This should go over well with the Pentagon:
Now, a 4 am post of "TRUE!!!" is not exactly a reliable policy pronouncement. But it's certainly suggestive.
But can Trump do it? Both law and culture bar the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement. Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act, but that would trigger instant court action since there's plainly no insurrection happening at the moment. And even if Trump prevailed in court, the military traditionally insists that its involvement be limited to a specific jurisdiction.
Trump might get away with it. Maybe the Supreme Court would cave in to some sophistry or another and maybe Trump could bulldoze the military into reluctantly going along. But it would be a helluva mess. He'd be better off just asking Congress for $30 or $40 billion to authorize a truckload of new ICE officers. Maybe they could hire all the January 6 protesters Trump plans to pardon.
POSTSCRIPT: It's worth recalling that Trump already tried this in his first term. It was a smallish deployment to the border in 2018, and even at that troops were forbidden by law from detaining migrants. All they could do was provide limited logistical support (air, medical, etc.) to border patrol officers.
Trump himself is not interested in immigrants. For him it is just elections propaganda.
But he needs an excuse for creating a force to suppress any opposition, and deporting migrants is a good excuse for that.
I would expect him to want to create a new force, so he can recruit only loyalists to it. The army contains too many people with respect to the constitutional order, which makes it difficult to use (as he found in the first term). But maybe he will try to use the army anyway.
Political theater to send a message that resistance will not be tolerated. The base wants law and order restored (unless there's a stolen election to protest, which is totally different). Laying the groundwork for enforcement in case the women get out of line as well.
The idea that Trump will deport the illegal immigrants working for illegal employers like farmers, construction contractors, meatpackers, and golf course owners is risible.
The purpose of his rhetoric is to instill terror and create a captive slave labor force without rights.
This is classic authoritarianism, which is the antithesis of the rule of law—the arbitrariness and capriciousness of the autocrat dictates outcomes.
That’s why people in authoritarian states are sentenced to harsh punishment for random activity that is not criminal in any way—and then “mercifully” released by the autocrat who spares them.
And Trump doesn’t give a shit if the wages of his base are driven down by emasculating the slave labor force—that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s just so sad that those desperate people who have been raped by the billionaire class actually believe this vicious, malevolent huckster. The Democrats must do better.
Every single thing Trump says is utter bullshit. The only time he has ever told the truth is when he said he could shoot someone dead in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose the vote of a single one of his pathetic lickspittles.
I believe you're pretty spot on with your analysis but with one exception. He will not use this new army deportation force to expel immigrants from Republican donor states and businesses. However I can foresee him using this deportation force AGAINST his "enemies" in attempt to punish their businesses and use that power to the benefit of his benefactors.
What was Elon doing with Trump's phone at 4am, that looks like something he'd write?
It's a safe bet that Elon has access to any X account to do anything he wants.
Doesn't X still use blue checkmarks? Those are red -- this is in all likelihood a screen capture of Truth Social.
Yes, Truth Social uses pink checks. This isn't X.
Not really. The National Guard can be federalized and used for domestic law enforcement basically at-will. That's longstanding precedent.
Trump also deployed the army, not just the guard but the army, to crack immigrant heads his last go-round and that passed legal muster, so...
Only in cases of localized riots, and even then the military is reluctant.
Civil stuff (hurricane cleanup etc.) is a different matter.
I think it’s fair to say that the laws in this country are in a state of flux. The law that we knew, the law that was written down in decisions and books is basically just words on paper at this point. There’s plenty of Republican judges (including the six on the Supreme Court) who will almost certainly do as they are told.
Indeed, my guess is that now that the guardrails are crumbling, all institutions will quickly learn to obey and so will almost all of the people. The real question now is whether Trump’s up to the job or whether he can screwup implementing himself as king. If Trump acts boldly and audaciously, it will take a “color revolution” to rid us of the Republican Party and that takes a long time to put together and apparently has historically failed to restore what was lost. .
The guy did organize an assault on Congress to overthrow an election and nothing happened to him besides the Supreme Court declaring he should be immune. So yeah, nothing to worry about here.
things will be fine
I understand how the line about hiring Jan 6 "protesters" is tempting to write. But for God's sake don't give the guy any ideas!
We, as a country, litigated this question on November 5, and we decided that it is not, in fact, stupid.
...even though it is. Stupid, I mean.
Remember the Big Block of Cheese Day episode of the West Wing?
This was, of course, a reference to Andrew Jackson who, infamously, brought into his administration and to DC a whole different crew from what had been there before.
And who, BTW, did something more or less like what Trump is suggesting...
Of course back in the day (1999) Jackson was still to some extent a hero even to Hollywood, being a Democrat and all...
Everything has a history. But plenty of people would rather ignore that history if it doesn't fit the histrionics of the hour.
...and someone sent him the largest block of cheese and it took them a long long time to get rid of it.
"This was, of course, a reference to Andrew Jackson who, infamously, brought into his administration and to DC a whole different crew from what had been there before." Everyone did that back then. The sale of civil service jobs was the norm until the 1880s.
name99 is right, though--the 19th century was great so why would people (of color, or women, or non-landholders) complain about being dragged back to the norms of that glorious time?
First, the primary intention of this advanced messaging is to get undocumented, TPS, and other residents to leave on their own. Many will do so out of fear of being arrested and forced to deal with the consequences that includes being deported back to the country they left to escape persecution. Maybe they'll flee to Canada?
Second, Trump will most certainly work with Republican governors to activate the National Guard in their states to support deportations within their state. This will cause many to flee to states with Democratic governors. Republican governors will see this as dunking on Democrats much like when DeSantis and Abbott sent recent immigrants onto planes or buses to Democratic states.
Whether or not he activates the US military is almost moot. He doesn't need to do it, but he might do it just as virtue signaling (even if SCOTUS blocks him, which I think is doubtful), doubling down on the message to immigrants both lawfully and unlawfully living in the US to get out on their own.
I believe it’s called vice signalling when the thing you want to do that you don’t really believe in is bad or evil. Virtue signalling is supposed to be doing something good that you don’t really believe in.
Virtue-signaling is exactly what I mean. He bifurcated the issue into good vs evil the moment he rode his fat ass down his escalator, and has held the anti-immigrant mantle since then.
Trump has zero interest in actually effecting deportations of the slave labor force that props up the agricultural, construction, and meatpacking industries—all heavily Republican.
After all, if the Chinese-owned meatpacking companies couldn’t hire teenage Mexicans to work the graveyard shift hosing down their slaughterhouses for less than minimum wage, many white Christian Americans might profit slightly less from abusing them.
He has a huge interest in extending the Two Minutes Hate to the Four Year Hate and ensuring that said slave labor force remains docile.
Well, arguably, he'd do it to force employers to go through the H-2A and H-2B visa system, which meaningfully blocks all avenues for citizenship to all the brown people working in the US.
We are talking about people with mortgages and businesses and kids in school. Those kids, by the way, may not even have any legal standing in the countries of their parents. It's not clear whether the undocumented immigrants themselves have enough documentation to self-deport.
He's already kinda telegraphed his plan.
Step one order the military to do it.
Step two keep firing generals and appointing suck-ups
Step three eventually there will be enough suck-ups to comply
Imagine how the hordes will cheer and Fox News will annoint his forehead.
Order military to do what?
Mass deportations.
They have to round up people first, don't they?
Then they have to build deportation camps, because they can't just load up people on buses or planes and ship them out. They have to get a buy in from the countries where they are deporting people. And the kids who were born here -- they have no standing in those countries at all. It'll take weeks and months and longer.
And how many in the military signed up to patrol U.S. municipalities to assist in mass deportations? Recruitment is going to be interesting under those conditions.
While waiting in the camps, perhaps have them earn their keep by bussing them to employers who need labor based on the fact that their former laborers were placed in camps.
The "law" has never bound Donald Trump, and is in fact far too slow to keep up with his criming. Look how he fomented an insurrection against the United States of America, and has not even been charged for it yet.
And, as everyone has noted, he's packed the federal judiciary with his minions and the Supreme Court has declared him immune from prosecution. Plus, negated the part of the 14th Amendment that would have and should have kept him off the ballot.
Plus, the military does as its told. Maybe not the top level officers, but they're easily taken off the board. The troops follow orders. Too many past cases of soldiers standing on principal, and being destroyed by it ... until decades later when they're declared "heroes." Who needs that?
We can't kick back and assume current law will save us.
Military rank and file and cops love Trump and would love to inflict pain on anyone in the way. Their current top brass have some sense but are in the cross hairs.
9/11 and not one but two Obama terms along with less than stellar results in the middle east have shaken them. The damn browns aren't rolling over. They want revenge and will get the chance to inflict it.
Quick
someone tell me how this is the fault of a few trans girls playing HS sports
I love how people still think the law applies to Trump. He will fire generals until he finds one willing to do it, and if it comes to that it’s over. We can’t rely on the law to save us. If the justice system worked he’d be in prison now and the 14th amendment in place. We can’t rely on impeachment when he starts firing generals either. The GOP will mostly sycophantically do what he wants and how he wants it.
"Maybe" the USSC would cave in" Maybe? As in the court that gave him immunity and ignored insurrection? Ya think ?
LOL
Pundits are already normwashing Trump's intentions. It would be fine for the military to build the camps, provide guards, transport deportees in their vehicles etc. Nothing unlawful about that in a "national emergency". Just as long as soldiers don't actually join in the raids to arrest people.
This kind of slow incrementalism...a slow, gradual surrender sure feels inevitable.
Many Dems are falling in line very quickly. Can imagine the brave resistance line will be something like, "I see no problem with the National Guard and every State Trooper rounding up these people....after all the Navy Seals arent dragging people out of their homes!!"
Kevin will probably make this post by spring. Along with a chart of course.