So, apparently the regime has found another use for a federalized California National Guard, other than jackbooting around Los Angeles with their rifles hanging out.
So, now they’re off to Coachella.
Valley, that is.
Working for the DEA.
Who, as you may be aware, only do police things.
And a federalized National Guard is, of course, explicitly forbidden from doing police things.
This is all wildly illegal.
The order taking federal control of California’s National Guard was illegal, being based on false claims of an emergency.
The deployment of federal troops to L.A. was illegal, as there was nothing for them to do there that would not violate the ban on military personnel being involved in domestic law enforcement.
Seconding the troops to the DEA is illegal, for the same reason and because their deployment parameters certainly did not include performing raids for the DEA.
And yet the state, the Congress and the courts have done nothing.
This has pretty effectively demonstrated that the Constitution’s much vaunted “checks and balances” are a paper tiger: there’s really nothing in the U.S. system that can constrain an out of control executive branch if it has collaborators among the other branches.
There is very little within the system that the citizens can do either.
A system with no channels for resolving this degree of conflict is pretty much guaranteed to break down.
It is frankly a testament to the good sense of past generations that the system has only been strained this far once before.
But I’m seeing no signs that the current folks in power have the sense that it will take to navigate this situation.
So I guess the best we can do now is to keep watching, note where the system fails and try to come up with ways that whatever system we build next can prevent it happening again.
A stronger role for the minority party in federal oversight would be a good start.
