POWER GRAB

Critics Rip ‘Wannabe Dictator’ Trump for LA Troop Deployment

The move marks the first time since the 1960s that a president has federalized a state’s National Guard without a governor’s request.

Critics of the administration have lined up to bash President Donald Trump as an “authoritarian” after he sent the National Guard to quash protests in Los Angeles against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We have a president who is moving this country rapidly toward authoritarianism,” Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said on CNN Sunday morning. “This guy wants all of the power. He does not believe in the constitution, he does not believe in the rule of law.”

ESCALATING THE DE-ESCALATING

Trump Deploys National Guard to LA Amid ICE Protests

Catherine Bouris

Trump announced Saturday that he was federalizing the California National Guard and deploying 2,000 troops to Los Angeles, where protests against ICE raids erupted this week—a move California Governor Gavin Newsom blasted as “purposefully inflammatory” and warned would “only escalate tensions.”

The last time a president overrode a governor to seize control of a state’s National Guard was in 1965, when former President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights marchers, according to The New York Times.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) branded Trump as a “wannabe dictator” in a statement, while California Senator Adam Schiff of Los Angeles blasted Trump’s deployment of National Guard members as a politically motivated stunt with far-reaching consequences.

“If the Guard is needed to restore peace, the Governor will ask for it. But continuing down this path will erode trust in the National Guard and set a dangerous precedent for unilateral misuse of the Guard across the country,” Schiff said.

Former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, who served in the first Trump administration, said Trump’s latest move is “the most significant act you’ve seen yet in the Trump administration” and puts him one step closer to what Taylor claims he’s always wanted to do: “taking control of national law enforcement.”

Speaking on MSNBC’s The Weekend, Taylor said that during Trump’s first term, “his own lieutenants were worried he would create a de facto police state if he was going to be deploying the military on U.S. soil.”

“That was our fear, and we are seeing potentially the early innings of that play out in real-time,” he added.

The National Guard was last federalized in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush deployed troops to respond to the L.A. riots—at the request of then-Governor Pete Wilson and then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

This time, neither Newsom nor Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass requested federal intervention, and officials from the LAPD and sheriff’s department said the demonstrations, despite some flare-ups of violence, were under control, according to The Washington Post.

“Sending federalized guard troops to Southern California, without regard for the authority or approval of local or state officials, is a tactic we associate with authoritarian regimes, not the United States,” said Roman Palomares, president and board chairman of League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a civil rights group.

“For the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and a leading scholar on constitutional law, told the Los Angeles Times.

“It is using the military domestically to stop dissent. It certainly sends a message as to how this administration is going to respond to protests. It is very frightening to see this done,” he said.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt justified the deployment by claiming that “violent mobs have attacked ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles.”

“These operations are essential to halting and reversing the invasion of illegal criminals into the United States. In the wake of this violence, California’s feckless Democrat leaders have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens,” she told the Daily Beast in a statement.

“The Trump Administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs. These criminals will be arrested and swiftly brought to justice. The Commander-in-Chief will ensure the laws of the United States are executed fully and completely.”

Echoing a similar narrative, Trump has attacked Newsom on Truth Social: “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”

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Erkki ForsterNight News Reporter

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