Americans Hate Trump’s Plan to Unleash Troops on Los Angeles

The president’s decision to use the Marines on U.S. civilians in Los Angeles is not sitting well with the public.

A YouGov poll released Tuesday morning indicates that the majority of Americans disagree with Donald Trump’s order sending 700 Marines to break up anti-ICE protests in the city. The number of people against the president’s action eclipsed those who supported it by double digits, with 47 percent of polled Americans saying they disagreed with the order compared to 34 percent who approved.

When it comes to Trump’s decision to send 4,100 National Guard members to one of the country’s most populous cities, Americans were equally unhappy: 45 percent of polled Americans said they disapproved, while 38 percent supported the action.

A shocking percentage of Americans were undecided on both issues. Some 19 percent of those surveyed said they weren’t sure how they felt about Trump sending the Marines to manhandle anti-ICE demonstrators, while 17 percent said they were undecided about the president’s decision to send in the National Guard. Both of those groups were mostly composed of registered independents, according to polling data.

The results are remarkably aligned with Trump’s overall job approval, with 51 percent of Americans disapproving of his job performance while 44 percent approve, as tracked by The Economist.

The YouGov poll was conducted before the Defense Department unveiled the price tag of sending active duty troops into Los Angeles: $134 million, paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Exactly who is breaking the law in L.A. is in question. Americans have a First Amendment right to protest, as protected by the U.S. Constitution—a document that every sitting president and public official swears an oath to uphold. But Trump has directed the military to squash the protests without California’s authorization, prompting a lawsuit from the state to peel back the order. California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters Monday that Trump had “trampled” California’s sovereignty.

Furthermore, Trump’s enforcement of his national agenda directly violates the will of the city of Los Angeles: The Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted in November to establish itself as a “sanctuary city,” prohibiting city resources from being used for federal immigration enforcement. Thrusting the military into the city to help federal agents rip undocumented immigrants out of their communities oversteps what Angelinos voted for.

Trump’s order also violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878, that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The White House could have bypassed the military doctrine by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to utilize the military during periods of rebellion or mass civil unrest, but had not done so by the time of the order. (Trump has openly discussed leveraging the nineteenth-century law to enact his agenda since his inauguration but has still not invoked the Insurrection Act as of the time of publishing.)

A month before the presidential election, the Brennan Center for Justice referred to the Posse Comitatus Act as “too flimsy a guardrail” to genuinely protect the nation from the White House, explaining that the principle within the act is protected “more by norms and historical practice” than the law itself. “Unfortunately, we’ve entered an era in which we can no longer rely on tradition to constrain executive action,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, wrote at the time.

House Speaker Mike Johnson got draconian as he upped the ante on the Trump administration’s threats against California Governor Gavin Newsom.

During a press conference with House Republican leadership Tuesday, Johnson was asked whether he believed Newsom should face legal consequences, after Donald Trump said it would be “great” if acting ICE Director Tom Homan had him arrested for obstructing immigration enforcement operations in Los Angeles.

“That’s not my lane, I’m not gonna give you legal analysis on whether Gavin Newsom should be arrested, but he ought to be tarred and feathered, I’ll say that,” Johnson said.

“He’s standing in the way of the administration and carrying out of federal law. He is applauding the bad guys, and standing in the way of the good guys,” Johnson said, calling the governor a “participant and an accomplice” in the assault on federal officers.

“Do your job, stop working on your rebrand and be a governor,” Johnson added, likely referring to Newsom’s newfound centrist politics.

Newsom swiftly responded to Johnson’s comment, which seemed to sit somewhere between counseling ridicule and mob violence.

“Good to know we’re skipping the arrest and going straight for the 1700’s style forms of punishment,” Newsom wrote in a post on X. “A fitting threat given the @GOP want to bring our country back to the 18th Century.”

All of this started over the weekend when Homan was asked whether he would consider arresting Newsom or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass if they got in the way of the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement. Homan said that no one was above the law but did not specifically threaten to arrest Newsom. On Monday, Trump said that he thought arresting Newsom would be a great P.R. stunt for the Democrat, but Newsom hit back saying that Trump’s green light was “an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.”

Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration alleging that the president had overstepped his authority by deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to protests opposing several ICE raids last week.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that the president’s plan to use the military against U.S. citizens will cost taxpayers a jaw-dropping sum.

Testifying before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Tuesday, Hegseth initially refused to address how exactly his department’s overstretched budget would afford the sudden deployment of 700 Marines to Los Angeles—until he was backed into a corner. In the end, persistent questioning from the committee forced Hegseth to turn to his acting comptroller, Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, to provide a figure for the unpopular deployment: $134 million.

MacDonnell said the sum would come from the department’s operations and maintenance accounts, though Hegseth seemed to have little idea how the money would actually be reshuffled.

“What is the current cost for what is taking place in California, and how is it going to affect this budget?” asked Representative Betty McCollum. “How much are these deployments going to cost, for both the Marines and the National Guard? And what training or duties are not taking place because of these deployments? Where in your limited budget, sir, are you going to find—in the remainder of this fiscal year—are you going to pull the money to cover these deployments? What holes are being created?”

After jotting a note to himself, Hegseth appealed to McCollum’s shared background in Minnesota, where he claimed that protests had been “improperly” handled in 2020.

“So in Los Angeles, we believe that ICE—which is a federal law enforcement agency—has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country, especially after 21 million illegals have crossed our border under the previous administration.” (Fact checks indicate that stat—which has been touted by Trump since he was on the campaign trail to stoke fear—is tangibly untrue. Approximately eight million undocumented immigrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.)

“I asked a budget question. Could the secretary please address the budget? Thank you,” said McCollum.

“You asked about the situation in Los Angeles, and we believe that ICE agents should be allowed to be safe in doing their operations. We have deployed the National Guard and the Marines to protect them in the execution of their duties, because we ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country, unlike what Governor [Tim] Walz did in 2020,” Hegseth continued, before going on about the “defund the police” movement that took root that year.

“Mister Chairman, if the secretary is not going to [answer] the budgetary questions, I will yield back my time if the secretary refuses to ask the budgetary questions put before him. They’re important,” McCollum said. “What training missions aren’t happening, where are you pulling the money from, and how are you planning this moving forward? These are budget questions that affect this committee and the decisions we’re going to be making in a couple of hours.”

Despite MacDonnell finally providing the estimated cost, questions remain about what will happen when the Marines finally step foot in Los Angeles. Despite the defense secretary’s pledge that the Marines are arriving in L.A. fully trained, Pentagon officials are reportedly still working to draft guidelines for soldiers who have never been tasked with engaging the public.

Trump’s order violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The White House could have bypassed the military doctrine by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to utilize the military during periods of rebellion or mass civil unrest, but had not done so by the time of the order. (Trump has openly discussed leveraging the nineteenth-century law to enact his agenda since his inauguration but has still not invoked the Insurrection Act as of the time of publishing.)

The Marines are joining 4,100 National Guard members that Trump similarly tasked with disassembling the protests, against the wishes of local government officials. On Monday, California sued the Trump administration to roll back the National Guard’s deployment, citing logistical challenges that L.A. and state officials said would make it more difficult to safely handle the protests.

Senator Bill Cassidy promised the American people that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would not make any changes to the vaccine advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when he cast his decisive confirmation vote for the health and human services secretary. But on Monday, RFK Jr. scrapped the board entirely, leaving Cassidy scrambling to explain himself and his vote. 

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy posted on X after Kennedy explained his rationale in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

When asked what he said specifically to Kennedy to “ensure” that the immunization advisory committee wouldn’t be run by anti-vaxxers, Cassidy went mum. 

“I’d rather just characterize it as: we had a conversation,” he told Semafor’s Burgess Everett on Tuesday. When Burgess asked if Cassidy was “still comfortable” with voting to confirm RFK Jr. in February, Cassidy replied, “I’d rather not comment on that.” 

During the confirmation process Cassidy explicitly guaranteed that “if confirmed, [RFK Jr.] will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.” Either Cassidy was lying, or RFK Jr. was lying to Cassidy.

Now all of the other promises that Cassidy made on RFK’s behalf—like not making false claims about vaccines causing autism, or even appearing before Congress on a quarterly basis—are moot. Cassidy claimed that he studied his decision to confirm Kennedy “exhaustively” and took it “very seriously.” It’s clear that Cassidy’s words meant nothing as Kennedy guts a key institution of our national health apparatus.  

Police in Philadelphia are searching for a man who robbed a business while masquerading as a Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, according to Fox 29.

A man wearing a tactical vest with the words “Security Enforcement Agent” entered a car repair business Monday afternoon and detained a 50-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic using zip-ties, before making away with roughly $1,000, according to police.

“He kept saying he is immigration officer,” the woman told Fox 29’s Steve Keeley.

Crimes like these are the inevitable result of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants, as part of the government’s massive deportation efforts.

During recent ICE raids across the country, agents have declined to show identification or a warrant, often detaining people while wearing face masks to hide their identity, meaning that it’s not difficult to pretend to be an ICE agent and enact racialized violence and mayhem. The Trump administration’s escalating rhetoric targeting immigrants has already emboldened several ICE imposters who have been hit with charges such as kidnapping, assault, and of course, impersonating a federal officer.

The Trump administration’s decision to empower an extrajudicial enforcement agency that is not accountable to the citizens it purports to protect will likely continue to sow chaos across the country—particularly as the Trump administration has moved to increase the number of daily ICE arrests.

The president’s “law and order” agenda isn’t popular with the people tasked with enforcing it.

The Los Angeles Police Department torched Donald Trump, revealing to the public that not only had the administration failed to notify them of its decision to send 700 Marines to quell the city’s anti-ICE protests, but also that they believe Washington’s  involvement will unnecessarily complicate the situation.

“The LAPD has not received any formal notification that the Marines will be arriving in Los Angeles,” wrote LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell in a news release Monday. “However, the possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles absent clear coordination presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.

“The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively,” McDonnell continued. “That said, our top priority is the safety of both the public and the officers on the ground. We are urging open and continuous lines of communication between all agencies to prevent confusion, avoid escalation, and ensure a coordinated, lawful, and orderly response during this critical time.”

Police unions across the country comprised a massive coalition responsible for sending Trump back to the White House. Cops were some of his biggest cheerleaders during the past three election cycles, frothing at his promises to always “back the blue.”

Thousands of locals flooded the streets of Los Angeles over the weekend in a stunning visual protest of the president’s agenda. Protesters blocked off a major freeway, trashed Waymos (self-driving cars), and organized outside City Hall and the Metropolitan Detention Center. In reaction, law enforcement officials shot rubber bullets and fired tear gas and flash bangs into crowds of civilians. The FBI added protesters suspected of throwing rocks at police cars to its Most Wanted list and ominously threatened to intervene in the anti-Trump display without guidance from California or the White House.

California sued the federal government Monday to roll back Trump’s deployment of 4,100 National Guard members that state authorities said had not been authorized or requested to handle the protests. In a press conference announcing the lawsuit Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters that Trump had “trampled” California’s sovereignty.

Direct orders from Stephen Miller ignited the Los Angeles protests, leading to the precarious, highly militarized situation the city is currently facing. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Miller, frustrated with ICE’s failure to meet their lofty deportation quota, held an intense meeting at ICE headquarters  last month and bet his agents that they could go to places like Home Depot or 7-Eleven and start arresting people. 

“Who here thinks they can do it?” Miller said, asking the audience directly. Officers were repeatedly told to do “what they needed to do” to make arrests. 

ICE followed suit, flooding Los Angeles’s Westlake neighborhood with agents, accosting immigrants at their jobs and setting off resistance from community members, which then in turn led to federal agents deploying tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash-bang grenades on American citizens. Miller, who is from Santa Monica, has long been obsessed with Los Angeles as a symbol of everything he hates: multicultural, multilingual, vibrant.

Los Angeles is only the beginning of this immigration crackdown, and Miller’s aggressive, by any means necessary tactics will only continue to be met with community protest, which in turn will lead to more Marines and National Guardsmen in the street (and without rules of civilian engagement at the time of this writing). This cycle is exactly what Miller and the administration want, as they continue to use the response to their extrajudicial detainments to further justify their actions. 

Defense officials are working overtime to throw together guidance in the event that U.S. Marines—sent to Los Angeles Monday—are required to use force on civilians.

The rare prospect is the design of Donald Trump, who ordered 700 Marines to the city amid ongoing protests intended to block ICE raids and thwart his administration’s immigration agenda.

The soldiers are coming from Twentynine Palms, California, and have been trained in deescalation, crowd control, and self-defense, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. But rules on how the active duty soldiers should engage in force are still being drafted, according to nine anonymous U.S. officials who spoke with the AP.

The troops are experienced in active combat zones, having spent time in Syria and Afghanistan. But sending troops overseas is starkly different from sending them to one of America’s most populous cities. In war zones, soldiers are guided by the rules of engagement, but on American soil they will be guided by standing rules for the use of force, which must be agreed upon by Northern Command.

One U.S. official told the AP that each Marine should receive a card indicating what they can and cannot do. Another U.S. official told the publication that the troops will be armed with “normal service weapons” and will be carrying helmets, shields, and gas masks, but they will not be carrying tear gas.

Drafted use-of-force documents obtained by the newswire indicate that the Pentagon has so far written off warning shots, deciding that they should be prohibited. Marines sent to the city are instructed to deescalate but are not prohibited from acting in self-defense, according to the documents.

They are also drafting rules on how Marines should go about protecting federal personnel and property, or detaining civilians if troops are under assault.

Trump’s order violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The White House could have bypassed the military doctrine by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to utilize the military during periods of rebellion or mass civil unrest, but had not done so by the time of the order. (Trump has still not invoked the Insurrection Act, as of the time of publishing.)

The Marines are joining 4,100 National Guard members that Trump similarly tasked with disassembling the protests, against the wishes of local government officials. On Monday, California sued the Trump administration to roll back the National Guard’s deployment, citing logistical challenges that L.A. and state officials said would make it more difficult to safely handle the protests.

In a press conference announcing the lawsuit Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters that Trump had “trampled” California’s sovereignty.

“We don’t take lightly to the president abusing his authority and unlawfully mobilizing California National Guard troops,” Bonta said.

The president claimed on Truth Social Tuesday morning that Los Angeles would be “burning to the ground” without his militaristic directive.

Trump also endorsed threats to arrest Newsom, telling reporters that he’d “do it.”

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman was spotted Monday night chatting with Steve Bannon, according to Politico Playbook.

Fetterman, who has displayed his own dramatic rightward shift, was reportedly dining at a top MAGA hangout near Capitol Hill with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle, when the conservative news site’s old director wandered up and spoke to the pair for roughly 20 minutes.

Bannon took over Breitbart in 2012, and directed the site to publish patently pugnacious rhetoric and conspiracy theories cooked up by far-right activists and white supremacists. In 2016, Bannon stepped down to join Trump’s presidential campaign as its CEO, and went on to mastermind the authoritarian MAGA movement.

Fetterman broke with his party yet again on Monday to condemn the anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles. “I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that. This is anarchy and true chaos,” he wrote in a post on X.

“My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement,” he added.

Bannon has a slightly different view of the unrest in Los Angeles, which has been spurred on by Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard, and now the Marines. “We’re in the Third World War,” he said in an interview published on Monday. “And it’s a battlefield that’s everywhere, including in downtown Los Angeles.”

Last month, a damning report said that some of Fetterman’s staff were concerned about his increasingly erratic behavior, and Republican lawmakers flocked to support the Democratic senator with whom they’d inexplicably come to agree.

Fetterman was one of the more than two dozen Democrats to support the Laken Riley Act, which would, among other things, allow the government to detain undocumented immigrants accused of committing nonviolent crimes.

President Trump is sending 700 Marines to Los Angeles, allegedly to help police—who have not asked for it—with protests that have occurred in downtown Los Angeles. This is an extreme escalation from the Trump administration, an aggressive demonstration of force by the government against its own citizens.

The troops are set to arrive on Monday evening, and without rules of engagement—which puts the lives of countless demonstrators at risk. 

“The rules of engagement here, we are told, are still being finalized,” said CNN’s Natasha Bertrand. “And defense department lawyers are also looking at the kinds of rules of engagement these Marines will have as they encounter protesters, possibly on the streets of Los Angeles.” 

Hundreds of Marines in a city on edge from the impact of ICE’s indiscriminate deportation raids is a recipe for a devastating tragedy.  

The deployment, moreover, almost certainly is illegal. No leader in Los Angeles or California has said that it’s necessary—the situation is not out of control, and it certainly does not need hundreds of Marines and National Guard soldiers to maintain order. Instead, this is a blanket display of force, meant to intimidate protesters and municipalities that dare to stand up to an administration that is sweeping thousands of people off the street. 

This piece has been updated.