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To suppress protests<\/span> against his deportation agenda, President Donald Trump took an extraordinary action on Saturday by calling up 2,000 National Guard troops to tamp down demonstrations in California. In doing so, he exercised rarely used federal powers, bypassed the authority of the state\u2019s governor, Gavin Newsom, and set the stage for violent confrontation.<\/p>\n Newsom, a Democrat, said<\/a> the soldiers were unneeded and would only \u201cescalate tensions.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s order came after protests broke out on Friday and continued through Saturday as federal agents searched Los Angeles\u2019 garment district and other neighborhoods for undocumented immigrant workers. More protests are planned for Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n Any demonstration impeding immigration law enforcement would be considered a \u201cform of rebellion,\u201d according to Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can\u2019t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can\u2019t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!\u201d Trump posted<\/a> to his Truth Social account, using his childish moniker for Newsom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s move to further insert the military into domestic political and law enforcement activities carries immense risk. Militarizing an already tense situation increases the likelihood of civilian harm, threatens to chill civil liberties and could irreparably damage civil-military relations.<\/p>\n The White House did not respond to questions about the potential for escalating tensions, worries about violence, or whether Trump would take personal responsibility for any resulting casualties.<\/p>\n The National Guard<\/span> has, at times, been tapped to stifle dissent. In 2020, Trump requested that the governors of multiple states deploy their National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. to suppress protests after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. Many governors agreed and thousands of troops from 11 states were deployed to Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n In 1992, President George H.W. Bush sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles<\/a>\u00a0to quell riots after police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. That deployment was requested by California\u2019s then-governor, Pete Wilson.<\/p>\n The Guard was federalized during the New York postal strike in 1970, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and during the 1967 Detroit uprising. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson used the National Guard to help enforce civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p>\n But it is the 1970 deployment of the National Guard to crack down on anti-war protests in Kent, Ohio that best illustrates the danger of involving the military in civilian law enforcement.<\/p>\n \u201cAt times, their response has degenerated into uncontrolled violence.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n That April,\u00a0President Richard M. Nixon expanded the Vietnam War by invading neighboring Cambodia, supercharging the anti-war movement. In Kent, protests in response\u00a0led to vandalism\u00a0and prompted Republican Governor James Rhodes to deploy the Ohio National Guard. On May 4, Guardsmen opened fire on antiwar protesters at Kent State University, firing 67 rounds over a period of just 13 seconds, killing four students \u2013 Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder \u2013 and wounding nine others.<\/p>\n The unrest that followed was unprecedented in American history. A national student strike involving more than one million students<\/a> at 450 colleges and universities followed. Close to 90 percent of campuses saw protests in the month after the Kent State killings, with four million<\/a> participating. This included at Jackson State College <\/a>(now University) in Mississippi, where city and state police opened fire on student protesters and passersby on May 15, wounding 12 and killing law student Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and 17-year-old high school student James Earl Green.<\/p>\n Nixon\u2019s own Commission on Campus Unrest, established in the wake of the killings at Kent State and Jackson State, found that student discontent was fueled by the Vietnam War and exacerbated by officials. \u201cActions and inactions of government at all levels have contributed to campus unrest. The words of some political leaders have helped to inflame it. Law enforcement officers have too often reacted ineptly or overreacted,\u201d according to the report. \u201cAt times, their response has degenerated into uncontrolled violence.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s activation of the California National Guard is the first time a president has done so without a request from a state\u2019s governor since 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.<\/p>\n During his first term in office, Trump suggested shooting protestors to quell dissent, according to his former secretary of defense, Mark Esper. \u201cThe president was enraged,\u201d Esper recalled<\/a>, amid the strife following George Floyd\u2019s murder in 2020. \u201cHe thought that the protests made the country look weak, made us look weak and \u2018us\u2019 meant him.\u201d Esper said that Trump looked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and said, \u201c\u2019Can\u2019t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?\u2019\u201d Esper characterized it as \u201ca suggestion and a formal question.\u201d<\/p>\n During the last presidential campaign, Trump promised he would crack down on protests with troops. \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in \u2014 the next time, I\u2019m not waiting,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n