Before a lot of cheering soldiers at an event who seemed more like an election rally than a speech to the troops, Donald Trump defended his decision to organize the first major military parade in Washington since 1991.
“Many people say that we don’t want to do that. I say yes, we are doing the soldiers in Fort Bragg in North Carolina this week for approval of the assembled crowd.” We want to show a bit. ”
The memory of the armyThe 250th anniversary on Saturday, which coincides with the 79th birthday of the President, will be an impurable projection of power by an commander-in-chief who is driving in the showmanship.
Trump card will lead a procession of military hardware through the wide streets of the American capital, while military aircraft fly over us – everything at a price of up to $ 45 million for American taxpayers.
The Pagantry reflects the president’s growing fascination for military power, while testing his ability to use the armed forces to implement his domestic agenda in a way in which authoritarian regime Echo, which has long been criticized by Washington.
At the beginning of this month, Trump ordered the use of Marines and the National Guard in Los Angeles about the objections of Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, to suppress protests against the expansion of his government’s deportation campaign.
Trump said the presence of the troops was necessary to ward off “the attacks of a malignant and violent mob and some on the radical left”.
However, newsoma insists that the federal intervention was unnecessary and violates a law that provides that the instructions to bring the national guards under federal control must be issued by the governors of the states.
Gender -specific standards that are legally defined that prevent the use of the federal military in the national civilian rooms of the police is “how autocrats work,” said Harold Hongju Koh, professor of international law at the Yale Law School.
“You milither the domestic space. This is (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”
This echo of autocrats can also be seen in the increasing willingness of the Trump government to use law enforcement authorities against their political opponents.
On Thursday, Alex Padilla, a Democratic US Senator from California, by federal agents and a press conference, was drawn from a press conference by Kristi Noem, the secretary of the home protection.
“What happened yesterday was part of a much greater exertion, everyone who dares to ask what the Trump administration does,” wrote Padilla on X.
Trump’s hugging of the military as an agent of domestic law enforcement is not unprecedented. Former presidents have used federal troops on US floor – especially in order to enforce civil rights legislation in the face of the resistance of the segregationist states in the south.
However, historians say that with a long -term reluctance to use the armed forces at home, even in times when Washington was willing to move his military power overseas.
“Americans have been very uncomfortable since the foundation was used when the military was used in a domestic function,” said Lindsay Chervinsky, Managing Director of George Washington Presidential Library.
“The presidents really adhered to this precedent, and only if there is really an extreme uprising to protect the citizens did they go,” she added.
Trump’s obvious ease in increasing these standards triggered the vocal opposition to the parade on Saturday. Hundreds of protests are planned in cities in the USA.
“This is fascism. It must be non -violent in the streets of DC and all over the country, but with determination,” said Sunsara Taylor, one of the protest organizers.
The look of the parade on Saturday and the military missions in California were reinforced by the attack of Israel to Iran. The President has shaped himself as a non-interventionist peace-based in contrast to traditional Republican military hawks and claims that he would end conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine as soon as he took office.
But he now has a new war in the Middle East, which threatens its core foreign policy message.
His actions at home also test the limits of its constitutional authority and the system of checks that the US democracy has maintained for more than two centuries.
In Los Angeles, Trump “federized” the national guard – or rather under national and state control – brought it through a rarely used law that aimed to combat rebellions or foreign invasions, or the presidents who are unable to carry out the law with regular forces.
He could try to justify his decision to use Marines in Los Angeles by referring to his authority to protect the federal government, legal experts said. The administration could also cite a memo from the 1971 Ministry of Justice, which argues that President could use troops to protect federal functions and property.
Trump even called the uprising of 1807, which was issued to suppress rebellions, although he has not yet taken this step.
But several lawyers believe that the president exceeds his powers. Bringing the military was “very unusual and really in contradiction to our norms and traditions, since we have no uprising here,” said Laura Dickinson, professor at George Washington University Law School.
“They are trained for foreign wars,” she added.
Two hundred US marines from 700, which Trump is used together together with the National Guard in Los Angeles.
“They focus on the protection of the federal law enforcement officer” and “keep the masses while performing their federal law enforcement tasks of the federal government,” said Commander Maj Maj General Gen Scott Sherman on Friday.
Sherman said that the troops were “mobilized with their assigned weapon and“ standard audience control equipment ”, including helmets, facial signs, batons and gas masks.
“The attempt to keep the military out of domestic matters … is a tradition that has been confirmed over generations because people understood how important it was,” said Chervinsky.
“If we lose that, it changes the character of our republic.”
