Liberate Los Angeles
Featured Contributor Prof. Josef Mahoney discusses the ongoing crisis in #losangeles.
Featured contributor Prof Josef Mahoney joined CGTN The Hub with Wang Guan and fellow panelists Andy Mok and John Gong to discuss the ongoing military deployments in California.
First, we last saw this kind of deployment in 1965, in Selma, to enforce Civil Rights and protect African Americans. That it's being used now to target minorities is ironic and repulsive. Unfortunately, 54% of Americans approve of Trump’s deportation policies.
Second, this outcome was predictable, given the location, targets, and leaders involved. If offers Trump his best opportunity to test the limits of his authority. He’s picked the biggest opponent, as he did with China in his trade war, as he did with Harvard in his war on higher education. He’s picked an area reviled by his base, targeting a Democratic governor who’s his strongest political opponent and a future contender for the presidency. He's testing the military's resolve and that of the American people, while distracting everyone from his failed trade polices, low approval ratings, a looming recession, Gaza, the feud with Musk, and so on.
Third, he's avoided calling the situation a rebellion and invoking the Insurrection Act and arguably stayed within the limits of the Posse Comitatus Act. However, reports that the raids were conducted without consulting with local and state authorities in a very sensitive area suggests this was a deliberate attempt to incite unrest, raising serious questions about the statutory basis "legalizing" these actions. In the meantime, local authorities will have to out-police the Feds to prevent a take over, which risks more local backlash against them or, stand down. If things spiral, Trump will exploit. If peaceful, he'll claim victory. But it's reasonable to worry about precedent: the new defense bill projects future deployments of federal troops throughout the US.
Fourth, some argue the US may be approaching a Constitutional breaking point—or even a kind of “cold civil war.” I’m generally suspicious of such descriptions--cold violence vs. violence, cold war vs. war, cold civil war vs. civil war. A civil war, however defined, is possible but unlikely. Trump can exercise and expand presidential powers considerably, but I don't think he can actualize a complete coup. Plus, this kind of politics is almost always self-defeating. It always goes too far but can never go far enough. It always fails, above all because it doesn't really address the underlying social, political and economic problems. It's purely reactionary.
Fifth, has the Constitution already failed? Presidents ruling by decree. Congress failing its legislative and oversight responsibilities. A highly politicized, divided judiciary. Polarization preventing Constitutional reforms... Trump’s rise to power was already a symptom of Constitutional failures. Further, he doesn’t treat it as sacrosanct, never appears to follow it in good faith. He was impeached previously for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and for inciting insurrection.
https://www.cgtn.com/tv/replay?id=CGCIGAA
Trump vowed to "liberate Los Angeles," labelling the unrest as "anarchy," and deploying nearly 5000 troops to quell protests. How significant is this move?
It risks establishing a dangerous precedent of the White House inciting unrest in so-called blue areas and then using that as a justification for deploying US military forces to quell protestors.
Legal scholars have already pointed out that Trump’s asserted statutory basis carries no geographical limitations or standards for determining whether local law enforcement and legal systems have failed. The risk is that he’ll expand these policies to other areas of the country if his position in California holds, and this could be complemented by the new defense bill that envisions expanding US troop deployments in the US. That could lead to a nightmare scenario of White House-led martial law in various parts of the country at odds with the president politically.
A federal judge California's motion to immediately halt these deployments, instead scheduling a hearing on the 12th. Your perspective?
Trump is probably within his legal authority to deploy troops, and all the more so because they were given a narrow mission of protecting federal agents and federal property. He does not yet appear to have violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, at least the letter of the law.
Federal courts are careful when it comes to challenging the authority of the US president as commander-in-chief because this is one of the bedrocks of the US system and the separation of powers, a cornerstone of national security and the chain-of-command. Unfortunately, the courts might end up supporting the Constitution but do so in ways that contribute to democratic degeneration.
Might Trump deploy troops to other states?
This is clearly a risk, one that could endanger the US federal system and democracy. Some are reasonably worried this foreshadows some type of right-wing coup, and while it’s important to avoid fearmongering and conspiracy theories, I won’t dismiss those concerns as being farfetched.
These troops, especially the #marines, are not trained for domestic policing or perhaps policing at all. They were trained to confront foreign enemies, those without Constitutional protections, in the most aggressive ways. The White House asserts it wants to quell violence, but it’s doing so by inviting a fight, one that it might want, one that some will be happy to join, including those oppose or support his policies.
If we see this kind of policy expanding to other areas, then America risks the sort of domestic unrest unseen since the 1960s, far eclipsing the Black Lives Matter protests that haunted Trump 1.0, and might include the spectre of American troops fighting and killing Americans in their own communities, and vice versa. #martiallaw
