I recently watched a rather good docu-drama on Wyatt Earp – all moustaches, gun smoke, and constitutional tension. One moment in particular stood out: the then-President’s attempt to deploy the U.S. Army to help Earp and his marshals go after the Cowboy gang – which Congress promptly voted down.
It wasn’t because the Cowboys didn’t deserve justice. It was because even in the lawless world of Tombstone, there was a line: the Army is not your local police.
Congress’s refusal was rooted in principle. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, passed just a few years earlier, barred the federal military from enforcing civilian law. The only exception was the Insurrection Act, meant for rebellion, not cattle rustlers. Congress understood that letting the president use federal troops against civilians set a dangerous precedent.
Now fast-forward to 2025 and Donald Trump, who just deployed 2,000 National Guardsmen to Los Angeles without the governor’s consent, after unrest broke out in response to federal immigration raids.
This wasn’t about restoring calm. It was about staging control. Trump – a man with all the restraint of a dog in a squirrel sanctuary – federalised California’s National Guard, wresting them from Governor Newsom’s authority and sending them into a protest zone sparked by aggressive immigration enforcement.
And what a set-up. ICE – that’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for those lucky enough not to have it kicking down doors in their neighbourhood – conducts heavy-handed sweeps in a Latino area to meet deportation quotas. Protests erupt. Tear gas flies. Federal agents clash with civilians. Then the White House calls it “lawlessness” and rolls in the troops. A crisis manufactured for the cameras.
But to understand how Trump got away with this, you have to understand why the National Guard exists at all.
Formally created by the Militia Act of 1903, the National Guard was designed to replace the chaotic tangle of 19th-century state militias with a more professional, dual-role force. It serves two masters:
- The state governor, for domestic emergencies.
- The president, when national defence or insurrection demands it.
Legally, under Title 32 of the U.S. Code, the Guard remains under state control (even when federally funded). But under Title 10, the president can federalise it – transforming it into a federal military asset.
However, this isn’t meant to be done on a whim. The conditions for federalisation include:
- A national emergency.
- A collapse of civil authority.
- An insurrection, rebellion, or active obstruction of federal law.
None of those applied in Los Angeles.
Local law enforcement was intact. No governor asked for help. And Trump didn’t even invoke the Insurrection Act, which would have required legal justification and scrutiny. Instead, he sidestepped the process entirely with a Presidential Memorandum – and deployed troops to enforce a narrative, not law.
That’s where this gets dangerous. Because while federal troops are normally barred from policing civilians under Posse Comitatus, the National Guard can – but only when under state control. Federalising them should mean pulling them away from civilian policing duties, not pushing them into it.
Back in Tombstone, Congress said no. They recognised the danger. In 2025, Trump just did it anyway, under cover of chaos of his own making.
Governor Newsom condemned the move. Mayor Bass called ICE's tactics "terror." Trump responded with his usual all-caps bombast, promising to deal with “RIOTS & LOOTERS” the “way it should be solved.” We know what that means. We’ve heard it before.
What’s most galling is the choreography. ICE triggers unrest, then the administration declares a breakdown of law and order, and suddenly the Guard is needed to mop up the scene they helped create. It’s a circular justification for federal overreach – the arsonist acting as fire marshal.
And let’s not ignore the language. “Invasion of illegal criminals.” “Feckless Democrat leaders.” This wasn’t public safety. This was campaign material with uniforms. The National Guard wasn’t being used for its intended purpose. It was being used as a prop.
And if you can use it for this – for suppressing a reaction to your own policy failure – what next? Climate protesters? Strikers? Governors who don’t fall in line?
This is the precedent now. A president can strip a governor of their own forces, drop troops into a domestic protest, and bypass the legal mechanisms that are supposed to guard against exactly this sort of abuse.
The National Guard was created to balance state and federal power. Not to tilt the scales at the whim of a populist with a vendetta.
Back in Wyatt Earp’s day, the system held. Congress upheld the boundary. In our day, it’s being trampled – by executive memo, by militarised rhetoric, by the creeping normalisation of federal force in response to domestic dissent.
You want to know what creeping authoritarianism looks like? It doesn’t always arrive with tanks. Sometimes, it comes in boots and body armour, flying the flag, with a press release in one hand and a canister of tear gas in the other.
Welcome to Operation Flashbang. The lights are bright, the noise is deafening – and constitutional limits have just been marched off the street.
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