Politics

Members of the Texas National Guard arrive on October 7, 2025, at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, Illinois. | Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

It’s hard to think of a more dramatic question than the issue before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Illinois.

President Donald Trump wants to use federalized troops to quell protests outside an immigration detention facility near Chicago. Two federal courts have ruled that federal law does not permit Trump to do this. But the case is now before a Supreme Court dominated by six Republican justices who rarely part ways with the leader of their political party.

Trump’s arguments in the Illinois case, moreover, are quite aggressive. His lawyers claim that the question of when the president may exercise his power to take control of National Guard members, who are ordinarily under the command of state officials, “is committed exclusively to the president” and cannot be reviewed by federal courts. Once Trump does so, his lawyers also claim, “the Guardsmen serve under the command and control of federal military officials and ultimately the President as Commander in Chief.”

Thus, if the justices embrace this argument, Trump could potentially gain unchecked authority to call up the National Guard and order armed guardsmen to “protect” voting precincts in Democratic regions of the country.

The case arises out of Trump’s decision to place several hundred members of the Illinois and Texas National Guard under his control and order them to an immigration detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, about 12 miles west of Chicago. Since September, a small group of people have protested against the Trump administration’s immigration policies outside of that facility, and some of them have allegedly vandalized federal law enforcement vehicles. Some people have also been arrested for violent crimes, such as aggravated battery.

According to Judge April Perry, a federal district judge who temporarily blocked this deployment, “the typical number of protestors is fewer than fifty,” and “the crowd has never exceeded 200.”

To justify Trump’s decision to deploy military personnel to an American town, his lawyers rely on a federal law that permits the federal government to take command of National Guard members if there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” or if “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

Trump, in other words, claims that a small crowd that ranges from a few dozen people to a couple hundred has so overwhelmed the United States’ capacity to enforce its own laws that it justifies using the military against US citizens on US soil.

Needless to say, the stakes in the Illinois case are breathtaking. If Trump is allowed to use military personnel to suppress a tiny group of protesters and vandals, then it is unlikely that this Court will place any meaningful limits whatsoever on his ability to deploy the US military against Americans.

What does the law actually say about presidential use of the National Guard?

If you want to understand the Illinois case, it’s helpful to first understand how the framers of the original Constitution understood the role of the military.

The framers were quite fearful that military power would be directed against a nation’s own citizens or against state governments that were out of step with whoever ran the federal government. Indeed, they were so fearful that they imagined a country with no permanent national army. This is why the Constitution prohibits Congress from appropriating any money to the army that does not expire after two years.

As the Supreme Court explained in Perpich v. Department of Defense (1990), among the framers, “there was a widespread fear that a national standing Army posed an intolerable threat to individual liberty and to the sovereignty of the separate States.”

The framers did, however, contemplate that each state would maintain a militia — which could, under conditions established by Congress, be called into federal service “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

Though the United States’ military might, and its tolerance for standing armies, has obviously grown considerably since the founding, federal law still reflects the framers’ fear of military personnel being used to oppress the people or to trample on states’ internal governance.

While the president may, in limited circumstances, order the National Guard (the modern version of founding-era militias) into service on US soil, such orders are supposed to be a last resort. The relevant statute permits such use of the National Guard only to repel a foreign invasion, to suppress a rebellion, or when the president is “unable” to otherwise execute US law.

Trump, however, asks the Supreme Court to read these limits to be entirely meaningless. His primary argument is that he can simply declare that a rebellion or similar emergency exists, and the courts can do nothing to intervene even if that declaration is ridiculous. Alternatively, he asks the justices to read words like “rebellion” or “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States” so broadly that they encompass a small protest that has never grown beyond a couple hundred people.

Trump’s first argument arises out of a single line from the Court’s decision in Martin v. Mott (1827) that, if read in isolation, does seem to support his broad claim of authority over the National Guard. Martin involved a previous version of the federal law governing presidential control of the militia, and one sentence of that opinion states that the “authority to decide” whether calling up the militia is justified “belongs exclusively to the President.”

But, as both federal courts that heard the Illinois case concluded, Trump’s lawyers read this line out of context. Martin involved a member of the New York militia who refused President James Madison’s order to report for federal service during the War of 1812. In that case, the Supreme Court asked a question: “Is the President the sole and exclusive judge whether the exigency has arisen, or is it to be considered as an open question, upon which every officer to whom the orders of the President are addressed, may decide for himself, and equally open to be contested by every militiaman who shall refuse to obey the orders of the President?”

The Court then answered that question with the line Trump’s lawyers quote, saying that the president has the authority to decide whether to federalize the militia; it’s not each individual person within that militia who holds that authority. Thus, Martin doesn’t stand for the proposition that courts may never review whether a president’s decision to call up the National Guard complies with federal law. It simply held that members of the militia can’t decide on their own whether to report for duty or not.

That leaves Trump’s argument that a small gathering of pro-immigration protesters amounts to a “rebellion,” or a mob that so threatens the United States that law will cease to function unless military personnel suppress that mob.

The latter claim is risible on its face. As Judge Perry noted, “federal immigration officials have seen huge increases in arrests and deportations,” despite the fact that several dozen people have been protesting outside of a single immigration detention facility in Illinois. So, the government appears to be executing its laws just fine.

Similarly, Judge Perry defines the term “rebellion” to mean “a deliberate, organized resistance, openly and avowedly opposing the laws and authority of the government as a whole by means of armed opposition and violence.” Thus, mere lawbreaking, or even lawbreaking that seeks to prevent federal officials from carrying out their duties, is not enough. The alleged rebellion must actually threaten the “authority of the government as a whole.”

That definition makes sense, seeing as the word “rebellion” is tucked within a statute that also targets foreign invasions or major uprisings that threaten anarchy. So, it makes sense that the word “rebellion” should be read to encompass similar threats to national security or US stability. A narrow definition of the word “rebellion” also makes sense in light of the United States’ history of fearing the use of military forces on domestic soil.

Will that be enough to persuade this Supreme Court? Probably not, given the Republican justices’ extraordinarily solicitude for the head of their political party. But a decision authorizing Trump to use the National Guard to suppress a minor protest would be a sharp departure from the nation’s history of caution regarding domestic use of the armed forces.

The Illinois case may turn on whether the Trump administration can be trusted

In its brief to the justices, the Trump administration suggests that there’s been a breakdown of order outside the Broadview facility. They claim that “federal law enforcement agencies have been forced to operate under the constant threat of mob violence and to divert resources from enforcement efforts to protect federal agents and property.” Meanwhile, the Trump administration says, “local forces have failed to respond, or unaccountably delayed their response, even when federal agents face life-threatening violence.”

Both the Illinois plaintiffs and state and local police, meanwhile, present a more nuanced picture. In their view, while protesters have sometimes engaged in criminal activity, state and local police have been responsive to the federal government’s needs, and much of the violence near the facility was provoked by bad policing from federal officials.

Judge Perry summarized the Broadview Police Department’s position, saying they believe that the “tone of the protesters” changed for the worse after federal officials made a show of force; “twenty to thirty federal agents parked across the street and walked toward the ICE Processing Center in camouflage tactical gear with masks covering their faces.” Broadview Police also complained that federal officials’ “use of chemical agents against protestors ‘has often been arbitrary and indiscriminate,’ at times being used on crowds as small as ten people.”

Perry concluded that the state and local police’s version of events is more credible than the Trump administration’s. Among other things, she noted that some of the Trump administration’s declarations to her court contain factual errors or otherwise dubious claims. Two of Trump’s witnesses, for example, “refer to arrests made on September 27, 2025 of individuals who were carrying weapons and assaulting federal agents,” but “neither declaration discloses that federal grand juries have refused to return an indictment against at least three of those individuals, which equates to a finding of a lack of probable cause that any crime occurred.”

Judge Perry’s determination that the Trump administration is not credible, and that the state and local police’s version of events is, matters, because appellate courts are only supposed to second guess a trial judge’s factual findings if they are “clearly erroneous.” So, the Supreme Court should presume that the Trump administration’s portrait of widespread chaos outside of the Broadview facility is wrong.

But many of the Republican justices are openly hostile toward district judges who do not share their views. And those justices are particularly credulous toward Trump and his administration, especially in cases involving law enforcement.

So, there’s a real chance that the Republican justices will resolve the Illinois case by simply assuming that order has broken down in Broadview and then interpreting the law as if Trump’s claims are gospel. In the worst case scenario, they could also demand that lower courts defer to Trump even if he uses the military to suppress dissent or to intimidate Democratic voters.

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On Saturday, millions of people across the U.S. attended “No Kings” protests—a slogan born in response to President Donald Trump’s self-aggrandizing social media posts where he’s called himself a king, including with AI-generated images of himself in a crown, and his continuous stretching of executive power. While Americans were out in the street, the president was posting.

In an AI-generated video originally posted on X by a genAI shitposter, Trump, wearing a crown, takes off in a fighter jet to the song “Danger Zone” like he’s in Top Gun. Flying over protestors in American cities, Pilot King Trump bombs people with gallons of chunky brown liquid. It’s poop, ok? It’s shit. It’s diarrhea, and in reposting it, it’s clear enough to me that Trump is fantasizing about doing a carpet-bomb dookie on the people he put his hand on a bible and swore to serve nine months ago. The first protestor seen in the video is a real person, Harry Sisson, a liberal social media influencer.

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The video Trump reposted to Truth Social

But this was not clear, it seems, to many other journalists. Most national news outlets seem scared to call it how they see, and how everyone sees it: as Trump dropping turd bombs on America, instead opting for euphemisms. Some of the best have included:

The Hill called it “brown liquid” and “what looked like feces”The Guardian deemed it “brown sludge” and “bursts of brown matter”More “brown liquid” from the New York TimesNBC News got close with “what appeared to be feces”A CNN contributor’s “analysis” said Trump was “appearing to dump raw sewage”Axios’ helpful context: “suspect brown substances falling from the sky”ABC News opted to cut the video before the AI poop even started falling

The New York Post, never one to waste a prime alliteration opportunity, didn’t disappoint: “Trump’s fighter jet was shown dropping masses of manure.”

I can understand some of these venerated news establishments might be skittish about using a word like “poop” in their headlines, and I can also concede that I haven’t had an editor tell me I can’t use a bad word in a headline in a long, long time. I can imagine the logic: we can’t “prove” it’s meant to be shit, so we can’t call it shit. But there’s nothing in these outlets’ style guides that has kept them from saying “poop” in the headline in the past: “Women Poop,” the New York Times once proclaimed. Axios writes extensively and frequently about dog poop. CNN’s analysis extends to poop often.

Along with the above concessions, I can also promise I don’t feel that passionately about getting poop on anyone else’s homepages. But we are in an era where the highest office in the country is disseminating imagery that isn’t just fake and stupid, but actively hostile to the people living in this country. When I first saw someone talking about the Trump Poop Bomber video—on Reels, of all places—I thought it must be someone doing satire about what they imagined Trump would post about the protests. I had to search for it to find out if he really did, and what I found was the above: trusted sources of truth and information too scared to call fake poop fake poop. It’s not about poop, it’s about being able to accurately describe what we see, an essential skill when everything online is increasingly built to enrage, trick, or mislead us. AI continues to be the aesthetic of fascism: fast, easy, ugly. When we lose the ability to say what it is, we’re losing a lot more than the chance to pun on poop.

Add to this the fact that no one in Trump’s circle will say what we can all plainly see, either: that the president hates the people. “The president uses social media to make the point. You can argue he’s probably the most effective person who’s ever used social media for that,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said at a news conference this morning. “He is using satire to make a point. He is not calling for the murder of his political opponents.” Johnson did not say what that point was, however.

Pro-Israel lobby groups, media, and trolls have tried to manufacture outrage by claiming that a man – not named, but described as the “founder of the Society of Independent Legal Observers” (SILO) – was ‘arrested for wearing a Star of David necklace’ over the weekend. Stephen Pollard, former editor of the libel-riddled Jewish Chronicle, went to the Tory Spectator to demand to know why “the Met think [sic] the Star of David is offensive”:

Far-right broadcaster GB News described the arrest as ‘insane’:

But the man was not arrested for ‘wearing a Star of David’, nor even for “antagonising pro-Palestine protesters”.

No, he was not arrested for ‘wearing the Star of David’

Instead, a statement from the Met reveals that he was arrested for repeatedly defying orders to stay away from a group of Jews peacefully protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, members of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) – and the Israel lobbyists had dishonestly edited video to support their false claim:

We understand the concerns raised, but the claim this man was arrested for wearing a star of David necklace is not true. He was arrested for allegedly repeatedly breaching Public Order Act conditions that were in place to keep opposing protest groups apart.

The conditions required protesters from the pro-Israel group Stop the Hate to remain in one area with protesters from the pro-Palestinian group IJAN required to remain in a separate area.

The man told officers he was acting as an independent legal observer but his actions are alleged to have breached the conditions in place, and to have gone beyond observing in an independent and neutral way to provoking and, as such, actively participating as a protester.

Over the course of an hour, the man is alleged to have continuously approached the area allocated to IJAN, getting very close to protesters to film them and provoking a reaction. Officers had to intervene at least four times to ask the man to return to the Stop the Hate area as required by the conditions.

When he failed to do so after multiple warnings, he was arrested. He was released on bail and the investigation continues.

The clipped footage released, in which officers question the man’s status and actions as an independent legal observer, is six minutes of an hour-long interview. We can fully appreciate why this clip in isolation causes concern and we are continuing to review and work with communities to understand the concerns they have voiced.

METROPOLITAN POLICE

We’ve been here before

The case brings to mind the incident last year involving Gideon Falter, boss of the Israel-funded lobby group that calls itself ‘Campaign against Antisemitism’ (CAA). Falter claimed he had been prevented from crossing the road because he was Jewish and an anti-Israel (in fact, anti-genocide) march was approaching. UK ‘mainstream’ media immediately (of course) amplified his claim, giving abundant airtime to interviews in which he repeated his claim and his attacks on anti-genocide protest.

But video evidence proved that Falter had not been ‘just trying to cross the road’. Instead, accompanied by a clan of minders and bodyguards, he was trying deliberately to impede the march. Under eventual challenge on camera, Falter fell to pieces and refused to discuss the issue. Only Sky News appeared even to have modified its reporting when this evidence became public – no doubt because it doesn’t help the regime’s narrative that anti-genocide protests are ‘hate marches’ and peaceful protesters are a threatening ‘mob’.

CAA, described by human rights group CAGE as one of the two key pro-apartheid organisations in the UK, is one of the most prominent groups among the UK Israel lobby, even boasting of its role in getting the Starmer government to ban the non-violent anti-genocide protest group Palestine Action as terrorists. CAGE has complained to the Charity Commission about CAA’s lack of transparency about its sources of funding and its blatantly political activities.

What is SILO?

SILO, the group apparently ‘founded’ by the alleged agitator arrested by the Met, is mentioned by the trolls as if it is something noteworthy and substantial. However, a ‘WHOIS’ search for its domain reveals that its website, which is hosted on Israeli domain firm Wix, only came into existence in June.

The website’s ‘about’ section – in fact the whole website – contains nothing except a two-line ‘welcome’, an email address and an image of what appear to be pencil cases or make-up bags:

The ‘welcome’ claims the organisation is “dedicated to upholding justice and protecting rights”, but gives no detail of any justice it has upheld or rights it has protected, nor whose rights it is interested in protecting, or even of who else is in the ‘society’ except for its un-named ‘founder’ – who may be named Levy, according to an apparently now-deleted reference to him in an AOL article whose link is still listed by Google:

Arrested for wearing the Star of David = it was a scam

Without any detail on its own site or others about its activities, it’s not currently possible to say what rights SILO is interested in, but the arrest of Mr Maybe-Levy at the weekend for allegedly trying to get at a group of Jewish anti-Zionist protesters strongly suggests that the rights in question may be those of Israel and those who support it, like CAA – and its fellow apartheid-apologist group (according to CAGE) UK Lawyers for Israel, who are currently under investigation for making ‘baseless and vexatious’ legal threats to try to silence Israel’s critics and have used such tactics against everyone from doctors and hospital boards to streaming services.

As always, if an Israeli official or supporter are talking, there’s a very good chance the story is not what you are being told. As an Iranian official observed drily last week in reference to a promise from Israeli PM Netanyahu that he isn’t planning to attack Iran, they are:

capable of deception.

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Last week we covered how Trump’s immigration theater was pulling federal agents off child sex crimes, drug interdiction, and terrorism investigations to chase landscapers and line cooks instead. Turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg. Now we’re learning the administration is also pulling hundreds of cybersecurity professionals away from defending America’s critical infrastructure so they can help process deportation paperwork.

The latest reporting from Nextgov reveals the scope of this bureaucratic insanity:

Employees across various units of the Department of Homeland Security have been marked for reassignments to agencies focused on Trump-era border security and deportation work, and could be dismissed if they don’t comply, according to multiple people familiar with the matter and a copy of one notice viewed by Nextgov/FCW.

In recent weeks, hundreds of DHS employees have been directed to transfer to agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Protective Service and Customs and Border Protection — the main units overseeing much of President Donald Trump’s immigration and deportation efforts.

The people being reassigned include staff from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the very federal agency, created during the first Trump administration, responsible for coordinating cybersecurity across federal agencies and helping protect America’s critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. This includes issuing emergency directives when vulnerabilities are discovered, coordinating incident response when breaches occur, and working with private sector operators of power grids, water systems, and financial networks—you know, the stuff that might actually matter for “national security.”

Bloomberg provides more detail on exactly which CISA personnel are being moved:

Compulsory reassignments have gone in recent weeks to workers within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, who had focused on issuing alerts about threats against US agencies and critical infrastructure, current and former employees said. They described the orders on condition of anonymity over fears of retaliation.

Affected CISA staffers have been shuffled to agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which received a $150 billion infusion to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown, the employees said. CISA workers have been moved to Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Protective Service, a domestic police force working with ICE and CBP on deportations.

Changes have hit particularly hard in CISA’s Capacity Building team, which writes emergency directives and oversees cybersecurity for the government’s highest value assets, the employees said. Reassignments have largely targeted senior CISA staffers, who are forbidden from joining unions because they work on national security issues, according to one person.

So we’re specifically targeting the people whose job it is to improve the cybersecurity of federal agencies and coordinate with international partners on cybersecurity threats.

Once again, the Trump admin seems to time these things to highlight how messed up their priorities truly are. We’re still dealing with the fallout from the Salt Typhoon hack and we’re only just starting to get a sense of just how bad the recent Salesforce hack really is.

But sure, let’s pull the people who deal with those threats off their jobs so they can help arrest landscapers.

What could possibly go wrong?

This fits perfectly with the broader pattern we’ve already documented, where Trump’s immigration obsession is gutting federal law enforcement’s ability to tackle actual crimes that matter. As we covered recently, federal agents are being pulled off child trafficking cases, drug interdiction, and terrorism investigations so they can chase non-violent immigrants instead.

But there’s an extra layer of stupidity here, because CISA has become a target of right-wing conspiracy theories. Republicans have spent years claiming that CISA is actually a “censorship” agency rather than a cybersecurity one, because the agency had the audacity to set up a system to help local election officials alert social media companies of election misinformation around the time, place, and manner of voting.

Senator Rand Paul has been particularly vocal about wanting to eliminate CISA entirely. As Politico reported last year:

“I’d like to eliminate it,” Paul told POLITICO Thursday. “The First Amendment is pretty important, that’s why we listed it as the First Amendment, and I would have liked to, at the very least, eliminate their ability to censor content online.”

Of course, CISA doesn’t actually censor content online. That’s not what the agency does. But when you’re dealing with people who think everything is a grand conspiracy, facts tend to be inconvenient.

The reality is that CISA was created in 2018 under Trump himself, and its actual mission is defending critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. You know, the kind of attacks that could actually shut down hospitals, banks, and power plants. The kind of attacks that represent genuine national security threats, as opposed to someone trying to mow your lawn without the right paperwork.

But with the MAGA GOP’s bizarre obsession with CISA, reassigning actual cybersecurity experts to bogus immigration jobs is hardly surprising. The weird obsession with CISA is causing all sorts of stupid decisions, including Rand Paul making sure a different “CISA” (the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015) basically expired, in part because Paul seemed unwilling to recognize the two CISAs are different things:

Senate aides echoed concerns that cybersecurity industry stakeholders have also shared with Axios: That Paul is conflating CISA the agency with the information-sharing program, which shares the same acronym.

When you’re more concerned with feeding red meat to your base than actually protecting the country, these distinctions don’t matter much.

The human cost of this bureaucratic madness is becoming clear. As Nextgov reports:

The shifts could slow ongoing responses to cyber threats that have targeted the federal enterprise.

CISA personnel are addressing a Cisco vulnerability — recently exploited by a hacking group potentially linked to China — that predominantly affects government networks. And over the summer, a hacker stole employee data from both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and CBP, Nextgov/FCW first reported.

So while CISA personnel are being reassigned to help with deportations, actual foreign adversaries are actively exploiting vulnerabilities in government networks. But I’m sure the Chinese hackers will politely wait until we’re done processing paperwork on restaurant workers.

The DHS response to this criticism is predictably tone-deaf and filled with culture war nonsense, rather than actually addressing the underlying issues:

“DHS routinely aligns personnel to meet mission priorities while ensuring continuity across all core mission areas,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Any notion that DHS is unprepared to handle threats to our nation because of these realignments is ludicrous, especially given the abject failure at the hands of CISA in the last administration.”

“CISA was adrift and was focused on censorship, branding, and electioneering instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure. Today, CISA is focused squarely on executing its statutory mission: serving as the national coordinator for securing and protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure and is delivering timely, actionable cyber threat intelligence, supporting federal, state and local partners, and defending against both nation-state and criminal cyber threats,” she added.

Ah yes, the “abject failure” of… defending critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. Because apparently the real threat to America isn’t foreign hackers potentially shutting down our power grid, it’s people trying to work in agriculture and construction.

This is what happens when you let people who fundamentally don’t understand how anything works make decisions about complex systems. They see an agency that viewed foreign influence attacks on elections and assume it must be part of some grand conspiracy to silence red-blooded Americans on social media.

The end result is that we’re making America demonstrably less safe in the name of political theater. When you pull cybersecurity experts off incident response and vulnerability management so they can help with deportation paperwork, you’re not making the country more secure. You’re just making it easier for foreign adversaries to exploit the next zero-day vulnerability, breach more federal systems, or potentially disrupt critical infrastructure.

But hey, at least the people cheering this on will have someone to blame when the lights go out.