Trump Official Threatens National Guard Deployment Amid LA Protests

Another White House official calls anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles an "insurrection"

Stephen Miller

This afternoon, White House border czar Tom Homan said that the administration would bring the National Guard in to respond to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.

“ We're gonna bring National Guard in tonight,” Homan told Fox News. “We're gonna push back on these people and we're gonna enforce the law.

Deploying the National Guard can’t happen without the assent of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who today called the idea “inflammatory” and the “wrong mission.” Absent Newsom’s permission, President Trump would have to invoke the Insurrection Act to “federalize” the California National Guard, which he could theoretically use to put down the insurrection (the theory being that the ICE protesters are impeding federal law enforcement). That hasn’t happened, but this morning Trump aide Stephen Miller used the “i” word.

“An insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States,” aide Stephen Miller said on X, referring to video of the LA protests.

Trump also threatened that the federal government could “step in” to deal with the unrest, saying:

“If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”

A senior Pentagon intelligence analyst told me that Homan’s remark wasn’t idle bluster. The Pentagon, he explained, has been actively discussing the deployment of military personnel to Los Angeles. It wasn’t clear if Homan was supposed to disclose it, but this isn’t just rhetoric, the Pentagon source told me.

Even so, the Insurrection Act requires that the president first issue a formal dispersal order, which Trump has not done. It’s also not clear that Republicans in Congress would support such a move.

Regardless, it would not be the first time the U.S. military was deployed to LA. In 1992, then-President George H.W. Bush deployed U.S. Marines to Compton after invoking the Insurrection Act.

Correction: This article has been updated to better reflect impediments to the deployment of U.S. troops to LA