Eisenhower’s deployment of the National Guard to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, and President George H.W. Bush’s use of the National Guard during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
From article: “However today, those same troops are jeered as they patrol neighborhoods, accompany federal agents on immigration raids, and guard federal buildings with no clear mission or legal justification.”
Sounds like a “mission” to me.
But if soldiers (since that’s what the National Guard is) start questioning orders, we’d no longer have a military. (That’s like Rule #1 in the military, and is one of the primary reasons that most people don’t enlist.) Maybe the U.S. would have stayed out of Vietnam and Iraq, as well.
In this case, Trump won an election by promising to do exactly what he is doing in regard to illegal immigrants. It’s certainly possible that some Americans might change their minds, when they see how that works.
It will be interesting to see what happens going forward, since Trump now has more funding for this as a result of the “Big Beautiful Bill”.
I have no problem with the troops being deployed to protect federal buildings. I am uncomfortable with their role enforcing immigration raids. I’m fine with enforcing the border and deporting criminals. I’m very uncomfortable with deporting people for the ‘crime’ of being here when a previous administration openly allowed them to by not enforcing the law rather than changing the law. Democrats had plenty of time in power to do the right thing and pass laws to make immigration policy sane and offer immunity, but they did not. Because both parties benefit from illegal immigration, and benefit from having the issue to demonize the other party. F*** the whole lot of y’all.
Oh, and on the issue of masked cops, no way no way no way. No masks for cops, no masks for protestors. What do you all think this is, the internet where everyone can be anonymous? Masks are insidious, and the left being so anonymous and the cops not enforcing mask laws and cities and universities not cracking down with legislation, policy and enforcement has just led to this same horror now on the right with cops. The left insisted because ‘they could be identified’ and now law enforcement insists because ‘they could be identified’. This is all insane. If you are going to be in the game, you need to be identified, as a protestor or as law enforcement.
I see this insane future with fully masked protestors and fully masked cops going at it in Central Park and The Quad, trying to tear each other’s face coverings off.
And I think to myself: what a wonderful world.