America is heading towards a Constitutional crisis, with the President of the United States, on his own instance, federalizing the California National Guard and sending in the Marines to support the quasi-military fugitive operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), rounding up thousands of Angelenos in one of the most densely populated Hispanic and Latino counties in America—Los Angeles.
The President was not asked by local officials for help in controlling violent protests, perhaps because Los Angeles city and county together employ nearly 20,000 sworn law enforcement officers, trained and experienced in handling ambiguous and confrontational situations.
Yet, the President chose to bypass local authority, sending in 4,000 Guardsmen and 700 Marines under the authority of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, dealing with the Armed Forces, Chapter 13, which defines military operations in an insurrection, a violent uprising against the government.
However, Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which established the Executive branch and the office of the President, did not confer unfettered domestic control. The President’s power as Commander-in-Chief is limited. It does not extend to military deployment inside the United States except under sharply restricted circumstances.
The President is strictly prohibited from using active-duty federal troops for local law enforcement, arrests, or searches under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, unless explicitly authorized by statute. No such statutory authorization has been invoked.
(‘Posse Comitatus’ derives from Latin, “the power of the county,” relating to the ability of a Sheriff to call upon local, able-bodied citizens to assist in law enforcement.)
The controlling statute—the Insurrection Act of 1807—was passed to enable the federal government to use troops when there is an attempt to overthrow the government or when state authorities cannot or will not act to enforce the law. Where is the insurrection? Where is the rebellion? Mass protest and public unrest, however widespread or inconvenient, do not meet the legal threshold.
The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
This state–federal power-sharing amendment, a cornerstone of the Bill of Rights, was essential to the ratification of the Constitution on June 21, 1788. States became known, in the apocryphal words of Justice Louis Brandeis, “the laboratories of democracy.”
The modern reality is that while states function semi-autonomously, they are often starved of resources to perform the “laboratory” experiments, while enmeshed in federal-state partisan political battles and riven by federal pre-emption, a dilemma further detailed in the Columbia Law Review “The Myth of the Laboratories of Democracy,” by Charles W. Tyler and Heather K. Gerken.
Still the Tenth Amendment stands as a bulwark for states, particularly when it comes to controlling its own militia, the National Guard. The Tenth Amendment reserves to states the right to control their own National Guards, unless and until properly federalized.
By deploying troops without state consent, the President is overriding state sovereignty, undermining federal law and defying the foundational documents of the Republic.
If a governor objects to federalization, the burden is on the President to demonstrate, legally and constitutionally, why that state’s authority should be suspended over its affairs of public safety. The federal government must prove its case. Absent a collapse in law and order, the Insurrection Act cannot be used to mask political motives or suppress lawful protest.
The President’s use of the military in contravention of the Tenth Amendment is a direct assault on the structural integrity of the Union, a raw power grab.
It is not traditional political conflict, we are witnessing, it is the slow unraveling of the Republic. If authoritarian practices are unchallenged and become normalized, autocracy will transit to fascism, unless the federal courts, and ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes quickly.
The moment harkens back to the cautionary words of Ben Franklin on September 17, 1787, uttered on the last day of the Constitutional Convention. When questioned by Elizabeth Willing Powell, a woman famous in Philadelphia social and political circles, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
Franklin answered, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
We are the philosophical heirs and heiresses of that Convention. May it be understood that the task of protecting our basic freedoms falls to each succeeding generation, Today, it is our responsibility to defend the Constitution so that we may keep our Republic.
Of course we cannot ignore context. These times are not only about states’ rights.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, government spending in 2025 is over $7 trillion, revenues are $5.2 trillion, the deficit for 2025 is 1.9 trillion, mushrooming to $2.7 trillion in ten years.
The “Big Beautiful” reconciliation bill will accelerate the wealth to the top, with military spending hitting $1 trillion annually, ensuring the perpetuation of wars and human rights abuses abroad.
Add to the Republic’s challenges the influence of oligarchs on public policy, the suppression of speech, the attacks on university independence, and a pay-to-play political system governed by one law—the Golden Rule: those with the gold make the rules.
Cue the Imperial March from “Star Wars”
As if to make a fine point that there is a “new Sheriff (again) in town,” this Saturday, June 14th, the same President who sent American troops to occupy an American city has ordered a massive military parade to march through Washington, D.C.
The cost of the military exhibition will be upwards of $50 million. Part of the expense will be for repair of DC streets which currently forbid trucks in excess of 40 tons on District streets. It will be interesting to see if army tanks weighing as much as 70 tons will be supported by an aging infrastructure which is always begging Congress for support.
Additionally, the long line of armaments will include the latest military hardware, legions of soldiers, fighter jets overhead, and fireworks to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Army.
The parade just so happens to fall on the President’s birthday, Flag Day, an unsettling fusion of sublime ostentatiousness, celebration of self, and national force guaranteed to stir patriotic fervor until the price tag is widely known. It would be better, and perhaps more comforting, for every American to send the President a birthday card.
This display, supposedly in appreciation for those who serve, or who have served, may instead stand as a monument to elite delusion and authoritarian excess.
This is America’s own Versailles moment, a spectacle worthy of Marie Antoinette’s fabled “let them eat cake.”
A lavish $50 million display of power and might as 50 million Americans face hunger every day and millions more struggle paycheck to paycheck, barely affording afford rent, and postponing health car. Tell the Army veterans who beg for survival at freeway exits that this parade is a thank you.
Yes, America has an immigration problem. But if our government answers it by shredding the Constitution, criminalizing protest, and weaponizing the military against its own people, then illegal immigration will be the least of our problems.
Let us not mistake constitutional governance for regime behavior.