“We’re going to have troops everywhere”: Trump Makes Police-State Fantasy Explicit, “No Kings” Demonstrations Explode, Courts Remain Key Battleground
Like authoritarian leaders around the world, Donald Trump thrives on creating crises he then pretends he alone can resolve.
It began on Friday, June 6, with ICE workplace raids, including day laborers at the Westlake Home Depot. Why? Because ICE can’t find enough criminals to meet Trump’s deportation targets. There aren’t nearly enough of them. But in three days time, Trump had managed to spin the resulting community outrage into justification for turning federal troops loose to attack his perceived enemies.
“We’re going to have troops everywhere,” Trump said on Sunday night. “We’re not going to let this happen to our country. We’re not going to let our country be torn apart.”
But it’s Trump himself who’s tearing the country apart. LA was peaceful before the ICE raids. And even afterwards, protests were overwhelmingly peaceful. Then he called up the National Guard without Governor Gavin Newsom’s request or consent—something that hasn’t been done since the Civil Rights Movement, when it was done to protect civil rights protesters, against the wishes of a terror-supporting segregationist governor. What Trump’s doing now is the exact opposite. And his border czar, Tom Homan, even threatened to arrest Governor Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass if they got in his way.
Trump doubled down, saying it would be a “great thing” if Homan arrested Newsom, adding that Newsom’s “primary crime is running for governor because he’s done such a bad job.”
But if these actions are meant to intimidate the opposition, they’re clearly failing. The number of “No Kings” demonstrations planned for next weekend has jumped by more than 100 in just a few days, Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin told Rachel Maddow. More than 1800 are currently planned. There are dozens in the LA region, including Torrance, Long Beach, Catalina Island, and nine Orange County locations from Dana Point to Seal Beach. While previous mass protests organized by 50501, Indivisible and their partners have skewed older and whiter, Trump’s crackdown in LA may help broaden the coalition of people who show up.
Itching For Violence
Trump has long wanted to use federal troops to impose his will. “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump asked about Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, according to his then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper. So he’s been thinking about it for quite some time. Which is just what authoritarians do: they substitute the rule of force for the rule of law.
And the rule of law has been very frustrating for Trump, particularly when it comes to immigration, where his losses include a 9-0 Supreme Court decision. But his losses across the board have been staggering.
In May, federal courts ruled against the Trump administration 96.3% of the time, according to a tally by Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica. The loss rate has risen every month: 53.8% in February, 74.3% in March, and 76.1% in April, before becoming almost total in May. And Republican-appointed judges ruled against Trump almost as often as Democratic-appointed ones: 72.2% vs 80.4% of the time.
Needless to say, Trump has been getting mad. He’s called those ruling against him—even ones he appointed himself—”USA HATING JUDGES,” and “communist radical-left judges,” along with individual attacks, calls for impeachment, and incendiary language that’s helped feed record levels of physical threats to judges.
There have been 269 challenges to Trump’s executive actions alone as of June 6, according to Just Security’s Litigation Tracker. including 63 cases about immigration and citizenship, 34 about civil liberties and civil rights, and 16 about diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. But those figures understate the situation. For example, the tracker treats as one case all the lawsuits challenging the removal of F-1 foreign student visa registration, which includes “more than 100 lawsuits and 50 restraining orders from dozens of federal judges,” according to Politico. The government reversed its decision on Apr. 25—yet another source of Trump’s frustration.
Eight lawsuits filed on the administration’s first day gave a strong indication of how radically his sense of his own power was at odds with American history. They included:
- Three cases challenging Trump’s revocation of birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th Amendment, passed in 1868.
- One case challenged Trump’s executive order to reclassify federal employees, stripping them of civil service protections so they could be fired at will—a protection that “dates back more than 130 years to the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act” of 1883, as plaintiffs argued in their initial complaint.
- Three cases challenging Trump’s creation of the “Department of Government Efficiency” as a violation of the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act by delegating regulatory and monetary power to unelected citizens without public oversight.
That same day, Trump pardoned close to 1,600 January 6 insurrectionists, including more than 600 who were charged with assaulting or obstructing law enforcement officers. In short, Trump’s hostility to the traditional rule of American law was evident from Day 1.
Trump’s hostility has been amplified by his supporters. At least half a dozen judges have been targeted for impeachment by House Republicans, and violent threats have escalated dramatically, with 277 judges threatened this fiscal year, roughly a third of the judiciary, according to the US Marshals Service. There has even been a bomb threat to the sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee who has nonetheless ruled against his administration on several occasions.
Trump has even turned against the conservative Federalist Society for its “bad advice” on judicial nominations, after one such judge joined a unanimous ruling that his worldwide tariffs were illegal. He called Leonard Leo, who was chiefly responsible for the picks, a “sleazebag” and a “bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America.” So now, even conservative judges aren’t good enough for him.
Immigration Lawlessness
Immigration has been a particular focus of Trump’s lawlessness. Deportations have taken place despite judicial orders. Even a Supreme Court decision—requiring the Trump administration to facilitate the return of Kilmer Abrego Garcia after he was wrongly deported—was ignored for more than 6 weeks. After it was complied with, Trump lawyers brought new, seemingly trumped-up charges against Garcia. They were based on a years-old incident regarded as harmless at the time, and the case led a high-ranking federal prosecutor to resign, fearing that it was brought for political reasons.
Not only have ICE and other immigration officials acted illegally, but they’ve also harassed and intimidated elected officials and judges. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is suing temporary US Attorney General Alina Habba (formerly Trump’s personal attorney) for false arrest over a May 9 incident at an ICE facility in his city. After false trespassing charges against him were dismissed, charges were filed against Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, who was present at the time, claiming she had assaulted officers, a claim unsupported by video of the event.
In Wisconsin, FBI agents arrested a respected state district court judge, Hannah Dugan, based on allegations that she prevented the arrest of a man by immigration authorities during a federal law enforcement operation at her courthouse. In reality, Dugan merely directed him to exit by a different door, which led to the same public area where immigration agents were waiting, and they subsequently did arrest him. So no harm was done, except to the agents’ egos. A bipartisan group of more than 130 retired judges subsequently filed a brief urging the court to drop charges, saying her arrest undermines “centuries of precedent on judicial immunity.” But that could well be the whole point—to further erode judicial legitimacy.
The Threat Of Dictatorial Takeover
All these are symptoms of a deeper threat—the threat of a dictatorial takeover of the courts, as Bonica noted in a May 28 substack, “When Leaders Attack Judges as ‘Enemies’: The Global Authoritarian Playbook—and How to Stop It.” Citing examples on three continents, he wrote, “From Erdoğan to Trump, strongmen follow the same script—and mass mobilization offers a path to resist.” And he warned Random Lengths that “we’re in a narrow window where judicial resistance remains meaningful” because the Supreme Court has also been eroding constitutional limits and human rights protections, and will like overturn many lower court rulings.
The pattern Bonica described is frustratingly predictable:
- A court rules against the leader
- The leader attacks judges personally, calling them biased, corrupt, or “enemies”
- They work to delegitimize the entire judicial system
- This creates permission for supporters to threaten and intimidate judges
- If there is no or insufficient mass resistance, they capture the courts
- If there’s sustained, broad resistance, they’re forced to pause or retreat
Bonica cited examples such as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who bluntly told the country’s Constitutional court, “I don’t obey or respect the decision” in a 2016 case, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who called Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno an “enemy,” and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro who openly threatened violence against judges when he faced a corruption investigation.
As for how to stop the destruction of independent courts, “mass protests are effective,” Bonica argued, “but intensity and timing are important,” and he offered the contrasting examples of Israel and Poland as illustrations. Summarizing the differences, he wrote, “In Israel, the mobilization was immediate, massive, economically disruptive, and crucially, it united people across political, economic, and social lines. In Poland, despite heroic efforts by judges and citizens, the protests came too late and never achieved the breadth or economic impact needed to stop the takeover.”
So what are the prospects for America? Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous “because the escalation is already visible,” he warned. And our situation is particularly precarious, he told Random Lengths.
“One troubling aspect of this is that the federal courts are under attack from outside by political actors while being undermined from within by a Supreme Court that increasingly abandons its role as constitutional guardian,” Bonica said. “When lower courts try to enforce constitutional limits and protect human rights, they face the likelihood that the Supreme Court will reverse them in ways that further erode these principles—as we saw with the immunity decision giving presidents a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”
As a result, “This means we’re in a narrow window where judicial resistance remains meaningful. Lower court judges still issue rulings defending democracy, but the gap between their decisions and Supreme Court review may represent our last period of effective judicial protection,” he warned.
As that window closes, “This internal conflict profoundly complicates public mobilization,” he said. “When the highest court undermines both legal principles and its own legitimacy, it’s harder to rally support for ‘defending the courts.’ The Trump admin and allies will be able to point to the Supreme Court and say that the courts are on their side, not the protestors. And from what we’ve seen so far, they will probably be right.”
The attacks on the judiciary are particularly troubling. “It’s long been apparent that ICE would become the secret police if the GOP’s authoritarian ambitions progressed,” Bonica said. “That they are showing up in courtrooms in a very public and intentional challenge to judicial authority is an ominous sign. That the Supreme Court has done nothing to stop them is even more concerning.”
As we go to press, things are very much in flux. Trump’s chest-pounding has seemingly distracted attention from a myriad of problems he faces—his failed tariff strategy, a slowing economy, with higher prices, his feud with Musk, and his highly unpopular billionaire tax-cut bill that would simultaneously decimate Medicare, Medicade, SNAP and much more, while ballooning the deficit and exploding immigration enforcement spending from $34 billion to $168 billion. There are so many things Trump doesn’t want people paying attention to. So he seems to think that acting tough on immigration is a no-lose strategy.
A big military presence may look tough to some, but for what? Arresting garment workers and chasing after day laborers doesn’t look all that tough. And that’s really all that Trump has at this point. On May 30, a story in the conservative Washington Examiner, “Stephen Miller eviscerated ICE officials in private meeting for low deportation numbers,” reported that Trump’s top immigration advisor demanded a focus on numbers rounded up. “What do you mean you’re going after criminals?” one official quoted him saying. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” another said.
An ICE spokesman disputed the account, but what unfolded in Los Angeles after that speaks for itself. And it’s no accident.
Contrary to all Trump’s rhetoric, undocumented immigrants are far less inclined to commit crimes. The most rigorous study of the subject, based on Texas arrest records between 2012 and 2018, found that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.” A document based on the study was removed from the Department of Justice website 10 days after Trump took office.
Trump may be able to hide the documentation of the truth. But the truth itself can’t be hidden forever. Today’s immigrants are basically no different from yesterday’s: the vast majority are hardworking seekers of a better life for themselves and their children. A small fraction are criminals, and bigots will try to tar all immigrants with their brush. But undocumented immigrants are far more likely to be victims of crime than to be perpetrators. More than anyone, they need a fair and honest legal system to protect them. They need America’s rule of law to actually deliver its promise. They don’t want to change America into something wildly unrecognizable and distorted. That’s what Donald Trump wants. He is the threat to America.