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At the National Guard’s request, the Trump administration is reassigning some of the troops deployed to Los Angeles as part of Donald Trump’s authoritarian publicity stunt so they can instead address a real crisis — rather than the fake crisis of unrest that Trump has tried to fabricate.
The president deployed thousands of guard members to California last month in an illiberal show of force against demonstrators opposed to his administration’s disturbing immigration raids. In dictatorial fashion, Trump said the deployment was intended to “liberate” Los Angeles.
The deployment was against the wishes of California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department framed it as unnecessary, saying his officers were fully equipped to handle any issues.
In other words, top officials in California correctly portrayed this deployment as a waste of resources.
In other words, top officials in California correctly portrayed this deployment as a waste of resources. And there’s been mounting criticism of the troops being pulled from other duties, such as firefighting and drug enforcement work, as well as the expensive deployment of thousands of guard members — when only a fraction of them have actually been on the ground in L.A.
With wildfire season in full swing, The Associated Press reported Monday that the Guard had requested that 200 of the troops be allowed to return to their firefighting work — essentially, that some of the troops be relieved from acting as Trump’s toy soldiers. And it appears the administration is partially fulfilling that request.
According to a news release sent out Tuesday:
At the recommendation of Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, Commander, U.S. Northern Command, and approved by the Secretary of Defense, Task Force 51 will release approximately 150 members of the California National Guard from the Federal Protection mission today.
The press release added that there will still be enough troops to “conduct our Federal Protection Mission” in California, meaning there will still be a large contingency of National Guard troops and Marines basically occupying Los Angeles at the Trump administration’s direction.
But the fact that this request was made at all, and that the administration acknowledged these troops aren’t essential to their so-called mission, adds to the heap of evidence that this entire undertaking has been a massive waste of resources.