plus it might divert eyeballs from all the truly critical news about which AI startup got how much in funding to do something 100 other companies are doing.
Though I guess the loop hole here is that the National Guard would in this case be acting under "state authority" given that typically state-like actions for DC are deferred to Congress. The open question being whether the Executive branch could act independently, or whether they still need explicit authorization from Congress.
normalaccess · 2h ago
From the Wiki Page:
"The Act does not prevent the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor. The United States Coast Guard (under the Department of Homeland Security) is not covered by the Act either, primarily because although it is an armed service, it also has a maritime law enforcement mission."
It's confusing because DC does not have a governor so it looks like an edge case that has not been tested before.
ratelimitsteve · 2h ago
the DC national guard is under the direct command of the president. The law may use the words "state" and "governor" but I'd take the other side of any bet that says that will be interpreted to mean that the president doesn't have the authority to deploy the DC guard in DC because of the posse comitatus act.
The loophole is that the President is allowed to ignore the law.
Aurornis · 2h ago
This ruling has been widely misinterpreted. It does not mean that the president can make an unlawful declaration and that the National Guard, for example, must follow it even though the declaration is inconsistent with the law.
That said, it’s not immediately clear to me that this would be illegal. The National Guard and the District of Columbia is a unique edge case because D.C. is not a state.
To be clear I don’t like this move nor where it is going. I’m not endorsing it, only trying to understand the legal basis.
burkaman · 2h ago
You're right, but if someone down the chain of command refuses to obey a declaration they consider illegal, the president can (and will) just repeatedly fire people until someone does what he wants.
justin66 · 1h ago
We're talking about the military. In the worst case he can do a lot more than fire people for their disobedience. He's already indicated publicly that he believes General Mark Milley ought to be hung, although to date his efforts to end the general have not gone further than removing his security detail. (the general is believed to be an assassination target of Iran...)
And to go back to the original comment, the president cannot be prosecuted for doing any of this since it's part of his "official duties." I'd expect this Supreme Court to walk back the specifics of this ruling the moment a Democratic president starts pushing the limits, however.
jameskilton · 2h ago
No, I think we all have a pretty clear interpretation of that ruling.
If no-one is going to uphold the legality, or lack there of, then there is no rule of law.
SCOTUS is not going to hold POTUS accountable.
Therefore, Trump is above the law.
api · 2h ago
Even if Trump isn’t the one, this means we are ready for our Caesar and fall of the Republic.
Of course I think we’ve been sliding toward our decadent imperial phase for quite some time. This did not materialize out of nowhere. The Executive long ago took the power to declare war from Congress, at least in practice, and that was one of the first huge steps.
Personally I think Trump will die, there will be a power struggle, and it will be one of the next few. There’s even some chance it could be a left-populist authoritarian. Political winds can shift fast in an environment like this.
Speed running the fall of Rome.
jacquesm · 2h ago
Rome, for all its might was puny in comparison to the United States. The downfall and/or breakup of the USA will leave the world in pieces. If it happens - which I really hope it will not, though I don't see how at this point it is still unavoidable - millions of people will die the world over. Every two bit dictator will see their chance and grab it knowing the next opportunity to do so will be at least a century away. The number of democracies and the number of people living in an (actual) democracy is already a minority. Democracy may well soon become an endangered species in the zoo of possible governments.
api · 2h ago
China will probably rise up in our place, which is why I think MAGA just handed the world to China.
In that first state of the union when he talked about a golden age I was like “yeah, this is the Chinese century. He’s gonna burn it down.” Literally gilding the White House is a caricature of how you’d depict the fall of an empire in bad fiction. An editor would say that was cliche.
Bender · 1h ago
China is going through its own issues at the moment. Larger numbers of people are rising up against the CCP and recent events are becoming more and more frequent. Their government is predictably cracking down harder on its citizens. But you could be right, just not with the CCP but rather whatever government takes its place soon. The riots have not yet reached their precipice but it's getting nasty.
antifa · 11m ago
> Larger numbers of people are rising up against the CCP and recent events are becoming more and more frequent.
Do you have a source on that, preferably one that's not quoting a cult like the chinese version of scientology, not uploading daily china-will-collaspse-soon videos, not a tankie, or other random type of propaganda/fanboy outlet?
api · 1h ago
A more liberal and open Chinese government would be exactly what they need if they want to take the place of the USA on the world stage. Of course a revolution is not guaranteed to produce that. Revolutions often end with a new boss worse than the old boss. But it could. It's a dice roll, a high risk thing, which is why people have to be pushed really hard to do it.
It helps the US for China to have its own "make China great again" revanchist authoritarian CCP. It slows their overall growth and keeps them from engaging with the world. Walls are for losers. Global mercantile empires must be porous and outward facing. This porosity becomes the main source of their soft power and causes them to export their culture globally.
If China starts allowing a little more immigration that would turbocharge their rise, since every immigrant community inside China becomes the terminal end of a line of influence reaching back to wherever they came from.
If they don't liberalize then who knows. Maybe the US will decide to remove the shot gun from its mouth, in which case the window will close.
Bender · 1h ago
For what it's worth it will probably be quite a while before China reaches the Make China Great Again phase. At the moment they have not even reached the Stop Bludgeoning Citizens Again.
jacquesm · 2h ago
There is a pretty good chance of that, I don't see any other contenders. Australia and NZ better watch their back.
croes · 2h ago
That protects Trump, not his henchmen.
And soldiers are expected to refuse orders that are manifestly illegal
burkaman · 2h ago
True. Has an American soldier ever been prosecuted for obeying an illegal order?
jacquesm · 2h ago
I'm not sure what exactly the orders were, but Calley, one of the My Lai massacre war criminals was in fact convicted. But many others who should have been convicted were not.
Calley claimed he was following orders from Medina (his SO) but Medina denied giving them.
For the cold blooded murder of many civilians. Insanity, and one of those moments that humanity will judge its past by.
monkey_monkey · 2h ago
His henchmen are implicitly protected because he'll pardon them.
readthenotes1 · 2h ago
Biden set a good precedent...
SirFatty · 1h ago
Don't forget about Bengasi and the emails!
Tadpole9181 · 2h ago
Trump has pardoned several people who attempted to breach the capital and murder elected representatives to stop the ratification of a democratic presidential election.
All he needs is a single paper that says "All members of the military following the orders of President Trump are pardoned for all crimes past and future related to said orders" and - boom - accountability gone!
ratelimitsteve · 2h ago
This protects Trump, and Trump protects his henchmen. Look at the J6 pardons.
baggy_trough · 2h ago
"One set of troops, the District of Columbia National Guard, has historically operated as the equivalent of a state militia (under Title 32 of the United States Code) not subject to Posse Comitatus Act restrictions, even though it is a federal entity under the command of the President and the Secretary of the Army."
jacquesm · 2h ago
One way to now a chess match is about to begin is to see people place pieces on a chessboard. There is no thread of our possible history that is colored 'good' for the next couple of years that starts off with deploying the NG in Washington, D.C. As a pre-emptive move it is an overt threat and as a response to something that is actually happening it is complete overkill. Either way, trouble is brewing.
pohl · 2h ago
A staged "carjacking" that the police got lucky enough to "stumble upon" — the "victim" of which just so happened to be the DOGE employee known as "Big Balls" — isn't enough justification for the presence of the National Guard for you?
cookiengineer · 2h ago
Wait this seriously happened? Wtf is going on in the US :D
nosioptar · 1h ago
Yes, Big Balls allegedly got his ass beat by a couple of 15 year olds.
If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC, without engaging in particularly political actions, will raise some interesting questions about why things have been so bad for for long.
Aside from street protests and rallies (which NG should scrupulously facilitate for 1A reasons; DC itself has been fairly bad about this in the past, too), I don't think most local policing is highly political. Yes, DC residents are losing some democratic control over their local policing, which is bad, but DC has also done a bad job with local policing for a long time.
(I'm broadly in favor of shrinking DC to the federal areas themselves; the parts where people live generally should be returned to the States.)
jacquesm · 1h ago
For me it doesn't really raise any interesting questions at all: things are statistically not 'bad' per se, besides, you could trade your democracy for an autocracy or a dictatorship and end up 'safe' from small crime but meanwhile have your whole country looted.
Maybe some people prefer that but I would rather have garden variety criminals and a trustworthy government fighting them than some kind of re-invention of the USSR, which didn't really bother with collecting crime statistics, and where crime was - so they claimed - very low (this really wasn't the case, especially not if you consider the behavior of lots of highly placed individuals, who could get away with just about anything, except of course stealing from their bosses).
skajzbxbbj · 1h ago
Our country is currently being looted (rampant political corruption - Ukraine, Gaza, big tech, etc) and becoming less safe.
The irony is you often get the best of both worlds. A government that is tough on crime is often so because they care about their people, and thus won’t let the country be looted by the larger criminals either.
That being said, these types don’t often win (because they’re at odds with the system that creates billionaires) and are painted in a terrible light by the media & history book writers.
burkaman · 2h ago
> If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC
I don't know how you could measure this, since DC saw a very significant reduction in crime last year without any interference from the National Guard. If there are further reductions this year, that would be a continuation of a trend, not a new phenomenon.
It’s nice to be data driven but that isn’t really possible in our low trust society.
burkaman · 1h ago
If you don't trust the stats, then again, how would you know what effect the National Guard has? I can give you my subjective assessment as a DC resident, which is that crime is pretty low and it's a great place to live, but that isn't very useful to anyone who doesn't know me personally.
If you don't trust the stats then the Guard is being sent in for no reason and there will be no way to determine what impact they have. That is a terrible situation for everyone.
> It’s nice to be data driven but that isn’t really possible in our low trust society.
I don't think these concepts (interpersonal trust vs. accuracy of government statistics) are very related. For example China has one of the highest levels of interpersonal trust in the world (https://ourworldindata.org/trust), but notoriously unreliable government statistics.
No comments yet
toomuchtodo · 2h ago
> If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC, without engaging in particularly political actions, will raise some interesting questions about why things have been so bad for for long.
Can't wait for the to have no impact on crime in Southeast.
drivingmenuts · 1h ago
Is being homeless now a violation of federal law?
dragonwriter · 30m ago
Law as something distinct from the immediate whim of the executive backed by military force is under (both figurative and literal) attack in the US right now.
It directs the executive agencies to seek to loosen any restrictions on non-consentual admission to psychiatric facilities and to force homeless (and people with mental illness) into them.
It also aims to end drug abuse recovery programs and says that not having physical space for patients shouldn't stop them, IIRC.
nickpinkston · 2h ago
Almost a "Trump crossing the Potomac" (Caesar / Rubicon) moment, where the Army enters the Pomerium [1] of democracy.
Let's hope it doesn't have the same effect (ie the eventual fall of the republic)
https://news.ycombinator.com/active
Though I guess the loop hole here is that the National Guard would in this case be acting under "state authority" given that typically state-like actions for DC are deferred to Congress. The open question being whether the Executive branch could act independently, or whether they still need explicit authorization from Congress.
"The Act does not prevent the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor. The United States Coast Guard (under the Department of Homeland Security) is not covered by the Act either, primarily because although it is an armed service, it also has a maritime law enforcement mission."
It's confusing because DC does not have a governor so it looks like an edge case that has not been tested before.
The loophole is that the President is allowed to ignore the law.
That said, it’s not immediately clear to me that this would be illegal. The National Guard and the District of Columbia is a unique edge case because D.C. is not a state.
To be clear I don’t like this move nor where it is going. I’m not endorsing it, only trying to understand the legal basis.
And to go back to the original comment, the president cannot be prosecuted for doing any of this since it's part of his "official duties." I'd expect this Supreme Court to walk back the specifics of this ruling the moment a Democratic president starts pushing the limits, however.
If no-one is going to uphold the legality, or lack there of, then there is no rule of law.
SCOTUS is not going to hold POTUS accountable.
Therefore, Trump is above the law.
Of course I think we’ve been sliding toward our decadent imperial phase for quite some time. This did not materialize out of nowhere. The Executive long ago took the power to declare war from Congress, at least in practice, and that was one of the first huge steps.
Personally I think Trump will die, there will be a power struggle, and it will be one of the next few. There’s even some chance it could be a left-populist authoritarian. Political winds can shift fast in an environment like this.
Speed running the fall of Rome.
In that first state of the union when he talked about a golden age I was like “yeah, this is the Chinese century. He’s gonna burn it down.” Literally gilding the White House is a caricature of how you’d depict the fall of an empire in bad fiction. An editor would say that was cliche.
Do you have a source on that, preferably one that's not quoting a cult like the chinese version of scientology, not uploading daily china-will-collaspse-soon videos, not a tankie, or other random type of propaganda/fanboy outlet?
It helps the US for China to have its own "make China great again" revanchist authoritarian CCP. It slows their overall growth and keeps them from engaging with the world. Walls are for losers. Global mercantile empires must be porous and outward facing. This porosity becomes the main source of their soft power and causes them to export their culture globally.
If China starts allowing a little more immigration that would turbocharge their rise, since every immigrant community inside China becomes the terminal end of a line of influence reaching back to wherever they came from.
If they don't liberalize then who knows. Maybe the US will decide to remove the shot gun from its mouth, in which case the window will close.
And soldiers are expected to refuse orders that are manifestly illegal
Calley claimed he was following orders from Medina (his SO) but Medina denied giving them.
https://time.com/archive/6878225/the-military-galley-paroled...
All he needs is a single paper that says "All members of the military following the orders of President Trump are pardoned for all crimes past and future related to said orders" and - boom - accountability gone!
https://abcnews.go.com/US/19-year-former-doge-worker-assault...
Aside from street protests and rallies (which NG should scrupulously facilitate for 1A reasons; DC itself has been fairly bad about this in the past, too), I don't think most local policing is highly political. Yes, DC residents are losing some democratic control over their local policing, which is bad, but DC has also done a bad job with local policing for a long time.
(I'm broadly in favor of shrinking DC to the federal areas themselves; the parts where people live generally should be returned to the States.)
Maybe some people prefer that but I would rather have garden variety criminals and a trustworthy government fighting them than some kind of re-invention of the USSR, which didn't really bother with collecting crime statistics, and where crime was - so they claimed - very low (this really wasn't the case, especially not if you consider the behavior of lots of highly placed individuals, who could get away with just about anything, except of course stealing from their bosses).
The irony is you often get the best of both worlds. A government that is tough on crime is often so because they care about their people, and thus won’t let the country be looted by the larger criminals either.
That being said, these types don’t often win (because they’re at odds with the system that creates billionaires) and are painted in a terrible light by the media & history book writers.
I don't know how you could measure this, since DC saw a very significant reduction in crime last year without any interference from the National Guard. If there are further reductions this year, that would be a continuation of a trend, not a new phenomenon.
It’s nice to be data driven but that isn’t really possible in our low trust society.
If you don't trust the stats then the Guard is being sent in for no reason and there will be no way to determine what impact they have. That is a terrible situation for everyone.
> It’s nice to be data driven but that isn’t really possible in our low trust society.
I don't think these concepts (interpersonal trust vs. accuracy of government statistics) are very related. For example China has one of the highest levels of interpersonal trust in the world (https://ourworldindata.org/trust), but notoriously unreliable government statistics.
No comments yet
Trump says crime in D.C. is out of control. Here’s what the data shows. - https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/10/trump-cri... - August 10th, 2025
Violent Crime in D.C. Hits 30 Year Low - https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/violent-crime-dc-hits-30-... - January 3rd, 2025 (My note: Published by this admin's DoJ in January of this year)
DC Metro Police 2025 Year-to-Date Crime Comparison - https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance
It’s hard to imagine three summers from now being anything other than a hellscape. I hope to God I’m wrong.
It directs the executive agencies to seek to loosen any restrictions on non-consentual admission to psychiatric facilities and to force homeless (and people with mental illness) into them.
It also aims to end drug abuse recovery programs and says that not having physical space for patients shouldn't stop them, IIRC.
Let's hope it doesn't have the same effect (ie the eventual fall of the republic)
[1] No military weapons were allowed inside this boundary of ancient Rome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomerium
No comments yet