Just a little over seven months into his second term, President Donald Trump has already deployed the National Guard twice and is currently eyeing a third deployment in Chicago.
His first deployment of the National Guard this year happened in June during the Los Angeles immigration protests, which happened due to ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids happening throughout California.
“He seems to want to be seen as a strong and decisive leader,” said Thomas Holyoke, a political science professor at Fresno State. “This very much seems to be part of the image he is trying to project.”
The deployment of over 4,000 troops was met with tons of pushback, especially from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who sued the Trump administration because it overstepped the governor’s authority over the California National Guard.
Everett A. Vieira III, a political science professor at Fresno State, said that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard can be seen as “competitive authoritarianism.”
“It’s using democratic institutions for authoritarian purposes,” Vieira said. “But to be fair, President Trump isn’t acting alone. He has allies in both chambers of Congress (and a Republican majority in each chamber), a favorable U.S. Supreme Court (one-third of whom he appointed himself) and various state governors, all doing his bidding.”
Holyoke said that the National Guard is not trained like typical law enforcement, so deploying troops for policing matters brings legality and fear into play.
“How can they do policing work when they do not know how? I suppose that lots of people walking around with heavy weapons might deter some crime for a while, but it is also very scary for ordinary people as well,” he said.
However, on Sept. 2, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer declared Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles as unlawful. Breyer cited that it violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which states that the National Guard cannot be deployed for domestic policing under normal circumstances.
In the past, the National Guard was typically deployed during domestic emergencies like natural disasters and civil unrest. Before Trump’s first use of the National Guard in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests, the National Guard had only been deployed domestically six times by presidents.
“He pretty clearly has no interest in precedent, not in this or much of anything else,” Holyoke said. “Typically, norms are part of the way we decide what is, and what is not, acceptable behavior, but he has decided to blow those away.”
Trump decided to deploy the National Guard again in August, this time in Washington, D.C., after he declared Washington a “public safety emergency.”
Since Washington is a federal district and not a state, it does not have control over its National Guard, giving Trump more leeway and authority to make the deployment.
While the Trump administration’s reasoning for deploying the National Guard to Washington and Los Angeles is to crack down on crime and protect law enforcement, Vieira said there are other ways to go about those measures.
“Has crime gone down in Washington since the National Guard was deployed there? Yes,” Vieira said. “Should we be deploying troops on U.S. soil? No. There are ways for the national government to assist local law enforcement without sending soldiers to U.S. cities.”
Trump’s deployment of the National Guard has been notably occurring in cities that have a majority of Democratic voters, leaving some to question his intentions.
Vieira noted that some Republican cities have higher rates of crime.
“The murder rate is higher in Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi than in California, Washington, New York and Illinois,” Vieira said. “So one has to ask—why hasn’t the National Guard been deployed in those cities or states?”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the states with the highest homicide mortalities are Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. Washington, though not a state, has a higher homicide rate than the top three states, with 33.1 homicides per 100,000 people.
On the same day that Breyer ruled Trump’s deployment of the Guard as unlawful, Trump announced in the Oval Office that he is ready to send the National Guard to Chicago and Baltimore.
Trump said that he has “an obligation” to send troops to Chicago and Baltimore due to the amount of crime in both cities, even calling Chicago “the world’s most dangerous city.”
It is uncertain whether or not Breyer’s ruling will remain standing, as the Supreme Court limited the authority of lower federal judges to enact injunctions to block executive actions back in June.
“Perhaps [the courts] fear that the president will ignore their rulings, and there is nothing the courts can do about it,” Holyoke said. “Remember that the courts are only powerful because we believe that they are powerful; they have no force to back up their unpopular decisions.”
Trump deploying the National Guard potentially four times in less than a year in his first term has sparked many familiar questions about democracy as a whole.
“From a democracy standpoint, it is very problematic,” Holyoke said. “A democratic leader does not use military forces to do police work. The military defends the nation; it is not intended to engage in domestic law enforcement.”
