The trial run

Trump’s occupation of Washington, D.C.

Friends,

It’s important to see Trump’s occupation of Washington, D.C., as a trial run for a possible military occupation of the United States, including martial law, later in his term. I don’t want to be paranoid, but Trump may figure he needs such a plan if his strategies to hold Congress after the midterm elections raise too much public opposition, especially in big Democratic cities.

I suspect he’s most interested in learning six things:

1. How quickly and obediently the Defense Department and the National Guard are able to act in a major city, when their major purpose is a show of force rather than to quell any specific disturbance. Los Angeles was another trial run, when the Department of Defense ordered some 4,000 California National Guard members and 700 Marines there as thousands of immigration activists and supporters marched in the streets and outside federal buildings to demonstrate their opposition to Trump’s mass deportation effort.

2. How legal challenges are handled in the federal courts — on what basis they’re made, how federal judges respond, and what sorts of appeals are filed. California has sued the Trump administration for what it called an unwarranted deployment in LA and won an early victory from Judge Charles Breyer, who ruled that the federal government had violated the 10th Amendment clarifying the balance of power between federal and state governments. The Trump administration appealed that ruling, arguing that courts cannot second-guess the president’s orders. The U.S. Department of Justice has just secured a temporary halt to Judge Breyer’s ruling, which allows control of the California National Guard to remain with Trump.

Central to the legal debate is the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which bars a president from using the military as a domestic police force. The LA case could set a precedent for how the Trump administration handles future deployments of federal troops in Baltimore and other cities.

3. How the media reacts. Trump couldn’t care less about outlets like MSNBC or The New York Times. He’s interested in how the deployment is covered by local affiliates of major networks and by Fox News and Newsmax. In particular, he’s testing Rupert Murdoch’s reaction. Murdoch has broken with Trump on Trump’s decision to continue to cover up the Epstein scandal, but will Murdoch back him on this?

4. Whether it wipes away almost all Epstein stories. Trump must suspect that Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal is sitting on other Epstein bombshells similar to the ones it has recently released. The Journal could be awaiting the slow news holes of mid-August. So part of Trump’s trial run here is to gauge how much of a distraction he can create that continues to keep additional Epstein stories out of sight.

5. How it plays with his base. On the one hand, his MAGA base is mainly rural and white; they think of big cities as dens of iniquity, filled with people of color. Yet they’re also conservative when it comes to the deployment of federal troops inside the nation; some remember the use of federal troops to enforce integration of public schools in the South. So Trump is using this trial run to gauge which way the base goes.

6. How it plays with Republicans in Congress. Trump knows he has them cowed most of the time but may worry that when they’re back in their states and districts, they’ll feel some heat from their constituents, both MAGA and non-MAGA. This trial run during the August recess allows him to get a measure of how strongly Republicans will back him if and when he goes national with an occupation.