Caesar in California

[Celerity]

A domestic deployment in California could mark the moment the military ceases to serve the Constitution—and begins serving the man.

https://washingtonspectator.org/caesar-in-california/



The legal confrontation between the federal government and the State of California entered a new phase on June 7, 2025, when President Donald J. Trump invoked 10 U.S.C. § 12406, a statute that allows the President to place National Guard units under federal control in cases of rebellion or obstruction of law, thereby federalizing elements of the California National Guard. Citing escalating protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and what he described as an “unlawful rebellion,” the President ordered at least 2,000 National Guard personnel into federal service for “force protection” of federal immigration officers. While their initial role would be limited—no direct arrests or crowd control—the legal and political path is now unmistakably heading toward something far more consequential.

This is something Trump has long wanted to do. During his first term, amid the George Floyd protests in June 2020, he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty troops to U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C.   He insisted the protesters made him seem “weak” and demanded up to 10,000 troops and even asked whether soldiers “could just shoot them in the legs or something.” Then, his top advisors—Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Joint Chiefs head General Mark Milley, and Attorney General William Barr—publicly and privately opposed the move. Now, his immigration policy czar, Stephen Miller, and his acting deportation head at ICE, Tom Homan, are egging him on.

The Rhetorical Claims Trump Employs to Justify the Use of Military Force

On June 8, Trump again ratcheted up his rhetoric, describing Los Angeles as “invaded,” “occupied,” and “swarming” with “Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” blending immigration enforcement with a national security lens. He labeled protesters as “violent, insurrectionist mobs,” as if they were like the January 6 rioters he set into motion in 2021. He ordered DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi—heads of three civilian and military-linked agencies—to take “all such action necessary” to “liberate” Los Angeles from migrants, using language with quasi-military, quasi-occupation overtones, usually reserved for foreign conflict zones.

The language sets the stage politically and legally for him soon to order federal control over local law enforcement operations, possibly superseding state and municipal authority, by formally invoking the Insurrection Act under 10 U.S.C. § 252 and then interpreting it expansively. The text of that law authorizes the President to use federal troops to suppress “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages” that render it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States “by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” It is among the most extreme tools available to a President and, historically, has only been used in the face of violent unrest or open defiance of federal court orders—for example, Eisenhower’s deployment in Little Rock in 1957 to enforce school desegregation, or President George H. W. Bush’s response to the Los Angeles riots in 1992.

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