Make America Fight Again

Is the Texas National Guard about to invade Oregon?

U.S. Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth

Last week, Trump made two statements that further indicate his intention to make illegal use of the National Guard, and possibly even the Marines, to suppress American citizens who oppose him politically and to wreak vengeance on his personal enemies. It is clearly illegal for any President to use the U.S. military inside the country and against American citizens (except in an emergency and as approved by Congress). Nonetheless, on Sep. 27 Trump announced that he would federalize another 200 National Guard and dispatch them to Portland, OR to suppress the “domestic terrorists” in that supposedly “war torn” city, against the wishes of both the Governor of Oregon and the Mayor of Portland.^[1] Several days later, on Oct. 1, he summoned the 800 most senior U.S. military commanders from around the world to an unprecedented and secret meeting in Quantico, VA during which he gave one of the scariest speeches yet of his presidency (which is saying something). At this meeting, he told the assembled generals and admirals that America’s real enemy is “the enemy within,” the “radical left Democrats” who have destroyed San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. He paused and stared down at the legion of grey-haired officers in uniform: “we’re going to straighten them out one by one.”^[2]

The law that bars Trump from turning the military against his own people is called the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. The law prohibits the President from using federal military forces to engage in state or local law enforcement and it is designed as a check against exactly this kind of dictatorial move.

To be fair, a President does have the ability to activate the National Guard in the event of a true national emergency, such as 9/11 when President George W. Bush called out the National Guard to provide added security at every airport in the nation for a period of four months. At first, it was an unsettling surprise to see federal troops wearing battle fatigues and carrying assault rifles in public. That’s just not something that we are used to seeing in America. But 9/11 was an attack by real terrorists, not Trump’s loosely defined “domestic terrorists” or “enemies” which often includes legal protesters, Democratic members of Congress, MSNBC and late night talk show hosts. When Bush activated the National Guard, he immediately went to Congress and asked it to appropriate $65 million for their pay, so as not to place any financial burden on the states. And most importantly, he was careful to leave all the National Guard under the command of their local Governors who decided how best to deploy them.^[3] Even in the aftermath of the worst attack on American soil, Bush understood the importance of avoiding even the appearance that the federal government was intervening militarily in the states.

Even though Posse Comitatus was passed by Congress in 1878, the prohibition against a President using the federal military inside the country has been inherent in our Constitution and a part of our democracy since the Founders created it. In installment no. 46 of The Federalist Papers, James Madison argued that a militia in each state would act as a critical safeguard against a tyrannical federal government or a President who tries to become a king by controlling his citizens by force.^[4] This was also Madison’s intention when he drafted the 2nd Amendment:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” ^[5]

Many gun owners in America mistakenly believe that public gun ownership was guaranteed by the 2^nd Amendment as a deterrent to the British who might decide to come back one day to reclaim their colonies (they came back in 1812 anyway), and also to empower private citizens to defend their homes and families generally. But this was not Madison’s intent. Rather, through the 2nd Amendment Madison intended to empower the state Governors to have armed militias made up of their own constituents to defend themselves against an invading federal army. The reason Madison seems to use the words “militia” and “people” interchangeably is because he viewed them as the same thing. The militias were to be made up of citizen-soldiers from among the local people in the state. And by allowing them to be armed, the 2^nd Amendment provided a citizen fighting force that could be called up at a moment’s notice to defend against a despotic President.

The National Guard as we know it evolved directly out of the state militias of the early days of our republic, drawing its soldiers from among the residents of the state and commanded by the Governor, and it has a fundamentally different character profile than professional, full-time federal troops because the National Guard are also citizens who live in the state with us. The National Guard is a part-time job, requiring only two weeks per year of training and one weekend per month of active duty. When these citizen-soldiers are not on duty they are regular civilians living and working in our communities as pharmacists, school teachers, real estate agents and bus drivers. They have spouses and children who go to school with our children. They eat at the same restaurants and are fans of the same sports teams. Our state’s National Guard poses no threat to us because they are also citizens of our state, just like us.

Or at least they used to be.

When Trump federalized 800 D.C. National Guard in August and took control of the D.C. Metro Police force, he imported approximately 1,200 additional National Guard from W. Virginia, S. Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee.^[6] These troops are not trained in local law enforcement, do not live in Washington, D.C., are not accountable to the people who live there and the Mayor of DC didn’t want them.

Trump is now trying the same thing in Portland. Yesterday, Oregon U.S. District Court judge Karen Immelgut – who was appointed by Trump - blocked Trump’s federalization of 200 National Guard stating bluntly that the protests against ICE were relatively small and uneventful and there is no evidence of anything even remotely resembling the “rebellion” Trump claims to justify federal military intervention.^[7] In an attempt to work around the judge he appointed, Trump then quickly federalized a new set of National Guard from California and Texas and commanded them both to go up to Oregon, directly contradicting the judge’s restraining order and landing everyone back in court again.

While all of this was going on a few days ago, Trump also federalized National Guard troops in Illinois to suppress Chicago’s “epidemic of crime,” once again against the wishes of the Mayor and Governor, who are also suing to block this action. As is the case in Portland, there is no national emergency of crime in Chicago. Violent crime in Chicago has actually fallen dramatically this year, with murders down 31.6% for the first half of 2025 versus the same period in 2024.^[8] If Trump really thought that the federal military was necessary to suppress crime, he would start by sending his troops to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana which has a violent crime rate 44.8% higher than the national average.^[9]

Similarly, Trump’s attack on Portland has little, if anything, to do with rounding up illegal aliens and protecting ICE agents. It’s Portland itself that offends and infuriates Trump. Portland’s acceptance of ethnic diversity and gender fluidity, its support of women’s reproductive rights, preservation of the environment and renewable energy and, most of all, its strong and vocal opposition to him is the kind of disobedient and antiestablishment culture that Trump abhors, and he is determined to put his boot on Portland’s neck. If this were really about illegal immigrants, Trump would be sending troops into his own home state of Florida where there are 15X more unauthorized immigrants than in the state of Oregon.^[10]

As usual, all of Trump’s justifications are transparently bullsh*t. He is simply trying to occupy and intimidate his political opposition and punish his personal enemies. Over an hour into his rambling and embarrassing speech to the 800 generals and admirals on Oct. 1 - which included long stretches about how much everyone loves his signature, how he never liked the way Obama used to jog up and down stairs, and how “nuclear” is what he refers to as the “other N-word” - he finally got around to his justification for sending military troops into Chicago.

20 sec

Trump’s real motives are actually very easy to understand. He has a strong, personal dislike for J.B. Pritzker, the Governor of Illinois, who “criticizes us all the time.” Trump wants to shut him up, embarrass him and emasculate him before his constituents, and he wants to threaten and intimidate Democrats in Illinois by installing a military garrison in Chicago, under his personal command. The fact that Chicago is also the home town of former President Barack Obama is the cherry on top.

Regarding Portland, Gavin Newsom has sued to keep his National Guard home in California where it belongs. However, Texas Governor and Trump ally Greg Abbott has authorized his troops to report to Trump and to travel to Oregon,^[11]setting up a conflict between the citizens of the most liberal city in America and a military occupation force from the most conservative state in the country. This is a disaster. This is a powder keg that the tiniest spark will detonate, and it will go off if the Texas National Guard marches into Portland, guaranteed. The last time one Governor sent troops into another Governor’s state against their will was during the Civil War.

Trump’s federalization of the National Guard without an emergency, without special authorization of Congress and against the wishes of the state Governors is not only a violation of Posse Comitatus, it is the exact opposite of what the state militias and the 2nd Amendment were designed to protect against – a President using the military to suppress and control his own citizens and silence their protest and opposition. No doubt, if Trump had been President at the time he would have also declared women marching for the right to vote in the early 1900s to be “dangerous radicals,” he would have designated Blacks marching for civil rights in the 1960s to be “domestic terrorists” and college students protesting the Vietnam War in the 1970s to be “the enemy within” and among the “many sick people” we have in this country. If Trump is really looking to suppress a “domestic terrorist group” - as in, an organization whose policies and actions have directly resulted in violence and death in America - he can start with the NRA.

As of this writing on Tuesday evening, Oct. 7, Trump is threatening to overcome all of these court injunctions and bypass them entirely by invoking the Insurrection Act.^[12]

The ability to engage in protest against the government is the very essence of what America’s democracy is, but if Trump succeeds in his effort we may very well end up with a military that supports the agenda of only one political party and suppresses all opposition and dissent – otherwise known as a fascist dictatorship – and Trump will have used the states’ own militias to do it.

He is literally James Madison’s worst nightmare come true.

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^[1] https://www.opb.org/article/2025/09/27/trump-send-troops-portland/

^[2] https://www.rev.com/transcripts/hegseth-and-trump-address-to-military

^[3] https://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/09/rec.bush.airportsecurity/index.html

^[4] “To these [federal troops] would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.”

https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-41-50

^[5] https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-ii

^[6] https://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/20/dc_takeover

^[7] https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/05/california-and-oregon-sue-trump-administration-to-block-national-guard-deployment-to-portland/

^[8] https://ah-datalytics.github.io/rtci/table/table.html

^[9] https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-crime-rate-in-the-us/state/louisiana/

^[10] Pew Research Center report with most current data (2023) estimates 1.6 million “unauthorized immigrants” in Florida versus 108,000 in Oregon. https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-reached-a-record-14-million-in-2023/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

^[11] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/05/greg-abbott-trump-texas-national-guard/

^[12] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10/06/us/national-guard-trump-oregon-chicago