The fascist turn of the Trump administration continues to harden into routine. Pete Hegseth, now functioning less as defence secretary than as Praetorian tribune, has told the House committee that the military will remain in Los Angeles for at least sixty days. The stated purpose? To make sure that the “rioters, looters and thugs… know we’re not going anywhere.” The language is indistinguishable from occupation—and that’s exactly what it is. A domestic city has been placed under effective martial law not by virtue of congressional declaration or judicial process, but by fiat.
The Marines, all 700 of them, have arrived. Over 4,000 National Guard troops are on the streets. The estimated cost so far is $134 million, with no end date in sight. Trump has claimed the authority to invoke the Insurrection Act, and while he stops short of formally doing so, the deployment itself is the fact on the ground. “If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it,” he told reporters, before adding vaguely that parts of LA could already be “called an insurrection”. When asked to justify the legal grounds, Hegseth responded, “you just read it yourself… it sounds like all three to me”—a casual invocation of invasion, rebellion, and the president’s inability to execute laws through civilian means. In other words, the entire constitutional framework has been supplanted by vibes.
Behind the spectacle lies the brutal logic of militarised racial capitalism. The protests that sparked this latest escalation were against ICE raids. Mass arrests and deportations by federal agents that have grown increasingly aggressive under Trump’s second term. Kristi Noem, Trump’s homeland security secretary, even requested that the Marines be granted authority to detain or arrest civilians directly—a clear violation of posse comitatus and a demand that federal troops act as paramilitary enforcers. While that request was (for now) denied, it speaks volumes about the endgame.
Trump’s public language drips with fascist tropes. The demonstrators are “paid insurrectionists”, “agitators”, “troublemakers”—labels that render them outside the bounds of civil society and place them in the rhetorical domain of enemy combatants. In his view, California governor Gavin Newsom is not merely incompetent but criminal. “I called him up to tell him he’s gotta do a better job,” Trump said, blaming him for “a lot of potential death.” House Speaker Mike Johnson, when pressed on this, replied: “He ought to be tarred and feathered.”
This is not hyperbole. It is governance by spectacle, repression, and scapegoat. The fascist turn is not some hypothetical future but an unfolding present. The suppression of protest, the erasure of USAID (another restructuring quietly buried in yesterday’s news), and the full-spectrum consolidation of executive power through militarised force are not isolated acts but part of a coherent fascist programme. The LA deployment is not a policing measure. It is a political theatre of domination designed to send a message: the state belongs to Trump, the military answers to Trump, and those who oppose him—activists, migrants, dissenters—will be met with force.
When Trump says “until there’s no danger, they’ll leave”, the danger he means is political dissent. And that, in fascist logic, never ends.
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