WASHINGTON – From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Santa Monica, the Marine Corp is now fighting President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump’s battles political and otherwise, in the air, on land and in East LA.
Trump, with no provocation, has decided to employ the nation’s military muscle to invade California, a rather curious initiative since the Golden State, unlike Greenland and Panama, remains one of the 50 members of the union, one that makes significant contributions to the economic health of all the others.
But Trump, who has never expended much effort to keep his honor clean, has decided 700 jarheads, not to mention about 4,000 members of the National Guard, should march into the City of Angels to quell a non-existent insurrection over the administration’s nasty and malicious effort to oust some 11 million undocumented workers living within the nation’s confines.
About 4.6 percent of the U.S. labor force consists of undocumented workers, mostly from Latin America, who make healthy contributions to the economy and plug gaps in the labor force, particularly in areas like construction, farming and landscaping. They invariably are here to make a few bucks, support their families and remain as inconspicuous as humanly possible.
Trump and, to be honest, a substantial passel of red-blooded Americans, don’t want them here. They portray them as murderers and rapists sucking off the public teat and polluting the culture, thus dismissing the nation’s melting pot elements that have long existed.
The Lord of Mar-a-Lago used the bogus crisis of foreigners entering the nation uninvited to attract about 77 million votes last year, enabling him to return to the White House for a second go-round. Since his January return, Trump has striven to paint America in his own image – belligerent, hateful, ignorant and bigoted.
A primary target, one he stressed during his election campaign, is undocumented immigrants, insisting he has a mandate to oust them, even though he drew just less than 50 percent of the vote, which doesn’t bespeak of an overwhelming authority.
Just what has led to Trump’s detestation of these folks, other than political opportunism, remains open to speculation. But his administration has, over the past five months, dispatched goons of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, often masked, heavily armed, without warrants while refusing to offer any identification, to pick up brown people minding their own business off the streets and dispatching them to who knows where without providing them with any opportunity to contact their loved ones.
This is not, nor, at least it shouldn’t be, the American way.
This has understandably sparked protests, particularly in Los Angeles, home to an estimated 900,000 undocumented workers, 80 percent of whom are Latinos in a city where 48 percent of the population is Latino. Folks grew outraged as a result of ICE raids throughout LA, particularly one at a local Home Depot where they witnessed friends and neighbors being carted away, and took to the streets in protest.
Some of those protests, it’s been reported, initially turned violent as demonstrators clashed with police, threw rocks and bricks and set some vehicles on fire. But subsequently for the most part they have remained peaceful with most of the activity restricted to a five-block area downtown.
Trump, the dimwit, activated the National Guard without the consent of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, an obvious violation of state sovereignty, and had his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, deploy the 700 marines for good measure, all at the estimated cost of $134 million. This was done even though the situation is well in hand to, Trump claims, protect ICE agents and secure federal facilities.
As is his wont, Trump attacked Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, going so far as to say he should be arrested. He called the protests “lawless riots’’ and the participants “violent, insurrectionist mobs.” Newsom has sued Trump, asserting the president-cum-dictator overstepped his bounds – imagine that – and violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the federal government’s power to employ the military to enforce domestic policies.
Trump, meanwhile, claims he had the authority under the Insurrectionist Act of 1807, a claim that only his idolaters are taking seriously, leaving others to ask, “What insurrection?’’
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear who, like Newsom, is viewed as a potential Democratic presidential candidate, signed on to a letter issued by the Democratic Governors Association calling Trump’s troop deployment “an alarming abuse of power.”
“…threatening to send the U.S. Marines into American neighborhoods undermines the mission of our service members, erodes public trust, and shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement,” it read.
Reaction from the Republican members of the Kentucky congressional delegation has been, as you might expect, muted. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, has been the only one to address the issue directly, offering a mushy take, telling The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, that Newsom and other Democratic officials “seem not to be very concerned with controlling the violence” and “in some ways are defiant of federal law” by refusing to work with federal officials to deport migrants who are living in the community without papers.
But, apparently unbeknownst to Paul, California officials are containing the situation and the state is under no obligation to assist the federal government’s anti-immigration initiatives as long as it doesn’t obstruct the effort. Paul finally got around to saying he would prefer “to have local, not national” authorities handle similar situations.
Others, like Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, Kentucky’s own Trump handmaid, didn’t address the issue directly but wants you to know he just LOVES him some Donald J. Trump.
“The LA riots should be a wake up call, we need funding surge included in BBB (the tax and spending measure known as the Big Beautiful Bill) for the border,’’ Barr wrote on X. “We need to seal the border, deport illegal immigrants, and stop the dangerous flow of fentanyl into our communities.’’
Yeah, right. This is popularly known as a diversion. Rather than address the real issue at hand – dispatching the military uninvited into a sovereign American city in a show of power for alleged law enforcement purposes – Andy wants you to look at the big, shiny trinket.
Let’s make this simple: You can’t empower the president of the United States to impose his will on this vast nation by allowing him to deploy troops to any nook or cranny he so desires for doing something, anything, that displeases him. That’s the be-all and end-all.
Yet, that’s where we’re headed with this guy and he’s not really even trying to hide it. In his presidential memorandum issued June 7 which led to deploying troops to LA, Trump said, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
Therefore, Trump decreed, “The Secretary of Defense may employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.”
This proclamation is not limited to addressing the ongoing protest in Los Angeles. It essentially provides the secretary of defense to hereinafter mobilize as many troops as he wants for an indeterminant length domestically He can do this wherever protests “are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.”
That is called a blank check, folks. Wake up tomorrow and find an entire division at your doorstep.
This is the outrage of all outrages And it shows what can happen when you elect a sociopath to lead the country.
What could possibly go wrong? I don’t know, what say we hop aboard the Wayback Machine and head to Kent, Ohio, at about, say 12:24 p.m. on May 4, 1970 and ask Allison Krause, 19, Jeffrey Miller, 20, Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, and William Schroeder, 20, if they have any thoughts on deploying the National Guard for a protest. Maybe we can even get a word from that fatuous clown Jim Rhodes.
Ah, American exceptionalism. Ain’t it grand?