The D.C. Dress Rehearsal

Just one day after President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard into Washington D.C. in response to a spurious crime wave, the Washington Post reported that the administration was evaluating a plan to rapidly deploy troops to other American cities. According to the Post, the plan would establish a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” made up of hundreds of troops stationed in Arizona and Alabama, equipped with weapons and riot gear and ready to deploy within hours to any American city facing “civil unrest.” 

The following day, Rolling Stone revealed that Trump officials and lawyers have been crafting a number of “detailed plans and menus of options” for the president to “feed his desire for replicating and proliferating his militarized crackdowns,” whether on immigrants or unruly citizens. It is the president’s priority, according to a number of officials in the administration, to “normalize” military deployments to Democratic cities. 

These reports, coupled with the president’s own threats to send troops into Chicago and New York, make it all but certain that he will order deployments in the months (and years) ahead. Like the president’s other power grabs, these actions will almost certainly be justified under the guise of “emergencies” requiring swift and decisive action. 

Since entering office, Trump has enacted much of his second-term agenda through the use of emergency powers once reserved for exceptional circumstances. In six months, the president has invoked presidential emergency powers more than his predecessor did during his four-year presidency. A June analysis from the Associated Press found that nearly a fifth of Trump’s executive orders had cited some kind of emergency power or authority — a rate that “far outpaces his recent predecessors” (including himself). 

These powers generally fall under the National Emergencies Act of 1976. This post-Watergate law grants the president over a hundred special statutory powers that become available to him upon the declaration of a national emergency, creating what expert Elizabeth Goitein has described as a “parallel legal regime [that] allows the president to sidestep many of the constraints that normally apply.” While initially developed to establish congressional oversight and official procedures for the use of emergency powers, the law has mostly failed in practice. There are currently more than 40 ongoing national emergencies, some of which date back decades, and Congress has only succeeded in terminating one emergency declaration in the 50 years since the law was passed. This is partly due to a 1983 Supreme Court ruling that made legislative vetoes unconstitutional, effectively barring Congress from terminating emergencies with a simple majority (as the law originally allowed).

Under the current framework, the president has enormous discretion to declare emergencies for almost any reason, with no obligation to offer any proof of said emergency. That creates enormous potential for abuse in the hands of a serial fabricator and aspiring autocrat like Donald Trump. Indeed, most of the supposed emergencies that he has declared since January have been figments of the reactionary mind, from the “invasion” at the southern border to the “unusual and extraordinary threat” posed by trade deficits. In Washington, the president continued this pattern by insisting that the capital is “under siege from violent crime,” even as the city continued to experience a sharp decline in such crime, which hit a 30-year low in 2024. 

“This edifice of extraordinary powers has historically rested on the assumption that the president will act in the country’s best interest when using them,” notes Goitein. Yet they are “dangerously suited to a leader bent on amassing or retaining power.” 

Trump is not only “bent on amassing” power, but believes it to be his absolute right to use emergency powers in service of his agenda. Indeed, the president’s prolific use of emergency declarations reflects MAGA’s expansive view of executive authority. 

During his first term, Trump notoriously remarked that Article II of the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want as president.” This was a crude articulation of what legal theorists call the “unitary executive theory,” a once-fringe legal doctrine that is now widely accepted among conservatives, including those sitting on the Supreme Court. The unitary executive theory vests the president with unchecked control over the executive branch and its 2-million-plus federal employees. It rejects the long-established norm of an apolitical and nonpartisan civil service or the notion of “independence” in departments like the Department of Justice or even agencies that are statutorily independent, such as the National Labor Relations Board or the Securities and Exchange Commission. While Republicans frequently (and falsely) alleged that Joe Biden and his officials were “politicizing” and “weaponizing” the federal government during his presidency, this was well within the right of the president, according to their own theory of executive power. 

Now, Trump is doing exactly what he accused his predecessor of doing — politicizing and weaponizing the federal government against his opponents. 

“The second Trump administration is demonstrating how, in practice, the unitary executive theory risks making the rest of the executive branch just an extension of the president’s personal will,” said Vanderbilt University professor John A. Dearborn, who researches presidential power and restraint. “Norms and values that American government has long depended on — things like the importance of prosecutorial independence or the role of scientific expertise — are being left subject to the president’s own discretion as to whether to respect them.”

As Trump officials map out the further deployment of troops to American cities, it is clear that the president also views the military as an extension of his personal power — and that it can and should be used to execute his agenda and crush what he calls “the enemy from within.” 

That language suggests that the wanton deployment of troops on American soil is paving the way for more egregious abuses. Indeed, the question that should alarm all Americans is what will happen if and when a real national crisis arrives in America. 

“Imagine what could happen if the United States were struck again by a surprise attack in days to come,” ponders historian Tim Weiner in the recent sequel to his classic study of the CIA, “Legacy of Ashes.” “What would stop the president from declaring martial law or canceling elections? Could Congress or the Supreme Court oppose him? Who would disobey him if he ordered the clandestine service to rebuild the secret prisons, overthrow a sovereign nation or assassinate his political enemies?” 

These questions are all the more unsettling in light of last year’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, which granted the president immunity from criminal prosecution if he can claim to have committed illegal acts in an “official” capacity. As the administration continues to politicize military deployments and assaults on the civilian workforce, the perilous path ahead comes sharply into view.