"Democracy is in the balance" as Trump sends the military to quell Los Angeles protests

Trump is setting a dictatorial precedent with his actions

President Donald Trump did not send the National Guard to Los Angeles to quell a riot, despite what he and his right-wing media pals are saying. He did it to make American democracy much, much closer to a dictatorship.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has it right. As he declared during a Sunday evening interview with MSNBC, the right to peaceful protest is foundational to American democracy.

“It’s what makes this country great,” Newsom explained. “And that needs to persist. And right now people need to come out.” At the same time, he warned against “these elements that are coming in that are intentionally trying to take advantage of this in a way that only aids and abets Donald Trump.”

In that context, Newsom argued that those who engage in violence or destroy property are “playing right into Donald Trump’s hand. And they need to be called out and they need to be arrested.” Of the bad actors, Newsom argued that “they’re doing more than damage to buildings and to property. They’re potentially damaging the very foundation of our republic. Democracy is in the balance.”

Newsom is correct that the acts of violence occurring in Los Angeles are not just morally wrong, but strategically stupid. One does not stop a dictator — and make no mistake about it, those Los Angeles protesters are absolutely right in accusing Trump of acting like a dictator through his immigration policies — by providing them with grist for their propaganda mills. One does so by making it practically impossible for them to carry out their policies.

Flash back to 1894. Unlike 2025, the president in that year was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat instead of a Republican — although, philosophically, Cleveland acted quite a bit like a modern Republican. He opposed social welfare spending, advocated for traditional gender roles and cozied up to the big business community. This is why, when the American Railway Union (led by future perennial Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs) declared a series of strikes involving 250,000 of their members to protest reduced wages, Cleveland seized upon a handful of acts of violence to justify sending in the Army. By the time the much more widespread violence provoked by Cleveland’s actions had abated, roughly 70 people were dead, 57 were injured and four had been arrested.

Cleveland and his conservative supporters defended his militant actions by stating that the president had a Constitutional right to protect the mails. Similarly, Trump and his conservative supporters claim they are merely doing their Constitutional job of protecting domestic tranquility.

Both sides ignore the obvious flaws in their logic. In Cleveland’s case, it is self-evidently improper for the government to rely so much on private business interests that those same interests can exploit people with impunity, lest they grind vital government activities to a halt. In Trump’s case, there is zero evidence that the protests against ICE contain anywhere near the type of widespread violence that would make it unfeasible for local law enforcement to handle the situation.

Fortunately for us, history offers us lessons as well as precedents. When Cleveland abused his power in 1894, Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld (whose state contains the city, Chicago, where the strike activity was centralized), Altgeld replied with a brilliant explanation of how Cleveland’s actions were dictatorial.

“Local self-government is a fundamental principle of our Constitution,” Altgeld wrote to Cleveland in a public letter. “Each community shall govern itself so long as it can and is ready and able to enforce the law, and it is in harmony with this fundamental principle that the statute authorizing the President to send troops into states must be construed; especially is this so in matters relating to the exercise of the police power and the preservation of law and order.”

He added, “To absolutely ignore a local government in matters of this kind, when the local government is ready to furnish assistance needed, and is amply able to enforce the law, not only insults the people of this State by imputing to them an inability to govern themselves, or an unwillingness to enforce the law, but is in violation of a basic principle of our institutions.”

Newsom could use every word of Altgeld’s 1894 passage in his 2025 circumstances and the whole thing would still apply today. The Californian lacks Altgeld’s moral prestige — Newsom has cozied up to Trump supporters and cracked down on immigration, while Altgeld tried to help the exploited railway workers — but he still has an opportunity to make the same essential point.

This is not a risk-free proposition. Debs, who led and was later radicalized by the railway strike, spent six months in prison as a result. When I discussed this sacrifice last year with climate activist Roger Hallam, who is spending five years in a British jail for shutting down a major highway to protest climate change, he observed that such prison sentences are handed out precisely because non-violent protest threatens oppressive leaders.

“For that reason, they started giving people three, four, five year sentences,” Hallam said. “It's really a matter of attrition, as you might say, over the next few years until we finally push these regimes into some sort of shape or replace them.”

Thanks to the actions of Altgeld and other supporters of the railway union, the foundations were laid for a stronger labor movement that succeeded in passing laws protecting their basic rights. If opponents of Trump’s policies wish to experience similar success, they must learn from their forebears.

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Back Seat Socialism

Column by Matthew Rozsa who is a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently he is writing a book for Beacon Press, "Neurosocialism," which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.