On the night of Saturday, June 7, President Trump issued an order directing National Guard troops to Los Angeles “to temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions.” The order calls for two thousand National Guard troops to be deployed for at least 60 days, and authorizes the Secretary of Defense to deploy regular federal troops “as necessary” to augment their work. A deployment of Marines indeed ensued. Tellingly, the memo characterizes the protests – i.e., what would ordinarily be understood to be a core case of First Amendment speech – as “a form of rebellion against the authority of the United States.”

On social media, the President has claimed that the city was “invaded and occupied” by “violent, insurrectionist mobs,” and directed his lieutenants to take any actions necessary to “liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion.” One of his senior advisors, Stephen Miller, called it “a fight to save civilization.” Such existential language – echoing tropes of the kind employed by Carl Schmitt and his allies a century ago – portends an extended and potentially violent confrontation. Add to this the Administration’s repeated flouting of federal statutes and constitutional norms: A government that does not perceive itself as bound by law or constitution even in the ordinary course of things is a government that is likely far more prone to destabilizing overreach – with unpredictable consequences.

What now unfolds in Los Angeles depends less on the precise statutory authority relied upon by Mr. Trump (the one invoked in the original order is relatively narrowly gauged around the protection of federal officials and properties). Rather, it depends on the pattern of escalation, or (much less likely) de-escalation by people on the ground. There are few American precedents, whether legal or historical, for mapping out or predicting the unfolding conflict. Although President Lyndon Johnson had taken a similar action in March 1965 to protect civil rights protests of racial segregation, his intervention was crucially different: For one thing, it was intended to, and did, protect the First Amendment interests of protesters against state violence. For another, it was not accompanied by the inflammatory rhetoric Trump and Miller have used – rhetoric that likely increases the probability of a tragic and bloody confrontation. Perhaps the closest precedent is the first Trump Administration’s use of federal forces against BLM protesters, especially in Portland, OR (in contrast, the deployment to Louisiana during hurricane Katrina was not contested by the state). Which is hardly auspicious.

Read more at Verfassungsblog