How Trump Is Undermining the National Guard—and America

As a former Guardsman, I’ve seen the damage this kind of abuse can do—both to the soldiers and to the country.

Donald Trump has wasted no time in his new term showing just how far he’s willing to go to consolidate power. This week, he deployed the National Guard into Washington, D.C., not in response to an actual emergency, but under the pretext of a “crime wave” that local leaders and residents say doesn’t exist. At the same time, he moved to seize control of the D.C. police force, stripping local officials of their authority in their own city. The move was as unprecedented as it was alarming, an unmistakable signal that local self-governance is now optional if it gets in the way of his agenda.

A few months ago, Trump announced similar actions in Los Angeles—on the basis of “out of control riots” which didn’t exist. In L.A., the National Guard was deployed alongside U.S. Marines, an unmistakable escalation that blurs the already thin line between civilian policing and military occupation. These were not targeted operations based on urgent public safety threats. They were highly visible shows of force, designed to create an image of chaos that only Trump, supposedly, can control.

The leaked Pentagon plans for a so-called National Guard “strike force” now look far less theoretical and far more operational. They were never about responding to insurrections, terrorist attacks, or foreign threats. They were about being ready to confront protests, demonstrations, and dissent—legal, constitutionally protected activities that have been a hallmark of our democracy since its founding. By putting these plans into action, Trump has crossed a line every democratic society must guard carefully: the use of military forces against its own people, not to preserve order in times of genuine emergency, but to intimidate, silence, and suppress.

I served in the National Guard. I know what it means when that activation call comes in. It’s not just a change in plans for the weekend—it upends lives. Guardsmen are citizen-soldiers. They have civilian jobs, family responsibilities, and community commitments. Many are single parents who must suddenly scramble to find childcare, miss paychecks, or rely on friends and family to hold their lives together while they are away. When they answer the call for a hurricane, a wildfire, a flood, or a war zone overseas, they do it because those missions serve the public good. They put their personal lives on hold for something larger than themselves. But when they are ordered to stand on street corners in American cities to serve the political optics of a president looking to project strength and dominance, that is an abuse of their service and their oath.

These deployments don’t just disrupt the lives of those currently serving; they corrode the very foundation of the National Guard’s relationship with the public. Recruitment in the Guard is already facing serious challenges. The next generation of young Americans is not looking to enlist in order to confront peaceful protesters or to patrol neighborhoods at the whim of a president’s political calculations. When service becomes synonymous with suppressing dissent, the pipeline of willing and capable recruits will dry up even faster. And once lost, rebuilding that trust—and those ranks—will take decades, if it happens at all.

Democrats should be railing against this. They should be on every network, in every community, making it clear that this is not a partisan disagreement over crime policy but an existential threat to the balance between civilian government and military power. The public should understand that this precedent, if accepted, can and will be applied anywhere. Today it’s D.C. and Los Angeles. Tomorrow it could be Chicago, New York, Atlanta, or any city whose leadership crosses the president. There will always be a pretext, a claim of “rising crime,” “unrest,” or “threats to order.”

If this continues, the next peaceful protest you attend—whether about wages, climate change, civil rights, or even government overreach—might be met not just by police, but by soldiers in uniform. They may be your neighbors, your friends, or the person you sit next to at church, acting under orders to see you not as a fellow citizen but as a threat. That’s not the America I served. And it’s not the America we can afford to become.

Don’t lose heart, stay engaged and energized. We will win, and watching these decisionmakers realize the price they will pay in reputation and otherwise will make it feel a bit better in the end. We won’t forget. Our ancestors defended their rights with their lives, we will defend with everything necessary.