LA riots: 700 Marines arrive in Trump's test of federal power

About 700 Marines arrived in the Los Angeles area Tuesday in response to several days of protests over President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement actions, testing the boundaries of the president's power to use military forces on US soil.

The Marines joined about 4,000 National Guard troops that Trump had also deployed over the objections of Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, two Democrats who have said that local and state law enforcement were capable of handling the protests and that the use of federal troops would only inflame tensions.

State and city officials, legal experts and Democrats in Congress have called the deployment of active-duty Marines in Los Angeles deeply alarming. By tradition and law, US military troops are supposed to be used inside the United States only in the rarest and most extreme situations.

"The Trump administration is test-driving a novel legal theory that you can circumvent the restrictions on domestic law enforcement by the American military," said Kori Schake, an expert on defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a forthcoming history of civil-military relations.

She added that the administration appeared to be "blurring the line" between federalization of the National Guard under existing US law and the use of active-duty US military forces domestically, calling it "a dangerous undertaking."

The US Northern Command said the Marines, based in Twentynine Palms, California, had arrived in the "greater LA area," but did not offer any further information on where they had been sent or what they were doing. The command shared images that appeared to show the Marines before their deployment holding riot shields and standing near armored vehicles with rifles.

Trump administration officials have said that the Marines and the National Guard soldiers would protect federal property and federal agents who are arresting and detaining immigrants in the country without legal permission in Los Angeles. The Northern Command said the troops had been trained in crowd control and de-escalation.

At a House budget hearing Tuesday, the Pentagon's acting comptroller, Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, testified that the deployment, which was expected to last 60 days, would cost $134 million, mainly for food, travel and housing.

On Tuesday, California officials asked a federal court for an emergency order that would restrict the federal government's use of Marines and National Guard troops in Los Angeles, limiting them only to protecting federal property.

The request asks a federal judge to declare that the Marines and other troops cannot accompany federal immigration agents on raids or perform other law enforcement activities, such as operating checkpoints. Such activities, it says, would violate an 1878 law called the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally forbids the use of federal troops on domestic soil for policing purposes.

The motion is part of an earlier lawsuit filed by California officials asking the court to stop Trump's deployment of 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, which local officials have called unnecessary and provocative. The state argues that the president unconstitutionally bypassed Newsom in mobilizing the National Guard without the governor's consent.

In his order calling up the National Guard, Trump cited Title 10 of the United States Code, which allows the president to press National Guard members into federal service under certain circumstances, including during a rebellion against the authority of the federal government. His order also referred to "the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution."

Trump has described the protesters as "insurrectionists," but he has not invoked the 1807 Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy the military to quell civil unrest and put down rebellions.

"If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it," Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday. "We'll see."

Invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act would give Trump the kind of extraordinary powers he sought during the Black Lives Matter protests during his first term. At the time, he was restrained by the White House general counsel, Donald McGahn, and the defense secretary, Mark Esper. In his 2022 book A Sacred Oath, Esper wrote that Trump had asked why protesters could not just be shot.

The troop deployment has touched off a partisan fight over how violent and unruly the situation actually is. Trump administration officials have shared photos on social media of smoke billowing from burning cars and people kicking law enforcement vehicles to argue that the deployment is a necessary response to Newsom's failure to maintain law and order.

Democratic city and state officials have said that the destruction has been limited to a few areas and that it is well within the capacity of state and local law enforcement to control.

Trump, speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, also suggested that the unrest in Los Angeles was petering out because of the presence of federal troops. "By doing what I did, I stopped the violence in LA," he said. California officials have said the situation was already coming under control before the president sent in the National Guard.

The mixed messages -- Trump's flexing of military power in response to the protests, even while claiming early success -- come as the president and his allies have appeared to relish the immigration standoff with local and state officials.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said he called Newsom on Monday and told him that he has "got to do a better job. He's done a bad job, causing a lot of death, a lot of potential death."

California authorities have not reported any deaths during the protests, and Newsom said the president's claim that the two had spoken by phone Monday was false.

"Americans should be alarmed that a president deploying Marines onto our streets doesn't even know who he's talking to," Newsom wrote on social media. The last time Newsom spoke with Trump was Friday, the governor's spokesperson, Izzy Gardon, said.

The Los Angeles police said that 96 people had been arrested Monday evening for failing to disperse during a protest and that one person had been arrested on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. Two officers were injured, and several business were looted, with 14 arrests made for looting, the police said. National Guard troops have been stationed around government buildings during the protests, but have largely stayed in the background.

In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie said a protest Monday involving thousands of people was larger and "significantly calmer" than demonstrations a day earlier where violent clashes took place. In Santa Ana, California, officials said that federal agents had used tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets against protesters who threw bottles and rocks.