This Is Not What Authoritarianism Looks Like

By Rich Lowry

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

 

President Trump’s activation of the California National Guard has launched a thousand op-eds warning of his authoritarianism.

 

“This Is What Autocracy Looks Like,” Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times declares.

 

Edward Luce of the Financial Times maintains: “Sending the National Guard into LA is the administration’s clearest step yet towards authoritarianism.”

 

CNN, too, has a piece saying, “Trump is acting like an authoritarian.”

 

Goldberg believes we are seeing her worst fear realized that Trump would “call out the military against people protesting his mass deportations, putting America on the road to martial law.”

 

The phrase “road to martial law” is doing a lot of work there.

 

What’s happened so far is that Trump has acted within the law, as even analysts not favorable to him and his approach have acknowledged, to use the National Guard (and now a contingent of Marines) to protect federal personnel and property in L.A.

 

Most people don’t feel threatened or provoked by guys in camo standing impassively in front of a federal building.

 

The old saw about the Nazis is, “First, they came for the Jews . . .,” not, “First, they protected government property from violent demonstrators . . .”

 

Goldberg minimizes the mayhem. She quotes a Saturday statement by the LAPD that all is well, leaving out the subsequent comments by the police chief on Sunday night about the situation being “out of control” and his officers getting “overwhelmed.”

 

The chief described in detail how protesters were launching dangerous attacks against his officers with stones and fireworks.

 

She’s particularly alarmed by a line in Trump’s proclamation over the weekend that warns against protests or acts of violence that “inhibit” the execution of the laws.

 

This, she worries, includes “peaceful demonstrations.” As an example of such a demonstration, she cites an outraged crowd preventing ICE agents from leaving San Diego restaurants after a raid. Nothing to see here — just a mob impeding federal agents!

 

It’s perverse to consider such assemblages meant to stop the law from being enforced as acceptable and a president who wants to enforce the law — and prevent federal officers from being obstructed or attacked — as the threat to the democratic order.

 

Immigration laws were adopted by a democratically elected Congress and signed by democratically elected presidents. If progressives believe they are wrong, they can seek to repeal them or pass new ones, but it is an offense against our system to simply consider them null and void.

 

For his part, Luce says “putting troops on America’s streets poses a mortal threat to federal democracy.”

 

This is sheer ignorance. Troops have been on American streets many times before.

 

He also worries, “Wherever ICE raids trigger protests, Trump can send in the troops.” This isn’t quite right — wherever demonstrators threaten or impede federal agents, Trump can send in troops to protect them.

 

Is it really so hard to let federal agents do their job?

 

The pieces about our impending descent into authoritarianism tend to mention Trump’s threat to arrest Gavin Newsom, leaving out the trolly, “Oh yeah? So’s your mother!” back-and-forth between Newsom on the one hand and Tom Homan and the president on the other.

 

A chest-beating Newsom has told Homan to come and get him.

 

But Homan has convincingly addressed the matter, as this ABC News report notes:

 

“The reporter asked about, ‘Could Governor, Governor Newsom, or Mayor Bass, be arrested? I said, ‘Well, no one’s above the law, if they cross the line and commit a crime. Absolutely they can.’ So, there was no discussion about arresting Newsom,” he said.

 

“I’ve said it many times, You can protest, you got your First Amendment rights, but when you cross that line, you put hands on an ICE officer, or you destroy property, or ICE says that you’re impeding law enforcement . . . that’s a crime, and that the Trump administration is not going to tolerate. You cross that line we’re gonna see prosecution in the Department of Justice,” Homan said.

 

Those who see budding autocracy in Trump’s handling of L.A. probably read Homan’s statement and think, There he goes again, saying you can’t assault ICE agents or destroy property. Has he no decency?

 

In pretty much any other circumstance, defying federal law and federal law enforcement would be portrayed as reprehensible proto-secessionism, but since we’re talking about Trump and immigration law, it’s federal agents — and those charged with protecting them — who are the precursors of a dystopian future.