This week marks a jarring collision of the military and civilian relationship, one that has traditionally remained carefully apolitical. It’s a week bookended by two high-profile events, both steeped in Trump-era symbolism.
Since Sunday, President Donald Trump has mobilized 4,000 California National Guard troops to deploy into Los Angeles amid widespread protests against his sweeping immigration raids. Clashes with federal authorities have intensified. In a move widely seen as an unprecedented escalation, the president also ordered 700 active-duty Marines from Twentynine Palms into the city, signaling a readiness to confront civilians with military force on U.S. soil.
Meanwhile, the Army is set to hold a parade in Washington ostensibly marking its 250th birthday, an event that happens to fall on June 14, Trump’s 79th birthday. The last time the Army held a parade of this scale was in 1991, following victory in Operation Desert Storm. While framed as a celebration of military history, it’s widely seen as a symbolic tribute to the president and the grandest spectacle across both of his terms, which includes Golden Knights parachuting onto the White House lawn to present a flag to him.
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“At a minimum, the stunning events involving the military this week will result in long overdue discussions at the dinner table about the military and its role and purpose,” Mara Karlin, a top Defense Department policy official during the Biden administration, told Military.com.
The Army initially envisioned a relatively modest celebration for its 250th birthday, and early planning from about a year ago outlined an event involving just a few hundred troops, according to two service officials familiar with the discussions.
But in just three months, the parade’s scope has ballooned, from a relatively recent plan of using 250 troops across the Army’s active-duty, National Guard and reserve components to more than 6,600 soldiers, representing each of the service’s major divisions, as well as dozens of tanks and other combat vehicles.
Units are being flown in from as far as South Korea and Alaska. The abrupt expansion forced some units to cancel critical training events, multiple commanders and senior noncommissioned officers told Military.com.
“The generous reading of this is that the parade itself can be a way of reinforcing patriotism, showcasing military achievement, and introducing the military to the population in a different way,” Yvonne Chiu, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she studies Indo-Pacific policy and authoritarianism, told Military.com.
“But the president has a history of being very explicit about politicizing the military,” she added. “It’s hard to ignore that; his intent matters, even if people choose not to read it that way.”
Now, as the Army holds its weeklong birthday celebration in Washington, D.C., the country is confronted by the rare and controversial military deployment in one of America’s largest cities.
The last time the Guard had been deployed domestically without a governor’s consent was in 1965 during the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, when President Lyndon Johnson deployed elements of 1st Battalion, 167th Infantry Regiment, as Gov. George Wallace, a staunch segregationist, refused to use state funds to protect the marchers.
It remains unclear what legal justification the Guardsmen — and the Marines, if and when they are sent into the city — are operating under in LA. Marine Commandant Gen. Eric Smith told Congress on Tuesday that the Marines had not yet been called in to respond to the protests, according to The Associated Press.
The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act prohibits federal troops from engaging in domestic law enforcement. The White House has not invoked the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law meant to combat rebellion or insurrection that could allow such action. As of Tuesday, the Pentagon had not provided guidance on what authority the Marines would operate under, or whether they would be permitted to make arrests or use force against civilians.
Protests have also broken out in other major cities including Chicago, Houston and Washington, D.C. — but so far, federal forces have not been deployed beyond California. Still, there’s growing concern that Republican governors may deploy their own National Guard troops to urban centers to curry favor with the president, regardless of whether local protests warrant such a response.
There’s also the possibility that Trump could bypass Democratic state governors altogether and send Guard units across state lines, which could be viewed as an escalation of the federal government trampling state sovereignty.
However, protesters often direct their grievances toward police and other federal authorities, distinguishing between law enforcement and the military, which has maintained relative popularity as trust in other institutions has diminished in recent years.
“When the National Guard is called out to do civil disturbance, they’re typically seen as neutral arbiters, especially when police community relations is the heart of the problem,” Carrie Lee, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told Military.com. “The danger is the mission being used to protect ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and what that looks like in practice, and if the Guard goes with them on raids.”
The pageantry and troop deployments come with a hefty price tag: The Army estimates the D.C. parade will cost $45 million, though the true price will likely be much greater when factoring local services like police overtime. The Los Angeles mission is expected to last 60 days and cost $134 million, acting Pentagon comptroller Bryn MacDonnell told lawmakers during a Pentagon budget hearing Tuesday.
“This is probably not what the Army had in mind, to have a parade to celebrate its history and accomplishments and the people who served in it, and to be in the middle of a political fight between the president and a governor,” Lee said.
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