President Donald Trump’s deployment of the California National Guard (and now the Marines) to help quell the violence in Los Angeles and protect federal law enforcement officers and property has the nation’s liberals so horrified some may never fully recover. This is a rather hyperbolic reaction, of course, but there are a few things to consider surrounding the convulsions in LA, which are now erupting elsewhere, including Denver.

Responding to civil disorder is generally, or at least ought to be, a local function. Federal — or even state — assistance should only be provided if local authorities determine they can no longer handle the situation and need help. Indeed, the provenance of a lot of our national problems is the federal government injecting itself into areas that really are local concerns or within the purview of the state. There are, of course, extenuating circumstances where it is justified for the feds to intervene.

The president can, for instance, deploy resources to protect federal personnel and property, as, by definition, federal entities are under the jurisdiction of the federal government, of which the president is the chief executive.

And that is in fact what President Trump did in LA. Whatever other justifications, or conversely whatever philosophical issues one may have with the underlying policy used as an excuse for the rioting, the president has legal authority to what he feels is necessary for the protection of those things within his jurisdiction. The violence in LA was predominantly directed at ICE officials and buildings. The president has a legal right and duty, as provided for in 10 U.S.C. 12406, and a 1971 Office of Legal Counsel memo, to protect federal property and the agents legally enforcing duly made federal laws.

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But let’s look a little broader as well. Conceding that, yes, civil disorder is a local issue until such time as local officials can no longer handle the problem and need to call for assistance… what happens if they fail to do so? The government has as its first priority the protection and safety of its citizens and their property. If for whatever reason the local authorities fail to do that, at what point ought a higher governing authority step in? That gets a little trickier legally, and for good reason. There is a school of thought that suggests if a local government wants to let their city burn, let them do that and face the political wrath to follow. But that does little to help the people who are injured, or who have their property destroyed, or have to stay holed up in their homes while the protestors go on with exercising their anarchic passion to destroy (to use Herbert Agar’s turn of phrase).

There is ever the question, raised vigorously by folks like California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass, of whether the deployment of the National Guard and other federal assets exacerbates the situation rather than pacifying it. It’s a fair question to ask, but in this situation experience and evidence quite clearly demonstrate the situation was out of hand well before the Guard showed up. Anyone who truly believes the assembled protestors were going to be mollified by local exhortations to disperse has either not been paying attention or is living in fantasyland. They were there to smash things, stop traffic and attack law enforcement officers of whatever kind.    

Which leads us to the third extenuation: what if the local government itself is breaking the law? This happened in 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower, frustrated at the meager efforts of Little Rock police to enforce desegregation in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, sent the 101st Airborne to do the job. President John F. Kennedy did something similar for the same reason, activating the Mississippi National Guard in 1962 to do what Mississippi refused to, and again a year later in Alabama, over the objections of Gov. George Wallace.

The legal and precedential elements are thus met. Trump federalized the troops in response to attacks on federal property and on agents enforcing duly enacted federal law — laws the enforcement of which California and LA officials have been intent on hindering.

The administration risks a general failure of its immigration enforcement efforts if it allows excess to overcome prudence, as it did with the Elon Musk-led DOGE experiment. The stories of mistaken arrests and deportations, if they continue to pile up, will erode public support for enforcement. On the other hand, continued liberal tolerance and equivocation about the violence in the streets — every bit as disgraceful as Republican tolerance and equivocation about the violence on Jan. 6, 2021 — will erase whatever doubt or pause people may have had about the deportation program.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.