Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles is not a policy misstep; it is an attack on American federalism itself. Trump has unilaterally seized control of a state’s military force by invoking Title 10 Section 12406 of the US Code to federalise California’s National Guard without Governor Gavin Newsom’s consent. This act tramples on state sovereignty and reveals the authoritarian impulse behind the “states’ rights” rhetoric he once championed. This is not administrative overreach. It is a calculated test of how far a president can go in building a police state, with Los Angeles as the proving ground.

The justification for this deployment is a fabrication. Trump’s social media rants about “violent instigated riots” threatening to “completely obliterate” Los Angeles are baseless, designed to stoke fear and rationalise his tactics. The reality on the ground was a handful of protests on downtown streets—hardly a city-wide apocalypse. Trump has manufactured a crisis to unleash militarised federal troops, turning a major American city into a stage for his authoritarian theatre. This is not leadership; it is state-sponsored propaganda.

The violation of state sovereignty is explicit. Section 12406 allows a president to federalise the National Guard only in extreme cases, such as invasion or rebellion, and is predicated on cooperation with state governors. Governor Newsom did not request this deployment; he explicitly opposed it, calling it a “serious breach of state sovereignty.” For the first time since 1965, a president has commandeered a state’s Guard against its will, stripping California of its constitutional authority to manage its own forces. The Democratic Governor’s Association has rightly warned that this sets a dangerous precedent, eroding the checks and balances that prevent executive overreach.

The hypocrisy is galling. This is the man who built a political brand on “states’ rights” and a “small central government,” railing against federal power when it suited his narrative. Yet, given the chance, he has cast aside the Tenth Amendment, which reserves powers to the states, to punish a political opponent. California, a state that dares to resist his agenda, is being used as a guinea pig for an authoritarian experiment—a dry run for Project 2025’s vision of federal control over Democratic strongholds. This is a deliberate effort to dismantle state authority from the top down, paving the way for unchecked power.

And it is the people of Los Angeles who will pay the price, particularly communities of colour, now demonised as “criminals” and “insurrectionists” to justify this crackdown. Trump’s rhetoric, echoed by his far-right allies, portrays immigrants and minorities as threats, reviving the poison of the “great replacement” theory. For a state “acquired” from Mexico in 1848, home to millions of people of Mexican descent, this language is especially pernicious. It is the vocabulary of white supremacy, weaponised to divide and oppress, with ICE detention centres overflowing and local police conscripted into a federal deportation machine.

Mayor Karen Bass has called for peace, urging Angelenos not to “play into the Trump administration’s hands.” She is right. This chaos is Trump’s creation—a self-fulfilling prophecy in which a crisis is invented to justify tyranny. The “professional agitators” are not on the streets of Los Angeles; they are in the White House. Governor Newsom’s plea to the Pentagon to rescind this illegal order is a stand for democracy, but the responsibility to resist falls on us all.

Trump’s defenders may claim he is restoring order, but there was no order to restore—only a city targeted for political theatre. His actions are not just unconstitutional; they are immoral, putting lives at risk to feed his ego and his base’s paranoia. The founders of the United States designed a nation built on a compact between the states and the federal government. By shredding that compact, Trump’s war on Los Angeles becomes a war on democracy itself.