When President Donald Trump addressed a gathering of over 800 military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico on October 1, 2025, his words sent shockwaves through the nation’s political and military establishment. Declaring U.S. cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles as “very unsafe places,” Trump told the assembled admirals and generals, “We’re going to straighten them out one by one. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.” He went further, suggesting that these cities could become “training grounds” for the military—a statement that immediately drew fierce criticism from lawmakers, legal experts, historians, and local officials.
The backlash was swift and bipartisan in its concern, if not in its party lines. According to The Hill, a group of 25 House Democratic veterans, led by Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, sent a letter to the president the very next day, condemning his remarks as “un-American.” The letter warned that Trump’s suggestion threatened “the bedrock principles of an apolitical military that this country was founded on” and could “break the fabric of our democracy.” The veterans, all of whom served in uniform, insisted, “Men and women who have sacrificed everything to serve in uniform should not and cannot be used as political pawns to wage war against your political foes.” Ryan, who completed two tours in Iraq, told CNN, “I did not risk my life, 27 months in combat, to come and see U.S. troops in my own city or my own state.”
Trump’s remarks did not come out of nowhere. Over the past several months, the administration has steadily increased the deployment of National Guard troops and even active-duty Marines to several American cities. In June, thousands of federalized National Guard members and hundreds of Marines were sent to Los Angeles in response to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. In August, National Guard troops were dispatched to Washington, D.C., and on September 28, 2025, 200 Oregon National Guard troops arrived in Portland, despite objections from the state’s Democratic governor, attorney general, and mayor. In early October, Trump established a federal law enforcement task force for Memphis, with agents arriving in the city shortly thereafter. During his Quantico speech, he hinted that Chicago could be next on the list for a military surge.
Legal challenges have followed these deployments. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, Oregon’s attorney general filed a lawsuit on October 1, 2025, alleging that Trump’s justification for sending troops to Portland was a “baseless, wildly hyperbolic pretext.” The legal battle echoes an earlier case in California, where a federal judge ruled in June that the deployment of soldiers for law enforcement duties was illegal. Despite this, troops remained on the streets of Los Angeles while the case moved through the courts, and the administration pressed ahead with additional deployments elsewhere.
The legal debate hinges on the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which generally prohibits the use of the Army and Air Force for domestic law enforcement. While the National Guard can be federalized in certain circumstances, the law’s vagueness and loopholes have alarmed legal scholars. Daniel C. Schwartz, former general counsel at the National Security Agency, told the Los Angeles Times, “He is suggesting that they learn how to become warriors in American cities. That should scare everybody. It’s also boldly illegal.” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, added, “Using the military for domestic law enforcement is something that’s characteristic of authoritarian regimes.”
The courts have so far been deferential to the president’s interpretation of the facts on the ground, but as deployments multiply, experts predict the issue will soon reach the Supreme Court. “It will be a test for the Supreme Court,” Schwartz said. “Whether they are willing to continue to allow this president to do whatever he wants to do in clear violation of constitutional principles, or whether they will restrain him.”
The policy has also drawn criticism from state and local officials. In New Jersey, State Senator Benjie Wimberly, a longtime football coach and community leader, called the president’s plan “insulting to Americans” and “a show of force on your own people not where it’s needed,” according to InsiderNJ. Wimberly advocated for increased funding for policing and community initiatives instead of militarization, arguing that community policing would be a more effective and appropriate response to crime.
Historians and former military leaders see Trump’s approach as a dramatic break from American tradition. According to The New York Times, the notion of an apolitical military, serving the nation as a whole rather than any single leader or party, is deeply rooted in the country’s founding principles. The Posse Comitatus Act itself was born out of post-Civil War tensions and fears that the government might use a standing army to suppress dissent and establish tyranny. Over the centuries, the American military has prided itself on remaining nonpartisan, with active-duty personnel discouraged from engaging in political activity and military leaders usually avoiding partisan missions.
There are historical precedents for the use of troops in domestic situations—but always in response to acute crises and with the explicit aim of enforcing the law. President Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to enforce school desegregation in the face of state resistance. President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the National Guard in Alabama in 1965 to protect civil rights marchers. In both cases, the military was deployed to uphold constitutional rights and enforce Supreme Court rulings, not to further a political agenda or address generalized crime.
By contrast, Trump’s deployments have come amid no such national crisis, but rather as part of a broader strategy to address crime and immigration enforcement in cities that he has repeatedly criticized. Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University, told The New York Times, “Since there is not the generalized breakdown in civil order, or a global crisis, that makes a nonpartisan case harder to make, and we’re left with the partisan interpretation. And that is toxic for military professionalism because they do not want to be deployed in narrow partisan missions.”
The shift in civil-military relations is compounded by changes in Pentagon leadership and congressional oversight. During Trump’s first term, Defense Secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper and chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff resisted efforts to use the military for domestic political purposes, sometimes at the cost of their jobs. Now, with Republicans controlling both the House and Senate, and with Trump loyalists in key defense positions, there is little institutional opposition to his directives. The result has been the deployment of National Guard troops to cities over the objections of local leaders, the banning of books by writers of color at the U.S. Naval Academy, and plans to use military lawyers as immigration judges.
As the legal and political battles continue, the country finds itself at a crossroads. Kori Schake, a former defense official and director at the American Enterprise Institute, warned, “We genuinely are at a fraught moment.” The decisions made in the coming months—by courts, Congress, and voters—may well redefine the relationship between America’s military, its cities, and its democracy.
