Michael Smolens: Trump’s domestic militia is growing

There’s a new reality we’re likely to experience: U.S. troops regularly patrolling streets in American cities.

It’s clear that the presence of heavily armed immigration agents and National Guard members in Democratic metropolitan areas is not a short-lived policy of President Donald Trump.

The courts may still rule against Trump’s use of the National Guard as he is trying to do. But even if they do, he has a history of ignoring the judges or otherwise looking for workarounds on legal prohibitions.

He’s not designating special National Guard “reaction forces” as essentially a federal domestic police force for nothing. His claim that they are needed to deal with civil unrest would be laughable if it weren’t so serious and potentially dangerous.

Trump has said he would use various branches of the standing military for the same purpose. Given his actions so far, why do so many people seem to shrug this off as idle talk?

There has not been the kind of widespread unrest — let alone any insurrection — that he suggests requires military involvement, despite his claims. What protests have occurred so far can, have and should be handled by local law enforcement, as governors and mayors of those cities maintain and as prescribed by law.

Some of those protests, and certainly the intensity of them, have been triggered by the aggressive, militaristic shows of force in cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago. It now seems like long ago, but it was only in June that Trump dispatched Marines to immigration protests in L.A.

Even one of his top Homeland Security officials from his first term called these ploys a “false flag” intended to provoke and justify harsh crackdowns.

The Pentagon says thousands of National Guard personnel are being prepared for civil unrest in urban areas. This, of course, is a departure from the Guard’s traditional duties of assisting during natural disasters and, on rare occasions, helping protect the public and property during widespread rioting.

We can only hope that the members of these units will be trained in ways that prioritize professionalism and restraint, not the thuggish tactics regularly displayed by federal agents during immigration enforcement.

Recently, a U.S. citizen in Los Angeles was shot in the back by a federal agent while driving away.

A day care worker was chased into a school on Wednesday by federal agents, who then dragged her out in front of children. She told the agents she had documents to be in the country legally but was still arrested, according to news reports.

A military veteran, another a U.S. citizen, was pulled out of his car in Ventura and held for three days. Never having been charged, he was released. If you think this is some liberal rant, check out George Will’s column on this injustice.

The standard government claim that the victims were either resisting, assaulting or otherwise behaving illegally toward the agents often have been specious and contradicted by evidence.

These are not isolated incidents.

Nor are these the kind of people the Trump administration says it is targeting — dangerous criminal immigrants, who should be deported. Data has shown that beyond immigration status, the majority of people arrested in the nationwide immigration roundup do not have criminal records.

Trump has expanded the use of the National Guard from immigration to the general notion that the military is needed to combat crime. This comes as violent crime rates continue to drop nationwide, according to the FBI.

Some urban areas certainly have their problems, and maybe could use help. There’s a way to do that — see how the state of New Mexico is coordinating with its National Guard — but it’s not deploying heavily armed units without consultation or approval of local officials.

Crime and immigration are seen as winning issues for Republicans. But depicting undocumented immigrants as a public safety threat (generally, they aren’t) and exaggerating or making up crime problems (Portland is not burning) as Trump does is morally, if not legally, wrong.

That Trump cut hundreds of millions of dollars for anti-crime and law enforcement programs contradicts the notion that his primary goal here is to tame crime.

The harassment, intimidation and arrests may go beyond pseudo-crime fighting and illegal immigration. The elections certainly are on Trump’s radar.

Remember that more than a dozen Border Patrol agents appeared at an August rally and news conference in Los Angeles where Gov. Gavin Newsom kicked off the Proposition 50 redistricting campaign. The events had nothing to do with immigration.

In June, Trump said he thought arresting Newsom would be “great.” It would be easy to suggest these and other threats against officials who oppose him are merely off-kilter rants. But then Trump’s Department of Justice has begun selective prosecutions and investigations of people like former FBI Director James Comey and Democratic California Sen. Adam Schiff.

Trump is already trying to put his thumb on the scale in next year’s midterm elections, during which Democrats hope to take over the House majority, by trying to ban mail-in ballots and change other legitimate voting rules he deems advantageous to Democrats.

Republican lawsuits claiming Democratic election victories have been fraudulent continue to this day, as they have for years, though none has been successful. Meanwhile, Trump has installed election deniers in key federal positions, and like-minded people are now serving as election officials in many states.

Perhaps because of Trump’s false claims of widespread voting fraud, U.S. elections in recent years have never been more secure, transparent and orderly.

For at least a decade, Trump has stoked political tensions with evidence-free claims about a rigged system against his interests. As president, he’s quick to declare an emergency when there is none to justify executive action.

Don’t expect that to change with next year’s elections. It’s not going to make things calmer if U.S. troops are on the streets.

What they said

Elizabeth Landers, White House correspondent for PBS News Hour. (@ElizLanders)

“A White House official sent this information over (Tuesday night) in response to my question in the briefing today when I asked for evidence, as the president claimed, that the CA voting is ‘rigged.’ This cites one example of voter fraud in Orange County, CA from 2021/2022.”