this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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Do you really think this is as bad as it can get?
Of course not. I'm asking what declaring Martial Law would change.
Martial Law would mean the real military rolling into towns, and the loss of recourse in the courts for federal overreach.
Currently we just have ICE, national guard, and police assaulting us, but under martial law there will be things like tanks and drone bombs.
You believe the only thing stopping that is Trump saying "I declare Martial Law"?
He also can't just kidnap a foreign leader without notifying congress -- except he actually just can.
The only thing stopping Trump right now is the courts. Martial law is an endrun around the courts.
Yes, he is breaking laws, but once the court actually steps up and tells him to stop, he does. We unfortunately have a long history of extrajudicial foreign action that the courts just don't care about, but that's not the same as deploying military to one's own country.
Stopping him how?
Like when? And what good is telling him to stop after he's already done the thing? What's to stop him from just defying it again?
I'm referring to things like this:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/31/donald-trump-national-guard-deployment-00708714
You may think it's ineffective, but it's why we're not staring down the barrel of a tank right now.
Let me know if I'm summarizing this fairly:
Your concern with people open-carrying at ICE protests is that it risks creating a situation where Trump can declare Martial Law. If that happens, he could use bombs against civilians, with no way for the courts to tell him to stop.
You agree that there is nothing stopping him from using tanks and bombs on civilians right now, but if he does, the courts will tell him to stop at some point in the future. And he probably would, but then he would come back later, probably with more weaponry.
Now that's a whole lot of stuff I didn't say. You wanted to know how Martial Law would be different than what we've got now, and I gave you the answer.
I can quote everything I included in that summary if you give me examples of things you think you didn't say.
You assume I'm against open carry, for one.
I also disagree with your entire second paragraph. Something is clearly stopping him from bombing us right now, and you seem to be suggesting that it's not the courts, it's... his own goodwill? What?
You're right, I got mixed up with this thread and another -- this is about opening fire.
That's a false premise. Just because he isn't doing something doesn't mean he's prevented from doing it.
You could have said exactly the same thing about deploying the national guard to those states before he did it, and we can see that you would have been wrong.
Except, America has always fucked around with foreign leaders, so I wouldn't have said that. We've done a number of coups without congressional approval in my lifetime, the only remarkable thing about Maduro is that we took him alive.
In the same lifetime, we have never deployed troops to local neighborhoods.
Edit: you ninja edited me.
I also wouldn't have said the same thing about deploying national guard to those states, because that's also happened multiple times before Trump.
I envy your comfort in the guardrails and ability to rationalize Trump as behaving more-or-less within the bounds of precedence.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
I'd love to see some of that planning actually happen.
Come to my community meetings and help us set up a mutual aid network.
I've been looking into organizations in my area, Rotary seems interesting -- but I have this nagging suspicion someone is going to link me to why they're actually problematic.
Rotary can be good, but they lean more progressive lib than left left. They do have a lot of helpful programs for the community though.
Honestly, grassroots groups are popping up all over the place, and you can't even find them online yet. We didn't even have a website before I volunteered space, and I only found them by going to protests and talking to people there. There's one coming up at 2pm on Tuesday the 20th, so you're gonna find the ones willing to leave work early at that one.
Nothing wrong with being progressive lib. Not fond of most self-described left-left leaning people I meet anyways (at least on fedi). So maybe I'll look into it more.
lmao, yeah I feel you on the fediverse left. I promise we're not all like that offline too, gotta have practical praxis IRL.
See my edit, I deliberately changed my example the moment I posted it because I knew you'd say that.
Edit war lol