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Trump considers expanded role of national guard for ‘quick reaction’ to unrest

edited August 13 in Off-Topic
Here is a current report from The Guardian:

Pentagon considers a quick-reaction force to deploy in US cities amid unrest, raising legal and political concerns
Donald Trump could expand the use of national guard troops in US cities even further, if a plan from the Pentagon comes to fruition.

The Washington Post, reporting on internal documents on Tuesday, says Pentagon officials are “evaluating plans” to create a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” that would deploy to crack down on cities in events of unrest or during protests.

The newly revealed plans come as Trump has used the national guard in ways beyond the norm. He deployed troops to Los Angeles against the state and city’s wishes to tamp down protests against immigration enforcement, and sent troops to Washington DC and took over the local police citing allegedly increased crime.

The Department of Defense would not weigh in directly on the idea of a “reaction force”.

“The Department of Defense is a planning organization and routinely reviews how the department would respond to a variety of contingencies across the globe,” a defense official said in a statement to the Guardian. “We will not discuss these plans through leaked documents, pre-decisional or otherwise.”

In the documents, the Post reports, it calls for 600 troops to be placed at the ready at military bases in Alabama and Arizona, able to deploy quickly if called. This force could cost “hundreds of millions of dollars”. The documents have timestamps from late July and early August, though they are marked as “pre-decisional”.

The plan, if implemented, would be an expansion of the use of troops in US cities and is legally questionable. National guard troops are frequently deployed in their states to respond to disasters and, particularly in 2020, to civil unrest, when many states called on their units to deploy amid protests over police brutality.

Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement that the move would be a “breathtakingly dangerous power grab”.

“Sending armed troops into cities to suppress protest should be a non-starter in any healthy democracy, but especially in a country founded on a strong presumption against the military policing civilians,” Shamsi said. “The right to protest is core to the constitution and who we are as a nation, yet the Trump administration seems ready to betray our basic values in order to muzzle political expression across the country.”

In 2020, around the time of the election, the Associated Press reported then, the guard designated military police units in Alabama and Arizona to rapidly respond “if requested by a governor in another state”. In that instance, reporting at the time said, governors would need to request the help – it would not be deployed just by the administration, as has happened in recent months.
Comment: So here we go: lets create a force of elite StormTroopers TrumpTroopers.

Comments

  • By unrest he means anti-47 demonstrations.
  • edited August 13
    The elephant in the room is why he thinks that he needs this option. What bizarre conversations are going on in that circle? "When we crash the economy, people will come for us with pitchforks." ? "Eventually, the non-whites will rise up and we need to be prepared." ?

    https://newrepublic.com/post/199027/ice-recruitment-drive-just-hit-disgusting-new-low

    'What’s most alarming is the DHS’s caption. They write “Which way, American Man?” a direct reference to the book “Which Way, Western Man?” written by infamous white supremacist William Gayley Simpson and published by neo-Nazi and National Alliance founder William Luther Pierce.

    Simpson’s book is deeply racist and antisemitic, containing chapters titled “The Necessity of Eugenics,” “The Everlasting Truth About Race,” and “The Doctrine of the Thoroughbred,” among others.

    "In the case of a country like the United States, if the original stock and its values are to survive, then all aliens, such as Negroes, Jews, and Orientals, will have to be put out and kept out. Immigration will have to be strictly limited to stocks most closely related, by blood and by tradition, to the stocks by which the country was originally founded,” Simpson writes in one chapter of his magnum opus of racism.

    “The point is to reveal organized Jewry as a world power entrenched in every country of the White man’s world, operating freely across every nation’s frontiers, and engaged in a ruthless war for the destruction of them all,” he writes in another chapter."

    Disgusting example to be parroting.
  • @DrVenture,

    The fact that DHS chose to reference William Gayley Simpson's book is very troubling.
    It's no surprise that white supremist groups have flourished under Trump's current regime!
  • 'Trump considers ???' Hell, I'm sure a word search of Project 2025 would detail the steps, 1 through 100.
  • @DrVenture,

    The fact that DHS chose to reference William Gayley Simpson's book is very troubling.
    It's no surprise that white supremist groups have flourished under Trump's current regime!

    And they are clearly intending to recruit from the ranks of white supremacy militias, to which these words resonate.

    Keeping in mind that they are going after people who have no means or legal standing, and will easily be brutalized and abused.

  • DHS has a 'Facebook page'. Some the language for 'hiring' is:

    Your nation needs you to step into the breach. For our country, for our culture, for our way of life. Will you answer the call?
  • Sure they will. All White Nationalists welcome. After all, they're "good people", remember? Brown uniform shirts are probably being ordered from China right now.

    image

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  • Pretty hard not to view that as deeply racist and xenophobic.
  • Maybe that is the deal being struck in Alaska - whether Putin will take in native Alaskans deported from the US by ICE as undocumented. Then, maybe, T will find a reservoir for the rest of the Native-Americans. Who knows, maybe there's oil, coal, or rare earths under those reservation lands just waiting transfer to the T foundation library.
  • Cannot imagine to deploy our military on our very own citizens and cities under the pretense of civic unrest. Notice that he is doing it now in the BLUE states.
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