Trump’s Memphis Takeover Another Step Down the Road to Authoritarianism
The deployment of National Guard units and federal agents to Memphis for a Donald Trump–defined crime-fighting mission has gotten far less alarmed attention nationally than the earlier presidential takeover of law enforcement in Washington, D.C. But even though the president himself is calling the Memphis action a “replica” of the D.C. “crackdown,” it’s actually different in important ways and is also different from future Guard deployments Trump is threatening to undertake in places such as Chicago.
First of all, D.C. isn’t in a state, and the president has quasi-gubernatorial powers over city government. He had the power to call up the National Guard there just like a governor would in the states. He also has special emergency authority to control local law enforcement in emergencies he identifies. So nothing anywhere else could actually be a “replica” of what he did in the nation’s capital.
Second of all, Trump conveniently has a submissive Republican governor in place in Tennessee who can call up the National Guard without encountering the legal restrictions federalized Guard units must acknowledge under a 19th-century law prohibiting use of the military for domestic law enforcement other than in extreme situations. Governor Bill Lee very clearly didn’t think the crime situation in Memphis required Guard units until Trump told him otherwise, but he’s going along with the Memphis deployment because The Boss said so. But there’s a wrinkle: Trump isn’t sending federal agents to Memphis to support a state-and-local law-enforcement initiative; this is a federal “mission” totally created and defined by Trump. While Tennessee Guard units will remain under the operational control of the governor, it’s very clear who’s really in charge.
There are two notable similarities to the D.C. takeover, however. First, as in Washington, crime rates are relatively high but have been falling recently. This is only an “emergency” because the president has decided it’s one. Second, the Democrats who ostensibly control local governments in Memphis, as in Washington, didn’t ask for this intervention and think it’s inappropriate but aren’t in much of a position to fight both the federal and state governments without looking “soft on crime” and losing even more control over their city and county. So it’s a semi-hostile takeover. Trump has talked about a similar intervention in New Orleans, where there is a compliant Republican governor as well.
At the same time, it’s important to know that the Memphis law-enforcement takeover is different legally and politically from what Trump did in Los Angeles in June and is threatening to do in Chicago, Baltimore, and Oakland — cities in states with Democratic governors. In cases where the governor is not going to take orders from the White House to participate in a hyperpolitical crime-fighting initiative, the president has to fully “federalize” National Guard units, and they (and other military assets involved) can only operate in a support capacity to law-enforcement agencies. In L.A., for example, Guard and Marine units “protected” the ICE and Border Patrol agents who were actually conducting widespread immigration raids over the objections of state and local officials.
If that’s what Trump has in mind after his Memphis initiative, it’s going to get a lot hairier. But it’s bad enough that he’s encouraging — nay, demanding — that red-state leaders join him in violating the sovereignty of blue cities in their midst, politicizing law enforcement to an even greater degree than before, and disrupting the cooperative arrangements that typically exist on the ground across party lines. And down the road also looms the possibility that Trump will expect Republican governors to send Guard units into Democratic-governed states, essentially invading their neighbors. Six red states already deployed Guard assets to D.C. to give the president additional soldiers for his performative takeover there. At some point all this militarized interstate crime fighting could begin to look a lot like civil war.
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