Marines tasked with LA mission have not yet completed use of force and nonlethal training
The roughly 700 Marines recently ordered to deploy to Los Angeles have not yet completed training on less-than-lethal weapons and training on the Standing Rules for Use of Force, which governs the use of force for military personnel within the United States, said a spokesperson for U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM.
It is not yet clear when the Marines will complete the training, or when they will join NORTHCOM's Task Force 51, which is overseeing U.S. troops responding to the ongoing immigration protests in Los Angeles, the spokesperson said.
When U.S. troops operate domestically, they are bound by the Standing Rules for the Use of Force — which are more restrictive than wartime rules of engagement — and they must follow the same law and rules under the 4th Amendment as police, said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham, a former military attorney.
NORTHCOM announced on Sunday that the Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines based at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, had been told to be ready to deploy to Los Angeles to supplement National Guardsmen responding to immigration protests there.
The Marines began receiving Standing Rules for Use of Force training from an operational law attorney with I Marine Expeditionary Force before deploying to Los Angeles, a Marine Corps official told Task & Purpose.
Since the immigration protests began on June 7, President Donald Trump has federalized about 4,000 members of the National Guard to protect federal personnel and buildings. The Marines were ordered to deploy to Los Angeles on Monday.
Typically, states activate their National Guard troops to conduct disaster relief or law enforcement missions when their governors deem it necessary, VanLandingham told Task & Purpose for a previous story.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits federal U.S. troops from enforcing U.S. laws on American soil unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act.
Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act, and he has only directed the federalized National Guard troops to protect federal personnel and buildings, VanLandingham said.
Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of NORTHCOM, recently told the Los Angeles Times that the Marines do not have the authority to arrest people.
'They are not law enforcement officers, and they do not have the authority to make arrests,' Guillot told the newspaper. 'There are very unique situations where they could detain someone if detaining was necessary to defend, but they could only detain that person long enough to hand it off to a proper law enforcement official.'
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San Francisco Chronicle
a day ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Letters: The federal government once stood up for what was right. What's changed?
As a Black teenager growing up in Detroit in the 1960s, I was horrified after seeing news coverage of the peaceful demonstrators, marchers and children being attacked and brutalized. The demonstrators, mostly Black Americans, were simply asking for the same rights that were afforded to the majority of Americans. Today's demonstrations against the Trump administration's immigration roundups in Los Angeles and elsewhere remind me of the Civil Rights Movement. The National Guard is deployed in Los Angeles, purportedly to protect federal property. The last time the guard was used in a disputed manner was 1957. Nine Black high school students attempted to enroll at the all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The Democratic Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called in the National Guard to prevent it. In response, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent the Army to protect the students. The irony is self-evident. The cause of the peaceful demonstrators in Los Angeles and beyond is righteous. It is a shame that the federal government under President Donald Trump no longer protects the disenfranchised and marginalized. Clarence Boyd, Oakland Maintain health care I was relieved when Sen. John McCain voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act in 2017. As a breast cancer survivor with two pre-existing conditions, the thought of losing my health care was terrifying. I recently overcame another bout of breast cancer, and I'm grateful a second mastectomy was avoided. Medicare's follow-up care has been superb. Now we're facing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, which threatens the health care coverage of 16 million Americans by 2034. The proposed bill includes substantial cuts to Medicaid and changes to the Affordable Care Act that will affect low-income individuals and families. What kind of society are we if we fail to support our sick, elderly and disabled? We need to pressure Congress to refuse a huge deficit increase while simultaneously denying health care to vulnerable populations. It's not crazy You might think that I am a Republican. I believe in fiscal responsibility. I support a balanced federal budget. I support a strong immigration policy. I support a strong national defense. I support a rational and fair tariff policy. I believe in fair and honest elections. But I am not a Republican. I am a Democrat. And just because I have empathy for the most vulnerable and defenseless among us, that also does not make me 'a radical left lunatic.' Bill Schrupp, Lafayette
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Trump's policies on immigration, economy and trade are unpopular with Americans
Five months into his second term as president, Americans are deeply unsatisfied with how Trump has handled the economy, immigration and tariffs. No wonder his approval rating is underwater. Anyone who saw Donald Trump rally his supporters for reelection heard him make sweeping promises on three key pillars of his campaign ‒ improving the economy, deporting undocumented immigrants and penalizing other countries with tariffs. Five months into his second term as president, Americans are deeply unsatisfied with how Trump has handled those three issues, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll released Thursday, June 26. Immigrants have been Trump's favorite boogeymen for a solid decade, ever since he declared his first run for president in 2015. And he found supporters by demonizing undocumented immigrants, winning elections in 2016 and 2024. But now that Trump holds the power to deport those immigrants, as he repeatedly promised, Americans appear to be repulsed by what that looks like. Turn on any television news broadcast or open any social media platform. You'll see heavily armed men in masks, wearing body armor, refusing to show identification as they grab men, women and children ‒ sometimes with wanton and unnecessary violence ‒ on streets, in warehouses and meatpacking plants, and on farm fields across the country. Unfortunately for Trump, Americans have some empathy A Dec. 18 Quinnipiac Poll, released a month before Trump took office, found that 55% of registered voters preferred giving undocumented immigrants a pathway to legal status here in America, while 36% wanted to deport most of them. Six months later, Quinnipiac finds a 9-point swing on the issue, with 64% now saying they want a pathway to citizenship and 31% still preferring deportation. It leaps off the page: a significant shift in public opinion that has to be attributed to Americans seeing Trump getting what he has always wanted when it comes to immigrants. The poll also found that 56% disapprove of how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is doing its job, while 39% approve. Opinion: Trump pivots to distractions as polls show collapsing support for his agenda ICE raids in California provoked protests that Trump tried to politicize by sending in the military. American voters don't like that either, disapproving of deploying the Army National Guard by 55-43% and disapproving by 60-37% his decision to also deploy U.S. Marines. Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac University polling analyst, told me that "there's a lot of empathy for people who want to stay here," reflected in the poll, and that American compassion rings out even during a time of international turmoil and conflict. "Keep in mind," Malloy added, "this all happened in the midst of Gaza, Russia, and Iran, and yet those videos coming out of California of ICE raids in fields and Marines in LA top the news." It turns out Americans also like democracy Something else jumps out from the poll ‒ Americans are worried about America. The economy was the top concern cited by voters in Quinnipiac Polls in late January (24%) and in mid-March (30%). But "preserving democracy" was the top concern in the June poll ‒ at 24% ‒ while the economic concern fell to 19%. Malloy told me that's the first time he's seen "the economy eclipsed by concern about the very bedrock of the country." Opinion: Red states push religion in public schools. Supreme Court is their endgame. No wonder Trump's approval rating is underwater, with 54% disapproving of the way he is handling the presidency and just 41% approving. The June Quinnipiac poll also shows that on immigration, 57% disapprove and 41% approve. On the economy, 56% disapprove and 39% approve. And on trade, after Trump's fruitless tariff wars with international allies, 55% approve and 38% disapprove. Trump's signature policy proposal ‒ the so-called Big Beautiful Bill being batted about by Republicans in Congress to continue tax breaks for America's wealthiest people while stripping health care from some of the poorest ‒ is also deeply unpopular, with 55% opposing it and 29% supporting it. That tracks with recent polling, which shows the more people learn about the budget bill, the more they hate it. Trump will spin his lies on poor polling, but the numbers won't Expect pushback from Trump and his supporters, who won't like what Quinnipiac found in this latest survey. That's to be expected. Trump always touts polls that tell him what he wants to hear and flouts polls that give him bad news. So keep this in mind: On at least three occasions from late March to early June in 2024, Trump's campaign emailed journalists news releases pointing to Quinnipiac polling that showed him performing well in the race for president. Trump, using his Truth Social platform while running for office, repeatedly bragged about Quinnipiac polls that pleased him and attacked Quinnipiac if he didn't like a poll's results. A shorter version of that point ‒ you can't trust anything Trump says about polling. But, as Malloy noted, Trump has been in worse spots when it comes to the approval of Americans. His disapproval rating hit 60% in a Quinnipiac poll released Jan. 11, 2021, just five days after he incited supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol because he could not accept that he had lost the 2020 election. I counted 41 times in Quinnipiac polls done monthly during Trump's first term, from January 2017 to January 2021, when his approval rating was lower than in this new poll. Trump could take that as good news. I doubt he will. But here's another chunk of good news in the June poll ‒ Americans are clearly concerned about the state of America, but they don't think our democracy will end during their lifetime: 49% said our democracy is not working, compared with 43% who say it is. But 73% think democracy will outlast this, while just 17% say it won't. "There are major domestic and international crises the country is facing," Malloy said. "And, at the same time that we're politically divided, there's a belief that democracy will survive. And that's heartening." Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here. You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump is trying to turn California into a police state. Here's what's coming next
The stage is set for one hot summer on America's streets. Last week's U.S. Court of Appeals hearing on whether President Trump exceeded his authority — first, by unilaterally calling up thousands of California's National Guard troops to restore order in roughly six city blocks of Los Angeles and then by deploying hundreds of active-duty Marines specializing in urban warfare — was jaw-dropping. A Trump administration attorney argued before the court that his boss has the unreviewable power to call up the guard, not only as he has already done in the Golden State, but simultaneously in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. And to deploy, alongside these guard members, unlimited numbers of active-duty armed forces, such as the Marines, whose primary mission Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly pledged will focus on 'lethality, warfighting and readiness.' The court signing off on this shocking authoritarian overreach was paired with Trump's recent comments suggesting that Los Angeles is just the beginning ('We are going to have troops everywhere'), and Hegseth's belligerent refusal in last week's Senate oversight hearing to answer the simple question of whether or not he had given the order authorizing 'live ammunition' (one might, reasonably, assume the answer is 'yes'). Outrage over the court's sanctioning of Trump's military deployments was quickly overwhelmed by his bombing of Iran. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement has continued its provocations in Los Angeles — including the apparent racial profiling and arrest of a U.S. citizen on her way to work — with military backing. National Guard troops were also deployed last week more than 130 miles away from Los Angeles to assist in the raid of a suspected marijuana farm in Riverside County. The 'legal rationale' the administration has thus far successfully floated to justify these actions was an obscure 1798 law whose Fox News-friendly statutory nomenclature has quickly evolved into a MAGA-embraced, immigrant-bashing, chest-pounding rallying cry: The wording fits perfectly with the outright lies told during Trump's presidential campaign, about how Haitian immigrants were allegedly eating everyone's cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, and how a Venezuelan street gang had somehow turned Aurora, Colo., (conveniently located near an ICE detention center) into a 'war zone.' The Trump administration will almost certainly ride the Alien Enemies Act train until it jumps the court-sanctioned tracks, then simply catch the next train and then the next until they/we/all of us arrive at their chosen destination: A police state. The term 'police state,' as we all know, gets tossed around a lot. But few have a clear idea of what it is. A country becomes a police state when the line between civil and military authority is rendered meaningless. We're not there yet. But here's one scenario of how we might arrive at that fate, using Los Angeles (as Trump is doing in real life) as a case study. The last time a U.S. president sent the National Guard somewhere to address civil unrest was, of course, Los Angeles in 1992 during the riots after police officers were acquitted of the Rodney King beating. The initial request for a federal response originated with the governor, rather than the president. Then, as it is now, local police, such as the Los Angeles Police Department, train and practice alongside National Guard soldiers under a federal mandate known as Defense Support of Civil Authority. These joint preparations occur during weekend training drills of National Guard and reserve units and help to identify possible weaknesses in the chain of command and in general operations. One illustrative example of how crucial a role this authority plays in emergency operations — and how quickly things can turn bad, quickly — comes from the Rodney King riots and their aftermath. As the disturbances were winding down, an L.A. police sergeant who had taken fire some days earlier returned to the scene where shots were fired. With him was a Marine Corps infantry platoon led by a young lieutenant. With the Marines stationed in front of the house, the police sergeant sent two of his men around back. Before starting across the street to investigate, the police sergeant told the Marine lieutenant to 'cover him.' The entire platoon opened up with automatic weapons fire. 'Cover me' means something very different to a Marine than it means to a police officer. To a Marine, trained only for combat, 'cover me' means opening fire when a member of your team begins to advance on a target. Most people have probably seen this in a movie, if not in a modern war video game. That, however, is not what it means to police; it's a request to raise weapons to be ready to fire should the need arise. Fortunately, no one died that day. But we may not be so lucky on today's streets, given the lack of coordination and cooperation endemic to Trump's style of leadership. Should such a tragic incident come to pass, we can expect more civil unrest — possibly even riots — and for Trump to weaponize that straight out of the fascist playbook, something he's already doing with his ICE provocations: Stir something up, wait for your loyal base to call on its dear leader to restore order. Send in more troops, provide that 'iron fist' for which your followers yearn, tighten your grip on power. Wrap yourself in the flag, flood the zone with propaganda, rinse/repeat. The aggressive actions in Los Angeles have not, as of yet, resulted in significant injury and harm to civilians or police. But other cities, other states might not be so lucky. As Trump almost certainly seeks to expand his operations in the coming weeks and months to New York or perhaps Chicago, Democratic governors likely to find themselves in the crosshairs would be well-advised to begin preparing now, while their National Guard is still under their command and control. Make no mistake, America: Our mettle and our intestinal fortitude are about to be tested. We hold out hope that the Supreme Court will issue an emergency ruling telling the president he has exceeded his powers. Especially if people start to die. This would put some daylight between what Trump is trying to pull and his actual official powers. If he then persists in issuing orders to the military, which the court has declared illegal, you can rest assured the military has ways, largely unfamiliar to civilians, to maintain 'good order and discipline' in its ranks. Arresting a superior officer (including a commander-in-chief) may be contemplated where his or her actions warrant such. Especially when that becomes necessary to fulfill their sacred oath to 'protect and defend the Constitution.' Semper fi. Brett Wagner, now retired, served as a professor of national security decision making for the U.S. Naval War College and adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. J. Holmes Armstead, now retired, served as a professor of strategy and international law at the U.S. Naval War College and as a judge advocate general, inspector general and civil affairs officer in the U.S. Army, Army Reserves and National Guard.
