Trump has manufactured a national crisis that could come to define his presidency

“Never let a good crisis go to waste” is a cynical view of politics attributed to Winston Churchill — and repeated by other politicians ever since. What we are now learning is that US President Donald Trump has added a far more cynical setup line: the best crises are the ones you create yourself to further your political purposes.

The Trump administration essentially manufactured a national crisis over immigration — with ground zero in Los Angeles — and is now using the resulting protests to support his outrage and precipitate actions.

To address a series of demonstrations in Los Angeles, he ordered the dispatch of a contingent of US Marines there and the call-up and federalising of some 4,000 National Guard personnel, wading into the ongoing crisis in Los Angeles and putatively setting up a way he could take the credit for stilling the demonstrations.

For bonus points, this would set up the landscape for blaming California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — both Democrats — if events go off the rails before the crisis winds down.

The Trump administration, of course, has had a long-running feud with Newsom over the handling of major forest fires and the distribution of crucial water resources, and with Los Angeles over its apparent inability to move quickly enough to save neighbourhoods destroyed by the fires.

Some officials close to the president have muttered about arresting the California governor over his behaviour and words; meanwhile, the governor is suing the federal government and its chief executive for arrogating the state government’s powers. It might — might not — be a coincidence, but Trump seems to see Newsom as a likely challenger for the Democrats in 2028’s presidential election and damaging him would be good, albeit cynical, politics.

The flood of illegal immigrants/undocumented aliens into the US and the presumably damaging impact on the economy, jobs and the general welfare was a key element of Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020. Throughout that effort, he cited imaginary numbers of millions of immigrants (and those mythic Haitians eating pet puppies and kittens).

Once in office, he has insisted upon more dramatic enforcement of arrests and mass deportations. This has reportedly included giving ICE — the Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security — quotas of several thousand individuals a day to be rounded up.

That led to vigorous efforts to round up suspects in factories and restaurant kitchens, or at the parking lots of big-box hardware stores where handymen, bricklayers, plumbers and electricians congregate, waiting for contractors to hire them early in the day. This, in turn, has led to increased fears among those whose papers were not in order.

In the newest wrinkle, while not directly related to the ICE roundups, but contributing to the fear, the Trump administration has issued a total freeze on visas to enter the US for a range of nations. (The recent anti-Semitic attack in Boulder, Colorado, carried out by an Egyptian immigrant apparently served as a pretext for the move, although Egypt was not, curiously, on the list of affected nations.)

Crowd control

In Los Angeles, a rising number of people — immigrants, their family members, and supporters, including labour union leaders — rallied to protest against the ICE roundups. The protests initially centred on the part of the city that housed federal government office buildings, including a major courthouse. The Los Angeles police were called out in force to protect the buildings and exercise crowd control, but without ending the demonstrations.

While the protests seemed rowdy, they were, at least initially, largely non-violent. As events moved on through the weekend, some in the crowd threw water bottles, stones and firecrackers at police, several Waymo autonomous vehicles were set alight, and there was some damage to fixed property.

Not surprisingly, the protests received blanket coverage on news channels and in other media, and the potential of wider violence was presumably the precipitating cause for the Trump administration’s thinking in seeing a path for action, even though city and state authorities — acting in close coordination — insisted they were well-practised in crowd control and had sufficient human resources to deal with the situation.

The Trump administration seized the moment, however, and announced, without any collaboration with city and state authorities, that they would call up 2,000 National Guard troops. They then doubled that number.

In addition, they deployed a substantial detachment of Marines to Los Angeles — even though using the Marines for law enforcement is illegal.

For his part, Trump said these deployments were crucial lest the city be “burning to the ground”. One surely must wonder why Trump did not move with the same alacrity in the insurrection in Washington, DC, at the Capitol Building in January 2021 in response to his false claim that he had been cheated of victory in the presidential election.

One major problem in this was that the call-up of the National Guard was done without consultation with the state government, under which control of a state’s National Guard units resides. The normal process is for a state governor to call upon units in times of major natural disasters or civil disorder, as with Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans a generation ago.

Elements of the California National Guard were called to duty in the rioting that took place in 1992 in the wake of the police assault on Rodney King, but not precipitously at the whim of the president.

‘Insurrection’

As a final resort, if the need arises, a president can federalise National Guard units to call them to service in civil duties, especially in the event of an insurrection or foreign invasion, according to the law. (Trump has kept up the drumbeat of using the word “insurrection”, probably to provide backstopping of the federalising and mobilising of National Guard troops.)

Historically, perhaps the most extraordinary version of such things took place in 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower federalised the Arkansas National Guard over the objections of the then governor to enforce the desegregation of that state’s public schools, in accord with the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v Board of Education. Arkansas had failed to heed the court’s ruling, and its governor egged on increasingly violent anti-integration demonstrations.

More generally, over the past several decades, National Guard and regular Army/Navy/Air Force reserve units have been integrated into the defence department’s table of organisation. Such units have been called to serve abroad in military activities as partners to regular active duty forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is important to note that National Guard personnel have usually been well-trained in dealing with civil disorder, demonstrations and protests. Accordingly, making use of such personnel is not, in and of itself, a terrible choice. This writer enlisted in the Maryland National Guard back in the early 1970s in an infantry unit — to stay out of the military draft that would have certainly sent him to Vietnam.

After basic and advanced infantry training, his training unit spent a full week rehearsing the ins and outs of anti-riot duty techniques not based on using lethal force. (We alternated in being riot control troops and rioting students — the verisimilitude was compelling.)

Such training had been put into place for those in National Guard units as a consequence of the killings at Kent State University in 1970 by poorly trained Ohio National Guard troops who used live ammunition, as well as the killings of several other students at a college in South Carolina the same week.

At the time of writing, it seems the demonstrations in Los Angeles have continued, but at a lower level of intensity. However, demonstrations in support of the protests in Los Angeles have been set for more than a dozen cities across the nation. This movement is not at an end.

Disconcerting week

All this has been taking place during a particularly disconcerting week for Trump’s presidency. There was the raucous, wild, childlike breakup with his heretofore “Dogester” partner, Elon Musk. Concurrently, there is growing dissatisfaction with the “Big Beautiful Bill” of tax cuts and government spending, not least from Musk, who called it an “abomination”.

It has become increasingly clear that this Bill, if passed by the Senate after a narrow victory in the House of Representatives, would give major tax cuts to the rich and cuts in a range of social services to the less well-off, triggering a massive increase in the nation’s debt. As a result, the president’s push for this Bill is becoming more frenetic, yet less certain of results.

Meanwhile, there is growing criticism of the plans Trump has pushed for a major military parade to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US Army. The massive parade is scheduled to take place in Washington, DC, on Saturday — which just happens to be Trump’s 79th birthday.

Moreover, those highly touted Trump initiatives to reach a chimerical, quick, easy solution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the continuing ferocity of Israel’s actions in Gaza, have left Trump with no victories to celebrate, despite his promises.

As a result, looking bloody-minded on immigrants, with a tough, military-style crackdown on protests against ICE’s round-ups of potential visa violators and other illegal immigrants, could be spun as a win for Trump, despite the rest of the depressing news. It could conceivably be touted as yet another campaign promise kept.

Of course, the demonstrations across the US could mushroom instead. Casualties might mount, and increasing disapproval from civic leaders, some Republicans, judges, and many Democrats could be heard, along with a swathe of lawsuits against the president’s policies.

The crisis of the protests over immigration policy is not over, and if it goes badly it might come to define the Trump presidency. DM