A president declares war on half the country

Kevin Lamarque, Daniel Cole, Yuri Avila/Reuters

Temporarily upstaged by war in the middle east, this week’s Senate Armed Services hearings suggested war might be brewing closer to home. Trump seeks an unprecedented $1 trillion defense budget that will be used, in large part, on American soil.

Ever since he was ignominiously blocked from shooting George Floyd protesters, Trump has been itching to deploy the military against US citizens. In 2020, during a White House meeting, Trump asked his Joint Chief of Staff why he couldn’t just shoot the protesters. His Defense Secretary at the time, Mark Esper, said “It was (both) a suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that moment as this issue hung very heavily in the air.” Trump apparently suggested shooting protesters—American citizens— enough times that Esper issued a public statement opposing the use of the Insurrection Act, enraging Trump.

Trump made sure that wouldn’t happen again in Trump 2.0 by appointing a dangerously unqualified Sec Def with fewer moral qualms about shooting civilians. As Fox News host, Pete Hegseth echoed Trump’s desire to deploy the military against protesters. He defended war criminals who ‘killed the right people in the wrong ways,’ advocating “total war against our enemies… All of ’em, you stack bodies, and when it’s over, then you let the dust settle and you figure out who’s ahead.”

A trillion dollar defense budget to kill whom, exactly?

Less than a week ago, Trump announced expanded efforts to raid cities that are “the core of the Democrat Power Center.” Sending military troops, expending federal resources, and directing federal agents to act based on the politics of targeted officials is a frontal assault on the US Constitution.

Even though the US is not at war, and Trump has abandoned our military alliances, Hegseth insists on “lethality,” and rails against “woke” laws that punish soldiers for indiscriminate killings. Trump/Hegseth seek a trillion dollar defense budget, not to defend America from foreign enemies, but to attack “enemies within,” i.e., Americans who oppose Trump’s agenda.

None of this, including Trump’s deliberate escalation of violence in LA, was unforeseen. Who can forget how Kamala Harris was panned as histrionic when she said Trump would sic the military on U.S. citizens, following his promise to do just that? In October, 2024, Trump said he’d use the military against the biggest threat to America—Americans who don’t support him. “I think the (main problem we face) is the enemy from within,” Trump said, adding, “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

Both he and Hegseth have already weeded out military officers who would honor their oaths to the Constitution over illegal orders from Trump. This week, Hegseth also inadvertently confirmed that the military, under Trump, will become a domestic force when he testified before Congress, saying, “We’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”

Dubious legal grounds

Trump’s plan to use military troops to impose his domestic agenda is decidedly un-American. Today it includes deportations and manufacturing civil unrest; tomorrow, the FBI will round up journalists who criticize him, judges, Democrats, and political opponents. If you have any doubt, watch Trump’s illegal and partisan address at Ft. Bragg, where he led troops in uniform to wildly “boo” journalists, California’s governor, and LA’s mayor. If you have any lingering naivety, hoping soldiers will honor their oaths and not follow America’s Hitler, that speech will erase it.

As of this writing, Trump has not declared martial law, but recent Trump history, paired with his questionable sanity, suggests it’s ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ For now, Trump is acting in LA pursuant to a presidential memorandum deploying the National Guard under a rarely used federal law, 10 U.S.C. § 12406. Under that code, a president possesses the power to federalize the National Guard only when there is “a rebellion or danger of rebellion” against federal authority, or when the president cannot execute federal laws. On Thursday, a U.S. appeals court allowed Trump to retain control over California's National Guard while a lawsuit challenging the deployment is pending.

The Posse Comitatus Act also remains in effect, prohibiting the use of the military as a domestic law enforcement agency, except in extraordinary circumstances not yet present in LA despite Trump’s best efforts. The Insurrection Act of 1807, the authority under which Hegseth sent active Marines to LA, is a broader set of statutes granting Trump the power to use military force in specific circumstances, including suppressing armed rebellion, civil disorder, or other extreme circumstances where the states are unable to maintain public order, but there has been no ruling yet on that mobilization.

Americans should be on guard for signs martial law is coming

Governor Newsom formally objected to Trump sending troops, because California in general, and LAPD in particular, have sufficient resources to maintain order. Newsom knows that when US Marines start shooting civilians, whether in democrat-run LA, Chicago, or New York, violence will escalate to the necessary threshold to circumvent Posse Comitatus and allow Trump to declare martial law.

Trump has already declared the power to deploy armed forces anywhere in the United States, insisting he can send the National Guard to “locations where protests against [ICE] functions are occurring or are likely to occur.” Like an unhinged King Kong, he declared, “We’re gonna have troops everywhere.”

We’ll see about that. Republicans in Congress may have lost their voices and their balls, but the American people are finding theirs. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr defeated the Trump/Hegseths of their time by wielding nonviolent resistance as a strategic weapon. We will do the same.

The No Kings Day protests on June 14 have been described as the largest protest in US history. These protests will continue, and they will grow, because attacking cities based on their politics is a seditious and un-American attempt to cleft the nation in half.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Howey Political Report, Indiana Democrats’ Kernel of Truth, Inside Indiana Business, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, South Florida Gay News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.