Trump’s recent moves risk politicizing the military, which has long strived to stay above politics

Last weekend, President Donald Trump took the rare step of mobilizing the National Guard, and then the U.S. Marines, sending them into Los Angeles over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom quickly took the president to court for unilaterally calling in the military to clamp down on protests against the administration’s immigration policies.

Trump followed that up with a campaign-style rally at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where uniformed soldiers cheered as he slammed former President Joe Biden, Newsom and other Democrats — raising concerns the president was using the military as a political prop.

The developments this week are the latest and most visible way Trump has tried to turn government institutions into vehicles to implement his personal agenda, and have cast Saturday’s planned military parade in a new light.

The scheduled parade in Washington, D.C., celebrates the Army’s 250th anniversary but happens to coincide with the 79th birthday of a president who warned that protests against the event will be “met with very big force.”

“As many lengths as Army leaders have gone through to depoliticize the parade, it’s very difficult for casual observers of the news to see this as anything other than a political use of the military,” said Carrie Ann Lee, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund who also taught at the U.S. Army War College.

Trump has wanted a military parade since his first term, but senior commanders balked, worrying it would be more like a spectacle one would see in authoritarian countries such as North Korea or Russia than something befitting the United States. After returning to the White House, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replaced him with his own pick and dismissed several other top military leaders.

In the wake of protests over the administration’s immigration enforcement operation near downtown Los Angeles, Trump last weekend sent in the California National Guard — and later deployed U.S. Marines — over Newsom’s objections. Trump contended Newsom had “totally lost control of the situation.” Newsom said the president was “behaving like a tyrant.”

It’s the first time the Guard has been used without a governor’s consent since then-President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama in 1965 to ensure compliance with civil rights laws.

A federal judge late Thursday ruled that Trump violated the law against using the military domestically in his mobilization in Los Angeles and ordered the Guard placed back under the governor’s control. The ruling, which did not make a determination about the deployment of Marines, was later blocked by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pending a hearing next week.

Military experts warn of the costs of this week’s events to the image of the military as a nonpartisan institution and one that has enjoyed a high level of trust among Americans.

“We don’t want military forces who work as an armed wing of a political party,” Lee said.

Trump has already used other parts of the federal government to reward his allies and punish his enemies. His Federal Communications Commission has launched investigations of media outlets Trump dislikes and, in some cases, is personally suing. The president has directed the Department of Justice to investigate Democratic Party institutions and a former appointee who vouched for the security of the 2020 election when Trump was arguing his loss was due to fraud.

During his brief blow-up with former donor and tech billionaire Elon Musk, Trump threatened to pull Musk’s government contracts — a sign of how Trump views the government as a tool for personal leverage.

“He’s doing it in every aspect of government, not just the military,” said Yvonne Chiu, a professor at the Naval War College and a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “But the military is the one with all the weapons.”

On Thursday, Trump laughed off protests planned for this weekend against the parade, organized by the “No Kings” movement: “I don’t feel like a king,” he said during a White House event. “I have to go through hell to get stuff approved.”

A new Associated Press-NORC Poll found a partisan divide in whether Americans approve of the parade, but wider agreement on its cost, with 6 in 10 Americans saying the tens of millions of dollars to be spent is not a good use of public money.

Other recent polling has indicated that, even if many others are alarmed, most Republicans are comfortable with the way Trump is exercising his power. More than half of U.S. adults said the president had “too much” power in an April 2025 AP-NORC poll, but only 23% of Republicans agreed.

The president and his supporters have said he’s simply giving voters what he promised during the campaign — a strong leader who cracks down on illegal immigration.

Kurt Weyland, a political scientist at the University of Texas, said while the president has done “shocking” things, at least part of the country’s system of checks and balances has so far held to keep him in check.

“The courts have been the main line of defense,” he said.

The courts stepped in again Thursday, with U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer — the brother of former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer — finding that the situation in Los Angeles did not involve a rebellion, invasion or situation where the government cannot otherwise enforce its laws, which are the requirements for a president to use the military domestically.

“The Court is troubled by the implication inherent in Defendants’ argument that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion,” Breyer wrote.

William Banks, a former dean of the Syracuse University law school and an expert in national security law, said there are good reasons Americans don’t want soldiers or Marines performing law enforcement on their streets. The military is trained to kill enemies, not handle the fraught interpersonal task of policing American streets.

“It’s corrosive,” Banks said of the military getting deployed domestically. “We don’t like that in this society; we haven’t for 250 years.”

Several experts said the true test for democracy lies ahead — whether it can continue to hold free and fair elections.

Trump tried to overturn his own loss in the 2020 election and, since returning to power, has pardoned more than 1,000 people convicted of crimes in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In the days after the Jan. 6 attack, one of the documents uncovered by investigators was a draft executive order that called for Trump to order the seizure of voting machines. The person the order would have directed to ensure the seizure happened was the secretary of defense.

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