Donald Trump just did what no other president has ever done in the context of urban unrest: He sent federal troops to a state without a request from the governor. By federalizing California National Guard members on Saturday, the president abrogated Governor Gavin Newsom’s authority over his own Guard. During both previous instances of a presidential order to deploy National Guardsmen to American cities—the Los Angeles riots in 1992 and the Hurricane Katrina response in 2005—the state’s governor was overseeing a public-safety apparatus that had been overwhelmed. Trump, seizing on unlawful behavior that included vandalism, violence, and refusing to disperse during protests against ICE raids in L.A., announced that 2,000 reservists would be deployed to the city, unilaterally and contra Newsom’s advice.
Trump’s decision—to exercise his Title 10 authority to federalize the National Guard under his command—was not based on a careful assessment of the operational needs on the streets of Los Angeles. Even if the White House’s escalating rhetoric and threats of full military deployment were justified by circumstances that merited overruling a governor, the notion that the armed services will stop protests and quiet widespread outrage about Trump’s immigration-enforcement policies in California is naive and flawed. Implicated in Trump’s decision was a lot of prior controversy—immigration and deportation, ICE raids, tension between blue states and the White House, a personal beef with Newsom—but the president’s assertion that a troop presence is the answer to public unrest is particularly dubious. Historically, these deployments have proved of limited value even when the president and governor agree on goals. Sending in the military as a hostile force is a recipe for trouble.
During the 1992 L.A. riots, after four white police officers were acquitted of assaulting Rodney King, 63 people were killed amid widespread arson and looting as rioting spread through the city. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 1,000 people in Louisiana and left New Orleans with no functioning government and little law enforcement. In each case, National Guard deployment was essentially a response to the incapacity of the local police force—either because the cops had become the focus of hostility or because they simply could not meet the demands of the crisis. And in both instances, the governor requested the federal intervention.
One key lesson of the L.A. deployment was that a failure to define command-and-control responsibilities resulted in operational problems and delays. The National Guard under Governor Pete Wilson’s authority was supposed to protect first responders (especially firefighters) and emergency work crews trying to fix critical infrastructure. Trained to help with crowd control, these troops also supported police patrols—to protect shopping centers from looting, for example. The soldiers’ initial deployment was slow, and they were not fully prepared for the mission. But in the days that followed, the rioting subsided and the National Guard was able to perform much of its mission and provide relief to the overstretched police forces.
By then, however, Wilson had lost confidence in the National Guard’s leadership and was unnerved by the scale of disorder. He asked the White House for help, and President George H. W. Bush sent in 3,500 federalized troops. Despite deploying in a less demanding situation, these federalized soldiers were unable to provide the effective support required on the ground. In the end, the state Guard proved the more flexible and adaptable force. The new military task force formed by the federal deployment never satisfactorily resolved issues with its mission, its communications, and its rules of engagement. The problems of this uneasy collaboration with local and state police agencies filtered down, hampering the street-level response.
The events of L.A. in 1992—and the explicit lessons that state, federal, and military authorities took from them—are why, until now, the task of dealing with civil unrest or natural disasters has remained largely with the National Guard acting under state jurisdiction. The National Guard has also been integrated into homeland-security efforts on the same basis. If one Guard force encounters a situation that exceeds its capacity, it can turn to another state’s Guard under mutual-aid agreements.
Mutual aid does not seem to have been on Trump’s mind last weekend. The National Guard exists to provide governors with additional power to protect their citizens, and to do so in support of local first responders. Trump’s hasty federalization of troops is unwise and unhelpful, before we even consider what malign political motive may lie behind the order.
Right now, the Pentagon appears not even to have arranged sleeping arrangements for its troops, let alone determined the rules of engagement on the streets; the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the deployment was so “wildly underprepared” that troops are sleeping in cramped quarters on the floor. At best, this deployment will be completely unnecessary. At worst, it will be deeply counterproductive. But Trump’s motive is transparent—and he will surely engineer an occasion to keep escalating his power plays, until they seem normal.
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