Troops in the Streets, Questions in Congress: Mass. reckons with role of military in civil society
It didn't take long to find out.
Moulton, D-6th District, cut right to the chase during the five or so minutes he had with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the former Fox News anchor defended his agency's budget request before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.
The Salem lawmaker pressed Hegseth repeatedly on whether he'd accept any personal responsibility for his role in the headline-grabbing national security meltdown known as 'SignalGate,' as well as his purge of senior Defense Department officials.
'You said accountability is back [at the Pentagon], Mr. Secretary,' the Salem Democrat jabbed at one point.
" And you know what? The Houthis were held accountable for shooting at our forces," Hegseth responded.
Moulton, an ex-Marine, jumped back in: 'I'm just asking if it applies to you.'
'I serve at the pleasure of the president,' Hegseth responded.
It was a vivid reminder that the place and primacy of the American military — not to mention its role in a civil society — has been at the center of the public conversation recently in a way that it has not been for a while.
That conversation largely has been dominated by the headlines emanating from Los Angeles over immigration protests and the U.S. Marines and National Guard soldiers who have been deployed there as a result.
And that's not to leave out Trump's military parade on the streets of Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
And Americans have thoughts.
A text survey of 1,000 Americans, including more than 200 Californians, by the Washington Post and the Schar School at George Mason University, found deep divisions over Trump's management of the protests.
The survey found that Californians were more critical of Trump's actions, as were Democrats and self-identified independents, the newspaper reported. Americans were mostly negative on Trump's handling of immigration.
Read More: Poll reveals how Americans feel about Trump sending troops into LA over ICE protests
A plurality of respondents to a similar YouGov poll said they didn't approve of the White House's decision to deploy the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, Axios reported.
Nearly 8 in 10 respondents to a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll said they don't have an opinion one way or the other on Trump's military parade on Saturday.
But even within that cohort, 6 in 10 respondents said they don't think it's a good use of public money.
And if you think that the White House's power play only applies to California, think again. The order Trump signed authorizing the National Guard deployment also opens the door to similar actions in other states.
That's according to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea J. Campbell, who joined with nearly two dozen colleagues nationwide in support of a lawsuit by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, challenging the White House's action.
'The unlawful deployment of armed forces under the guise of public safety to suppress protests, invoke fear, and silence dissent against the president's cruel policies is dangerous, and every resident should be concerned,' Campbell said in a statement.
On Thursday night, a U.S. District court judge in San Francisco ruled that Trump had to return command over those National Guard soldiers to Newsom, The Associated Press reported.
Hours later, a federal appeals court reversed the order and restored Trump's authority over the Guard.
Elsewhere on Capitol Hill on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, the acting ranking Democrat on the powerful House Oversight Committee, blasted the White House's decision to deploy Marines to one of the nation's largest cities.
'Our Marines are often the first responders in a war zone. But American neighborhoods are not war zones,' Lynch, D-8th District, said as the committee held a hearing on the White House's immigration policies.
'Protesters are not enemy combatants — they are Americans who have the constitutional right to peacefully assemble and speak up," the South Boston lawmaker continued.
U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-4th District, also a former Marine, told CNN that he never expected to see active-duty Marines deployed to Los Angeles or any other American city.
That's because 'in this scenario, as in almost every scenario imaginable, it is unnecessary, it's illegal and it's deeply unfair to these Marines,' the Newton lawmaker said, according to Mediaite.
At times like this, we're often inclined to look for historical parallels. Many people look to ancient Rome — although direct comparisons aren't always easy, convenient, or even immediately apparent.
Still, the Romans did have a prohibition against allowing legions within the city walls.
Returning generals were required to dissolve their armies and enter the city as civilians. It was the ultimate expression of the civil government's authority over the military.
When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in January 49 B.C., and eventually entered Rome itself, in defiance of that edict, it marked the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic.
Again, there are no easy parallels. But the United States has had a similar tradition of a rigidly apolitical military that swears to defend and uphold the Constitution, and not an elected leader, for all of its history.
And once the legions are within the city walls, it can be awfully hard to get them to leave.
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Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Zelenskyy brings Europe's top leaders with him to meet Trump on ending Russia's war
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Boston Globe
7 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Zelenskyy brings backup to the White House as Trump aligns more closely with Putin
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Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral who served as NATO's supreme allied commander from 2009-13, when the United States still viewed Russia as a NATO partner, if a difficult one. This is exactly the kind of split that European leaders were trying to avoid after Trump's return to power in January. NATO's new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, a former prime minister of the Netherlands, visited Washington frequently for quiet meetings with Trump. He was determined to avoid the kind of public breach that took place in the first term, when Trump came to the edge of withdrawing the United States from what he called an 'obsolete' alliance. Rutte helped engineer the announcement in June, at a NATO summit, that nearly all members of the alliance had committed to spend 5% of their gross domestic product on defense. (Of that, 1.5% is infrastructure spending only tangentially related to military spending.) That gave Trump an early win -- and demonstrated that, even if a decade late, Europe was getting serious about taking responsibility for its own defense. Trump took credit, and left the summit praising NATO's reforms. Then European leaders designed the program to buy U.S. weapons for Ukraine, recognizing its appeal to the president. The United States could remain Ukraine's arms supplier, but at no cost to American taxpayers. Advertisement The strategy seemed to be paying off a few weeks ago, when Trump castigated Putin for holding friendly conversations while continuing to kill civilians. He set deadlines and threatened to impose secondary sanctions on countries that were buying oil from Russia. For the first time since Trump's inauguration, Washington's approach, including the threat of new sanctions on Russian oil and gas if there was no ceasefire, and Europe's continued military and economic pressure seemed roughly aligned. 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In London on Sunday, after a virtual meeting of European countries that call themselves a 'coalition of the willing' -- a phrase used in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- British Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued a statement that commended Trump for his 'commitment to providing security guarantees for Ukraine.' That phrasing seemed intended to lock him into the effort. The statement reiterated that the United Kingdom and other European nations were ready to 'deploy a reassurance force once hostilities have ceased, and to help secure Ukraine's skies and seas and regenerate Ukraine's armed forces.' The United States has never been that specific. This article originally appeared in .
New York Times
8 minutes ago
- New York Times
Zelensky Calls for ‘Lasting' Peace, and Warns of Russia's Intentions
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Sunday called for a 'lasting' peace to end the war there, and warned that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had previously seized Ukrainian land as 'a springboard for a new attack.' Mr. Zelensky made the comments on social media after he arrived in Washington ahead of planned high-stakes meetings at the White House on Monday with President Trump and several European leaders. Mr. Trump met Mr. Putin in Alaska on Friday for talks on Ukraine that ended without the cease-fire Mr. Trump had been insisting was necessary to secure a peace deal. Instead, he backed Mr. Putin's plan for a sweeping peace agreement based on Ukraine ceding territory it controls to Russia. Russia already occupies almost a fifth of Ukraine, including the entire Crimean Peninsula and large portions of an eastern region known as the Donbas. Mr. Trump told European leaders after his Alaska meeting that a peace deal could be struck quickly if Mr. Zelensky agreed to give up the rest of the Donbas. In his comments on Sunday, Mr. Zelensky appeared to subtly push back against that idea — not directly, but by describing Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine as a cautionary tale. 'We all share a strong desire to end this war quickly and reliably,' he wrote. 'And peace must be lasting. Not like it was years ago, when Ukraine was forced to give up Crimea and part of our East — part of Donbas — and Putin simply used it as a springboard for a new attack.' Mr. Zelensky said the 'so called' security guarantees that Ukraine received from Russia, the United States and Britain under a 1994 accord — in exchange for giving old Soviet nuclear weapons back to Russia — also had not worked. 'Of course, Crimea should not have been given up then, just as Ukrainians did not give up Kyiv, Odesa, or Kharkiv after 2022,' he wrote, referring to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that year. Mr. Zelensky will meet Mr. Trump at the White House early Monday afternoon. Later in the day, they will be joined by the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Italy, as well as the secretary general of NATO and the president of the European Union's executive arm. Mr. Trump's recent reversal on a critical negotiating point for Ukraine and Europe — obtaining a cease-fire before negotiating land or security guarantees — has left many European officials wondering whether Mr. Trump was swayed by Mr. Putin in Alaska.
