Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests
381 comments
·June 9, 2025jxjnskkzxxhx
JumpCrisscross
> One fights the enemies of the state
"At stake is a fundamental component of the framework of US constitutional democracy. It begins with the principle, enshrined in law, that military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law.
Most fundamentally, the founders of the American republic understood very clearly that concentrated military power, loyal to a single man, could be used to achieve total control by that person. And they had a historical example in mind: Rome — a republic governed by the people and the Senate — was transformed into an empire ruled by an emperor as a result of the Roman army being turned against its citizens."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-06-09/trump-...
psalaun
(I've the feeling that during civil uprising in dictatorship or democracy, the police tends to serve and protect the hand that feeds them, rather than the oppressed people.)
drewcoo
The reason is Posse Comitatus. It's in place because enough people were fed up with federal troops being used to impose "law."
Larrikin
If illegal immigration is such a problem, why not fine businesses 5x salary for using the labor, for as long as it was used? There are a lot of systems in place to verify working status at this point. It eliminates any incentive to hire this cheaper labor willing to work for lower wages.
The people coming will be coming for a variety of reasons but it won't be to take the jobs of the uneducated Americans
seanmcdirmid
This is what Canada mostly does and it’s super effective, the problem is that the people who employ illegal immigrants: farmers, construction contractors, hotel owners, etc…belong to the same party pushing against illegal immigration, they would basically be punishing themselves, so it isn’t going to happen.
jaoane
Because they do so illegally? This solution you present is so ingenuous that I wonder if it was made in good faith at all.
Gigachad
Because this is more about a display of force than actually solving a problem.
King-Aaron
They want a reason to remove the current Californian government, as well as manufacturing a reason to enact emergency powers which can 'help' Trump push for a third term. They have been discussing this since before the election.
gamblor956
The e-verify system has been in place since 1996, and does exactly that: verify legal status of workers. It's required for federal contractors, but only about half of states require its use (it used to be more but some states like CA have actually passed laws banning its use).
ty6853
It verifies the legal status of the documents submitted. Does little beyond encouraging identity theft of USCs that end up with unexpected tax liabilities.
xivzgrev
Shh! We can’t do that! You’d piss off the republican donors. Not to mention the American public when their grocery bill significantly increases.
No, it’s much better to go harass people who aren’t in republican circles. Us vs them. Round up some illegals, make some examples, stick it to the democrats (who loosened the borders and are complicit). Trump is strong, and finally cracking down on all of this illegal nonsense, hoo rah!!
It’s all theater, that’s what Trump is - a darn good showman. Some illegals will get deported, eventually some of his core will see him as the thug he is. We just need to ensure democrats have a viable candidate lined up…ideally a white southern man. Clearly the push to elect a woman isn’t working at this time - we’ve tried it twice and Americans vote Trump instead.
jeffreygoesto
This. And two santas.
ExoticPearTree
LA is actively supporting illegal immigrants.
If you want something like this to work, federal agents need to do it.
JumpCrisscross
> If you want something like this to work, federal agents need to do it
Doing the arrests? Sure. Intimidating protesters for partisan messaging while desecrating the honour of our armed forces? No.
DidYaWipe
What is "this" and how do you define "work?"
And if illegals are such a problem, why do the Republicans toady up to the corporations that perpetuate and profit from it?
csours
Ahead of time, and from the inside, it looks and sounds like 'restoring proper order'.
Afterwards, and from the outside, it looks and sounds like ... well read some history about attempts to 'restore proper order'. The outcome and progression is entirely and sadly predictable.
It's been about 80 years since WWII. Are we doomed to repeat this on an 80 year cycle, when the last generation who went through this passes from the scene?
notepad0x90
Politics aside, LA just can't seem to catch a break. Floods last year, fires earlier this year and now this.
That said, what the current administration is doing is almost like they're following a manual other countries followed on their road to nationalistic decline and all the right people in places of power seem to know this. I wonder if they're ready for it? My observation is that the previous administration had four years to pass laws and measures based on trump's first four years and they didn't, which tells me there is really no stopping what is to come.
The planned decline of America won't be like other countries because of post-WW2 "super power" repositioning of country and it's critical role in global trade, communications and finance. All of humanity might suffer, at least that's my fear.
On the other hand, I like to think that if things turn sour and gruesome very fast, the American public might react to that well enough to make a u-turn.
JumpCrisscross
> LA just can't seem to catch a break. Floods last year, fires earlier this year and now this
I'm in LA right now. If I didn't read the news I wouldn't know anything is up.
hparadiz
Living in LA is so great. The only thing I regret in my life is not getting here sooner.
whyenot
I wish Kevin Drum were still here. I often didn't agree with his politics, but his blog posts were always insightful, and I wonder what he would say about our current situation.
ringeryless
Someone please tell me what an agent of Putin would be doing that Trump is not doing. All actions point to MAGA being an operation to destroy or degrade the USA. It is rather obviously in it's ironic name as well. 5th column pretends to be an ultrapatriot, ah yes, The Manchurian Candidate
null
bix6
This is terrifying and unconscionable. Hard to believe this is the USA today. I don’t really see this de-escalating given the ongoing rhetoric but I hope I’m wrong.
billfor
George Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots. At least 4000....
dragonwriter
> George Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots.
Governor Wilson called up the National Guard, actually; subsequently, at Governor Wilson's request, and coordinating planning with both the Governor and Mayor Bradley of LA, President Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Guard, and called up the Marines, and deployed the federal and federalized forces (including, also, federal law enforcement) in close cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement to restore order.
That is very different from the situation presently.
runlevel1
Because the governor requested federal assistance.
Scuds
there's a reason why people remember kent state.
ty6853
The real danger of Kent State is it teaches in for a penny, in for a pound.
lurk2
What reason is that?
ivape
It’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on.
motorest
> It’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on.
From an outsider's view, everything looks so performative and fabricated to be consumed by a tv target audience. I mean, if there is so much illegal immigration in the US, is it the most effective use of resources to target a TV cliche that would gather a residual number of people?
hparadiz
They hate poor people. The wealthy undocumented people are sitting at home in their legal son or daughter's house watching the kids without a care in the world. The ones getting caught up in this are the ones that can't lay low for a while.
k1t
Presumably it's just this meeting, filtering down the ranks:
So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.
Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the U.S., according to people familiar with the meeting.
Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-...
monster_truck
I've often felt the same way as an insider. It's beyond a parody of itself.
DidYaWipe
That's just one of many problems with this whole lie.
The best is Trump crowing about historically low unemployment numbers, and then peddling hysteria about illegals "taking American jobs." None of his degenerate followers care that this argument is stupid, and calls them stupid.
Now it's been papered over with other excuses, like the mythical "fentanyl" that's pouring in from Canada.
King-Aaron
They raided a school during their graduation ceremony to haul away parents of children receiving their graduations.
zippyman55
Only three people seeking work outside HD. Hope they raise their salary demands.
curtisblaine
I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying ICE should deport on.. merit basis? Leave the hardest working immigrants be and deport the lazy ones?
labster
You have to target the immigrants who work hard, just so we can eventually prove Trump right when he says all of the immigrants are lazy and take our welfare entitlements. The remainder will be poorer, that’s just math.
Whether it’s good public policy is neither here nor there, so long as our Leader is right.
lossolo
It's a salami tactic, that's how democracies are turning into autocracies, slice by slice. This is something new to you, but people who experienced this firsthand see what's going on in the US as an obvious road to autocratic rule. Then another Rubicon will be crossed, and another, one by one, little steps, until someday you will find yourself in a totally different country after all the steps converge into a different political system.
dachris
That, or the fast road to dictatorship. Escalate until you declare martial law, never to be revoked. The end.
The Ghorman massacre in the recently aired season 2 of Star Wars Andor is the playbook version of this.
I don't think the US is there yet, but the direction seems about right. As you say, step by step.
YZF
In the LA riots of 1992 there was also the national guard and the military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots
Andor was great. I really enjoyed it. It's the AI robots you should really worry about.
MaxHoppersGhost
They're not being deployed to run down protesters, they're deploying to protect federal personnel and federal property only.
fnordpiglet
To be fair they’re not even doing that. They’re holed up without food or beds because there was no plan while the LAPD manages the protests and riots triggered by the federal troop deployment. It’s literally designed to inflame tensions, and it’s the direct cause of everything that’s going on. I feel bad for those troops being used as a pawn in a political TV stunt.
The national guard and the marines are not trained in crowd control. They are trained in combat situations. They have no role to play here, at best they just make people angry, at worse could perpetuate a massacre.
ty6853
I've never been in the military but I was in a civil war. Let me explain what a few days holed up does to a bunch of young dudes with automatic weapons: it makes them eager for an exciting break from the monotony.
darksaints
The same exact lie was said about Tiananmen Square.
mock-possum
What if the threat to federal personnel comes from people trying to protect themselves from being run down by federal property?
You think any individual marine will follow their conscience and step in if they see an abuse of power by authority?
EGreg
What happened to all those safe active denial systems?
hypothesis
> modifications or misuse by an operator could nevertheless turn the ADS into a more damaging weapon which could potentially violate international conventions on warfare
Safe? When manned by actors known to shoot journalists in the head with “less lethal” weapons?
steve76
[dead]
leereeves
It's terrifying, certainly.
One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kill-l-police-attacked-fireworks-...
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said "you had people who were...attacking police officers, deputy sheriffs and causing a lot of destruction."
The 101 Freeway shut down Sunday evening two times due to protesters on an overpass throwing rocks, debris, and firecrackers at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles.
Footage on Sunday from the CBS News Los Angeles helicopter showed that multiple windows of the police headquarters had been shattered as well.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/downtown-la-protests...
pempem
I can't overstate how absolutely separate this is from reality. Yes there are protests, largely peaceful and in a tremendously small part of Los Angeles. In fact, in terms of sheer size, its less than half the size, in sq miles, of the fires in January.
Rocks / debris came after tear gas.
The news has been startling in its mis-coverage.
esseph
What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?
Once the state sets its eyes on enemies, it doesn't stop adding to that list.
Use of the tools and techniques in place right now will continue to be used, and against "legal" citizens.
I worry how we turn the corner. I don't like what history says.
curtisblaine
> What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?
This was always a well-understood risk though.
JumpCrisscross
> One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line
So fewer deaths and less illegality than January 6th. Action the President condoned in January by issuing pardons.
Honestly, if a Democrat were to match Trump's energy, they'd be promising pardons to protesters who damaged ICE property or torched a Trump property. They're not. In part because they're rudderless. But also because they're still gripped by the notion that we're not in the midst of a coup.
gamblor956
LAPD on Sunday night live with NBC 4 Los Angeles confirmed that most of the Sunday night looters were arrested. They also confirmed that most of the looters were part of a retail-theft gang attempting to use the protests as cover, and that at least one of the looters was actually a far-right-wing activist (unsuccessfully) attempting to stage a false flag operation to justify the use of military force.
darksaints
[flagged]
hunglee2
The irony is that one of the main rails upon which the MAGA train rides is States rights. But then, Trump was always going to be a rule breaker, not least to his own supporters, in the end all that will be left will be absolute fealty to the chief
jxjnskkzxxhx
> The irony is that one of the main rails upon which the MAGA train rides is States rights.
No it's not. They just like slavery. If it was about states rights they wouldn't support sending in the military.
What I find shocking about comments like yours is the reminder that propaganda works. Someone in the republican party decided "guys, advocating for slavery openly doesn't go over well, let's tell them it's actually about states rights", and loads of people actually believed it.
JumpCrisscross
Does Newsom have the right to defederalize the National Guard? Put another way, who is currently the supreme commander of the California National Guard?
WarOnPrivacy
Reminder that the authority under which the the US military is deployed against US citizens was intended to be used in exceptional (extreme) circumstances - ostensibly because no other options would suffice.
The Insurrection Act authorizes the president to deploy
military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion
or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations.
The statute implements Congress’s authority under the Constitution
to "provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of
the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."
It is the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act,
under which federal military forces are generally barred
from participating in civilian law enforcement activities.
This is the heaviest hammer in the toolbox. Deploying it against citizens he doesn't like because he resents their message is a historical display of bad character and is profoundly unethical in a way that the harshest adjectives struggle to reflect.
pyuser583
I read somewhere reliable Trump is not invoking the Insurrection Act.
I’d cite my source, but can’t find it. I also can’t find anything saying he is invoking it.
Do you have any specific source?
Edit: I’ve found several sources that make It clear the Insurrection Act had not been invoked.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/09/politics/insurrection-act-tru... - “Trump officials quietly discuss moves in LA that avoid invoking Insurrection Act, but it’s not off the table”
brewdad
Then that makes this move illegal. Impeach him now.
pyuser583
I have no knowledge of this area of law, but responsible press are saying he can deploy NG and Marines to defend federal property and employees without anything special.
cwsx
Third time's the charm!
RajT88
We tried that. Nothing has changed since then - if anything he has consolidated more power.
Republicans would have to lose a lot of seats for it to happen. Or, Trump would do something beyond the pale for the GOP. Hard to imagine what would make them change their minds on it. Probably not thousands of dead protesters.
plandis
According to the military release [1]:
> Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.
It seems like Trump has not invoked the insurrection act but instead it’s all under a different federal law. Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor, has a write up [2] on Title 10 vs the Insurrection Act and some possible concerns. He posted this about the National guard but given the military release states they are being deployed to assist the nation guard under title 10 it still seems relevant. To quote the TL;DR of his post:
> The TL;DR here is that Trump has not (yet) invoked the Insurrection Act, which means that the 2000 additional troops that will soon be brought to bear will not be allowed to engage in ordinary law enforcement activities without violating a different law—the Posse Comitatus Act. All that these troops will be able to do is provide a form of force protection and other logistical support for ICE personnel. Whether that, in turn, leads to further escalation is the bigger issue (and, indeed, may be the very purpose of their deployment). But at least as I’m writing this, we’re not there yet.
[1] https://www.northcom.mil/Newsroom/Press-Releases/Article/421...
[2] https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/156-federalizing-the-californ...
rocqua
What can a soldier do to protect federal property or personel that is not law enforcement? Manual labor to throw up barriers seems to be the only option. Anything else requires violence, which only law enforcement can do legally I thought. Unless perhaps they intend to 'use self defense'. But intent kinda defeats self defense.
vjvjvjvjghv
That’s the usual dictator and wannabe dictator playbook. Cause a problem, declare a national emergency and from there take over. The military is an excellent tool for that.
koolba
[flagged]
unsnap_biceps
As I said above, I'm not afraid of being deported, but I am concerned about the lack of due process for people being deported. Due process is the core of our democracy and once it's removed for some people, it's removed for everyone. I have zero issue with deporting people that shouldn't be here, but they are owed their day in court to make their case. That is why I'm protesting.
crises-luff-6b
[flagged]
WarOnPrivacy
> Here's the actual text[1], it's pretty clear.
There's nothing in the text that suggests it is appropriate to preemptively deploy US military in response to protests, not even because the administration deems protestors to be enemies.
Narratives in support of preemptively deploying the military against protesters are all crafted justifications, each built after the act has been decided on.
What's left to for apologists to do is to choose whether to own the methods and intentions or mirror the administration's disingeniousness.
lurk2
> There's nothing in the text that suggests it is appropriate to preemptively deploy US military in response to protests, not even because the administration deems protestors to be enemies.
Would blockading federal offices not qualify under the third condition?
> (3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States;
locopati
Do you approve of the way ICE is going about their business? What I see is Gestapo-like behavior that deserves protest, which is being responded to with unnecessarily violent force by ICE.
wellthisisgreat
any ex-marines here? how would they actually take to the orders that everyone's worried about? "no questions asked"?
mrj
Yeah. So.. Most of the Marine Corps is hard-right Trump supporters but not all. The Marines are different in that the leadership is steeped in the history and tradition of the Corps from the start of bootcamp. They will know they can be punished for following illegal orders.
In the end, it will come down to SNCOs and NCOs to make the decision because the Marines try to push down "battlefield" decisions to as close to the action as possible. Of any service, I expect your average Marine to be able to make independent decisions in the moment. That may or may not be a good thing.
null
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.