Trump tees up his next military takeover target
Another day, another Trump administration plan to send active-duty troops somewhere they are not remotely needed. This time around, it’s Louisiana.
Except not really, of course. The targets are the blue cities in the red state or, as the Pentagon’s proposal phrased it, the state’s “urban centers.”
Uh-huh.
The latest scheme calls for 1,000 Louisiana National Guard members to be activated to supplement law enforcement. The mobilization is set to last until Sept. 30, 2026, so we’re just having American troops straight up occupy an American city for a year, perhaps?
The administration is very pleased with itself, with a memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth describing the “unique advantage” of this plan. It’s not really very unique, as basically any red state with blue cities can pull this off.
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Here’s how it works. In a red state, the governor can voluntarily agree to deploy the state’s Guard under Title 32 of the U.S. Code, so in theory, those troops remain under the control of the state’s governor. But the federal government pays for it, and the Trump administration clearly thinks this is a way to get around the Posse Comitatus Act, the law that prohibits troops under federal control from being deployed for domestic law enforcement purposes. The administration can just smugly declare that the troops aren’t federal troops because they remain under state control. Sure, the federal government picks up the tab, and sure, President Donald Trump is directly picking which cities to attack, but state control, most definitely.
One of the reasons you know this Title 32 idea is a complete farce is that if Gov. Jeff Landry was so concerned about crime rates in New Orleans, he could simply deploy the Guard there himself. He doesn’t need to go through the rigmarole of Title 32 at all. But somehow, New Orleans’ crime rate is only terrifying enough to warrant active-duty troops when Trump feels like it.
This plan also gets around what Trump ran into in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom, of course, did not agree to have his National Guard deployed, so Trump federalized the Guard, leading to a court case that is still going on. If Landry gives the go-ahead, Trump doesn’t need to federalize the troops, nor does he need any particular emergency reason to send Guard members in.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that crime has absolutely plummeted in New Orleans, so it’s awfully helpful to Trump if he doesn’t have to invent an emergency.
Louisiana has around 11,000 National Guard members, so this would pull nearly 10% of the Guard away from the normal things the Guard helps with in Louisiana, like severe flooding and hurricane clean-up.
One tiny problem with this Louisiana plan: While Landry has indicated he might be down with this idea—after all, he did send over 100 troops to Washington, D.C. for Trump’s supposed crime crackdown—he has not actually requested that the administration help him with anything. Having a 1,000 troop plan ready to go seems like overkill if you haven’t even gotten a sign-off from the governor.
This is in no way meant to diminish how awful and threatening this experience is for cities that have been targeted, but Trump has definitely decided to shift his takeovers to easy mode after his experience in California. So, he threatened Chicago for weeks, only to abruptly change course and say he was going to Memphis. Illinois governor JB Pritzker has basically been standing athwart the state for days yelling, “Come and Take It!” Suddenly, Memphis was much more attractive, because it has an agreeable GOP governor, Bill Lee, willing to deploy troops in his state just because Trump feels like it.
Notably, Memphis did not agree to this, and the mayor only found out about it when it aired on Fox News. Memphis crime rates have been falling, but according to Trump, that’s because “the FBI and others in the Federal Government, at my direction, have been working there for 5 months... But the real work by us has barely begun. That happens after we make the official announcement that WE'RE COMING... ONLY I CAN SAVE THEM!!!"
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Now that Trump has figured out this loophole, and now that governors are seemingly agreeable to putting their own cities under federal occupation, he’s not going to stop. Red states will love it, because it’s a way to crush their blue cities—and on the federal dime! It’s a stark reminder that Republican elected officials do not believe that their job is to serve their constituents, but rather to attack them. And Trump will just keep going, naming each new target as if he’s firing someone on “The Apprentice” or announcing where the next Olympics are being held. To him, it really is all a game.