National Guard Troops Sent To California By Trump Are Just Out There Doing Drug Busts

Martial law? Police state? These are just things the alleged Leader of Free World wants, rather than things a nation founded on rejecting these options should be in the process of instituting. And yet, here we are, barely six months into Trump’s return to office, staring down the barrel of both of these related horrors.

If it looks like fascism, it’s probably not intentional. Trump simply isn’t smart enough to implement the real thing. But he does like authoritarianism, which looks a lot like fascism, because he’s always felt a president should be treated like a king — someone who answers to no one, not even his 340 million employers.

Trump tested the waters on martial law during his last term, threatening to send troops out to handle George Floyd protests. This time around, he’s amped everything up, openly hoping to turn every “Democrat” city into Kent State.

Legally, he’s not allowed to do this. But his administration is relying on some vagueness in the law to get around the long-standing prohibition of sending in the army (so to speak) to police the populace. So, we get the sort of thing we’ve seen recently, where a Los Angeles swap meet was treated like an open-air market in some Middle Eastern country we’re currently at (undeclared) war with.

The National Guard troops sent to Los Angeles are presumably still working without pay and/or beds, but that isn’t stopping them from blending in with federal law enforcement to aid and abet actual law enforcement work. First reported by CBS, a combined force of more than 500 federal officers and National Guard troops walked away from the ICE raids and the protection of federal property to perform a bog standard drug bust. Nicholas Slayton has more details for Task and Purpose, a military-oriented publication:

California National Guard soldiers operating under federal orders helped the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal personnel carry out a raid on a large marijuana growth operation in the eastern Coachella Valley last week, 130 miles from downtown Los Angeles. 

It’s unclear how many National Guard troops participated in the operation, but the force totalled roughly 500 people. According to the DEA, other agencies included Customs and Border Patrol, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Immigration and Custom Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

While this commandeering of California National Guard troops may have originally been for the unstated purpose of pushing back against anti-ICE protests, now that they’re here, the administration has decided to just use them for whatever. This raid of multiple marijuana farms occurred more than 100 miles away from the boundaries of Los Angeles County and even further away from the location these troops were originally sent: downtown Los Angeles.

According to Trump’s military, everything about this is good and fine and nothing to be concerned about. After all, the law says the military can help federal cops, even if it (supposedly) prevents them from doing actual cop work. That’s the Title 10 vagueness the military is relying on when it serves up statements like this”

“The catalyst of this order was related to events occurring in Los Angeles; however, the president’s order and NORTHCOM’s mission is not constrained by the geography of Southern California. Recently, Title 10 forces supported a Drug Enforcement Agency operation a few hours outside of Los Angeles. Title 10 forces protect federal personnel who are performing federal law enforcement functions…”

Hence the military-provided shots of alleged National Guard troops allegedly manning the perimeter of the places being raided. And, also hence, the narrative no one can definitively dispute because — despite the National Guard embedding with federal law enforcement agencies — no journalists are being allowed to embed with military-esque operations occurring within the borders of the United States.

Of course, we’ve already seen Marines detain people for the purpose of handing them over to law enforcement. And we’ve seen National Guard troops swarm a swap meet like they’re looking for terrorists in a foreign country, rather than just anyone looking kind of Hispanic who might not have the proper paperwork on them.

The more things like this occur, the more easily many people will just come to accept this is the way the United States operates now. Many of them will cheer on these efforts, failing to recognize the abuse of these powers may, at some point, target them. But for the rest of us, this shouldn’t be allowed to pass without notice. Trump may be a blowhard and an idiot, but he’s surrounded by people who truly desire an opportunity to perform a hard reset on democracy and its principles, replacing it with jackboot heels, racism, fascism, and — eventually — a return of the British Empire, this time wrapped in an American flag.