Harry Litman - The Summer of Invasion

This season is shaping up to be the summer of invasion in the U.S. But the invader is not a foreign power—it’s the President of the United States. Since June, when Trump purported to federalize several thousand California National Guard troops and deploy 700 Marines to Los Angeles for immigration enforcement, he has pushed to put U.S. military personnel on American streets. He’s testing limits, probing for weak seams in the law, and laying the groundwork to blow them wide open.

In California, a 3-day bench trial wraps today before Judge Charles Breyer to determine whether the Administration’s actions—over the objection of state officials—were lawful. Earlier this week, Trump announced with fanfare a military presence in Washington, D.C., and floated plans to “branch out” to other cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Oakland—all Democratic strongholds with large African-American populations. Now comes the latest: a 600-person “rapid response” unit the Pentagon has billed as a nationwide quick-reaction force—functionally, a standing crowd-control team in camouflage.

In Washington, Trump startled local officials by declaring that federal offices from a dozen agencies will moonlight as cops on the beat. FBI agents will be doing night patrols—an unglamorous and wearisome assignment that carries the added bonus, for Trump, of humiliating them.

He painted the capital as a hellscape “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals” with historically high murder rates. This brazenly false litany went straight into the Trump Hall of Fame for lies. In reality, violent crime in the District is at its low point this century and still falling.

https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/the-summer-of-invasion