Trump calls out the Guard; will WE answer the call?

Lawyer Jay Kuo draws what I think is the right lesson from President Bone Spurs' latest outrage: sending the National Guard to DC to combat a non-existent crime wave.

... deploying the military to conduct basic police matters could backfire badly. It fundamentally misunderstands how military officers and soldiers see their mission and purpose, which is to defend the national security of the country against foreign enemies, not to be local cops. The move will likely not put Trump and Secretary Hegseth in better standing with the troops or broader military leadership.

The move mirrors what the Justice Department has done with the FBI and what DHS has done even within ICE itself. Those agencies have reassigned officers primarily to civilian immigration enforcement, moving them from crime interdiction and causing a huge drop in morale and confusion over their mission. The misuse of federal troops as a stand-in for civilian law enforcement will also likely cause grumblings and pushback within the military and a fall in morale.

The military isn’t some black box that Trump can wind up and deploy. His record with getting the military to do what he wants is already quite spotty, as his recent sad military parade, complete with trudging soldiers showing lackluster enthusiasm, demonstrated to the world. The problem will only grow more acute as untrained and unprofessional new ICE agents multiply in number, recruited in large measure from political right-wing fringe and local law enforcement looking to earn big sign-on bonuses. The military will be asked to provide back up for these unseasoned federal agents even as they terrorize innocent people over the color of their skin. It’s not clear that is a sustainable program.

California is the first of many challenges for Trump’s police state, with D.C. and “sanctuary cities” such as New York City likely next up. 

The more the public stands up to and rejects the presence of permanent troops on the streets, the more likely the military command will recall their oaths to the Constitution and hesitate to pass along the President’s orders unconditionally.

This means that in the coming weeks and months, as federal troops begin to be deployed to our cities, our voices of dissent and protest will be more crucial than ever. 

They must grow loud enough for the military to understand, with no uncertainty, that the people do not assent to their presence as a posse comitatus, or to their use to intimidate and squelch democratic opposition to the Trump regime.

Emphasis added.

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Meanwhile, a trial began today in San Francisco in which federal district Judge Charles Breyer will decide whether Trump's deployment of the California Guard in Los Angeles was lawful. Governor Newsom and California State Attorney General Rob Bonta say NO. According the CalMatters:

What is California’s latest allegation? 

That Los Angeles residents were “subjected to a form of military occupation” as federal troops worked alongside federal immigration agents, “often indistinguishable from each other.”

The lawyers say that “never before, in the history of the Nation, has the federal government utilized the military for domestic law enforcement in this manner.”

The Trump administration’s “insistence that perimeters, blockades, and other security functions are permissible makes clear they will continue to engage in these activities,” California lawyers with the state attorney general’s office wrote to Breyer.

The lawyers argued that if military forces can accompany U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in their raids and arrests, as had been unfolding in Los Angeles, “there would be no logical basis to preclude members of the Armed Forces from accompanying other law enforcement agents when performing their duties,” the California lawyers wrote. Military personnel could accompany federal food safety inspectors, medical fraud investigators or accompany federal voting rights officials to “monitor” election polling places, they wrote.

I'll be surprised if Trump's lawyers prevail before Judge Breyer -- if this gets to the Supremes, I have much less confidence. The Republican-appointed Justices are clearly in the tank for Trump.

In the streets, the feds have already lost. Michelle Goldberg -- "They Saw Their Neighbors Taken Away by ICE. Then They Made a Plan." [gift article] -- reports on the rising resistance from Angelenos. I bet she's seen enough to concur with Kuo's prescription: showing up angry and loudly, peacefully, is the right and effective response to Trump's over reach.