Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles is a thinly veiled “authoritarian” and politically motivated attempt to inflame protests and crush dissent, veterans and legal experts warn.
Trump is relying on federal law that allows the president to call up the National Guard to respond to domestic unrest, an action known commonly as federalizing the normally state-authorized Guard. Even then, those troops have only a limited mission in supporting federal law enforcement agents and federal buildings at the center of protests against the administration’s mass deportation agenda.
