It’s barely an exaggeration to say that Trump plans to wage a civil war against much of the population of the United States. How else to characterize his announcement over the weekend that he would be deploying armed agents of the state to “the core of the Democrat Power Center” in blue cities across the country? He explicitly wants to do in New York and Chicago — and probably San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and Boston as well — what he did in Los Angeles. And while the the feds’ official mission in Los Angeles was ostensibly law enforcement, Trump and his apparatchiks like Kristi Noem could not have been clearer regarding their real intentions; at a press conference last week, Noem said outright that the feds were occupying Los Angeles to “liberate” it from its democratically chosen leadership.
Now Trump seemingly wants to “liberate” every major blue city in every major blue state. He won’t succeed, but the fact that he’s so much as making this an explicit goal of federal policy is bad enough. We’re in a profoundly dangerous moment, and probably closer to disunion than at any point since the 1860s.
Every patriotic American should be prepared to push back in their own ways, big and small. But the mayors and governors who hold jurisdiction over potential zones of occupation have a particularly important role to play. They need to have a plan for how they’re going to respond when Trump sends in the tanks to illegally occupy their downtowns.
Luckily, they have a few important things going for them. The first is that public sentiment is on their side; as Trump has become more openly fascist and dictatorial, he has also become more unpopular. The second is that they can learn from the occupation of Los Angeles; they know the invasion playbook and they can respond accordingly. And the third is that they’re all in the same boat.
If Trump can’t impose his will on Los Angeles, he’s going to have an even harder time pacifying several other large cities simultaneously. Big city mayors and Democratic governors can make it even harder for him by coordinating their response. What we need now is some sort of mutual defensive pact, almost a sort of NATO for large anti-MAGA cities.
The basic premise behind such a pact is this: All the signatories would agree to aid any city that faces military occupation or targeted, large-scale harassment by ICE agents. That aid could come in any number of forms. A few suggestions:
Legal support: At a minimum, state attorneys general should be prepared to file amicus briefs in support of lawsuits against unlawful deployments of federal troops.
Information warfare: Members of the defensive pact should do as much as they can to draw attention to Trump’s abuses of power in allied cities and stoke national sentiment against him.
Material support: Where necessary, members of the defensive pact should be prepared to ship supplies (for example, PPE to protect members of the public from tear gas) and even personnel where it is most urgently needed.
Intelligence sharing: Lastly, members of the defensive pact should keep each other apprised of whatever they know about the Trump administration’s plans and the plans of right-wing paramilitary groups.
In addition to all of this, blue state governors and legislators, and big city mayors and councilmembers should all take steps now to improve their personal security and ward off threats from their own local law enforcement. MAGA vigilantes are not going to stop at Melissa Hortman and her husband; they will try to assassinate other Democratic officials, particularly in cities that Trump himself declares to be targets. And where ICE agents and right-wing terrorists run amok, we should expect a significant chunk of local law enforcement to either tacitly or actively back them up.
That’s why it’s important for Democratic officials in targeted areas to start making plans immediately. They might not have the guns and tanks, but they’re far from helpless. Trump’s regime, though dangerous, is exceptionally brittle. If state and local Democrats move quickly, act smart, and work together, then he won’t stand a chance against them.