The Strongman’s Test Run, and Why the Next Deployment Will Be Bigger, Longer & Deadlier

Deploying troops without police training, defying the courts, and threatening the media, Trump is importing dictator tactics in plain sight and daring Americans to stop him...

He says he’s deploying the military to Washington DC because of a “crime emergency,” but armies don’t do policing: Their job, and their training, is to blow things up and kill people.

They have no training in evidence-chain-of-custody, arrest procedures, civil rights protections, criminal investigation, or any other aspect of policing. Sending a militia to do policing is like inviting the neighborhood butcher to perform your brain surgery.

In America, it’s also illegal. Under Posse Comitatus, the American military is explicitly forbidden from engaging in any police activities against civilian populations. Even though the Trump administration is bragging that the National Guard arrested almost 50 people yesterday in DC, the Posse Comitatus Act consists of just one sentence:

“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Armies are really good, however, at facing down large crowds of protestors.

— In 2020, after Aleksandr Lukashenko stole the election in Belarus, over a million people showed up in the streets to protest his increasingly violent repression of dissent. He called out the military to put down the protests, killing dozens and arresting over 25,000 people, many of whom were tortured while in custody.

— In 2021, when massive pro-Navalny protests broke out across Russia, Putin called out the Rosgvardiya (“National Guard”), a new masked militia he’d created just a few years earlier, answerable only to him, that was tasked with identifying and imprisoning immigrants and also used against his personal enemies. They showed up with armored vehicles, helicopters, and troops with automatic weapons to put down the protests: over 11,000 people were “arrested,” many never to be seen free again.

— On December 3, 2024, then-President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea declared emergency martial law, justifying it as a necessary move to suppress what he termed “anti-state” forces, specifically his political opposition. Because Yoon hadn’t pre-positioned the military or prepared for the eruption in Seoul’s streets like Lukashenko and Putin had, protestors succeeded in driving him out of office.

Trump is planning to go the Lukashenko and Putin route and is determined not to go down the way Yoon did. That — along with distracting us from his alleged raping of underage girls with his “best friend” Jeffrey Epstein — is why he’s militarizing Washington DC and Los Angeles.

These are test runs for when his crimes, corruption, and excesses — particularly if the feds intervene to help Republicans steal the 2026 elections — become so severe that Americans are in the streets in large enough numbers to present a threat to his regime.

He learned that lesson from the George Floyd protests, and may well be visiting Putin in Alaska this week to get further instruction in how to deal with protestors. It’s why the Pentagon is proposing a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” made up of military members who can deploy within hours to any city in America to put down “civil disturbances.”

If Trump really intended to do something about crime in DC, he would have directed his efforts toward fixing the root causes of crime: poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, drug addiction, homelessness, and lead in the water pipes, all areas where DC ranks toward the worst of American cities.

If DC was truly lacking policing resources, he’d be sending in Military Police (who are actually trained in policing) or shifting budgets around to give more money to the DC Metropolitan Police Department itself.

But, of course, he did none of the above; instead, he’s sending in troops.

The last time Trump was confronted with protestors he demanded General Mark Milley have soldiers “shoot them in the legs.” Milley refused, so Trump and Hegseth have decapitated the senior ranks of the military, replacing them with toadies willing to do whatever Dear Orange Leader wants.

You can see where this is going.

We’re in the early stages of autocratic breakthrough, the consolidation-of-power phase when a leader who’s planning to turn a democracy into an autocracy seizes control of all the various branches of government and makes sure the military is entirely loyal to him, rather than the rule of law.

So, now he is testing how far he can go and what kind of pushback his actions will produce from the public, the press, and the legal system.

The Trump administration has arrested a Democratic mayor, a Democratic judge, a Democratic member of Congress, and beaten a Democratic United States Senator to the ground. They’ve deployed the military, over the objections of the governor and mayors, into first Los Angeles and now Washington DC.

The nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, DHS Secretary Noem, said:

“We are staying here to liberate the city [of Los Angeles] from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

And the National Guard troops are still there. Angelinos and DC residents — and, by extension, all Americans who monitor the spectacle on TV — are expected to get used to having heavily armed military forces in our streets. Soon, Trump’s people hope, it’ll seem “normal,” just like they’re trying to normalize secret, masked Rosgvardiya-style police who refuse to identify themselves, abuse citizens, and routinely break the law themselves.

The president demanded a military parade for his birthday and is threatening to revoke broadcast licenses from television networks. He’s shut down funding for NPR and PBS. The Trump regime is ignoring court orders, including one from the Supreme Court, and Trump’s press secretary says:

“The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.“

The Republicans on the Supreme Court have given him immunity from prosecution for crimes he commits while president, and rolled over repeatedly as he openly and blatantly violates both Constitutional requirements and historic political norms.

Republican members of Congress, with the possible exception of Kentucky’s Thomas Massey, are terrified of Trump and have already sacrificed their independence and power. In the Senate, only Thom Tillis meaningfully stood against Trump and he was forced into retirement as a result.

With all three branches of government under his effective control, Trump is now threatening the media, crushing the independence of colleges and universities, receiving tribute and bribes from major corporations, and demanding changes to our voting systems that will make it harder for anybody who’s not white and upper-middle-class to vote.

Don’t be fooled. Trump and the billionaires and fascists he’s assembled into his cabinet are right in the middle of the process of permanently ending democracy in our country. First he went after immigrants and trans people. Now he’s targeting poor people in DC.

Next, as he follows the Putin/Lukashenko/Orbán/Erdoğan playbook, it will be Democrats and white protestors. Particularly if he tries to steal the 2026 election.

Standing against this coming onslaught will take considerable courage. Hitler put down the White Rose Society, Putin killed Navalny and arrested his lawyers and supporters, Lukashenko and Erdoğan had their troops fire on angry crowds.

Our best hope is that, when the crackdowns come, enough of us can mobilize to bring about a rebooting of our democracy like average people did in South Korea last year as they restored democracy to that nation.

This is not a drill; these people have revealed themselves as genuine white supremacist fascists and they’re not planning to back down or go away. Trump’s deployment of troops to LA and DC prove it.

Louise’s Daily Song: “When Armies Replace Police”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink comes out soon and is now available for pre-order.
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When Armies Replace Police

[Verse 1]
Boots on the pavement
Steel in the sun
Shadows fall heavy
Where freedom once run
They say it’s for safety
They say it’s for peace
But the lines start to blur
When armies replace police

[Chorus]
When armies replace police
The streets turn cold
And the truth’s on lease
Rights fade away
Like whispers in the night
When armies replace police
There’s no end in sight

[Verse 2]
The courts are ignored
The press under fire
The laws bend and break
At the will of a liar
The crowd holds their ground
The rifles don’t cease
Who protects the people
When armies replace police

[Chorus]
When armies replace police
The streets turn cold
And the truth’s on lease
Rights fade away
Like whispers in the night
When armies replace police
There’s no end in sight

[Bridge]
History warns in a voice we know
Once boots fill the streets
They’re reluctant to go
A nation can vanish without a shot
Just uniforms marching
Where justice is not

[Final Chorus]
When armies replace police
The flag still flies
But freedoms decrease
Hold the line
Raise your voice make them see
When armies replace police
We all cease to be