The U.S. Supreme Court could soon issue a ruling overturning an order from a federal district court (and reaffirmed by a federal appeals court) that has been holding back an armed occupation of Chicago by “federalized” National Guard troops.1 If the Court decides in Trump’s favor, it will be a major step towards the further consolidation of a fascist America with Trump having near unchallengeable authority, enforced by a U.S. military under his sole command.
Briefly, here is why this is so important and where things stand now:
On October 6, Trump federalized 300 Illinois National Guardsmen and ordered them to Chicago. Three days later, 200 more Guardsmen—this time from Texas—were ordered in as well.
This was plainly a “hostile takeover”—Trump acted in spite of the fervent and near unanimous insistence by Chicago and Illinois officials and civic leaders that they neither wanted nor needed federal troops. And both the city and state (Illinois) sued in federal court to prevent these federalized troops from being deployed.
Trump Regime’s Blatant Lies Exposed in Federal Appeals Courts…
The Trump regime said that federal troops were necessary to enable ICE to do its work—terrorizing and detaining immigrants, Black people, and other citizens, often deporting thousands of noncitizens, and antagonizing much of the population. The regime claimed that ICE’s rampaging thugs
have come under coordinated assault by violent groups intent on obstructing lawful federal enforcement actions. These groups are actively aligned with designated domestic terrorist organizations and have sought to impede the deportation and removal of criminal noncitizens through violent protest, intimidation, and sabotage of federal operations.
They also referred to largely peaceful civilian protests as a “rebellion” that needed to be suppressed.
These are dangerous lies aimed at shutting down constitutionally protected protest and speech. In fact, it is ICE agents that have been vicious and violent against peaceful protest—teargassing neighborhoods, shooting flash bang grenades and rubber bullets directly at protesters, including priests, politicians and a diverse array of the Chicago population. This lie was so extreme that two federal courts—which normally work on the assumption that the government is being honest and truthful—essentially called them out. The district court said that it “cannot conclude that Defendants’ [i.e., the federal government] declarations are reliable.” For example, the judge noted that the federal government cited as evidence cases where ICE thugs charged people with violent acts, but that it failed to mention the fact that these charges were thrown out by grand juries because they were based on lies.
The district court granted a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to prevent the federal government from deploying the troops while it appealed its case to higher courts. The federal government immediately appealed this to the Circuit Court of Appeals, which supported the district court on the main issues and affirmed its TRO blocking troop deployment. The appeals court basically pointed out that the federal government and the local authorities had each presented “competing sets of facts,” but that the actual evidence pointed to the truthfulness of the local governments’ version of events and contradicted the federal governments version.
…But Now the Illegitimate Fascist Supreme Court Has It
All of this is what brought the case to the Supreme Court, with the regime presenting their argument to the Justices on October 17. The fascists continued to insist on their already-discredited “facts.” This insistence is itself very important, because it implicitly (without saying it outright) amounts to an argument that “the ‘facts’ are whatever we say they are, evidence be damned.” This is an extremely dangerous position for a government to take, and if that position is validated by the highest court in the land, it essentially becomes “the law.”
But on top of this, the regime has explicitly called on the Court to endorse an openly fascist legal argument. U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer told the Supreme Court that leaving the TRO in effect “cause[s] irreparable harm to the Executive Branch by countermanding the President’s authority as Commander in Chief, jeopardizing the lives and safety of DHS officers, and preventing the President and the Secretary of War from taking reasonable and lawful measures to protect federal personnel from the violent resistance that has persisted in the Chicago area for several months.” [Emphasis added.]
In this argument, it is the first part (“countermanding the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief”) that really matters, especially because the rest of the argument about violent rebellion has already been established as false. As Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladek put it, Trump’s argument is that “the President has the exclusive and unreviewable power to decide whether and when to federalize National Guard troops.”
Vladek also points out that Trump is arguing that protests against ICE “disrupted” their work. Vladek wrote that making this the trigger for sending in the military “would effectively allow the President to call out the National Guard in response to even 100% peaceful anti-government protests solely because even a little bit of federal manpower would have to be redirected toward them.”
The Huge Stakes in This Case
None of this is “hypothetical.” Just as one example, Trump has repeatedly speculated that he could have the military take control of the voting machines after an election so his people can “oversee” the counting of the vote.
So what is on the line here is giving Trump the legal authority to deploy armed forces—to crush protests, to steal elections, to back up ICE’s ethnic cleansing—using whatever pretext he wants. And we are already getting “accustomed” to this, with troops having been sent to LA, DC, Memphis and New Orleans, with cities like Oakland, New York, Baltimore and San Francisco also in the regime’s sights.
This should really drive home to people how extreme and rapidly fascist rule is consolidating. It should underscore that as important and heroic as the protests have been in Chicago and cities across the country, we cannot just fight this city by city. The regime is a juggernaut aiming to crush and absorb all opposition. As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian said in his major statement @BobAvakianOfficial, REVOLUTION #141, The Time Is Urgently Upon Us Now—To Drive Out The Trump Fascist Regime!:
Every day this is driven home more and more forcefully and cruelly: There is no living with this Trump/MAGA fascism—it must be removed from power before it commits even more horrific atrocities and forcibly shuts down any real possibility of resistance.
The profound question with which all decent people are now confronted is: Will we rise together, in the millions, to do what urgently needs to be done, to drive out this Trump fascist regime that is a truly terrible scourge on humanity and a very serious threat to humanity’s future?
The Trump Regime Must Go Now.
Beginning November 5: Flood DC!
Building a Force of Heavily Armed Lawless Thugs
Even while the Trump regime is deploying, threatening to deploy, or fighting in the courts to deploy soldiers who are professionally trained for warfare (i.e., killing people) in a dozen U.S. cities, a growing army of heavily armed thugs is running amok in many more areas of the country. Wearing masks, without identifying gear or with “police” (which they are not) vests, they snatch foreign students off the streets and disappear them into a network of prison camps. They smash the windows of immigrants’ cars when they have their kids with them. They tear babies out of their mothers’ arms. They arrest and deport tamale vendors and day laborers; they tear gas and viciously assault protesters; and on and on.
Unpredictably violent, sadistic, undisciplined and lawless, their role is to terrorize oppressed nationalities and to beat down and break up any opposition to the regime.
In Germany under Hitler, these were known as the Brownshirts, or the SA. In Mussolini’s Italy, they were the Blackshirts. In the U.S. under Trump, this force is ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and is reinforced with other agencies like the Border Patrol, FBI, and others.
They are growing rapidly and dangerously.
Trump’s “One Big Beautiful” budget bill, signed last July 4, allotted $170 billion to ICE for the next four years—more than the military budget of most countries in the world. It also called for expanding ICE enforcement to 10,000 agents by the end of the year, in order to achieve their goal of deporting a million nonwhite immigrants a year.
Although the people they are detaining are overwhelmingly ordinary working people—not “violent criminals”—ICE is amping up its weaponry at an astonishing pace. In the nine months since Trump came to power, ICE alone (i.e., not counting Border Patrol, etc.) has spent $71,515,762 on weapons, mostly “small arms, ordnance and ordnance accessories,” but also some larger weapons, including “guided missile warheads and explosive components.”
Guided missile warheads?!?!!! WTF!!!
A single purchase of semi-automatic and automatic rifles from Geissele Automatics ran to over $9 million, which was almost as much as was spent on weapons in the entire previous year. Overall spending on weapons has gone up by 600 percent.
And who are the people being armed like this? In order to meet their recruiting goals, ICE is offering a one-time bonus of $50,000. And they are rushing to process the flood of potential recruits with little regard for things like training, stability or propensity to violence. Vetting is given short shrift—many apparently have not even been fingerprinted and given background checks. One recruit “had previously been charged with strong-armed robbery and battery stemming from a domestic violence incident.” Others failed drug tests after being recruited. Meanwhile, the training course was cut from 13 weeks, to eight weeks, to six weeks.