Trump Is Destroying the U.S. Constitution and Amassing Unprecedented Powers by Sending Federal Troops to Invade American Cities
Lincoln faced a real insurrection and still did not go as far as this president
Donald Trump has effectively declared war on U.S. cities that he perceives as enemy territory, expanding the military offensive he started this summer in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Last week, he ordered federal troops to Portland, Oregon, instructing them to use “full force” if necessary in order to respond to what he falsely described as a “war ravaged” city. After threatening to send the Texas National Guard to Chicago for over a month, the first wave of troops is set to deploy this week. Trump has also targeted Memphis and has made plans to invade San Francisco, New York City, and other major Democratic-run cities.
These troops would be in addition to the ICE agents and other federal law enforcement officers who have already been enlisted in a one-sided war against civilians—some of whom have been killed on the streets or in ICE custody and others wounded. Many have been captured, including during a recent raid in Chicago where federal agents reportedly broke down doors in an apartment building, “pulling men, women, and children from their apartments, some of them naked,” zip-tying some who were detained on site for hours and packing others into vans. At the same time that Trump is waging war within the United States, he is claiming the power that 18th-century British monarchs had to unilaterally go to war abroad.
This is not just unconstitutional action—it is anti-constitutional. Trump is attempting to erase the constitutional order itself. U.S. presidents do not have unilateral authority either to go to war abroad or at home against American cities; it is essential to emphasize this point as Trump aims to turn U.S. cities into occupied territories. What he is doing is so extreme that the constitutional system is not readily equipped to contemplate the possibility of what is happening. The Oath Clause in Article II requires presidents to swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” What if the president himself seeks to dismantle the Constitution? Article IV provides that “The United States shall ... protect each [state] against invasion.” What happens when the president uses the military and other federal agents to invade states?
Beyond these fundamental principles, there are at least two specific disqualifying factors for Trump’s war against America and Americans. First, he has ludicrously claimed that emergency, rebellion, or war justifies his decision to send the military into U.S. cities. He is lying. A federal judge recently stated the obvious: “there was no rebellion” in Los Angeles. Similarly, there was no war in Portland before Trump deployed the military there, and there was no emergency in Washington, D.C., either. Trump is simply claiming phony emergencies as a pretext for turning cities governed by his political opponents into a police state subject to military occupation. By claiming contrived emergencies as a pretext for military interventions in U.S. cities, Trump has gravely abused the power of the presidency and committed multiple impeachable offenses. As Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has observed, there is a case to remove Trump from office, given his extreme dereliction of duty, under the 25th Amendment.
It’s important to emphasize a second reason why Trump’s actions are illegitimate. Even if cities actually had committed the offenses Trump falsely charges them with, even if there really was an insurrection against the government, his actions would still offend the constitutional framework by waging unilateral war against states (even in a real civil war, he’d need support and authorization from Congress, as Abraham Lincoln understood).
One struggles to find an American precedent for what Trump is doing, and really there is none—the closest parallels may be the British military occupation of colonial Boston in the lead up to the Revolution—precisely the kind of monarchical overreach the Constitution means to guard against. Or the limited deployment of troops in the former Confederacy after the Civil War. The United States of course had a civil war, but that was not a one-sided “war from within” waged by the president against states. During the Civil War, the Supreme Court observed what is obvious from the Constitution’s text: the president “has no power to initiate or declare war either against a foreign nation or a domestic State.” Presidents possess a temporary emergency authority under both the Constitution and the Insurrection Act to act unilaterally by “resist[ing] force by force.”
When Lincoln faced an actual insurrection—not the phony rebellion Trump has delusionally manufactured—he understood that there were limits to his authority. Lincoln initially took action with Congress out of session in early 1861—calling up troops, raising armies, ordering a blockade, and suspending habeas corpus. But Lincoln recognized he did not have the unilateral power of an absolute monarch to wage the Civil War without congressional support. While he took emergency action unilaterally when Congress was unavailable, he understood he could not wage a prolonged civil war alone.
As soon as it was safely possible to do so, Lincoln called Congress into extraordinary session and specifically explained what he had done and how some of his actions were legally justified. Lincoln additionally conceded that other unilateral actions he took may not have been “strictly legal” and therefore required retroactive congressional approval. When he offered explanations to legislators for his unilateral actions in a written message dated July 4, 1861, Lincoln acknowledged that “[w]hether there shall be any legislation on the subject, and, if any, what, is submitted entirely to the better judgment of Congress.” It is impossible to imagine Trump showing such deference, humility, and respect for the separation of powers. Congress recognized the necessity of Lincoln’s actions and provided the statutory authorization necessary to legitimize all of what Lincoln had done and to fight a domestic war that ultimately lasted four years.
If there were a real domestic insurrection, Congress has the real authority to respond. Article I of the Constitution authorizes Congress “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union [and] suppress insurrections.” Congress has delegated authority to the president through the Insurrection Act to unilaterally respond to domestic unrest in extraordinary circumstances when civil order has unraveled. Those circumstances are not present today—or, to be more precise, to the extent that civil order has unraveled, it is because of Trump’s own actions. Even if Trump’s fantasies about insurrection were real, nothing in the constitutional system would permit him to unilaterally wage war against any state without congressional support—as Lincoln understood when the U.S. fought a real civil war.
The U.S. president is supposed to be neither a monarch or a dictator. Trump’s actions have disfigured and broken the constitutional system. This is not a time for platitudes or cliches about the ordinary mechanisms we used to invoke when other presidents overstepped their bounds. Although impeachment and removal from office are justified, this will not happen, as Republicans have made clear there is nothing Trump can do that is too much for them.
Yet it is also a mistake to concede Trump’s inevitable victory. The United States is not Russia, China, or North Korea. Americans still have the ability to openly discuss and criticize the government’s actions, as we do here. The courts can—and have—offered recourse to besieged cities and they can continue to make robust use of them. Democrats in Congress can use the levers available to them, including the recent shutdown, to make crystal clear that Trump seeks to end constitutional democracy; as Sen. Chris Murphy of Conn. has put it: “Congress should not willingly pay the bills to fund the most serious assault on political freedom in our lifetime—an assault that may collapse democracy as we know it if we don’t fight back.” Americans should urge Democrats in Congress to adopt Murphy’s approach; this is not a conventional dispute about health care premiums, but rather an existential struggle for the future of democracy.
Above all, the right to peaceful protest—aka citizen activism—is available if Americans choose to avail it. As U.S. District Court Judge William Young pointedly observed in an extraordinary judicial opinion last week, “Trump believes the American people are so divided today that they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.”
In this deeply perilous moment, with military and law enforcement fanning out across the country to fight Trump’s one-sided war against parts of the U.S., we will see whether Trump is right—and it will be up to all of us to do what we can, legally and peacefully, to mobilize an opposition to Trump’s actions that is worthy of this moment.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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Some thoughts on professor Edleson’s article.
First. Where is the media? Despite its reduced influence the mainstream press remains an important source of information, especially for Baby Boomers. Why then is the legacy media more focused on who’s winning in the shutdown stand off and the Epstein files rather than pointing out, the unprecedented nature of what’s going down in Illinois? Why aren’t they making it clear that no other president in American history has ever declared war on American cities, or his political opponents? Why isn’t the press sketching out for the public just how this president and his henchmen are orchestrating a scenario in which they get around the Possee Comitatus Act in order to implement the Insurrection Act?
Second. Why are America’s former generals and admirals remaining silent? I can appreciate those still serving being quiet, but what about the rest of them? John Kelly called Trump out for being a fascist. Where is he now when we actually need him?
Third. What will happen if the president, or the secretary of defense, orders the military to fire on civilians? Will the officers refuse en masse to carry out that order? What will the troops do if that is the case, will they obey and mutiny or they bow to the dictates of our deranged commander-in-chief? These are weighty issues but one would never know that if they read the New York Times, listen to NPR, or watch PBS. All three continue to sane wash this administration cover this administration as though it is behaving normally.
What's really disheartening here isn't just that he's doing it. It's the entirely muted reaction from everyone - the public, Democrats, career officials...