June 13, AD 2025, Trump's Law and Order Gamble, Democrats' Dangerous Opportunity
Beware the agents pacificateurs
Dear Readers,
Welcome to my new subscribers. Fire Hot Takes Fridays is when I look at the news from the last week or so and give my hot take. I often look at foreign news and its impact on the US, but sometimes domestic news takes precedence. In those cases, I still look at foreign media for its reporting on things in America. The reason is that most of the major US media is owned by multinational corporations whose main goal is to make money through controlled narratives catered to particular audiences. What this means is that in the USA, the biggest media voices do not have a business plan based on being the best investigative journalists or “scooping” one another by uncovering big stories. Neither are their analysis pieces focused on giving the best data or illuminating truth. This problem is not as great outside of the US, because corporate priorities have not overridden journalistic pride and integrity as much, and in many cases, foreign outlets still have the journalistic spirit that the First Amendment was designed to protect.
Okay, with that out of the way, let’s talk about the confrontation between the federal administration under President Donald John Trump, leader of the Republican Party, and California Governor Gavin Christopher Newsom. That is the major news this week. At its core, the issue is the constitutionality of deploying the National Guard against the wishes of a state that is neither in rebellion nor in violation of federal statutes.
Constitutionally, the National Guard of the United States exists as the organized national militia—that is, part-time soldiers based in the various states of the Union. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution references the militia within the enumerated powers of Congress, granting it the authority to legislate
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
Okay keep those clauses in mind as I continue with Article Two, Section Two with the relevant parts in bold.
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Okay this is not the only reference to the militia or state based forces. Going back to Article One, Section Ten we see it deals with explicit powers denied to the States but with some exceptions. Again the important parts are in bold.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
Okay, so states may wage war only if invaded, and states may keep permanent troops that are under their command—meaning not the militia, which can be called into federal service—only with permission of Congress. Then there is Article Four, Section Four, which reads:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
Republican government is understood to mean that there shall be no military government, no royalist government, and no hereditary aristocratic government in the United States. And that the protection against invasion requires an actual attack, and whether or not there is domestic violence that the local government cannot combat requires the state legislature to ask Congress to intervene or for the governor of the state to ask for Congress to intervene. Congress would then authorize the President to respond. What cannot happen is that the President cannot determine the state government is not doing a good enough job to stop domestic violence and send in the National Guard. The states doing a bad job at law enforcement is not unconstitutional unless the forces of the states are engaged in violating the rights of Americans.
So let’s say California says they have the situation under control and they are trying to manage unrest, but they are not colluding with criminals. Then the President cannot just intervene. Rioting is not enough to justify federal intervention; it is the state's responsibility to deal with it. Their responsibility cannot simply be usurped by the President, even if the state is incompetent in the execution of its duty. However, if federal law is being violated and criminal elements are too powerful for normal law enforcement—meaning they are blocking attempts to execute the Laws of the Union—then the President of the United States can call out the militia according to the laws provided by Congress. The Constitution of 1787 works as a system.
California has local and state police, it has the strongest State Guard in the country, and it has a National Guard. Meaning that California is in no danger of being overrun and its government is capable of determining whether or not a riot requires federal intervention. However, the federal administration can still take steps to protect federal law enforcement in its duties. So there is no authority for the President to get involved in local rioting, but the President can use the National Guard to enforce the immigration Laws of the Union. They are in fact two separate Constitutional issues, even if the rioting is in protest of the enforcement of federal laws. The reason for the rioting does not change whether or not the state is responsible for determining the best way to deal with its residents.
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots erupted on April 29 after four LAPD officers—Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, and Theodore Briseno—were acquitted of assault charges in the videotaped beating of Black motorist Rodney King. The riots lasted until May 4. The verdict set off six days of crime and anarchy with widespread violence, looting, and arson across L.A. More than 60 people were killed, over 2,000 were injured, and property damage topped $1 billion, half of which was losses by Korean-American businesses. The United States Department of Justice opened an investigation into the Rodney King beating and charged the officers with civil rights violations, securing the convictions of Koon and Powell in 1993.
What’s important for our purposes is that President George Herbert Walker Bush only deployed federal forces after Governor Peter Barton Wilson requested federal intervention. The President then invoked the Insurrection Act and sent in the National Guard and federal troops. This was legal and appropriate: the State of California’s executive made the request, and the federal government responded.
The problem now is that the state is not only not making the request, it is rejecting the intervention completely. That may be misguided, but they have the Constitutional right to be misguided. The late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Antonin Gregory Scalia, was noted for saying in 2013:
A lot of stuff that’s stupid is not unconstitutional. I gave a talk once where I said they ought to pass out to all federal judges a stamp, and the stamp says—Whack! [Pounds his fist.]—STUPID BUT CONSTITUTIONAL. Whack! [Pounds again.] STUPID BUT CONSTITUTIONAL! Whack! STUPID BUT CONSTITUTIONAL … [Laughs.] And then somebody sent me one.
And there you have it. Too many partisans, Democrats and Republicans, view the courts as a way of getting around things they do not like but are constitutional. This is a very bad habit and is self-serving—and self-defeating—because the other side will just return the favor. It is an attack on the rule of law. California may be stupid in how it deals with the rioting, but it is lawful and constitutional to be stupid. Likewise, the administration may be overbearing in enforcing immigration law, but as long as they are only arresting those who are actually in the country illegally, then it may be stupid, but it is lawful.
Yet the state cannot stop the President from enforcing the immigration Laws of the Union. And the federal administration cannot harass law-abiding citizens, continue to detain people when they known it is a case of mistaken identity, or usurp the states’ policing powers. This means that California can be right on one issue and wrong on the other, and the U.S. administration can be wrong on one issue and right on the other. These are different issues.
However, this ambiguity gives the advantage to President Trump because the Democrats have made a mess of immigration even though the laws are clear. Their willfulness regarding announcing their intention to not cooperate with federal law enforcement has a very, very small audience who will applaud. German news media outline DW has noted that the disorder has given rise to many untrue claims online, but actual disorder is very real. Most Americans want the laws enforced as written until they are changed. Overwhelmingly, Americans do not like riots, and the Democrats have gotten themselves associated with riots by their own actions. There can be no argument against the deportation of illegal aliens because the Constitution gives Congress exclusive rights on questions of immigration and naturalization. The states have no say in the matter except through the U.S. Senate, which was taken from them through the badly thought-out 17th Amendment. But that’s a subject for another day.
The major problem is the dueling federal court decisions. States have to start insisting on going directly to the Supreme Court via the Constitution’s original jurisdiction clause and cut out all the intermediary court back-and-forth. Ambiguity and (partisan) lower-court mendaciousness is harmful to public order. Think about this: the biggest news since 9/11 is this decision regarding the command of the California Guard. This is an Article One, Article Two, Article Four, and a Second and Tenth Amendment issue.
On Thursday, June 12, 2025, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer sided with Newsom, the Governor of California, and said that President Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard was done unlawfully. That meant that power to command the Guard returned to Governor Newsom and was taken from the Secretary of Defense, former Fox News personality Peter Brian Hegseth. This was to take effect at noon. Then that afternoon, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the order until it could hear the matter on June 17. That is judicial madness. You cannot have the orders bounce around like that in a situation of command and control. This leaves commanders in a moral and legal predicament: whose orders do they obey, and are those orders lawful? This is why states have to stop using the docket system of the lower courts and just go straight to the Supreme Court. The states are sovereign entities whose objections need to be resolved quickly and with clear constitutional standards that apply to all fifty of them. The way to do that is for either Congress or the Supreme Court to directly intervene—and in this case, the Supreme Court is the more likely and most direct venue. Ping-ponging between district and circuit courts is bad practice.
Nevertheless, if Gavin Newsom seizes the initiative and restores law and order this weekend, without federal help, he becomes the governor who kept his cool and proved the administration to have overreached and made a bad problem much worse. Whether the Democratic administration in California can pull off such a feat remains to be seen. The Democrats must not listen to those internal critics who sabotage their efforts all the time—those I call agents pacificateurs. These are the activists and false allies of the people who undermine reform by pacifying and enfeebling government action, by dulling common sense, and urging not doing something at the precise moment when firmness is required. This figure masquerades as a voice of compassion or charity but functions to neutralize energy, delay action, and preserve the status quo under the guise of concern or understanding. The ones who are complimented by being called “bleeding hearts” but are actually heartless because they do not care about the human cost of allowing crime waves and social dysfunction. The Democrats must avoid falling for the traps of the agents pacificateurs or they will be rejected by the American people. This is Newsom’s ball to fumble or take into the end zone. Either way, the American people want calm streets, and historically do not much care who gives it to them.