“Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.” — Hannah Ardent
America is in crisis. A crisis of democracy. A crisis of leadership. A crisis of identity. The point of no return is being reached. It’s fair to say what’s happening in Los Angeles is unprecedented. The sense of normalcy that’s shaped our lives is being replaced by fear, trepidation, and realization. Virginia’s streets are not immune. The deployment of 4,000 National Guard and 700 U.S. Marines against the will of California’s democratically elected leaders is proving this truer by the hour. So are the masked ICE agents snatching people at courthouses, elementary school graduations, and in cities across the country.
Los Angeles is not an outlier. It’s the evidence we’ve been waiting for. In his televised address to the nation last night, California Governor Gavin Newsom was correct when he said, “Democracy is under assault.”
This is not hyperbole. This is not politics as usual. Threatening to arrest a sitting governor over a policy dispute is not theatre. All of us now have a choice to make—both pragmatically and philosophically: To what extent will we, as Americans, allow ourselves to capitulate to authoritarianism.
Because beneath the fear and trepidation lies a deeper realization: We’re afraid of abandoning the underlying trust that made our democracy possible in the first place. We’re unsettled by the fact that the rights and freedoms once guaranteed by that trust are now at the mercy of an administration with no principles beyond the pursuit of power.
We need to admit these things to ourselves. The failure of our democratic guardrails in this moment is turning government against state, state against city, and ultimately neighbor against neighbor. This is the point, division as diversion. Escalation as a means of accumulation— of power, possession, and the spectacle of control.
Some will benefit. But most of us will lose, before we even realize what we had. Which is why Newsom was also correct when he said, “California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.”
Indeed, it looks like LA is just the proving ground. Yesterday, MSNBC reported that ICE is preparing “tactical units” that will be deployed to five additional cities: Northern Virginia, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. Conspicuously absent are any red-states. Why? Because this is a provocation that will continue to test the boundaries of what’s possible. They know our major cities will resist.
They know that in Virginia (and especially in Richmond), we will stand with our neighbors and vulnerable communities. We’ve done it before. And we’ll do it again. Even as Glenn Youngkin proclaimed that he “fully supports” Trump’s escalation amid the protests in Los Angeles.
But our protests and demonstrations will be used as a pretext. The administration is already shaping that narrative; their choice of phasing is not random.
On June 7th, Stephen Miller said, “Deport the invaders, or surrender to the insurrection. These are the choices.” This was followed by Pete Hegseth describing what’s happening in LA as, “a dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge national security risk.” This is not the language of law enforcement. This is the language of war. The language of the authoritarianism.
And despite all evidence to the contrary—from city and state officials, and even local law enforcement—they are preparing our cities as a battlespace to be defeated. Even yesterday, Trump stood in front of young soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and said he would “liberate” Los Angeles. They all cheered. In moment like this, the conditions are being created to justify the use of militarized force against our citizenry—American vs. American.
For now, National Guard and Marines have been federalized under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which places them under presidential control and allows deployment without state consent. This provides the legal authority to supersede a governor in deploying active-duty military within U.S. borders. However, the scope of what these troops can actually do domestically remains unclear.
While California is now suing the administration—arguing that the deployment violates state sovereignty—the next move is already being telegraphed: The Insurrection Act.
“The people that are causing the problem are professional agitators. They’re insurrectionists,” Trump declared during an Oval Office briefing before the Marine deployment— also saying, “If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We’ll see.”
Unsurprisingly, his memorandum doesn’t even mention Los Angeles. As Elizabeth Goitein, a national security law expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, noted in The Hill: “It authorizes deployment ‘at locations where protests against [ICE] functions are occurring or are likely to occur.’”
Essentially, this gives him the authority to preemptively deploy troops anywhere. No specific incident, no request from local officials, no constitutional threshold needs to be met. Just the likelihood that a protest might be enough to trigger a military response.
This is the point of no return.
Whether or not the Insurrection Act is officially declared, the stage has been set. Protests against ICE are spreading and troops are now on city streets. What remains unclear is how the military will respond if ordered to act against civilians exercising their 1st Amendment rights—or worse, to carry out commands that are unconstitutional. Decisions will have to be made, ones that could rupture the very foundations this country was built on.
Throw in Trump’s military parade in Washington D.C. this coming Saturday and there should be no doubt about what’s really at stake.
Photos by John Donegan from the Long Beach Post.
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