Tanks will roll down Constitution Avenue in Washington this weekend to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday. Demonstrations are being staged in all 50 states to protest immigration raids and President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles. And war has widened in the Middle East after Israel’s lethal attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and its leaders.
The nation is a cauldron of anxiety and anger as it enters the weekend at a moment recalling some of the darkest periods of its history.
This country has faced — and survived — spasms of tension and disruption before. Debate and disagreement, as well as military and even domestic conflict, are knitted into its history and DNA, from the Civil War to the antiwar demonstrations of the 1960s (not to mention two World Wars, the assassinations of four presidents and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks).
But two things, many historians suggest, distinguish this moment from other troubled times in our past. The first is the sheer number of conflagrations taking place at once — not only in the United States but also around the world. In Los Angeles, a U.S. senator, Alex Padilla of California, a Democrat, was pushed to the ground and handcuffed Thursday after trying to confront Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, about the immigration raids. Hours later, Israel launched its first airstrikes on Iran, and Iran retaliated Friday, launching scores of missiles, some of which broke through air defenses in and around Tel Aviv.
“We live in highly disruptive times,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Even before this week, Naftali argued, the world order was destabilized as Trump tore up trade deals and foreign alliances, and the United States, Russia and China moved to “take advantage of worldwide changes for their own interests, adding to the velocity of disruption.”
The second thing is Trump himself. At fraught moments like this, it normally falls to the president to step up as the reassuring figure, whether it was George W. Bush heading to downtown Manhattan after the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001, or Bill Clinton going to Oklahoma City after a truck bomb destroyed a nine-story federal building and killed 168 people in 1995.
Not Trump. When Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democrat of California, protested the dispatching of the National Guard to Los Angeles, the president responded by ordering even more members of the guard to the city, followed by a contingent of Marines. When told that the “No Kings” weekend protests might spill into Washington on Saturday, Trump warned that anyone trying to interfere with his military parade, which coincides with his 79th birthday, will be met with “a very big force.”
“What really stands out to me now is that the biggest source of chaos is the president himself,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton University. “Rather than acting as a force to try to bring some kind of reconciliation, calm and stability, he is fueling the fires.”
Naftali argued that Trump could “end most of the tension single-handedly.”
“But he revels in confrontation, and he is resentful and vengeful in a way he wasn’t quite in 2017,” Naftali said. He added, “No wonder many Americans are on edge when our commander in chief is determined to put tanks on the streets of D.C. and eager to declare emergencies to send masked and armed federal or federalized forces almost everywhere else.”
Perhaps the fact that the nation has endured difficult times before should offer a note of comfort.
But perhaps not. “The fact these moments have happened before signals the fragility of the democracy, rather than its inevitable ability to endure,” Zelizer said.
Enjoy your weekend.
in his words
Undocumented workers who are ‘almost impossible to replace’
Every so often, President Trump treats an objection to his policies as reasonable. My colleague Chris Cameron, a reporter in the Washington bureau, breaks down one such social-media post.
President Trump briefly took a softer tone on deportations Thursday morning when discussing undocumented seasonal workers in the agricultural and hospitality sectors.
“Our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” he wrote.
He added that “in many cases” criminals allowed into the country under the Biden administration were applying for those jobs. “This is not good,” he wrote. “We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Yet no immediate change in his immigration policy actually appears to be coming.
These seasonal workers are an issue of great personal interest for the president: He has been a frequent and longtime user of the H-2A and H-2B visa programs, used to hire agricultural workers and hospitality staff members like gardeners and housekeepers. His companies have employed more than 1,000 workers through both programs in the past 20 years, according to federal data.
But his administration has been slow to hand out those visas, and businesses that hire these immigrant workers have been pleading for relief.
It’s not the first time that Trump has signaled flexibility to business leaders on immigration. He promised Silicon Valley investors last year that he would automatically grant a green card to all foreign students who graduated from an American college. His campaign backed away from that promise hours later.
The Moment
Yet another military display
Kenny Holston’s photo of President Trump watching soldiers fast-rope down from an Army helicopter at Fort Bragg almost looks as if the president is standing in front of a giant TV screen watching the demonstration of military prowess. In fact, he was in a kind of makeshift bunker watching it unfold in real life.
Kenny was struck by how the president’s enjoyment of the spectacle seemed to be the point. He contrasted it with other presidential visits to military installations, both stateside and in conflict zones.
“With past presidents, we’d normally see them use that time to really bring themselves down to the service members’ level and ask: ‘What more can I do for you? Is leadership getting it right?’” Kenny said. “In this instance — while on the surface it was fascinating to witness, and it’s always intriguing to see how skilled our service members are — this was a show specifically arranged for the president.”
The picture, taken on Tuesday, is notable for another reason: the presence of the cameraman at right, who was not part of the White House press corps but was there capturing images of the soldiers and of Trump watching the soldiers. It’s unclear where those images might be shown, Kenny said, though Saturday’s military parade seems like a good bet.
ONE LAST THING
Not your typical performance
In case you couldn’t get tickets, our own Shawn McCreesh — along with a couple of drag queens, a president and his wife — was at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington the other night to take in a performance of “Les Misérables.”
This was no ordinary show.
For one thing, the Kennedy Center has become a cultural battleground since President Trump purged its board and declared that he would take charge of the programming. For another, Trump and his wife watched it all — from the presidential box at the center of the balcony — to a decidedly mixed reaction. (Shawn observed empty seats and a noticeable if low-level chorus of boos, in addition to cheers.)
There are many reasons to read his account of a night out in Washington, including Trump’s response to the question of whether he identified more with Jean Valjean or Inspector Javert. But the best may be the chance to hear from a drag queen Shawn interviewed at the show.
After all, when Trump took control of the arts center, he vowed, in one of his all-caps social-media rants, to ban drag shows and “other anti-American propaganda.”
The drag queen, who uses the name Vagenesis, would have none of that: “You can’t erase us.”
Chris Cameron contributed reporting to this newsletter.
Adam Nagourney is a Times reporter covering government, political and cultural stories in California, focusing on the effort to rebuild Los Angeles after the fires. He also writes about national politics.
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