Veterans slam Trump's ‘political' deployment of Marines and National Guard to LA: ‘Citizens are not enemy combatants'
Donald Trump's deployment of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles is a thinly veiled 'authoritarian' and politically motivated attempt to inflame protests and crush dissent, veterans and legal experts warn.
Trump is relying on federal law that allows the president to call up the National Guard to respond to domestic unrest, an action known commonly as federalizing the normally state-authorized Guard. Even then, those troops have only a limited mission in supporting federal law enforcement agents and federal buildings at the center of protests against the administration's mass deportation agenda.
But now, with his National Guard deployment combined with sending some 700 Marines to L.A., veterans groups, military law experts and Democratic officials fear the president is testing the limits of his authority to send active-duty military into American streets — and violating service members' commitments to stay out of domestic politics.
'When I joined the Marine Corps, I swore an oath — not to a person, not to a party, but to the Constitution,' said Marine veteran Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation, a national nonpartisan advocacy group.
'What we're seeing now is a deliberate effort to turn the military into a political prop,' she told The Independent.
Trump is not deploying troops for national defense but 'domestic intimidation,' she added.
'That's not just just politicizing the military — it's crossing a dangerous line,' Goldbeck told The Independent.
Trump's military threats are 'how authoritarian regimes take power' and signal the president's wider ambitions for 'the weaponization of the military for political gain,' according to veterans advocacy group Common Defense.
'The militarized response to protests in Los Angeles is a dangerous escalation that undermines civil rights and betrays the principles we swore to uphold,' Army veteran and Common Defense political director Naveed Shah said.
'The idea that Marines would be deployed to suppress the very people we're meant to protect is a disgrace. It's un-American,' Marine Corps veteran and Common Defense organizer Jojo Sweatt added.
The last time a president federalized the National Guard against the will of a state governor was in 1965, when then-President Lyndon Johnson deployed troops to protect civil rights advocates marching from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery — two weeks after the violence of 'Bloody Sunday' on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Johnson did so after Alabama's segregationist Gov. George Wallace told the president that his state 'refuses to provide for the safety and welfare' of the marchers, according to Johnson's proclamation.
But 60 years later, Trump is deploying troops not to defend civil rights activists but to protect law enforcement and federal property. Activating troops against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom'is bad for all Americans concerned about freedom of speech and states' rights,' retired Major Gen. Randy Manner said in a statement to Fox News.
'There are over a million badged and trained members of law enforcement in this country for the governor to ask for help if he needs it,' he added. 'While this is presently a legal order, it tramples the governor's rights and obligations to protect his people. This is an inappropriate use of the National Guard and is not warranted.'
Trump's open-ended memo invoking military deployment does not single out Los Angeles or even California. It empowers the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 'to employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary.'
Carrie A. Lee, a former associate professor at the U.S. Army War College, called Trump's actions 'massive overreach' and 'crazy broad,' seemingly paving the way for the administration 'to use military force against protestors on American soil anywhere they want.'
Invoking 'protective power' authority without any geographical limits effectively creates an unprecedented and 'dangerous' nationwide order, according to Lee.
Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act, though the president and administration officials have repeatedly labeled protesters 'insurrectionists' and 'seditionists' — sparking fears that the president is laying the groundwork for mass deployment of military assets across the country.
Instead, Trump is currently relying on a far more limited statute that taps his 'protective power' authority, which does not allow the military to conduct law enforcement activities — unlike the Insurrection Act, which is excluded from federal statute that bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement.
'The public must be laser focused on seeing the extent to which Secretary Hegseth adheres to these historically recognized limitations,' according to University of Houston Law Center professor Chris Mirasola, a former attorney-advisor at the Department of Defense Office of General Counsel.
If troops are pulled into violent confrontations, Trump could use those incidents to justify invoking the Insurrection Act, opening the door for active-duty military to face off against Americans not just in the streets of Los Angeles but across the country.
'This is an unnecessary, unprecedented and predictable misuse of military power against American citizens,' according to Army veteran Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
'And Trump has now thrust our troops into the middle of the most explosive issue in America,' he added. 'And this is likely just the start. We could see a clash and crisis between Trump and governors and mayors across America like we've never seen.'
A lawsuit from watchdog group American Oversight called the deployment 'an opening salvo in a coordinated national strategy and not simply an isolated incident.'
The lawsuit is seeking records from the Trump administration regarding the use of military assets in immigration enforcement and 'potential authorities his administration would invoke to authorize federalizing law enforcement.'
'Deploying the military to quash protests over the administration's inhumane and legally dubious immigration policies — especially over the objection of elected state leaders — is a dangerous, though unfortunately predictable, escalation by the Trump administration,' according to American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu.
'If left unchecked, this abuse of power under thin legal pretense can be readily replicated across other states in the future,' he said in a statement.
'Americans have a right to know who authorized it, what rationale was offered, and not just whether the government crossed a line — but by how much that line has been obliterated.'
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