Trump’s Most Dangerous Executive Order

Donald Trump has always wanted his own, private muscle — a group of armed men (and you have to think he’d want them to be men) he can deploy to silence his critics, intimidate his enemies, and more generally use the threat of violence to do his bidding. All the strongmen he admires have muscle — Vladimir Putin has the FSB, Recep Erdogan the SADAT, and Viktor Orban the TEK.

This is why, during his first term, Trump often posted threats on social media about the “cops, bikers, and soldiers” ready to wage violence on his behalf. It’s why he couldn’t bring himself to denounce the Proud Boys during the 2020 debates, and it’s why, despite pleas from allies and his own children to denounce the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, he watched the Capitol riot unfold on TV for more than three hours before reluctantly calling off his thugs — but not before telling them he loved them.

It’s against this history that Trump signed an executive order last week titled, “ADDITIONAL MEASURES TO ADDRESS THE CRIME EMERGENCY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA” (the all caps are his, of course). Though the order primarily addresses Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in Washington, there’s also some foreboding language tucked into it ordering Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment.”

This force would be “available to assist federal, state, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order.”

This appears to be enacting a Pentagon blueprint The Washington Post reported on last month. It calls for a force of 600 soldiers to be ready for deployment anywhere in the country on Trump’s command. That plan indicated the force would be used to quell protests or civil unrest. That it’s tucked into an executive order purporting to tackle common crime suggests Trump is expanding the idea.

The plan sets off so many alarms that it’s hard to know where to begin. 

First, the National Guard is not a police force. It’s a military organization that mostly serves under the authority of state governors. Guard troops aren’t trained to put down protests, police streets, or arrest people for open container violations. It also isn’t what they signed up for.

Second, in the United States, we have a long and important history of keeping the military out of domestic policing. Cops and soldiers have two fundamentally different missions. Cops are asked to keep the peace while protecting our rights. Soldiers are asked to kill the soldiers of enemy countries. That the military would be commonly used for domestic policing was among the Founders’ biggest fears. It’s a big part of why we have the Second, Third, and Fourth Amendments. 

Trump seems to think that because soldiers and cops both carry guns and use force, they have the same jobs, the same skill set, and the same training — that the military is just policing, but harder. It’s a dangerously ignorant misconception. During his first term, he wanted to send the military into cities to violently suppress the George Floyd protests — including shooting protesters if necessary. He was thwarted by his own Defense Secretary, Mike Esper, and his Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley. Trump has since said both men are guilty of crimes for criticizing him, including treason.

Just this week, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s federalization and deployment of the California National Guard to Los Angeles over the objections of Governor Newsom was a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the president from using the military for domestic policing unless he first invokes the Insurrection Act. 

Undeterred, the White House appears to have come up with a workaround: According to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Trump has asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott to send the Texas National Guard to Chicago, without Pritzker’s consent. Which is to say that at Trump’s command, Texas has ordered its National Guard to invade and occupy the streets of Chicago. 

But the language creating “rapid deployment” units is especially alarming. It seems to be mimicking the crime suppression police units that mayors and police chiefs often create to show that they’re tough on crime. These teams are typically given free reign over cities with little oversight and the power to skirt rules and procedures. 

Not surprisingly, telling police units that they’re “elite” and not subject to the usual rules has resulted in a long and ongoing trail of violence, corruption, and abuse. Tyre Nichols was beaten to death by the SCORPION crime suppression unit in Memphis. In the 1990s, an elite unit in Los Angeles charmingly nicknamed the “Death Squad” resulted in $125 million in abuse settlements. The unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo was killed by a NYPD suppression unit called the Street Crimes Unit — as were Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Kimani Gray. Elite police teams in Chicago (in the 2000s), and Baltimore (in the 2010s) were responsible for two of the biggest police abuse and corruption scandals in U.S. history. There have also been crime suppression unit scandals in Indianapolis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Newark.

These are merely the structural problems — or the reasons why an order like this would be dangerous under any administration. But we should also be particularly worried about how a national rapid deployment unit would operate under this one.

The Supreme Court has ruled that federal law enforcement officers — and that would presumably include military personnel assigned to domestic police work — have near absolute immunity from civil liability for constitutional violations. The only real way these rapid deployment teams could be held accountable for abuses would be criminal prosecution, and those would need to come from Trump’s Department of Justice. That just isn’t going to happen.

It’s also notable that Trump has entrusted Hegseth for the staffing, training, and oversight of these units. Hegseth is a man whose favorite word appears to be “lethality,” and who has gone to the mat to defend war criminals — including those accused by their fellow soldiers. In his book, Hesgeth called for the U.S. military to be enlisted in a holy war, and he held a prayer service at the Pentagon in which a pastor declared that Trump was “sovereignly appointed” by God. 

There’s actually some reason to hope that National Guard troops would be more inclined than others to refuse illegal orders. The Guard is made up of part-time soldiers who in most cases are deployed in the states where they live and work. These aren’t Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Border Patrol agents immersed in toxic police culture. They’re teachers, bartenders, and lawyers. When the White House violently cleared protesters from Lafayette Park to allow Trump’s surreal, Bible-clutching photo op in 2020, it was National Guard troops and supervisors who disputed the White House’s lies about how it all went down.

But this is again why it’s important that Hegseth will oversee the staffing of these units. This is a Defense Secretary who said at his confirmation hearing that he does his pushups in sets of 47 — as tribute to the 47th president. It seems safe to say that under Hegseth, the units will be staffed with soldiers loyal to Trump above all else.

The rapid deployment plan will likely encounter pushback from the courts. The L.A. deployments were the first time in U.S. history that a president has federalized and deployed Guard troops in a state over the objections of that state’s governor. This plan would essentially make that breach of norms an ongoing federal policy.

But if the courts do intervene, don’t expect Trump to give up on the idea. The most likely scenario is a similar project, but staffed with ICE, Border Patrol, FBI, or DHS officers instead. He’d just need to change the mission of the masked, lawless goons we see taking down moms and grandfathers in viral videos from immigration enforcement to general law enforcement.

Congress also just gave Trump a massive budget increase to ramp up hiring at these agencies, and the agencies themselves have already been purged of nonbelievers. The Atlantic reported recently that to staff up, ICE has shortened its training period from five months to just 47 days — the 47 again in honor of the current president. (An ICE spokesperson says the length of the new training program is a coincidence.)

A rapid deployment force staffed with federal law enforcement officers would still be illegal if it’s deployed for reasons other than to enforce federal law, such as suppressing protests or projecting force in blue cities. But the rule of law means little if no one bothers to enforce it.

Over the years, one of the healthier aspects of our now-hobbled democracy is that the institution most adamant about preserving the line between the military and domestic policing has been the military itself. When the Regan and Bush administrations wanted active duty troops conducting street searches and drug raids in the 1980s and 1990s, it was opposition from the Pentagon itself that killed the idea. “We do not allow the Army, Navy, and the Marines and Air Force to be a police force,” Marine Maj. Gen. Stephen Olmstead told Congress in 1989. “History is replete with countries that allowed that to happen. Disaster is the result.”

Retired Maj. General Randy Manner — the former second in command of the National Guard and deputy commanding general of Army forces in the Middle East — recently echoed Olmstead’s fears to a reporter from MSNBC. 

“Shouldn’t the concept of having the U.S. military on the streets of our cities alarm every single human being in the United States?” he asked. “Military, who are trained to kill people — and they’re not trained in law enforcement — on our streets. This should scare the crap out of every single person in the country.”

Trump and Hegseth have done their best to purge people like Olmstead and Manner from the Pentagon. Let’s hope they missed a few.