How Trump Twists the Uses of the National Guard

In one sense, there’s a simple story behind the National Guard bearing down on Los Angeles to break the back of protests there: Donald Trump is itching for a confrontation over immigration with a sanctuary city, and L.A. presents the perfect opportunity for him to flex his muscle. He says he wants calm, but he’s spoiling to fight the left on political ground that is hospitable to him.

In another sense, the story is more complex. Telling it — and understanding how radical Trump’s use of the Guard is — requires knowing the history, including the initial purpose and recent uses of the National Guard, a strange beast that salutes both to state governors and the commander in chief.

The Guard traces its roots to the militias established by the colonies long before the Revolution. They were modeled on a longtime English tradition. Citizen-soldiers organized for local defense; all able-bodied white men had to serve and train.

The militias would prove instrumental in winning the independence of the United States, which may be part of the reason the new Constitution kept the concept. The key language is in Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16 (the “Militia Clauses”). These grant Congress the authority to call up the militia to execute federal laws, stop insurrections and repel invasions, and to provide for “organizing, arming and disciplining the militia” — while giving the states responsibility over appointment of officers and training them in line with federal standards. Article II, Section 2 designates the president as commander-in-chief of the militias once they are called into federal service.

In the years since the Constitution was drafted, use of the militias (rebranded the National Guard in the early 20th century) have reflected all the complexities and contradictions of state and federal power in this republic of 50 states.

Under statute and precedent, the Guard answers to different authorities and performs a wide variety of crucial functions. Under the command of state governors, the Guard responds, as directed by a governor, to state emergencies, natural disasters and civil disturbances. But the Guard also serves as part of the Army or the U.S. Air National Guard, and it can be deployed in combat zones overseas. Complicating matters, the president has the power to “federalize” the Guard, placing it under Washington’s command, in order to “enforce federal authority or suppress domestic violence,” according to the Journal of the U.S. Army. (Presidents can deploy the U.S. military on domestic soil if they deem it necessary to suppress an insurrection; Trump invoked a rarely-used provision in Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services that permits presidents to deploy troops on U.S. soil in cases of “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion” against federal authority.) 

Though Trump’s actions are not without precedent, they twist the normal functions and uses of the Guard in ways rarely seen in past administrations, and with consequences — especially for those living in the nation’s big cities. America’s experience in the 1950s and ‘60s helps explain why Trump’s use of the Guard to suppress anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles is so troubling.

In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and sent 1,000 U.S. soldiers to Arkansas to protect nine Black students seeking to integrate Little Rock Central High School. But he did so only after the segregationist governor Orval Faubus had ordered the Guard to block integration; and only after Faubus withdrew the Guard and permitted white supremacist mob riots. Eisenhower ultimately put the Guard under his command to enforce the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education. He also did so at the request of Little Rock’s mayor. 

During the 1960s, governors called in the Guard as their cities burned. From Newark, N.J. to Detroit, Mich., state (and city) officials led the response. During far deadlier, far more violent urban disturbances five decades ago, governors and mayors used their powers to restore law and order without the intervention of the White House. Federalization of the Guard even then was a step too far. 

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard on the eve of the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. That was the last time a president sent the guard into America’s cities without a governor’s consent. But Johnson had his reasons, deploying it only after Gov. George Wallace, another arch-segregationist, refused to order his state’s Guard or other police authorities under his command to protect nonviolent demonstrators. LBJ took this momentous step in the wake of many years of states defying federal laws and the courts on civil rights, permitting countless acts of violence against civil rights activists.

In short, even during the tumultuous civil rights movement, respect for state and local authority — combined with a cultural aversion to, and constitutional limits on, deploying soldiers domestically (traceable to popular disgust with British colonial rule) — helped limit the number of drastic presidential escalations involving the federalization of the National Guard. Even during the far bloodier and far more destructive uprising in Watts in 1965, Lyndon Johnson deferred to the state of California on when and how to use the Guard to restore order.

The decades after the civil rights movement were similarly characterized by presidential restraint when it came to use of the Guard. During the 1992 Los Angeles riots triggered by the acquittal of four white police officers charged with beating motorist Rodney King, Governor Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to take charge of the state’s guard. Bush did so — but only at the governor’s behest. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, and President George W. Bush considered federalizing the Guard, but the Louisiana governor objected, and the president backed down. The governor deployed it under her own authority.

Republican and Democratic presidents alike have adhered to the principle and statutes holding that local and state officials are best positioned to deploy the guard and know when to ask for federal help. Presidents have respected the separation of powers in many cases, enabling states to decide when the guard is needed and when federal assistance is required. 

Los Angeles may be a sign that this bipartisan tradition has come to an end. Trump’s highly unusual action raises a specter for New Yorkers in particular: Could New York City come next? If Trump gets the political standoff he seeks, it could play right into his political narrative to widen the tactic. New York, also led by liberals whom Trump despises, must look like a ripe target for the White House. 

Trump’s team believes that this is a winning issue: The president can deploy the Guard, paint Democratic leaders as soft on rioters, weak on illegal immigration, and wanton in their willingness to allow crime to destroy big cities. Like Angelenos, New Yorkers seem inclined to resist ICE roundups in places of work.

It’s not hard to imagine the fight coming to New York. The endgame in L.A. may well determine whether or not Trump next sets his sights on the Big Apple.