Authoritarian Creep: How Trump Militarized L.A. Overnight

Newsom said no. Trump did it anyway. This is a major escalation.

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Let’s be crystal clear here:

Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard into Los Angeles is an unnecessary, dangerous escalation that is purely an exercise in suppressing dissent and narrative building. We need to break any narrative the administration tries to push, and make this explicit: This is not about public safety. It’s about control.

Not only has Governor Newsom taken strenuous steps to offer and provide the support of local and state resources, but he has repeatedly said there is no reality in which the National Guard is necessary. Against Governor Newsom’s will, Trump is still overriding the California National Guard.

After sending undertrained agents into majority-Latino neighborhoods to carry out deportations in a brazen and reckless manner, Trump administration officials immediately took to Fox News and X, using increasingly extreme rhetoric that only further inflamed tensions on the ground. The Trump admin built up outrage, then used it as a pretext to justify deploying the Guard.

Trump supporters are already gleefully lining up to cheer his use of Title 10 to send 2,000 National Guard troops into California — ignoring the fact that he did it against the clear objections of the state’s elected leaders.

Here is how we break the MAGA narrative and explain the danger:

1. Proportionality is what separates justice from abuse.

   This one is simple: if someone slaps me in the face and I pull a gun, that’s not a proportionate response, it’s an escalation.
   When low-level protests break out in Los Angeles and Trump answers with military force, that’s not about restoring order. That’s about asserting control.

2. You can’t claim to defend states’ rights, then cheer as a state’s will is trampled. Conservatives are constantly talking about the importance of state sovereignty. States’ rights are at the core of their philosophy, from abortion rights to education policy, they insist the federal government should stay out of state affairs. Just this week Marjorie Taylor Greene had a passionate house floor speech where she defended states’ ability to dictate their own AI laws.

   So here’s the question: if California’s governor says federal troops are not needed, why is Trump allowed to override him and send in 2,000 National Guard troops anyway? If they care about states' rights, they should be the first ones opposing this federal overreach.

3. This is an exercise in narrative building for Trump - it’s theatrical.

   If this were truly about protecting the public, Trump would have coordinated with Governor Newsom, worked with state officials, and ensured that any necessary support was provided through cooperation, not force.

   Instead, Trump and his administration are flooding Fox News with inflammatory rhetoric, and again, using outrage as a pretext to justify deploying the National Guard. He’s crafting a story: that immigrants are violent, that those who defend them participate and enable this violence, and that only military force can restore order. That is the narrative Trump wants to embed in the public’s mind, and right now, it’s working.

Governor Newsom has shown restraint, leadership, and clarity. He is doing what any responsible leader would do — keeping the peace with local and state resources, and rejecting unnecessary federal force.

We cannot let this become the norm.

If the president can override governors and use the military to police local streets, we are no longer operating under democratic principles. We are sleepwalking toward authoritarianism.

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Thanks for being here. More soon,
Adam