Not too long ago — less than a year ago, in fact — President Donald Trump and the GOP were the biggest supporters of states’ rights. You could talk to any Republican in Congress, and they’d rail against former President Joe Biden’s administration and how he was supposedly using the federal government to suppress conservative states’ rights.
Now, everything has changed. The ongoing anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles have shown just how much the Trump administration — and the GOP — are now against the very states’ rights they used to uphold. This policy change was cemented in Trump’s outrageous decision to federally deploy California’s National Guard to the city, even though the Golden State’s Governor Gavin Newsom didn’t want this to happen.
The National Guard’s arrival in Los Angeles is only the beginning.
Trump Sends the Military to California
Soon after his National Guard order, Trump then agreed with his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and Marines were told to head to California to try to quiet the unrest in the streets. Throughout this week, Trump and his key allies have stated that there was an “insurrection” happening in Los Angeles, even though advocates have claimed that these protests were peaceful.
Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have criticized Trump every step of the way, claiming that the federal government is interfering with California’s right to govern. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has responded by claiming that “federal law is supreme.”
That’s a quick change from the GOP stance of states’ rights being important, isn’t it? Nothing drives this point home more than Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s applause of sending the National Guard to California… something she once criticized Biden for doing.
Noem has also allegedly pressured Hegseth to allow the military to make civilian arrests during the L.A. protests. This unprecedented act, if it were to happen, would escalate the already tense situation between California and the federal government.
An Escalation to the Insurrection Act?
Newsom has clearly stated that he believes the Trump administration is escalating this conflict so that he can act on it. Trump has suggested that Newsom should be arrested, to which Newsom responded that the president was acting like a “dictator.”
Many liberals and Trump critics have agreed with Newsom’s assessment that Trump is using this fraught situation to escalate things. Some doomsdayers have suggested that the president will even invoke the Insurrection Act to deal with things as he sees fit.
Trump hasn’t quelled any of these fears, instead claiming that he’s looking into invoking the Insurrection Act. Not too long ago, this would have been unheard of. But in this day and age, anything is possible.
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