Organized citizens hold the key
Waking up to the news of Trump deploying 2,000 National Guard members to Los Angeles is chilling. David Frum's piece in The Atlantic is equally as chilling. You can use RemovePaywall.com to read it.
David Frum
Frum writes:
"Yesterday, President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard to quell disorderly protests against immigration-enforcement personnel in Los Angeles. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared his readiness to obey Trump by mobilizing the U.S. Marines as well. These threats look theatrical and pointless. The state, counties, and cities of California employ more than 75,000 uniformed law-enforcement personnel with arrest powers. The Los Angeles Police Department alone numbers nearly 9,000 uniformed officers. They can surely handle some dozens of agitators throwing rocks, shooting fireworks, and impeding vehicular traffic.
"If and when those 75,000 uniformed personnel feel overmatched by the agitators, California can request federal help of its own volition. When California has asked for needed federal help—during the wildfires earlier this year, for example—Trump has begrudged that help and played politics with it. Trump is now forcing help that the city and state do not need and do not want, not to restore law but to assert his personal dominance over the normal procedures to enforce the law.
"But if the Trump-Hegseth threats have little purpose as law enforcement, they signify great purpose as political strategy. Since Trump’s reelection, close observers of his presidency have feared a specific sequence of events that could play out ahead of midterm voting in 2026:
"Step 1: Use federal powers in ways to provoke some kind of made-for-TV disturbance—flames, smoke, loud noises, waving of foreign flags.
"Step 2: Invoke the disturbance to declare a state of emergency and deploy federal troops.
"Step 3: Seize control of local operations of government—policing in June 2025; voting in November 2026".
"Some of Trump’s most fervent supporters urged him to follow this plan in November 2020. But in 2020, they waited too long—until after the votes were cast. Using the military to overturn an election already completed was too extreme a step for a Department of Defense headed by a law-respecting Cabinet secretary such as Mark Esper. Trump looked to the courts instead. Only after the courts disappointed him did Trump attempt violence, and then the only available tool of violence was the lightly armed mob he summoned to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021. Harrowing as those events were, they never stood much chance of success: Without the support of any element of the military, Trump’s rioters could not impose the outcome Trump wanted.
"But the methods Trump threatened in Los Angeles this weekend could be much more effective in November 2026 than the attempted civilian coup of January 2021.
"If Trump can incite disturbances in blue states before the midterm elections, he can assert emergency powers to impose federal control over the voting process, which is to say his control. Or he might suspend voting until, in his opinion, order has been restored. Either way, blue-state seats could be rendered vacant for some time".
In her piece titled Every Election Is Now Existential, Anne Applebaum has the prescription for turning back Trump and his authoritarian, nihilistic gang of thugs.
“Small numbers of voters swinging one way or the next will decide the nature of the state, the future of democracy, the independence of the courts”.
Town Hall Citizen is about mobilizing a relatively small group of citizens, i.e. "small numbers of voters" to organize and take control of the Democratic Party, much like The Tea Party did. The idea isn't unique - we're literally taking a page from The Party playbook. Ralph Nader has been advocating for citizens groups for years now.
Now the only question is, will anyone listen?
tty next time,
