Vermont Major General presents first ‘State of the Guard' address
MONTPELIER, Vt. (ABC22 FOX44) – The leader of Vermont's National Guard delivered the first 'State of the Guard' at the statehouse Wednesday night. The address was the first of its kind, detailing the guard's recent activities both locally and across the nation.
Major General Gregory Knight started off his speech by thanking lawmakers in attendance, including former longtime Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy and his wife Marcelle. The leader of the Vermont national guard also offered special thanks to guard members, including three who earned Purple Hearts during missions in Iraq in 2023.
'The important thing is showing people who may not know a whole lot about the guard all the things we've accomplished,' said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Nick Fazio.
His colleague, Sergeant Alex Jarvis added, 'It's very important to get the state legislature involved in the guard so they can better understand our mission and get the word out about our recruiting issues.'
The Adjutant General went on to describe national efforts, including stationing 100 guards on capitol hill after January 6, 2021.
He also spoke on more recent efforts such as the deployment of over 200 air guardsmen to Japan and continuing international partnerships in North Macedonia, Senegal and Austria. He also touched on state-focused activities during COVID-19 and the 2023 and 2024 floods.
'Our Quick Reaction Force was directly engaged in saving the lives of 19 Vermonters, and their pets, from rising flood waters. They were there with our swift water rescue teams to evacuate hundreds more,' he said.
During his speech, Knight also focused on 'the changing culture of the guard' promising a no-tolerance policy for sexual assault, noting zero reported cases this year, and focusing on mental health resources for guards.
'I've encouraged those returning from deployment to seek help when needed… we don't have enough providers for me to refer them to. You can help us fix that.'
In closing, the Major General, who also announced he would not be seeking another term, asked lawmakers for help in growing the guard which he says has been struggling with recruitment.
'The state of our guard is strong, but with your help we can become even stronger and grow our capabilities and our capacity,' he said.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Politico
6 hours ago
- Politico
Can ‘Ohio's Anthony Fauci' Stage a Political Comeback?
ARCHBOLD, Ohio — On a Thursday night in early April, outside the banquet hall of a community college off a rural stretch of highway in northwest Ohio, a small group was hovering excitedly around Amy Acton. Acton, Ohio's Covid-era health director, was headlining a Democratic fundraiser an hour outside Toledo as the party's first announced 2026 gubernatorial candidate. Beside a table of wilted iceberg lettuce bowls, Acton greeted a gaggle of mostly female supporters. A woman in her 80s, a former Republican, gushed that Acton had been 'marvelous' as pandemic health director. A woman in her 50s, an employee of a local health department, asked Acton to sign a printout of the 'Swiss Cheese Model,' a visual aid that became a hallmark of Ohio's Covid briefings. A nurse in her 30s showed Acton her Covid scrapbook. 'I feel like I didn't get this part [as health director],' Acton, now five years out from that job, told the nurse, 'getting to meet people and hear their stories.' Acton's own pandemic story is Ohio lore. A Democrat appointed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to lead Ohio's Department of Health, Acton joined DeWine's cabinet in February 2019, with a mandate to address health outcomes in a state still grappling with the opioid epidemic. A year later, Acton was thrust into overseeing the statewide response to a global pandemic and cultivating a national profile as a compassionate and telegenic leader who put Ohio at the forefront of proactive school closures. Ohio's first stay-at-home orders went into effect on March 23, 2020. 'Today is the day we batten down the hatches,' Acton said at the time. By mid-June, following weeks of nonstop demonstrations outside her home (which included armed protesters and signs with antisemitic symbols), the harassment of her family both in Ohio and out-of-state, and an effort to blunt her powers in the legislature, Acton resigned as health director, a decision she later said was due to political pressure to sign health orders she opposed, specifically one to allow large, maskless crowds at county fairs. Acton's current-day campaign pitch to succeed DeWine begins where she left off as health director: 'I saw under the hood during Covid. I saw how fragile our democracy is,' she tells voters. 'I'm running for governor because I refuse to look the other way while our state continues to go in the wrong direction on every measure.' There's no existing model for Acton's candidacy — she's the only Covid-era health director using that experience as a springboard to run for a top statewide office, at a time when the only sitting U.S. governor who was previously a physician is Democrat Josh Green of Hawaii. How voters ultimately assess her will offer a window into how a segment of the country has processed the pandemic and its aftermath half a decade later. The takeaways won't be definitive. Acton enters the race at a distinct disadvantage, beyond even her reputation on the right as the chief architect of the state's divisive lockdowns. Donald Trump ushered in a new conservative era in Ohio, the state responsible for making JD Vance a senator. The likely GOP nominee for governor is Vivek Ramaswamy, a MAGA celebrity from Cincinnati who has effectively cleared his own primary with endorsements from Trump and the Ohio Republican Party. Acton may not even win her own primary next May, which could feature ex-Sen. Sherrod Brown and former Rep. Tim Ryan, two of the state's most prominent Democrats. That hasn't stopped Ramaswamy from treating Acton as his opponent, calling her an 'Anthony Fauci knockoff' who 'owes an apology to every kid in Ohio for the Covid public school shutdown.' It can be hard now to imagine the Before Times, when Amy Acton and Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease doctor during the pandemic, were obscure government bureaucrats. In Acton's case, the aggressively unglamorous role of state health director was not typically seen as a launchpad for stardom or a political career. But the dark days of early Covid elevated a host of unlikely voices from the trenches of public health and medicine, including Acton, Fauci, and White House Covid coordinator Deborah Birx. Those days revealed Acton to be a compelling communicator with a knack for distilling complexity and putting Ohioans at ease — traits that, in theory, translate well to retail politics, if not for the fact that Acton's skills as a messenger also inevitably recall those excruciating times. 'This is a war on a silent enemy. I don't want you to be afraid. I am not afraid. I am determined,' Acton declared on March 22, 2020. 'All of us are going to have to sacrifice. And I know someday we'll be looking back and wondering what was it we did in this moment.' Acton was lauded far and wide that spring. 'This is why we need Acton right now — she's a guiding star in what often seems like an endless night,' a local news site editorialized, below an illustration of Acton, with her prominent cheekbones and glossy-brown beach waves, as Rosie the Riveter. The New York Times called her 'The Leader We Wish We All Had.' Glamourwondered whether she was the 'Pandemic's Most Midwestern Hero.' Little kids dressed as her in white lab coats. The intensely earnest 'Dr. Amy Acton Fan Club' emerged on Facebook and amassed over 100,000 members. Acton's fans had responded to the way she 'delivered tough truths with clarity and compassion,' Katie Paris, the founder of Red, Wine and Blue, a group that aims to engage suburban women in politics, told me. She was also ridiculed by Republicans who felt her orders amounted to overreach. One GOP lawmaker accused Acton of promoting a 'medical dictatorship.' Another agreed with his wife who accused Acton, who is Jewish, of running Ohio like Nazi Germany. 'She might be the nicest and most well-intentioned person on the planet,' Bill Seitz, the GOP House majority leader during Acton's tenure, told me. 'But people were pissed off at the extent their lives changed, in their view, for the worse, because of these restrictions.' Acton hasn't been in the public eye since the early throes of the pandemic, and she's reemerging now into a totally different world. Bitter Covid skepticism on the right has given rise to the crunchy health and wellness doctrine known as MAHA, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who claims processed foods and seed oils are driving chronic illness, setting the tone as the nation's health secretary. In the years since the pandemic, trust in doctors and scientists has plummeted among members of both parties, and an increasing number of young Americans are getting their medical advice from TikTok and YouTube. In the midst of these trends, Acton will be reckoning with her own legacy and the decisions she made when so little was known about the virus. Acton is defensive of her posture back then — 'a leader's job is to give you a north star, to tell you these cold, hard facts,' she says in her stump speech, an unsubtle jab at her detractors — as well as the parasocial relationship some people have to her from the days of near-daily briefings. (That connection is 'something I'm very protective of,' Acton told me.) She's also relatively tight-lipped about DeWine — who has swatted away any notion he might cross party lines to endorse his former health director — insisting they had remained on good terms after her departure. 'The way we worked together was real,' she said. Acton acknowledges the mere fact of her candidacy dredging up Covid times can be strange and painful for some people — and may even kneecap her campaign in its infancy. 'We did overwhelm hospitals. People died during Covid from heart attacks and strokes because ambulances had nowhere to go,' Acton said, recalling one of the more nightmarish realities of that chapter. 'We haven't been honest as a country and just laid that out there. It's been too political. But we have a lot to learn from that, because we will face crises again.' 'Just hearing my voice, for some people, brings it back,' Acton told me in early April, at a park not far from her home in Bexley, where Acton arrived looking mostly like she does on TV — shoulder-length brown hair, dress, tights, ballet flats. Acton explained how at every meet-and-greet as a candidate for governor, 'somebody is crying in line … somebody is breaking down in a room. It's visceral. You don't have control over it. It just comes out.' Allyson Smith, the nurse with the Covid scrapbook in Archbold, opened up to Acton about being a contact tracer. 'I told her that I was threatened,' Smith said, thumbing open the book to a photo of her children, 2 and 4, in masks. 'It really makes me cry when I look back. It was a hard time … It was actually traumatic for people in a lot of ways.' Acton theorizes this sense of connection with her among total strangers comes from 'everybody in the world … watching the same thing at the same time, [which] led to a bond with me that's unusual. When I was trying to go back to my normal life, I realized people would come from everywhere just to see me speak. It doesn't go away.' Acton traces her empathy back to a tough childhood. Raised poor in Youngstown, Acton was always the 'smelly kid' in school. Her parents split up when she was 3, and her mother eventually remarried a man that Acton later accused of sexual abuse. The family moved a dozen times throughout her childhood and early adolescence. For nearly two years, she and her younger brother lived in a basement below a storefront where her mother sold antiques. Later, the family was homeless, sharing a tent for the winter. Acton ended up testifying about her stepfather's abuse to a grand jury, but according to Acton, he skipped town before facing charges. 'I was in the seventh grade,' she recalled, 'because I remember the feeling of new clothes and squeaky shoes walking through the courthouse.' The rest of her childhood she spent with her biological father. After high school, Acton enrolled in an accelerated medical degree program through Youngstown State University and Northeast Ohio Medical University. Acton credits her medical residency in the Bronx during the crack epidemic with her decision to pursue public health and preventive medicine. Back in Ohio, she spent most of the decade prior to her government appointment as a public health professor. Acton met DeWine through one of his aides while serving on a youth homelessness task force at the philanthropic organization where she worked as a grants manager. In Acton's retelling, she found the governor immediately 'disarming.' Acton was a pro-choice Democrat, DeWine a pro-life Republican who came up in the Bush-era GOP. Before Covid, the role of state health director was generally seen as apolitical (and non-specialized: one of Acton's predecessors was the former executive director of the Ohio Turnpike). Acton said she and DeWine were both passionate about addressing vexing health issues like the opioid epidemic and the state's below-average life expectancy. Their first joint Covid briefing was March 7, 2020. 'We know once again that there's a lot of fear, a lot of confusion out there,' Acton, wearing a white lab coat, told the press corps at the Ohio Statehouse. Two days later, Acton and DeWine signed a health order making Ohio the first state in the nation to close its schools. Almost overnight, the weekday 2 p.m. Covid pressers became appointment viewing with dedicated hashtags on a pre-Elon Musk Twitter and homemade merch. Fans praised DeWine's 'aggressive sincerity, buttressed by his endearing dorkiness,' and Acton's 'super powerful' determination and 'soothing' tone. They produced over-the-top tributes, like a cartoon of Acton and DeWine set to the theme from the '70s sitcom Laverne & Shirly. It was all part of a larger trend of prayer candles for Fauci and liberals swooning over a pre-scandal Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York. 'You could see [the pandemic] being solved, literally, day by day, and then the rest of the time behind the scenes,' said Acton, who praised DeWine for allowing the briefings to be authentic and unscripted. DeWine was also Acton's chief defender during this time, hailing her as a 'good, compassionate and honorable person' who, in the face of intense backlash, has 'worked nonstop to save lives and protect her fellow citizens.' As neo-Nazi protesters descended on the statehouse and Acton's neighborhood, DeWine warned: 'Any complaints about the policy of this administration need to be directed at me. I am the officeholder, and I appointed the director. Ultimately, I am responsible for the decisions in regard to the coronavirus. The buck stops with me.' The governor even lauded her live on air after she resigned. 'It's true not all heroes wear capes,' DeWine said on June 11, 2020. 'Some of them do, in fact, wear a white coat, and this particular hero's white coat is embossed with the name Dr. Amy Acton.' Acton stepped down as caseloads were plateauing and calls were mounting for DeWine to loosen the reins. But Acton was uncomfortable with outsiders influencing how the state reopened, she now says. From the pandemic's onset, Acton had been the governor's top adviser on health matters and a key collaborator on health orders. 'What changed in June was the pressure to sign orders,' Acton said. 'At a certain point the orders started to feel like political pressure … industries trying to leverage their [influence] to get something through the pandemic.' The county fair order, which allowed thousands of maskless spectators, 'just made no sense to me at all … I didn't sign it,' she said. DeWine's office declined to comment on the record, but noted the fair order was introduced several days after Acton's departure. Any illusion of cozy bipartisanship was gone within a year of those early briefings. In February 2021, a reporter asked DeWine about rumors Acton was considering a U.S. Senate campaign. DeWine smirked. 'I'm going to stay out of Democrat primaries, so … no comment.' For DeWine, the price of working closely with a Democrat was a semi-serious primary in 2022. 'I could give Amy Acton a pass, simply because she was acting on the knowledge she had at the time, and she was acting on good faith,' said former Republican state Rep. John Becker. 'The governor was the guy that we in the General Assembly had the problem with.' DeWine easily won the general election, though, which the Democrats now pushing Acton's candidacy take as a positive sign. 'DeWine was rewarded by voters as having been seen as reasonable, thoughtful, careful,' said David Pepper, the former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. 'I think in one way we've let the negative side of Covid — the RFK wing of the world — define the response to Covid, when in fact, Mike DeWine was reelected by 25 points by moderate voters who, on another part of their ballot, voted for Tim Ryan [for Senate].' In early April, as Acton was embarking on a listening tour for her campaign, conservative Cleveland radio host Bob Frantz prodded DeWine about whether he might endorse his former health director against Ramaswamy or another Republican. 'Easiest question you've asked me,' DeWine told Frantz. 'I'm a Republican.' Facing off against Ramaswamy, Acton would be forced to answer for the many things well-intentioned public health experts got wrong at the very onset of the pandemic. We now know the virus doesn't transmit well outdoors or via surfaces, which means nobody really needed to be wiping down groceries or disinfecting the mail. There's also plenty of research now into the harmful impact of lockdowns and school closures on mental health and academics. When I asked Acton about the aspects of pandemic response that didn't age well, she argued her decision-making then was based on the best available data, while also taking into account the imperative to use stay-at-home orders sparingly. 'You don't want to do the throttle down unless absolutely your systems are collapsing,' she said. 'The best way to save the economy was to get control of the virus and be able to treat it and keep people working. So you should have had very few quarantine orders, [which are] 150-year-old powers to keep people safe.' In a statement to POLITICO Magazine, Ramaswamy senior campaign strategist Jai Chabria accused Acton, Ohio's 'Chief Lockdown Officer,' of 'keeping kids home so long they forgot what a classroom looked like. Some lost a full year of learning — and not just math and reading, but basic childhood stuff like making friends and playing sports.' Shaughnessy Naughton, the president of 314 Action, a liberal PAC supporting scientists and doctors that has endorsed Acton and is making a major push to elect doctors up and down the ballot, also conceded that lockdowns are a fraught subject. 'I think you do have to recognize that there are portions of the population that still are upset about the shutdowns, especially around schooling,' she said. With several years' hindsight, Acton still regards sweeping school closures as utterly necessary, arguing that buildings were going dark even before the state had issued orders mandating remote classrooms. 'Schools were closing already because no one was showing up,' she told me. 'Getting kids educated was the question. How do we keep kids talking to teachers? How do we get breakfast to them when they're in a food program? Those were the problems we were solving then, because it wasn't safe to be in schools. But by fall, we started to know how to open school safely.' (Acton was no longer health director when DeWine released school reopening guidelines in July, though she was technically still employed as an advisor through early August.) While many Democrats may be excited for Acton's comeback, others are more clear-eyed about their chances after endless defeats in the Trump era, including Brown's loss to Republican Bernie Moreno in November. 'I think what's unknown about her is where does she stand on all the other things,' said David Plant, the chairman of the local Democratic Party in ultra-red Defiance County. 'She's going to have to really work to define that. Because there's no doubt the Republicans will try to brand her for that.' At a deeper level, Acton has to reckon with the reality that Covid, the event that catapulted her into public consciousness, might render her an unpleasant memory for the many Ohioans who'd much rather never think about the practical reality of that time again. 'I don't think people want to hear about [Covid],' said Jim Watkins, a former director of a rural county health department. 'I hope they would not pigeonhole her with that, but that is baggage that's going to be there.' Acton realizes there are 'probably a lot of Democrats who fear I'm not electable because of Covid. They also think you're not electable because you're a woman, even though Kansas has had three women governors and Michigan is on their third almost. They'll say I'm not tough enough. Some of that was due to misunderstanding about why I stepped down.' But when problems like this arise now, Acton often reaches for one of the lessons she absorbed from Covid: 'A leader,' she said, 'has to maximize the best outcomes you can get with what you have as your reality.'
New York Post
7 hours ago
- New York Post
NYC's free summer meal program offers halal food, without listing kosher options
The city Department of Education's summer meal program for NYC youths boasts a variety of halal options at more than 25 locations citywide, but kosher food 'must be specially ordered,' officials told The Post. Free breakfasts and lunches will be served at hundreds of locations – schools, pools, libraries and parks – for anyone up to 18 years old, including all students from both public and private schools. 'You don't need to sign up, show any papers, or have an ID to get these meals,' the DOE says. 'Just head to one of our spots and enjoy a delicious breakfast and lunch.' Halal food – permissible for Muslims to eat under Islamic law – is available for the taking by anyone who shows up at the listed locations. Kosher food, for observant Jewish kids, is not mentioned on the DOE website. 4 DOE food worker Maria Gonzalez said she gave out 100 meals from a food truck in Haffen Park in the Bronx on the first day of the free summer meal program Friday. J.C. Rice Only when asked by The Post, the DOE said kosher meals 'must be specially ordered, and they are only available upon request. However we do not currently have any applications for kosher meals.' The glaring omission angered some Jewish advocates. 'The DOE's clear promotion of halal options alongside silence on kosher meals highlights a gap that needs urgent attention,'' said Karen Feldman, a DOE teacher and co-founder of the NYCPS Alliance, which fights antisemitism in the city public schools. 'Jewish families who keep kosher deserve the same outreach to feel fully included in this important program.' 4 A DOE food truck gave out free summer breakfasts and lunches to youths in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. J.C. Rice A similar controversy erupted in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when the City Council's Jewish Caucus demanded that Mayor De Blasio's DOE include kosher meals along with vegetarian and halal food for Muslims in its free meal program. The DOE does not track students by religion, but an estimated 10 percent of NYC public-school students, roughly 100,000, are Muslim. The number of Jewish kids in NYC public schools is unclear, but 105,776 K-12 students enrolled in private Jewish schools in 2024-2025, said Gabriel Aaronson, director of policy and research for the non-profit advocacy group Teach Coalition. Poverty and hunger plague many NYC Jews, among other groups. The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, which serves more than 325,000 clients, says it provides emergency food that meets the cultural and religious dietary needs of both kosher and halal-observant households. 4 Karen Feldman, a DOE teacher and co-founder of a group fighting antisemitism in public schools, faulted the city's free summer meal program's failure to list kosher meals for Jewish kids. Gregory P. Mango The DOE's summer menus offer a variety of halal options it says meet Islamic guidelines. For instance, a breakfast of egg and cheese on a buttermilk biscuit, home fries, and fresh fruit; and a lunch of chicken tenders with dipping sauce, garlic knot and corn. Other halal breakfasts include waffles, zucchini and banana bread, whole-grain bagels and buttermilk pancakes. Lunches feature pizza, mozzarella sticks, beef patties, falafel, chicken sandwiches, veggie burgers and empanadas. Kosher foods meet Jewish dietary laws, including restrictions on certain animals like pork and shellfish, separation of meat and dairy, and specific slaughtering and preparation methods. If ordered, the DOE said, a kosher breakfast would include a muffin, granola or cereal, plus yogurt, an apple, and milk. A lunch would consist of hummus, tuna or egg salad, whole wheat bread, grape tomatoes, apple and milk. 4 The DOE posted July summer meals with multiple halal options, but none for kosher food, angering some Jewish advocates. DOE Last week, the DOE would not detail its preparation or purchase of halal and kosher foods. 'We are thrilled that our summer meals program is returning this year, making sure that our youngest New Yorkers are fed and nourished,'said DOE spokeswoman Jenna Lyle. Funding for the summer meal program comes out of the DOE's yearly $600 million budget for all school food.
San Francisco Chronicle
8 hours 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.
