For the first time since 1965, a US president federalized the National Guard without a formal request for intervention from a governor to restore order. Sixty years ago, it was President Lyndon B. Johnson who sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights protesters. Today it is Donald Trump who, in Los Angeles, first ordered the deployment of about 2,000 members of the National Guard (June 9th), later raising the number to 4,000, including 700 marines. A deployment formally justified by the protests that began on June 6th, when ICE agents (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) entered the garment district of Los Angeles, an area dedicated to manufacturing and trade, to arrest alleged illegal immigrants. Similar protests had occurred in previous days in San Diego and in Massachusetts and then spread to other cities across the country.
The conflict that emerges is indicative of what a report by Johns Hopkins University – published shortly before the 2024 presidential elections – calls the state of “significant erosion” of American democracy and of the increased polarization that, in the months before Trump’s re-election, led to a level of political violence comparable to that recorded in the 1970s. Significant, in this regard, was the alleged killing by a Trump-supporting voter, Vance Boelter, on June 14th, of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband; state senator John Hoffman and his wife were also injured in the attack. Both politicians belonged to the Democratic Party and, according to the police, the attacks were politically motivated.
This was not the only episode of this kind. In October 2020, for instance, the FBI foiled a plot by members of the militia movement – a group of armed “patriots” who consider themselves a vanguard meant to awaken and defend the United States – to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. Also emblematic of the level of confrontation is a recent statement by Tom Homan, ICE Director from 2017 to 2018 and, since January 2025, Executive Associate Director of ICE’s operational division in charge of the arrest, detention and deportation of suspected irregular immigrants, which is why Trump nicknamed him the “border czar”. According to Homan, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom had acted like an outlaw during the Los Angeles crisis and should have, therefore, been arrested. Newsom had immediately criticized the President for sending troops to the Californian city, accusing him of inflaming the clashes and violating California’s sovereignty, and described Trump’s rhetoric as “authoritarian”. On June 9th, Newsom, through California’s Attorney General, filed a lawsuit against the presidential administration.
Politicization of the armed forces and a “praetorian state”
Among the many issues raised by this crisis is whether the United States is becoming a “praetorian state”, a political science category largely shaped by the interpretation offered by political scientist Samuel Huntington in Political Order in Changing Societies (1968). A praetorian state is a state characterized by a high level of social conflict in which the armed forces – whose active personnel in the US number around 1.32 million and enjoy a trust rate of nearly 80% – hold such a prominent role that they become the center of power.
In January, Trump issued a series of executive orders aimed at reshaping the military by eliminating inclusion policies and anti-discrimination measures based on race and gender. In addition, the President replaced the leadership of military academies, accusing them of being “woke” Most notably, he dismissed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown, replacing him with retired Air Force General Dan Caine. The Chairman is the highest-ranking military officer and reports directly to the President; in addition to presiding over the Joint Chiefs of Staff – a council made up of the top officers from all branches of the armed forces –, the Chairman advises the President and serves as the liaison between the executive and the military. The Chairman’s term lasts four years and is typically appointed halfway through the presidential term. Trump broke with this tradition by prematurely dismissing Brown, who had been appointed by Joe Biden, to install a general closer to him.
Another signal of the politicization of the armed forces can be seen in the military parade held in Washington on June 14th to mark the 250th anniversary of the armed forces (which coincided with Trump’s 78th birthday). The President had wanted to organize a similar event during his first term but eventually relented to due to opposition from many – in his own party and among some of his own advisors – who highlighted the risk of militarizing politics. The public event of June 2025 was the first military parade since 1991, when the army marched to celebrate the end of the First Gulf War. In protest against this decision, demonstrations were organized across the country under the movement called “No Kings”.
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Trump’s attempts to politicize the armed forces in his first term prompted John Allen, a former Marine general and NATO commander, to accuse the President during the George Floyd protests of treating the military as a “personal force”. This accusation was also based on the fact that, during the Floyd protests, Trump, along with members of his cabinet, left the White House to walk to a nearby church that had been burned, accompanied by then-Secretary of Defense Mike Esper and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, who was wearing combat uniform – for which Milley later apologized. It was a break with protocol, which dictates that military officers do not appear in combat attire when accompanying the president: a way of underscoring the separation between the armed forces and politics, but also between the military and law enforcement.
In 2017, Trump had appointed several retired generals to his cabinet, calling them “my generals”. However, all of them resigned or were dismissed before the end of his term due to Trump’s repeated criticism of the military, especially of many serving generals who he described as representatives of the “deep state”. As of today, however, about 61% of veterans support the President.
In the four years between Trump’s first and second terms, he repeatedly emphasized that, in the event of re-election and public order issues – including the management of protests and the repression of immigration –, he would not hesitate, as he did in the past, to resort to military force, declaring himself willing to act even without the consent of governors and reiterating his plan to send the military to the border with Mexico to monitor immigration.
The use of military force within the United States: the legal framework
To federalize the California National Guard, Trump relied on Section 12406 of Title 10 of the US Code, a set of laws (Federal Statuses) which allows the President to act in cases in which the United States or some states are invaded or at risk of invasion – and indeed, both Trump and Vance spoke on X of an invasion and occupation by violent and insurrectional illegal immigrants; in the event of a rebellion or the threat of rebellion against the authorities; or when the President is unable with regular forces to “execute the laws”. Nevertheless, the section is not as clear as it may seem. The final part of the section, in fact, states: “Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.”
At first glance, then, the Code does not grant any authority to the President to use federal troops in the way Trump authorized Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. At the same time, when he federalized the California National Guard, the President tasked Hegseth “to coordinate with the Governors of the States” – in the plural – to identify the units to be federalized. After all, the Code itself allows this when it states: “The President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws.” This opens up the possibility that Hegseth may send troops from other states, including Republican ones, thus increasing political tensions. Another possibility is that the administration plans to extend the use of troops to other parts of the country, since Trump’s order is not limited to Los Angeles but authorizes the use of troops to protect immigration enforcement operations wherever protests or unrest occur. In this sense, the interpretation of the Code given on this occasion may also constitute a precedent for the future.
Given the vagueness of the legal framework, Trump, in federalizing the California National Guard, referred to the “authority vested in me as President by the Constitution”, i.e., Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” The article does not itself authorize the use of armed forces within the country by the President, but the administration could apply an expansive reading of presidential power that would allow him to claim the right to deploy troops. An idea that also seems to be supported through the use of certain memos written for the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice during the Vietnam War by William H. Rehnquist, a Supreme Court Justice from 1972 and its Chief Justice from 1986 to 2005. According to Rehnquist, presidents would have the inherent power to use troops to prevent peaceful protesters from obstructing federal functions or damaging federal property in Washington, DC and at the Pentagon. However, there is no definitive judicial ruling on this idea, and moreover, the memos referred to two federal enclaves, unlike the areas where ICE is conducting its arrests.
The legal framework is also complex because the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 allows the use of military force within the country only with congressional authorization or in the narrow cases provided by the Constitution. The Constitution was written in 1787, when there was not yet an army as it exists in the United States today. However, Article I, Section 8 assigns Congress the power to organize the navy and the armed forces (clauses 12, 13, 14) and, relevant here, to “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions” (clause 15) and “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress” (clause 16).
Nevertheless, a law that predates the Posse Comitatus Act, the Insurrection Act of 1807 – which Trump considered invoking during the George Floyd protests – allows the President to federalize the National Guard and use US armed forces to suppress civil unrest, insurrections and rebellions against the government. One section of the Insurrection Act specifies that states must request its application, while another stipulates that in cases where a state is unable to enforce the law or when citizens’ rights are being curtailed, the President may intervene. These powers were expanded following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, although they were later restricted due to unanimous objections from governors who saw them as an excessive extension of federal powers. Applying the Act, however, is not as straightforward as it may seem: the President must first issue a proclamation ordering the “insurgents” to disperse within a limited time frame. If this does not occur, the President may then issue an executive order, federalize the National Guard, and deploy it.
The militarization of the police and the increased prominence of the military
The Posse Comitatus Act has often been disregarded in US history. In particular, since the late 1970s it has frequently been debated in relation to the collaboration of the armed forces with local police in managing standoffs and in the provision of weapons and equipment. A 1981 law, the Military Cooperation With Civilian Law Enforcement Act (MCLEA), resolved the issue by identifying the circumstances under which the Department of Defense may provide direct assistance during investigations and crises, and also share information. In addition, the armed forces may provide police departments with weapons, equipment, and vehicles when requested. It was on this basis that Bill Clinton’s well-known 1033 Program was authorized, allowing further transfers of military equipment, weapons and supplies to the police. This program, partially blocked by Barack Obama in 2015, was reactivated by Trump and recently expanded, authorizing additional transfers from the armed forces to police departments.
This situation has led to a rise in Police Paramilitary Units – police forces such as SWAT that adopt military hierarchies, equipment, training and vehicles, and are highly militarized – across the United States since the late 1960s, with an expansion of their functions to include patrolling. Moreover, it has made the military both a supplier of goods to the police and a guarantor of both national defense and public order. In this sense, the military enjoys greater prominence in the US today than in the past. This prominence has altered the balance between the federal government and the states: Local police forces have become dependent on federal funding for acquisitions from the military and therefore dependent on the military itself.
The military’s increased prominence has also contributed to a shift in how dissent is perceived: Unlike the police, which are supposed to see those in front of them as citizens and minimize the use of maximum force, the military views its counterpart as a threat and tends to more often resort to overwhelming force. This latter shift is not insignificant, as it intertwines with the growing polarization in the United States. One consequence of polarization is the refusal to regard one’s political opponents as legitimate, viewing them instead as un-American, alien to the body of the nation – in other words, as enemies. A telling example of this mindset was the statement by Trump’s first-term Secretary of Defense, Mike Esper, who described the urban clashes following George Floyd’s death as a “battlespace”.
The crisis of American democracy
According to The Atlantic commentator Tom Nichols, Trump deliberately militarized the response to the protests in Los Angeles in order to create a casus with which to attack or undermine constitutional liberties. Nichols is not the only commentator to highlight the risk of an authoritarian turn in the United States. For The New York Times journalist Tyler Pager, the situation that has emerged in Los Angeles presents a series of elements that Trump is actively seeking – namely, a clash with a major political rival (the governor of California), in a Democratic state, on a central issue of his agenda (illegal immigration). From this point of view, according to The Atlantic columnist David Frum, the crisis appears to serve the purpose of asserting Trump’s personal control over law enforcement procedures.
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This is because the President bypassed the authority of the state of California, which has about 75,000 law enforcement officers, 9,000 of whom are in Los Angeles – numbers that, according to Frum, would be sufficient to maintain order. It would thus be a political strategy unfolding in three phases: the use of federal powers to provoke media-visible unrest; proclaiming a state of emergency based on the unrest in order to deploy troops; and taking control of local governmental operations, i.e., law enforcement, in view of the November 2026 midterm elections. The latter scenario is still far off, as more than a year remains before the vote, but we do not know how the situation may evolve. Nevertheless, the President may be testing ways to shield himself from the outcome of the elections or new impeachment procedures. According to Frum, if Trump succeeds in fomenting unrest in Democratic states before the midterms, he could invoke emergency powers to impose federal control over the voting process. Or he could even suspend the vote until, in his view, order has been restored. In either case, seats from Democratic states could remain vacant for a certain period.
These considerations align with those of Lee Morgenbesser, Associate Professor at Griffith University, regarding ICE. According to Morgenbesser, ICE is increasingly comparable to the standards used in political science to identify the secret police of authoritarian regimes. This is particularly due to its lack of clear identification – many arrests are carried out by plainclothes agents without badges – and its use to repress dissent, such as against foreign students and researchers who have demonstrated for Palestine at universities. While ICE does not report directly to the President, it is controlled by individuals who have demonstrated deep loyalty to Trump, including Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, under whose authority ICE falls, and Tom Homan. Morgenbesser also highlights that ICE has increased its powers, particularly in intelligence – capacities it is seeking to further expand through collaborations with private agencies, including to monitor criticism of the agency or of the administration more broadly – partly thanks to a possible increase in agency funding.
The growth in ICE’s operational capacity is also evidenced by what appears to be a new phase in immigration enforcement, now focusing especially on workplaces, as in the case of Los Angeles. These raids require well-structured planning, can be costly, and imply a large deployment of agents, but they lead to more arrests than individual cases and align with the objectives of the US administration. Such operations are made possible because FBI agents and other law enforcement personnel have been brought into immigration operations.
Towards a praetorian state?
In the transition towards a praetorian state, the loss of political legitimacy by those in power is central. This may lead to two scenarios. On the one hand, the military intervenes to restore order, presenting itself as the defender of national unity, which results in a military coup. On the other, those in power increasingly rely on the armed forces to assert and/or maintain their authority, making the leader ever more dependent on military power.
The administration of Donald Trump suffers from a certain lack of political legitimacy. The President was re-elected by a narrow margin of just 1.5 percentage points (49.91% versus Kamala Harris’s 48.43%) and without an absolute majority. All presidents before him since 1968 – except for George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016, who both lost the popular vote – have done better than Donald Trump. Moreover, according to a Gallup poll updated in May, only 43% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance, down from 47% at the end of January. This is a record low: it is the lowest approval rating of any president since the 1950s. The only exception is Trump himself in March 2017, with 42%.
This crisis is also reflected in the relationship among the executive (the President), the legislative (Congress), and the judiciary (from the Supreme Court to lower courts). In his first 100 days in office, Trump issued 130 executive orders, whereas Barack Obama signed 19 and Joe Biden 42. Many of these orders were later challenged in court for being unconstitutional, but they still serve to push the limits of presidential power, thereby altering the balance among the branches of government.
Eliminating checks and balances centralizes executive power by removing the barriers that stand between the President and the people. A people who, in the name of polarization that casts the opponent as un-American, identify with their leader and, in this sense, legitimize the use of military force. This could lead to a growing dependence of the rulers on the armed forces, which, as has been seen, already enjoy a certain preeminence in the United States, and the combination of these trends and pressures risks, if not leading to a praetorian state, at least worsening the crisis of American democracy, especially if voices of dissent begin to rise from within the military against the commander in chief.