By Joseph Coleman\People’s World
Photos: People’s World\YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
Between June 7 and 9, 2025, something unprecedented occurred in American history. President Donald Trump deployed 5,000 troops to occupy Los Angeles—4,000 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines—against the explicit wishes of California’s governor, the city’s mayor, and even the Los Angeles Police Department. The justification? Forty-four arrests during immigration raids.
Let that sink in. Forty-four arrests. Five thousand troops.
This is not crowd control. This is not disaster relief. This is the federal government using military force to occupy an American city whose leaders are saying no. And if we don’t understand what line we just crossed, we won’t recognize where it leads.
Manufacturing crisis, normalizing occupation
The damage was real. Five Waymo autonomous vehicles were torched and destroyed, their lithium-ion batteries creating toxic smoke clouds. Twenty-nine businesses were looted in a single night, including sporting goods stores and cell phone shops. Downtown Los Angeles was marred by graffiti and broken windows on buildings and storefronts.
But the arithmetic still reveals the disproportion. Property damage and civil disorder—serious, yes—met with 5,000 federal troops. That’s more military personnel than were deployed for Hurricane Katrina’s immediate response. Trump claimed Los Angeles would have been “completely obliterated” without his intervention, turning localized unrest into an existential urban crisis requiring military occupation.
The manufactured crisis isn’t the riot damage—it’s the White House’s response. When Governor Newsom called the deployment an “illegal act” that’s “immoral” and “unconstitutional,” Trump didn’t back down—he doubled down. When Mayor Bass said the city was being used as an “experiment” and a “test case” for taking power away from local authorities, the administration sent more troops.
The message is clear: federal authority doesn’t require local consent. Constitutional norms are suggestions. And American cities can be occupied when their politics displease Washington…. graduation….READ MORE…
