Over the past week, President Trump ordered the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles amid protests. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., he is pushing to advance his policy agenda through a giant spending bill. The Opinion columnists Tressie McMillan Cottom, David French and the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle convened to explore how Mr. Trump’s attempt to consolidate power is reshaping the American political landscape — possibly for generations to come.
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The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Cottle: I’m Michelle Cottle. I’m a writer in Opinion, and I’m here with the fabulous columnists David French and Tressie McMillan Cottom. Guys, welcome and I am so glad you are here to help me make sense of the latest crises.
David French: It’s great to be here with y’all.
Tressie McMillan Cottom: Well, I’m not sure I promise to help make sense, Michelle, but I am here.
Cottle: Well, Tressie, you can at least explain to me what is happening. [Tressie laughs] This is really what I need, because at this point, I think we all have to agree, there is no denying that we are truly living in Trump’s world.
First, there was all that flooding the zone with executive orders, and now he’s reshaping both our short-term and our long-term futures. And by our, I mean all of us, because the administration is doing many things that many people said that they would never do — which we will get to the long term and that big, beautiful bill in a minute, which could have a generational impact.
But first I want to talk about what’s happening right now, and specifically over the weekend. President Trump deployed the National Guard to quell protests against ICE in Los Angeles. Now, one big caveat: We are recording this on Monday afternoon, so God only knows what will happen before people actually hear this. But David, you’ve written about these protests and it seems like you see them as a very troubling sign as to how unstable America is becoming and how willing Trump is to do anything he feels like to achieve his political goals. So can you talk about this for a bit? Why should we be worried about this?
French: Well, yeah, there’s a lot of reasons to be concerned about this. Let’s back up a little bit. You cannot understand right now without understanding how Trump feels about 2020, and he has said this out loud: He’s regretted not deploying troops more quickly into American cities in 2020. He’s regretted not putting troops under his command because there were National Guard soldiers in streets in 2020, but they were under the command of governors, not of the president.
Between 2020 and 2025, you had a lot of folks allied with Trump, making plans during the interim between his two terms to invoke the Insurrection Act more quickly and more rapidly in the event of violent protests. So against this backdrop, you get a sense — and you’ve long had a sense — that the administration is spoiling for a fight, and when I say a fight, I don’t mean a political fight, I mean a literal fight in the streets.
And so when the protests kicked off in Los Angeles and they devolved from peaceful protests into violent protests — look, violent protest is utterly unacceptable. It has to stop. But California, this is a very small-scale protest at the moment, and California has immense resources. This is not out of California’s control. And California didn’t ask for or want any federal intervention, but almost as soon as it kicked off, you saw this rhetoric, this explosion of language across the online space that reminded me — did either one of you guys see the movie “300: Rise of an Empire,” which was the sequel to the movie “300”?
Cottle: David. Really?
French: I mean, maybe we don’t have the same movie taste. I’ll just go out on a limb and say that, but there’s a moment where Xerxes, the king, comes out in front of a giant crowd and he yells, “For glory’s sake, war!”
Audio clip from movie: For glory’s sake, for vengeance’s sake: war!
And the crowd just rises in a thunderous roar. And you felt like that was the online version. You had Stephen Miller saying insurrection, you had JD Vance calling it an invasion. You had Pete Hegseth in a very frantic post saying the Marines stood ready. And so you’re thinking, “OK, wait a minute, are they about to just bring down the hammer?” And then you find out Trump nationalized about 2,000 members of the National Guard, which is a relatively modest deployment, but he did it without invoking the Insurrection Act. He did it under a much more modest legal authority that essentially allows the president to defend the federal facility from an attack.
So on the one hand, there’s some comfort in that. This was not a broad invocation of the Insurrection Act that could theoretically impose control over all of Los Angeles. It was much more modest. But I think it’s a small comfort. It’s a very small comfort because you feel like the predicate is being laid. There’s a very easy A to B if, after a day or two or three, you don’t see the violence stop, you could imagine easily that Trump would use that as a pretext for a much more sweeping assertion of power. So we are at a very, very dangerous time. The rhetoric is maximal rhetoric. The deployment is relatively minimal, but I’m worried it’s only a matter of time before the deployment matches the rhetoric.
Cottle: Tressie, what about you? How are you viewing all this?
McMillan Cottom: Well I view it very similarly, obviously, to David with a couple of things that I think of as just being unique to this administration and how President Trump governs. I think to the extent that we can call it governance, which is one, this is a president who is keenly attuned to the power of political spectacle. I think it matters for readers and listeners to understand that it probably did not matter what happened on the ground in Los Angeles. I mean, the case here is pretty cut and dry. This is a governor who has not asked for federal intervention. As David points out, they seem to be handling people’s First Amendment rights pretty well there on the ground.
But this is a president who is attuned, again, to the opportunity of political spectacle, who has a bill that he needs to push through, and who is on the eve of his sort of celebratory theater he has planned for himself here where the military will come and pledge fealty to him.
Cottle: Oh, dear God, you mean the parade?
McMillan Cottom: Right, the great parade. I mean, I don’t think any of this timing is accidental. Not to say that Donald Trump plans things. I think we give him a little bit too much credit for that. But he is a particularly skilled political opportunist and here is a moment, I think, for him to align political spectacle.
So my concern isn’t just the sort of legality or the extralegality of his actions. But ultimately with Donald Trump, it does not tend to matter what is legal. It is what is possible and what fuels his desire for political spectacle. He’s got the military standing at the ready, lined up to do his march at the very time when he now has what I think is a political sort of dream for this administration, which is the quintessential urban America, the one that they like to villainize so much in conservative rhetoric as being the place that incubates all of this nation’s ills as it relates to diversity and inclusion and a violent immigrant wave that threatens to overtake white American hegemony. You’ve got all of that in the case of Los Angeles.
And I don’t think President Trump has the impulse control to avoid the opportunity there for political spectacle, which is to go in and use a demonstration of force on an urban landscape that is very easy to demonize, in particular, the right-wing media. I will say that the people on the ground in Los Angeles tend to be very well trained at protest, and I think we are seeing what happens when those types of forces meet each other on the ground. My fear remains that this is not an administration that is inclined to let the chance for spectacle pass it by.
Cottle: I think you’re so spot on in terms of this was almost a crisis that seems created in a lab to play to Donald Trump’s lack of impulse control, but also just kind of his dream. I mean, we’re talking about California, so it’s not just politically useful, but it’s personal for Trump.
He has a real issue with Gavin Newsom, the governor, who he refers to as Gavin “Newscum.” He makes no bones about wanting to paint the entire state as an urban hellscape run by progressives. But it also lets him change the channel, change the narrative on everything awkward that has been happening with, say, his breakup with Elon Musk, which had dominated the news for a few days.
Also, it kind of puts him in this position of strong man. All of this, as we are watching Congress debate Trump’s bill and try to come up with reasons they need to push this through. And so I think it just puts Trump in a role that he loves, which is a pugilist fighting against the invading hordes as a way to wipe every other concern off the table.
But more broadly, I worry about the point of — in order to crack down and exert further executive authority on a society in general, you look for these moments where you can say, “Oh, well, things are spiraling out of control, I have to be a strong man.” And that worries me in the broader picture and I’m wondering if you guys think enough is being done to make people understand that this is about more than immigration or just more than L.A. or any particular fight. I think this is, to David’s point, the thin end of the wedge in terms of redefining what he can do.
McMillan Cottom: Yeah. I’m not sure that — I actually don’t know the right way to tell or convince Americans of the scope of the threat of this moment. But that is an ongoing challenge, I think, with this administration — part of the problem being that everything feels very urgent. When there’s so much chaos and so much political overreach happening simultaneously, I think it is difficult to focus the American interest and outrage on a particular moment.
I will say this, Michelle: This, to me, is a moment where all of the concern, the outrage — this feels very much to me like an “all hands on deck” moment because of the fundamental questions of the rule of law that are at the heart of it. To me, this is about how willing this administration is going to be in flouting the rule of law. Like many instances in the Trump administration, this is about a stress test for American democracy. And it feels like a very important moment for people to understand that it is not just about Los Angeles, and it is not just about immigration — although those are very important issues — but this is about, really fundamentally, separation of powers. This is about civil liberties. This is one of those where I think if they’re able to get away with it, we’ll be dealing with the downriver effects for quite some time.
French: You know, I think this is an important test for civil society right now. I think that whenever you see a moment like this, there is a tendency for people who are partisan red or partisan blue to rationalize excesses that they see that are on their “side.” And in doing so, they provide an enormous amount of fuel for people on the other side. Here’s what I mean: For example, we had an incident where it looked as if out of the clear blue, a police officer just turned and intentionally shot a journalist from Australia with a rubber bullet while she was covering the protests. Unless there’s some context that we’re missing from that — which it’s hard to imagine what that could be — that’s just completely excessive force.
At the same time, there is not a reason to be burning cars. There’s not a reason to be throwing rocks at police officers. Now, it’s a little much to watch Kash Patel and all of these Trump people saying, “If you come after police officers, we’ll come after you.” Oh, really? Your administration just pardoned the Jan. 6 rioters. Spare us.
But civil society has to rise up right now and say political violence is unacceptable. If that political violence is coming from protesters, unacceptable. If political violence is coming through excessive force in response to protests, in sweeping excessive grabs of authority in response to protest, then that is unacceptable. Now, at the same time, we can’t conflate all protests — there is such a thing as civil disobedience that does violate the law. But it’s peaceful, and there is an honorable long tradition of civil disobedience in this country. I respect civil disobedience greatly. People who engage in civil disobedience are extraordinarily courageous. I do not respect the use of violence, and I think that has to be a line that has to apply across the board, and that’s where civil society has to rise up and say, “No, we’re not going to choose between violent rioters and excessive use of force. We’re going to demand application of the law, and we’re going to demand peace and peaceful responses.”
McMillan Cottom: I’d like to put a fine point here on how I understand the long-storied history of civil disobedience in this country. You know, we love the civil rights movement as the paradigmatic case of civil disobedience in this country. There was a lot of violence during the civil rights movement. This sort of romanticization that we have of it as being peaceful — this was not a strategy about moral will. Being peaceful was used to highlight how much state violence was being enacted against people.
I think it’s important to keep that in mind in part because there’s no equation in my mind between throwing rocks, while you may think it is distasteful, and just the sheer amount of violent power that exists on the other side — not just in sheer weaponry, but the legal power and the legal violence that the state can use against protesters. Having said all of that, even accepting, I think, the framing of this as being a violence happening on both sides concedes a point that ultimately fuels Donald Trump’s position that force demands force.
And when you get into that sort of equivocation, I think that you lead protesters to a space where they have no choice but to enact what I would consider the violence of protecting themselves as they try to enact civil disobedience. This is not two sides, then, that are equally armed and that are both playing by the same set of rules. Activists know how to protest peacefully. They are trained to do this and have been doing this for a very long time.”
I think the more important question is why that is a threat to this government.
Cottle: Yeah. I think what bothers me about this is that — speaking to something you said earlier, Tressie — this is something that the Trump administration so clearly was waiting to latch onto and turn into something that they could exploit. And when you’re talking about a P.R. battle for the country’s support, Trump has a huge megaphone ——
McMillan Cottom: Yeah.
Cottle: And he has a showman style. It’s hard to fight back against that, even if you are in the right. And so I will be very anxious about how this plays out in the next few days. And I don’t even know how you get out ahead of that with him.
So as troubling as this piece is in the immediate, in the now, I want to kind of move us to the longer term, which is much less spectacle, but could be incredibly damaging and have a very long tail to it. And in this I’m talking about the so-called big, beautiful bill, which as Tressie mentioned, Trump is gearing up to ——
McMillan Cottom: I was going to say, do we have to call it that? Do we have consensus on this? Do we have to call it big and beautiful?
Cottle: I think we probably are a family show.
McMillan Cottom: OK. [Laughs]
Cottle: So we’re not going to say what we really think about the bill, or at least what I really think about the bill. So we’re going to just put that in air quotes and express complete irony about the ——
McMillan Cottom: [Laughs] Thank you for the air quotes. That’s all I’m asking for, Michelle.
Cottle: I want the air quotes. You can’t see them, but they’re there. So this is so classically Trump. He creates this huge story with major consequences. It sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Meanwhile, something equally serious, but far less sexy and less Fox News telegenic is happening in Washington that is driving Trump’s agenda in the long term, and no one seems to understand what’s in it. I’m not even sure half of Congress understands what’s in it and they’re the ones jamming the stuff in there.
So what I wanted you guys to do is just take the “big, beautiful bill” and pick a piece of it that you are really concerned about and that you think people don’t — even know it’s in there, they don’t really understand the scope of the impact or why it matters so much.
So David, I’m going to start with you.
French: So I cannot talk about this monstrosity, which I refuse to refer to as beautiful in any way, short shape or form without saying, what the heck are we doing with these budget deficits?
We just went through a cycle where we demonstrated that extraordinary deficit spending and extraordinary government spending can lead to inflation that really hurts individual Americans. And here we’re going and saying, “YOLO, here we go.” [Laughter] Let’s just shoot the moon on the deficit. So I have to just say that. But I’m going to go with the 10-year ban on A.I. regulation. It’s hard to overstate in some ways how silly this is because you have an emerging technology, this A.I. It’s very hard to talk to somebody who really, truly, fully understands A.I. in all of its dimensions. Even when you have A.I. experts, they will clash considerably on what it means.
And so this is exactly the time for the American laboratories of democracy, the states, to take a crack at figuring out how we manage this emerging technology. And oh, by the way, the states are the only places that happen to have functioning legislatures right now that actually enact bills and laws in response to emerging problems. And so to then say the working legislatures are prohibited from responding to an emerging technology and the most dysfunctional legislature in the whole United States has exclusive authority to do so — it strikes me as utterly nonsensical and potentially dangerous. Honestly, it seems as if a lot of this is driven by the desire to use A.I. for propaganda purposes and it’s very strange.
McMillan Cottom: Here’s the thing about A.I. You know, I’ve written about it extensively as well and I’m like David — it seems awfully strange to me that something that is supposed to promise so much unquestioned innovation needs such strong market protectionism to do it. If it’s so innovative, why does it need to be protected from regulation? We should all need it and it’s going to change our lives and it’s going to be so self-evident. So I think it is also conceding the case that right now it doesn’t really have much of one. And it’s absolutely ridiculous, and I want every American to know about it and to care about it.
I also want Americans to know and care about the continued attack on private education. One of the things that is in this bill is a transformation of subsidies for private school vouchers. This is a voucher-enthusiastic administration. But this does something a little different. This not only incentivizes people to give private school vouchers, but then reduces their tax penalty when they do. So this is expected to then have the pretty much rational rush on private school vouchers that this administration is hoping will be a partner in its dismantling of the Department of Education and facilitating the sort of deregulation of public education in this country.
This is also just a further weaponization of the private school voucher system as a weapon against public education, which should be — to David’s larger point — a state issue, I would point out. So even having the federal government tweak the tax code in this way is arguably an overreach but is certainly hostile to public education.
Cottle: So before I throw mine in there, I want to make sure that we have not forced to be obscure. Is there anything that is really plaguing you about the bill that you did not bring up because you think it’s too well known or ——
French: Yep!
Cottle: Go, go.
French: The limitation and restrictions on the power of the courts in contempt proceedings.
So essentially, the problem that we have right now is that contempt proceedings are about the only significant tool that courts have to enforce their judgments, and even contempt proceedings are subject to, at the end of the day, the willingness of the executive branch of the government to arrest individuals to enforce contempt proceedings. But it’s about the only thing that the courts have. I mean, they do have sanctions, which are short of contempt, but contempt is the judicial equivalent of what their equivalent of their nuclear weapon would be. And it’s not that impressive.
And this Congress wants to restrict it even more with bond obligations. This is purely trying to provide Trump with refuge and Trump officials with refuge in the event that they ultimately do decide to flat out defy a court — that’s when contempt starts to lock in. They want to take what little power the judiciary has and diminish that. So I couldn’t leave that one entirely on the table either.
Cottle: Tressie, did you have anything — that we have failed ——
McMillan Cottom: This administration is obsessed with the expansion of work requirements for benefits. This would expand the work requirements for people who are on Medicaid.
Medicaid and Medicare is one of our great anti-poverty social programs in this country. The extent to which we continue to make it hostile to people who need it is a signal of our erosion of the social compact.
It would dramatically increase the number of people who are living below the poverty line overnight. There’s no social net positive. This isn’t like something where you could say, “You know, we’re pushing able-bodied people off of the states’ dole and making them go out and work.” There’s actually no cause for this other than cruelty.
Cottle: OK, so that tees me up for mine, which is, I worry that people don’t understand just how big a role Medicaid plays for say, the elderly population. I was having dinner with a bunch of very smart, well-informed Washington folks the other night, and one of them was like, “Are people really going to care about the Medicaid cuts if they’re not impacted themselves?” I’m like, yes, in part because if you have older family members, two-thirds of nursing home patients rely on Medicaid as their primary form of funding. And that doesn’t get into all the people who are taking care of their parents at home long-term. Medicare does not pay for long-term care for elders — that’s Medicaid.
We’ve seen what happens in a couple of states that have tried work requirements and the enrollment levels plummeted. One estimate says that at least $600 billion will get pulled out of that program over the next decade. If you’re talking about that level of money, just like kind of the trickle-down effect, as clinics get closed and hospitals get closed and providers, it’s just going to be a freak show with an aging population that already is straining public resources. America already cannot take care of its elderly population sufficiently right now and the burden, if you go whacking hundreds of millions of dollars out of Medicaid, is going to be an abject disaster.
McMillan Cottom: The level of punishment here of people who need health care is one of the crueler aspects of this big, so-called beautiful bill.
Cottle: There have been many people to point out that there are an awful lot of red states and red communities ——
McMillan Cottom: Oh yeah.
Cottle: That rely on Medicaid. So at the same time, you’re listening to people like Stephen Miller talk about how this is the most populous, most pro-American bill. It’s the MAGA agenda in legislative form, but there are some Republicans who see some trouble coming and we’ve already seen a couple of House members backtrack on the bill after they voted for it. And then there are a couple of folks in the Senate, including Josh Hawley, specifically over the Medicaid stuff.
So do either of you have some sense of optimism that maybe this could be stopped, that there will be enough concern among Republican senators? Or do you think that there’s no way to derail this at this stage?
French: Let me put it this way, Michelle. You’re always warned if you invest any money at all ever in your life, you’ll get one of these statements that says, past performance is not a predictor of future results. Right? And then everybody just blows right through that, going, past performance is a predictor of future results. It can be pretty darn reliable. That’s why people go with investment managers who have a long track record that’s good.
McMillan Cottom: Exactly.
French: If you’re going with past performance as a predictor of future results, which I think is a very rational thing to do here, watch the Senate cave — just watch it. And if it doesn’t cave, that will be a surprise.
So I’m not going to say it’s absolutely, definitely, positively going to cave, but if past performance is any indicator of future results, watch this happen, because as we’ve seen, the more aggressive MAGA gets toward the Senate, the more the Senate capitulates. It’s 180 degrees from the judiciary. The more aggressive MAGA gets at the judiciary, the judiciary stands firm, the more aggressive it gets for these senators.
Think about some of these confirmation battles — well, they weren’t even battles. So I’m hopeful — hopeful is probably even too strong. I hold out some hope that reason will prevail in the worst elements of the monstrosity bill. But I do not expect it in any way, shape or form.
Cottle: Yeah, my sense is that a lot of folks in the Senate, and I’m talking Republicans as well as the House, they’re just afraid of Trump.
Before we go, let’s shift back to the shorter term. What are you going to be keeping a close eye on in the days ahead? Let’s just try for the week and then the coming week. There’s going to be a lot going on. What’s going to get your attention most?
McMillan Cottom: I am paying attention to whether or not the Marines show up in Los Angeles. I think ——
Cottle: I can’t believe that had to come out of your mouth.
Tressie: Same. That’s what I’m paying attention to. I want to know if this was just a threat or if it’s something that they’re actually willing to do. I think their willingness to do it will say a lot to David’s earlier point ——
Cottle: Oh, wait, wait, wait. They’re there now. Actually, CNN just reported the Marines ——
McMillan Cottom: When did this happen?
Cottle: Just right now.
McMillan Cottom: Thank you. Thank you.
Cottle: A full Marine battalion. OK, Tressie, you’ve been overtaken by events.
McMillan Cottom: Not my first time.
Cottle: So as we’re talking, 700 Marines in California have been ordered to assist in Los Angeles and they’re expected to arrive over the next 24 hours or so, a U.S. official has confirmed. So this situation is still extremely fluid, and who knows what it’s going to look like by the time you all hear this. So, give us the first take.
McMillan Cottom: Well, my first take was that this is what I was very afraid of. It says something about how emboldened the administration feels, to David’s point, about what is legal and what this administration is willing to do may not always be the same thing. How much the administration continues to run roughshod over the Constitution just continues to be stunning. Whether or not this act, however, is supported by other Republicans will say a lot to me over the next day or so.
Listen, it is very odd for me, particularly as a Black American, to watch the federal government’s intervention at the state level of civil disobedience to be on the side of state power when so often during the civil rights movement, we relied on it to protect the civil rights movement’s right to protest. So I feel like I’m living — I’ve fallen through the looking glass here. But this will be the thing that I’m watching, not only that it has now happened, but how people respond.
French: I’m with Tressie on this. I think the single most important issue over the next several days, or the single most important thing that we all should be looking at is, does the situation in Los Angeles escalate? Does it spread to other cities? How does the administration respond to that? This is a very, very dangerous moment. We are in a tinder box right now, and so that’s what I’m looking at.
McMillan Cottom: Yeah.
Cottle: Who am I to buck the trend? I’m right there with you: I’m very nervous about the whole thing but hopefully we will have better news next time we gather to discuss. So I guess we’re going to land it there. And with that, David, Tressie, thank you so much for talking through all this craziness with me.
French: Thank you both.
McMillan Cottom: Yeah. It was a real pleasure to be here. Thank you, Michelle. Thanks, David.
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag).
Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2022. She is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, the author of “Thick: And Other Essays” and a 2020 MacArthur fellow. @tressiemcphd
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