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Let me do something I seldom do and briefly predict the future in an up-close-and-personal fashion. Count on this: on November 4th, Zohran Mamdani will indeed be elected mayor of New York City. (Ill vote for him and I have no doubt that Ill be anything but alone.) And count on this, too: as his opponent, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, recently predicted, if the National Guard or other military outfits aren't on the streets of this city and possibly at my polling place on election day, they certainly will be by the time Mamdani takes office next January.
Yes, once upon a time in a distant past, Donald Trump did indeed come from this very city, growing up in a neighborhood that he once termed an oasis. And I suspect he still thinks of it as, in some sense, his. As for Mamdani, whom he calls my little communist, the president isnt likely to put up with him for long, not in a country that, as TomDispatch regular Nick Turse makes vividly clear today, he seems increasingly intent on occupying militarily.
I sometimes try to imagine telling my long-dead father, who grew up in Brooklyn and fought in the Second World War, about the Trumpian universe hes missed, including the possibility that a president of the United States might actually send some part of the U.S. military into his old neighborhood as yes! an occupying force, while invoking the Insurrection Act. Once upon a time, such a thought would have been considered truly absurd science fiction, but no longer. And with that in mind, let Turse fill you in on just how Donald Trump is already beginning to militarily occupy this country and what that might mean for all of us. Tom
On the Precipice of Authoritarian Rule
The Trump Administrations Military Occupation of America
By Nick Turse
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump threatened to unleash the armed forces on more American cities during a rambling address to top military brass. He told the hundreds of generals and admirals gathered to hear him that some of them would be called upon to take a primary role at a time when his administration has launched occupations of American cities, deployed tens of thousands of troops across the United States, created a framework for targeting domestic enemies, cast his political rivals as subhuman, and asserted his right to wage secret war and summarily execute those he deems terrorists.
Trump used that bizarre speech to take aim at cities he claimed are run by the radical left Democrats, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. Were going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room, he said. That's a war too. Its a war from within. He then added: We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.
Trump has, of course, already deployed the armed forces inside the United States in an unprecedented fashion during the first year of his second term in office. As September began, a federal judge found that his decision to occupy Los Angeles with members of California's National Guard under so-called Title 10 or federalized status against the wishes of California Governor Gavin Newsom was illegal. But just weeks later, Trump followed up by ordering the military occupation of Portland, Oregon, over Governor Tina Kotek's objections.
I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists, Trump wrote on Truth Social late last month. And he authoriz[ed] Full Force, if necessary.
When a different federal judge blocked him from deploying Oregon National Guardsmen to the city, he ordered in Guard members from California and Texas. That judge then promptly blocked his effort to circumvent her order, citing the lack of a legal basis for sending troops into Portland. In response, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act an 1807 law that grants the president emergency powers to deploy troops on U.S. soil to get around the court rulings blocking his military occupation efforts. I think thats all insurrection, really criminal insurrection, he claimed, in confused remarks from the Oval Office.
Experts say that his increasing use of the armed forces within the United States represents an extraordinary violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. That bedrock nineteenth-century law banning the use of federal troops to execute domestic law enforcement has long been seen as fundamental to Americas democratic tradition. However, the presidents deployments continue to nudge this country ever closer to becoming a genuine police state. They come amid a raft of other Trump administration authoritarian measures designed to undermine the Constitution and weaken democracy. Those include attacks on birthright citizenship and free speech, as well as the exercise of expansive unilateral powers like deporting people without due process and rolling back energy regulations, citing wartime and emergency powers.
A Presidential Police Force
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled last month that Trumps deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles, which began in June, was illegal and harkened back to Britain's use of soldiers for law enforcement purposes in colonial America. He warned that Trump clearly intends to transform the National Guard into a presidential police force.
Congress spoke clearly in 1878 when it passed the Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law, Breyer wrote in his 52-page opinion. Nearly 140 years later, Defendants President Trump, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, and the Department of Defense deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.
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