Transcript

Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force | The Ezra Klein Show

From The Ezra Klein Show · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 13 min · 12,854 words · 120 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force | The Ezra Klein Show", an episode of The Ezra Klein Show published August 27, 2025 (1 h 13 min, about 12,854 words). It mentions 59 people, works and ideas, including National Guard, Los Angeles, Insurrection, Washington, D.C., Due process.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Los Angeles, Bradley Balco, Caitlyn Dickerson, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
  2. – 20:00: Home Depot, Due process, Insurrection, Insurrection Act
  3. – 30:00: National Guard, Public defender, T Priority from T-Mobile
  4. – 40:00: Los Angeles, National Guard, Due process, Nebraska
  5. – 50:00: Los Angeles, National Guard, Laura Loomer, MacArthur Park
  6. – 1:00:00: Chicago, National Guard, New York City, New York, Washington, D.C.
  7. – 1:10:00: Insurrection, Civil society, Insurrection Act, Los Angeles
  8. – 1:12:48: Carrie Alli, David Mitchell, Highest Law in the Land, Jessica Pishko

Notable quotes from "Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force | The Ezra Klein Show"

  • Centers. In LA, protesters tried to obstruct him. So Trump called up the National Guard. And after years of railing about crime levels in our major cities, Trump is using the…
    about National Guard · at
  • I see armed US troops in camo, some on horseback riding through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles like they're an occupying army. I see Trump sending in armed forces to take over the American capital.
    about Los Angeles · at
  • Disorder so he can build what he has wanted to build, an authoritarian state, a military or a paramilitary that answers only to him, that puts him in total control. And I…
    about Paramilitary · at
  • Hearings. and so that's what we're seeing. it's a lot easier to go to Home Depot and just massively racially profile and arrest anybody you see, and then sort through the…
    about Home Depot · at
  • Administration, we know that he wanted to invoke the insurrection act. He wanted to send active duty military and to put down the George Floyd protest and he, openly floated the idea of just shooting them, just shooting the protesters. To.
    about Insurrection · at
  • This podcast is supported by T Priority from T-Mobile. At T-Mobile, our critical mission is providing unparalleled 5G coverage for when connectivity is mission critical. Introducing T.
    about T Priority from T-Mobile · at
  • These are exceptions. But Trump is openly promising to send troops into Chicago, into Oakland, into Baltimore.
    about Chicago · at
  • So, I'm in I'm sitting here in New York City, so let me spin out a scenario that's been on my mind.
    about New York City, New York · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Bradley Balco — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Pictures even different? Trump promised all of this. You can destroy democracy somewhat democratically. Bradley Balco is a journalist who has written about policing and…
  • Caitlyn Dickerson — Person · 1 mention · first at
    It's really big. one quote that I came across while I was preparing for this episode from the journalist Caitlyn Dickerson, just I don't know, you know these things and then you don't you realize you don't really know them.
  • Laura Loomer — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Brad Lander — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Into office, the administration stepping up ICE rates even above where they are now. Brad Lander during the campaign, the comproller of New York City, ended up arrested as he…
  • Jessica Pishko — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Sort of interesting maybe a little off topic books. So first I'll be on topic but Jessica Pishko's book highest law in the land which is a narration of sort of how the sheriff…
  • David Mitchell — Person · 1 mention · first at
    That's that's one that's kind of on topic. I'm going to recommend for a kind of a fun history. David Mitchell, the British comedian, has a book came out, I think maybe a year…
  • Carrie Alli — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Fun to listen to. and I guess the last one would be my friend and former colleague Carrie Alli's book Bottoms Up and the Devil Lasts which is a book on the surveillance state…
  • Reality Winner — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Bottoms Up and the Devil Lasts which is a book on the surveillance state and reality winner and kind of how the national intelligence community has kind of evolved into what it is now.
  • Christie Noem — Person · 1 mention
  • General Mark Milley — Person · 1 mention
  • Mark Esper — Person · 1 mention
  • Vladimir Putin — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • National Guard — Company · 11 mentions · first at
  • Home Depot — Company · 3 mentions · first at
  • Ninth Circuit — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    The Ninth Circuit bought that argument, right? Well, the Trump administration argument went even farther, which was that as long as the president says that there's a need to send in the National.
  • The Watch — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Warrior Cop, the militarization of America's police forces, and he writes the terrific Substack, The Watch, where he's been tracking the militarization and the escalation of…
  • The Atlantic — Company · 1 mention · first at
    The Atlantic reported that in Donald Trump's 2026 budget, you had the FBI seeing a big budget cut. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Farms, and Explosives, a big cut. The Drug Enforcement.
  • Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Seeing a big budget cut. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Farms, and Explosives, a big cut. The Drug Enforcement Administration, again, big cut. At the same time, they're…
  • Immigration and Customs Enforcement — Company · 1 mention · first at
    The annual military budget of every country in the world except the United States and China. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, just one component of the Department of…
  • Paul Weiss — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Don't do and shifting that. And I think it was in a piece from you or someone else, Paul Weiss, which was a very, very big white shoe law firms that did a lot of proono work.…
  • Republican National Convention — Company · 1 mention · first at
    No prior criminal record of any kind in any country. you saw during the Republican National Convention with those mass deportation signs and you saw the kind of like sneering joy, that people got at the.
  • Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) — Company · 1 mention
  • Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — Company · 1 mention
  • FBI — Company · 1 mention
  • IRS (Internal Revenue Service) — Company · 1 mention
  • JAG Corps — Company · 1 mention
  • Liberalism and Democracy Conference — Company · 1 mention
  • Marine Corps — Company · 1 mention
  • Supreme Court of the United States — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

Concepts & topics

  • Insurrection — Concept · 5 mentions · first at
  • Due process — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    I see the evisceration of due process.
  • Insurrection Act — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    Administration, we know that he wanted to invoke the insurrection act. He wanted to send active duty military and to put down the George Floyd protest and he, openly floated the idea of just shooting them, just shooting the protesters. To.
  • Paramilitary — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
  • Project 2025 — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Well, he has part of project 2025 was to purge federal agencies of institutionalists of people who had these silly, allegiances to the rule of law and the constitution and replacing them with.
  • Civil society — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    What you would be doing differently than what Trump is doing now. What then is the role of civil society, of political opposition here? You talked earlier about the no- win position these cities and people in them are being put into.
  • White Supremacy — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    A living, right? but then we're also seeing these pretty explicit appeals to white supremacy and white culture. there's there's I think one of the social media posts they had said something about, defend your culture, join ICE.
  • Western expansionism — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Actually teach as sort of an embodiment of like the worst e excesses of western expansionism. so it's, they're embracing these ideas that, we've always looked at as kind of a regrettable part of our history. and then there was.
  • Public defender — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    It's a topic anyone's going to want to read about. But part of that was I embedded myself in a lot of public defender offices over the country. And so some of the better sort…
  • Student loan forgiveness for public service — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Groups. So that's that's done. but they're also, Trump is targeting student loan forgiveness for public service. and judging by the like a lot of his executive orders, it's pretty vague. but what it seems to be doing is saying that if you.
  • Sanctuary city — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Understand the Trump administration is bringing this path across this country to make sure every sanctuary city understands that we can touch people at any place, any time.…
  • No Kings Protest — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    And disorienting. I think sources of optimism I think the no king no kings protest you had literally I think the count estimate was around 5 million people around the country had come out. my wife and I were in at my parents place in.
  • Militarization of police — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

  • Los Angeles — Place · 9 mentions · first at
  • Washington, D.C. — Place · 4 mentions · first at
    Railing about crime levels in our major cities, Trump is using the power he has over Washington DC to do something about it, to show Americans that he's doing something about it. I don't like any of this. I certainly didn't vote for it.
  • Chicago — Place · 3 mentions · first at
  • New York City, New York — Place · 3 mentions · first at
  • MacArthur Park — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    I see armed US troops in camo, some on horseback riding through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles like they're an occupying army. I see Trump sending in armed forces to take over the American capital.
  • Nashville — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    Know, and then sort through the paperwork later. It's a lot easier, as we saw here in Nashville, to just pull over every driver who looks Latino. and if they can prove their…
  • Nebraska — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Because where the Indy500 was going to be in Speedway near the Indy500. the governor of I believe it was Nebraska just announced the corn husker clink.
  • Baltimore — Place · 1 mention · first at
    These are exceptions. But Trump is openly promising to send troops into Chicago, into Oakland, into Baltimore.
  • Oakland — Place · 1 mention · first at
    These are exceptions. But Trump is openly promising to send troops into Chicago, into Oakland, into Baltimore.
  • Speedway, Indiana — Place · 1 mention

Sponsors

Full transcript with timestamps

You know those optical illusions where you look at a picture and depending on where your eyes focus, maybe you're looking at a vase, maybe you're looking at two faces, it kind of keeps flickering back and forth. Looking at the Trump administration is like that for me. Though the flickering is between this is democracy, the American people are getting what they voted for good and hard or this is authoritarianism, at least the road to authoritarianism. I can see the picture of a president doing what he was elected to do.

Donald Trump ran unquestionably on mass deportations. We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States. He ran on reversing a historic surge of migration into this country.

They're coming from everywhere. They're coming at levels that we've never seen before. It is an invasion indeed.

He won on that platform. He is just doing what he promised. He's tripling ISIS budget. He's funneling tens of billions of dollars to build detention centers. In LA, protesters tried to obstruct him. So Trump called up the National Guard. And after years of railing about crime levels in our major cities, Trump is using the power he has over Washington DC to do something about it, to show Americans that he's doing something about it. I don't like any of this. I certainly didn't vote for it. But Trump promised and Americans did vote for the biggest deportation operation in US history. It was always going to be ugly and cruel. So I can see that picture.

And then it flickers. My eyes refocus. I see the evisceration of due process. Show me right now.

This is illegal. Watch out. Watch out. I see them building detention centers where it is extraordinarily hard for lawyers and families to reach the people in them. I see men in masks refusing to ID themselves. We don't need to give you IDs.

And pulling people into vans. I see armed US troops in camo, some on horseback riding through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles like they're an occupying army. I see Trump sending in armed forces to take over the American capital. DC. What is going to happen when predictably a protester throws a rock at an agent or Marine hears a car backfiring and thinks they heard a gunshot? In an instant, this could all explode. You could have American troops firing on American civilians in an American city and a country defining crisis. And then what?

What happens then? Because that's the other picture I see, the one that keeps coming into clear focus. Not Trump cleaning up crisis or disorder, but Trump creating crisis and disorder so he can build what he has wanted to build, an authoritarian state, a military or a paramilitary that answers only to him, that puts him in total control. And I wonder, are these pictures even different? Trump promised all of this. You can destroy democracy somewhat democratically. Bradley Balco is a journalist who has written about policing and criminal justice for decades. He's the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop, the militarization of America's police forces, and he writes the terrific Substack, The Watch, where he's been tracking the militarization and the escalation of all this under Donald Trump. As always, my email Ezra Kleinowy Times.com.

Bradley Balov, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on. So, I want to start here by following the money a bit. The Atlantic reported that in Donald Trump's 2026 budget, you had the FBI seeing a big budget cut. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Farms, and Explosives, a big cut. The Drug Enforcement Administration, again, big cut. At the same time, they're passing bills to triple the budget of ICE to allin add $170 billion to immigration enforcement. What's behind this pattern of the big crime agencies seeing their budgets cut and immigration enforcement entering a kind of budgetary expansion we have never seen before.

Uh I think it's just a continuation of the the hollowing out of institutions that we've seen over the last 6 months. um ICE and and Customs and Border Protection have long been kind of the most rogue um kind of renegade and certainly proTrump uh police agencies in the federal government. Uh so I think Trump sees those two as the most loyal to him. Um also, you know, obviously the mass deportations are going to ensure that those two agencies become remain relevant throughout his administration. You know, the FBI has a a long and and proud uh history and culture. Um there are a lot of stains on that history and culture, but it is an institution that uh has prided itself on its independence. Um same with the the ATF, which has often bucked, you know, Republican administrations. Um, and uh, you know, I've had certainly had my problems with the with the DEA over the years, but they also, you know, they

there is a a separate uh, sort of culture and sense of independence there. Uh, so I think this is this is an effort to build up uh, the two uh, federal police agencies that Trump sees as most loyal and and differential to him.

It's really big. I mean, one quote that I came across while I was preparing for this episode from the journalist Caitlyn Dickerson, just I don't know, you know these things and then you don't you realize you don't really know them. You're not tracking their scale. She writes, "It makes Immigration Enforcements budget quote larger than the annual military budget of every country in the world except the United States and China. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, just one component of the Department of Homeland Security, is getting more money than any other law enforcement agency in America. We've already seen pretty big changes in how ICE is acting. We've seen pretty big changes uh around how border police are acting. You've tracked internal policing for a long time. What is different about what we've seen over the past, you know, months of the Trump administration versus what we were seeing from them,

say, 5 years ago? what we're seeing now um are the are the tactics and operations and policies that that over the last 20 years I I I refrained or tried to restrain myself from warning about because it would sound too unhinged. Um you know I' I've warned for a long time about police agencies becoming too militarized, you know, too too aggressive, too sort of us versus them. um you know militarized both in the sense of the equipment that they use but also in the mentality that they bring to the job but it was always in response to a real threat right so it happened during the crack epidemic right which killed a lot of people which actually existed uh it happened again after September 11th where you had you know these attacks on American soil and so homeland security started um equipping police departments across the country with this you know military style police gear Um what we're seeing

right now is is not it's in response to a manufactured crisis, right? I mean, yes, crime is real. Yes, crime is higher in DC than in other cities, but um there is no crisis in DC, right? As we've all documented, crime is down uh pretty significantly there. Los Angeles, you know, there were a few incidents uh of of violence or more like property destruction during the original um protest against immigration enforcement, but it was not, you know, it wasn't anything different than you see in, you know, a big city at any given time, particularly during the summer. Uh so what we're seeing is this massive sort of increase in um aggressiveness and brutality uh in response to a crisis that is completely of Trump's own making. not a good faith effort to, you know, go after the worst of the worst, which if you look at polling overwhelmingly, that's what people wanted. They wanted them to go after people who had violent criminal

histories and criminal records. You can't you can't hit the figures that they wanted by just targeting the dangerous people because targeting dangerous dangerous people don't make themselves available to ICE. They hide. It's a hell of a lot easier just to send a couple of ICE agents to a courthouse and arrest people as they show up as they're supposed to be doing for their hearings. Um, and so that's what we're seeing. Um, it's a lot easier to go to Home Depot and just massively racially profile and arrest anybody you see, you know, and then sort through the paperwork later. It's a lot easier, as we saw here in Nashville, to just pull over every driver who looks Latino. Uh, and if they can prove their their citizenship, you let them go. Or if they're white, you let them go. uh and if they can't you you detain and arrest them and and you know send them through the process.

There's been a lot of reporting on the way Steven Miller has gone into meetings with the head of ICE and and other agencies and just lashed into them for not deporting enough people. They want to get um deportation numbers up around a million, which the expectation is that's very very difficult to do without creating a lot of tearing into the social fabric. But but there has been a sense and a and a fair amount of internal reporting that one of the things happening here is the heads of these operations are just getting hammered by top officials in the Trump administration for not having their numbers up. And it's like you figure out how to have your numbers up. You know, go swoop everybody up at the Home Depot, whatever it might be. But that the the way this is being done um at the top level is just demanding they hit a quota and that is then flowing down in you know these very destructive and cruel

ways. Yeah, that's my understanding of what's happening. Also, in fact, in LA, the raids on Home Depot parking lots came after, you know, a rant by by Steven Miller. Um that's kind of how they interpreted what he wanted done. Um, you know, Steven Miller is a menace. Um, he's been very clear about what his intentions are. He's been very clear that he does not believe the United States should be a place that takes in refugees from other countries. Uh, he's been very clear that he thinks the United States uh should be a prim primarily uh uh western culture country. uh he we've read, you know, uh investigative journalism about his influence uh by white supremacists. Um he is, you know, he's made no uh he has not pretended to hide who he is. Uh and the fact that, you know, the personnel numbers that they've set out for ICE in order to meet the uh mass deportation figures, the goals that they've set, uh they're going

to have to hire a lot of people and they're going to have to hire so they're going to have to lower standards, which they're already doing. Um, but also they're going to have to hire the kind of people who are going to be looking at these videos that are coming out of ICE, uh, you know, terrorizing families, arresting children, pulling grandmothers out of their homes. They're going to be hiring people who look at those videos and say, you know what, that's what I want to do. That's what I want to do for a living, right? Um, but then we're also seeing these pretty explicit appeals to white supremacy and white culture. I mean, there's there's I think one of the social media posts they had said something about, you know, defend your culture, join ICE. Um,

is that the one with like the painting of like a very western cowboy family like cradling this extremely white baby,

right? The two the the caption and the photo really or or illustration really told a tale. I think they're looking for dog whistles,

right? And there's another one of like um of of sort of white settlers chasing Native Americans off the land and a kind of a white angel sort of hovering over the landscape, which um history books actually teach as sort of an embodiment of like the worst e uh excesses of western expansionism. Um, so it's, you know, they're embracing these these ideas that, you know, we've always looked at as kind of a regrettable part of our history. Uh, and then there was another one where they explicitly refer explicitly referred to a a text, a book that was written by, you know, an unapologetic white supremacist. Uh, and you know, you you kind of have to know that that name and and that book to to get that, but that's the people they're appealing to, right? Why do you make that reference uh if it's going to be, you know, opaque to most people? You're you're you're appealing to people who know what the reference is. So, you

know, anybody who's left in these agencies who still takes a um you know, institutional view of policing, the idea that police should be accountable, that they should, you know, serve these communities and not occupy them, they're going to be overwhelmed by these new people. Um, so I think whatever, you know, culture of of um community service was left in either these agencies is pretty quickly going to be overwhelmed as these new hires start to take effect. Uh the other thing you know we're seeing is obviously the masks and um there's an anecdote I've uh told a lot over the years of the um the neoconservative writer uh Michael Leiddine uh who I think it was in 2007208 um was one of the kind of neoonservatives who were agitating for war with Iran and there were a series of photos that came out of Tran of a drug raid in Tran cocaine raid and all the officers in the in the raid were wearing

masks Uh and Leidden wrote it at Leedin wrote at the time that you know this you know when when the agents of the government hide their faces it speaks volumes about the relationship between the government and the people right and he was saying this that this is a sign of a totalitarian state um and now it's just routine I mean we're seeing this all over the country so you know I think we're in a um a pretty terrifying spiral right now um and uh I I've tried to over the course of my career be sort levelheaded and refrain from from expressing things in too dire of terms.

But um I I think we are we're we're vastly we have entered kind of the worst case scenario and and it's hard to see how we get out of it.

What is the worst case scenario? I think the worst case scenario is that Trump sends active duty military troops into any city that u displeases him. You know, any city where there's protests. I mean, you know, during his first administration, we know that he wanted he wanted to uh uh invoke the insurrection act. He wanted to send active duty military and to put down the George Floyd protest and he, you know, openly floated the idea of just shooting them, just shooting the protesters. To be fair, he said shooting them in the knee. So, um, you know, I guess it's not as bad as it could be. Uh, but, you know, it it it what I think we're seeing right now is Trump is attempting to build his own paramilitary force, right? the one people whose, you know, first uh and ultimate sort of loyalty in this job is going to be to the president. And you know, I'm I'm a journalist, not a historian, but I'm a student of history.

Uh and there aren't very many countries in which the you know, the figurative the political head of the country uh assembled his own personal paramilitary force that was loyal only to him where things turned out well. Um so that's that's I think where we are right now. Let me try to take their perspective on this for a moment, at least a stranded perspective. You talked about this as a manufactured crisis. Um DC's crime rates, we can talk about those in a minute. Uh I agree that's manufactured at least for the purposes of their takeover of DC.

But Donald Trump ran for president in 2024 saying to the country that we have seen record illegal immigration into this country. That was true actually. that America is buckling under the weight of all these illegal immigrants. That's arguable, not my view, but it's their view. And he promised the country mass deportations. And he said it aloud and he said it clearly and he said it repeatedly and he won the election. And we're here talking about paramilitaries, but what they're doing is simply following through in their view on what the country voted for. Mass deportation is going to be ugly. They're difficult.

They're violent. They require not just shutting down the border, but ejecting the people already here. That's going to require more ICE agents. It's going to require confrontations, but that this is not something outside the boundaries of what should happen after an election. This is exactly what they ran on. It is and now they're just following through as they told us they would.

Yeah. I think my response to that would be that we don't, you know, we we have the Bill of Rights for a reason. You can't vote away basic constitutional rights. They aren't subject to, you know, uh the whims of a of a majority. Um and what we're seeing is, you know, we are seeing suspensions of due process for people who are here and undocumented. Uh we're seeing people being arrested when they show up for their hearings, when they're abiding by the law, doing what they're supposed to be doing. Um we've seen uh the Trump administration revoke um protected status for refugees from, you know, countries who are fleeing, you know, violence, political persecution, famine, uh natural disasters all over the world.

Uh we're seeing the administration has has revoked that protected status for them and is now uh detaining and and moving to deport them. Uh these are people who came here legally who were invited here. In fact, um they're firing immigration judges who aren't ruling the way they want them to rule. Um they are freely admitting that they're racially profiling. So I I guess my bottom line is that we don't the government is not allowed to start violating our basic constitutional rights just because people voted for that in an election or or thought they were voting for that. I I found it a little shocking to watch them sending masked agents to courous where immigrants are showing up and participating in the system exactly as the system has asked them to participate. Right? These are clearly not people hiding. They are walking into the courthouse even knowing uh that in recent weeks, in recent months, people

have been yanked out of courouses and they're being arrested before they talk to a judge. They're being arrested during their process. So, what exactly is the policy here? I mean, you are allowed to go to a hearing and and claim asylum. That's the legal pathway. Have they decided they don't qualify for asylum or they no longer get hearings? I mean, beneath what they're doing, what is the process they are asserting should exist?

Yeah. So, this gets kind of into the weeds of immigration law. And I'm going to tell you my understanding of it with with the caveat that I'm not a lawyer. Um, but as I understand it, these are people who during the Biden administration went through the proper channels to request asylum, whether it was through the the app that you could use or in some cases people who just crossed the border and immediately turned themselves in and said, "I'm requesting asylum." And so they were um sort of entered into the asylum process. And so part of that means, you know, you get released because we can't hold everyone who's requesting asylum. We can't detain all of them. um but they're released on the condition that they show up for these hearings as their case progresses. So what's happening is that these people are showing up for their asylum hearings. The government is saying at these asylum hearings, we're going to

release all of our sort of dismiss the government's case against this person. Right? So at that point, the person is no longer someone who went through the proper channels to legally request asylum. At that point, they are now just someone who is undocumented and and is here without authorization. And so now ICE is legally permitted to detain them and sweep them up because they're no longer in the asylum process. Um now, as I understand it, that is legally dubious to say the least. Um and it's being challenged in federal court. Um, but it's a way for them to just kind of say, uh, we're going to it's it's a way for them to apprehend these people and it's a way for them to boost, uh, their deportation figures.

I mean, among other things, it seems like it would make a lot of immigrants go to ground. Uh, if that's what you get for showing up, why show up?

It's it's a very similar thing. I mean, this really scary thing we just saw with the IRS is now, you know, sharing its taxpayer data with ICE. Um, one of the big arguments you always hear on the right is that um, you know, that that imig undocumented people are um, you know, receiving government benefits and not paying taxes. And that's it's not true. They do pay taxes. They pay all the the payroll taxes. Um, and so by going after them to the IRS, you're in now, you know, encouraging you're you're punishing the people who are paying taxes, who are giving back. Uh, and you're going to encourage people now to find ways to avoid that. Um it is, you know, it is what they're doing is they're prioritizing sort of the cruelty. They want the images. They want the video, you know, they want the social media hits, you know, they want to project to their hardest core supporters. You know, they want to

fulfill that kind of thirst and glee for uh seeing cruelty done to people that they think are, you know, as Trump himself put it, less than human, people who poison the blood of the country. Well, it it seems to me they want to inspire fear,

right? There have been all these videos of people asking ICE agents, "What's your badge number? Who what authority are you here under?" And in many cases, these people are masked up. What is more frightening to a public than masked agents of the state operating without clear authorities or oversight who seem able to do whatever they want to you?

Yeah. And the reason they site for the masking is that um people are doxing ICE agents, right? Publishing their names. Um that's not illegal. There's no crime against that. There's no crime against publishing the names of law enforcement officers, particularly those who are doing this sort of aggressive policing. Um and they keep pointing to, you know, these I think they I don't the number keeps growing. I think the last I saw a 400% increase in assaults on ICE officers. um and Phil Bump and some other journalists have broken that down and it's you know it's from I can't remember the exact figures but you know it's from a two-digit figure to you know maybe a three-digit figure um and when you consider the number of sort of altercations and um uh encounters between ICE agents and and residents um it's actually seems pretty low

but I understand the masks as a tool of fear police get attacked act. Police can fear being doxed, but they show up in their uniforms and looking in a certain way because they're meant to be they're meant to project authority, but they're also meant to seem like part of the community. People you could talk to, people you could go up and ask a question of, people who are there serving you. But it does seem like a just a like the the policy is not just cruelty. The policy is fear.

Yeah. And part of part of it, I think, projecting fear is sort of flaunting your your unaccountability, right? That that you're above the law. I mean, one of the first things Trump said when he sent the the National Guard into DC was he specifically told them when he takes over the DC Police Department, police officers will will be able to do quote whatever the hell they want. Federal agents are almost completely immune from civil liability. There is um uh there's a case called Bivvens for uh from the early 1970s where the court created a way for people to sue federal agents for violating their constitutional rights.

Uh and in 2022, the current court basically um all but revoked that ruling. I mean, all but completely overturned it. Uh and Gorsuch, in fact, in a concurring opinion said, you know, we might as well admit what we're doing here, which is we're obliterating bivons. So there's no civil way to hold federal agents accountable for violating people's rights in these cases. There is, you know, in theory they could be held criminally accountable, but that would require Trump's justice department to bring charges against them. We know that's not going to happen. So there's no criminal liability. There's no civil liability. So what's left? I mean, the only way that you can sort of hold these agents accountable in any way for the the displays of sort of abuse and cruelty that we're seeing is, you know, sort of social uh approprium or social shaming, right? Um, and by wearing masks, they're removing that last sort

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Tell me about another piece of the institutional attack, which is the attack on people who work with immigrants. Um, you had a newsletter just about a lawyer who contacted you who had been, you know, asked to give some proono just advice to some immigrants who were facing deportation and what happened to him. So can you tell that story but also then sort of what you understand happening on the the more macro level?

Yeah. So what happened to this um lawyer is that he he he doesn't work in in immigration law. Um he did um real estate type law I think title defense um or title insurance and but he walked into a gas station he walked into regularly where he know knew the people who worked there um and he had previously I think given some advice to an immigrant family uh and they said well there's this other family where the father was recently detained on a workplace raid uh and you know they're worried and and could you just stop by and give them some some basic advice and so he did that um I'm I'm not I don't have the my story in front of me so I'm not sure about the exact timeline but I think it was a couple days later uh he said he was working at home and he was on his V you know he had works through a VPN um and the VPN

accessing the internet yeah it's a way of sort of anonymous or anonymizing yourself when you're out on the internet um and his VPN went down and then he got a knock on the door uh and he went and opened the door and he saw two people who um identified themselves with law enforcement, but wouldn't say which agency, wouldn't give them their names, wouldn't give them their badge numbers. Um, and so he, you know, basically uh asked them what it was about, and uh they asked if he had recently given some advice to undocumented people. Uh, and at that point, he said he wanted to call, you know, talk to a lawyer. He wasn't going to talk to them anymore and shut the door. Um, you know, it's a disturbing story because, you know, you've got ICE agents, presumably ICE, I guess it could be any federal or state agency. This was in Texas. Uh, coming to someone's private home. Clearly, that meant they had to

look him up, you know, look up his address. Uh, he had a um door camera, right? And so, you know, presumably they saw that and decided they didn't want to be on camera and so they shut down the Wi-Fi so it wouldn't work. Um, you know, this is speculation. I guess it's possible that his Wi-Fi coincidentally went down at exactly the time that they came to his door. Seems unlikely. Um, and so he was disturbed by this and so he told uh his employer uh about it and said, you know, he was worried about it. And the response he got was pretty cold from his own employer. Um, clearly they didn't want to be dragged into some fight with the Trump administration over immigration. Uh, and he eventually lost his job. uh specifically be because he made a big deal out of this internally.

So that's one incident that's pretty disturbing I think. But beyond that um you know I'm currently um working on a book about public defense and public defenders which um is not going to be at all timely when it comes out given everything that's going on. I'm not sure it's a topic anyone's going to want to read about. But part of that was I I I uh embedded myself in a lot of public defender offices over the country. And so some of the better sort of more equipped public defender offices have immigration defense. Um you're not entitled to a public defender if you're detained on immigration charges. Um but a lot of cities provide it anyway just sort of out of a sense of obligation.

And prior to Trump taking office, I did interviews with a lot of these attorneys. After Trump took office, none of those groups wanted to talk to me on the record anymore. Um they are all like terrified. They do not want to be on the Trump administration's radar. So Trump's going after these groups that provide aid to immigrants in a lot of different ways. One is they're shutting down all, you know, federal funding for these groups. So that's that's done. Um but they're also, you know, Trump is targeting um student loan forgiveness for public service. Uh and judging by the like a lot of his executive orders, it it's pretty vague. Um, but what it seems to be doing is saying that if you go into one of these areas of public service that we don't like, um, you know, where you're defending criminals and illegal immigrants, um, we're not going to forgive your student loans.

Well, you know, public defense is heavily reliant on people who go into that to take advantage of student loan forgiveness. So, if you take that away, uh, these groups are not going to be able to to staff themselves anymore. Um, so they're really trying to erode the ability uh of these immigrants to obtain representation. And and I will say if you talk to people who do this work and their studies of this, the the odds of you um getting a favorable outcome in an imig immigration hearing are significantly improved if you have an attorney than if you don't.

Also been going after big law firms for what kind of proono work they do and don't do and shifting that. And I think it was in a piece from you or someone else, Paul Weiss, uh, which was a very, very big white shoe law firms that did a lot of proono work. Now, if you look on what kind of proono work they do, immigration has disappeared, um, from what they say on the website. Maybe no one of these is that big of a deal. But you you look at it in totality and you're trying to destroy the structures if they keep some amount of legalism around this. And now you have the construction of these massive new detention centers, which it's worth saying that under US law here and and I think um this is still how they describe it. Immigration detention is supposed to be non-punitive. You're not being like sent to prison.

Y but they're building these things that seem like holes where it's very hard to get reached by a lawyer. Your family doesn't always know where you are. um you get moved around. What what do we know about that sort of buildup in in camps?

It's I mean on the one hand it's something that they were very open about. I mean Steven Miller talked about opening tent tent prisons along the border, you know, uh just huddling people in them. It is terrifying to me. Um it's not it's not even just terrifying that they're doing it. It's what's terrifying to me is the rush to sort of to to be on the cutting edge of this right among to show your your feelalty and and loyalty to this administration. Um it's things like you know in Indiana the lieutenant governor you know giddily announced the opening of a detention center there that they were called the speedway slammer right because where the Indy500 was going to be in Speedway near the Indy500. Um the governor of I believe it was Nebraska just announced the corn husker clink.

Right. So we're coming up with these cute illiterative names, right? So that we can what? Sell merchandise. I mean it's be it's got this just uh

this is all coming from alligator Alcatra I. Right. Right. Uh I mean we've meified fascism.

Yeah. I mean you can say fascism always mimified itself. Yeah. It's created a kind of exalting in not just cruelty but a like a gleeful obliteration of any kind of process or sense of restraint or sense that maybe we need to do these policies but we do them with a heavy heart or we can make mistakes so we need to make sure that those mistakes can be easily corrected and people can talk to lawyers you know you you come out of the as I understand like the libertarian movement this was not like a crazily leftcoded set of ideas in fact like I remember you know not that long ago how much he attacked on the left was there's not enough due process when you're getting canceled by the woke mob, right? Not enough due process in in universities and now you're looking at the actual state itself just eviscerate due process. I mean, yeah, I think it's even you could go even further than that. I mean, I think

there's the a sentiment that I incre in increasingly seeing on, you know, Facebook and occasionally when I just check in to see the horror show that is Twitter or X that I mean due process itself is woke now, right? I mean, this is something that that the idea of of letting people who are here illegally have access to the courts is just beyond the pale to people. And I mean, there's no understanding. That's always the way it's been. Uh, and like you said, I mean, this is a civil violation that we are now treating. I mean, you know, literally we were we disappeared people to a prison in El Salvador um without letting them ever, you know, consult the courts. And, you know, later we find out that I think at least half of them had no prior criminal record of any kind in any country. Um, you know, you saw during the Republican National Convention with those mass deportation signs and you saw the kind

of like sneering joy, you know, that people got at the idea of, you know, you would uh, those of us who who were alarmed by all this would talk about. So, you know, you're going to be you're okay with pulling grandmothers out of their homes and, you know, uh you going into schools and, you know, arresting people when they're there to pick up their children and and isolating the children. And it was Yes. Yes. We love that idea. I mean, it was there was absolute glee at the thought of this. I I don't know how we got to the point where you know 35 40% of the country uh you know thinks using politics as a way to impose physical harm on people that they think are you know on the other side or enemies is is kind of standard political discourse now but it's a pretty scary place to be.

I think that opens up one of the fundamental questions for a lot of us. I I have this line from another show that authoritarianism is here. is just unevenly distributed.

And so one way of looking at this is that there is a profound and I would say barbaric escalation against undocumented or legal immigrants. And but but it's just that it's you know Donald Trump and Steven Miller and that administration JD Vance have a view that America is being destroyed by an invasion which is the word they use of illegal immigrants and and they're going to do everything they need to do to turn that back. But it's but that's all it is that to the extent that it's here and unevenly distributed it's around a group of people who are not here legally. Okay.

Then there is this other way of imagining it which is that when you see movements like this they often start with one group of undesirabs and they expand out right who is on the other side.

Yeah. Who is the danger to saving this country? And one thing it seems to me we're watching in recent months is a series of escalations. Why don't we start with what happened in Los Angeles? So you had the Trump administration deploying the National Guard. um a certain number I believe of Marines ultimately

over the objection of the mayor of Los Angeles over the objection of the governor of California. That's not normal. It's ne it's never happened before. Um the last time that active duty troops, not National Guard, but active duty troops were deployed in the US was during the LA riots in 1992. uh and that was at the invitation of the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles. So what Trump did in Los Angeles has never happened before.

What led to Donald Trump deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles? What was his stated rationale?

Um the argument in court was that uh immigration enforcement is a federal power pretty explicitly in the constitution. Uh and that these protests were preventing uh federal immigration officers from doing their jobs. Uh now there was not a lot of evidence of that. Um the pro there were protests but there's not a lot of evidence that there was you know violence or or threats against immigration agents. There were people lining up at courouses expressing you know their their um opposition to the way the Trump administration was carrying these out. Um, but the court sort of took the administration's argument at face value that this deploying these guard troops was necessary to let these immigration agents do their jobs.

The Ninth Circuit bought that argument, right? Well, the Trump administration argument went even farther, which was that as long as the president says that there's a a need to send in the National Guard, that's not even reviewable by the courts. So, the Ninth Circuit at least said, "No, that's not true." Like, we we can review it. It is reviewable. But in this case, you know, we find the argument plausible, and so we're going to let you do it. Um, but Christine Holm publicly said that the reason why the National Guard was in California was to liberate, uh, the city of Los Angeles from its socialist leadership. Right.

I want to read her quote really quickly. Christine know um secretary leader of the department of homeland security. We are staying here

to liberate this city from the uh socialist and the um burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and and what they have tried to insert into this city. So I really that those words liberate the city right from its dyeleed democratic leadership at the state and and local level. When I say, you know, there's one version where you look at this and say, well, this is an immigration policy, that doesn't sound like an immigration policy. That sounds like something quite else. And and it's it's a sentiment that Trump has said repeatedly, too, right?

That he's going to um you know, he's going to take over blue cities. he's going to set policy, particularly crime policy in blue cities. Um, so she says that and you know, this isn't some, you know, low ranking administration official. This isn't some, you know, MAGA person that can be easily disavowed. This is the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Yeah. It's not Laura Loomer. Right. Exactly. And and although Loomer at this point may may have more power than Gnome for Fair enough. Yeah. Um but also, you know, if she had spoken out of turn, if she had if if she had been sort of caught up in the moment, um and and regretted saying things in that particular way, um she could have retracted that. The administration could have distanced itself. They could have said, uh no, that is not our policy. But they didn't. They didn't retract it and the Ninth Circuit didn't even consider it because it wasn't part of the record.

So I think this is a really important point because there's this um kind of dual path that we see in authoritarian states where they justify these massive power grabs with a sort of plausible if not persuasive but at least kind of legally based in some sort of legal argument. That's what they argue in court. And so this dual doctrine rests on this assumption that the executive is going to be arguing in good faith. the courts make,

right? That the courts make. And so they they tend to take the arguments at face value, even when there's ample evidence to the contrary, even when the administration has shown its willingness to just brazenly lie to the court in other cases. You have to show in each case that they're lying, right? Each case one at a time. But, you know, at some point, I think the courts have to acknowledge that what the administration is arguing in court, and to be frank, what they're arguing in court is now, you know, to the point outrageous and often easily disprovable as well. And then on the ground, they're doing the absolute worst version of this policy, right? Uh, and so what we saw in Los Angeles was there was this argument that this dual I just want to note this dual just because it's so grim, this dual state theory of fascism, right? It's written by a German Jew who escapes Nazi Germany. It's an anal it's an analysis

of how Nazi Germany worked as it built to what it became. Exactly. And and it's so consistent across other authoritarian states. I mean, this is this is a you know, this is part of every authoritarian playbook, right? One of the one of the really damaging things I I think that came out of uh USV Trump, which was the the decision that, you know, sort of gave Trump this broad wide-ranging immunity, is that there's no downside for Trump to to trying to do these really extreme extra constitutional things, right? There's no there's no punishment if he goes too far. At the worst, what happens is maybe three or four years down the road, you know, a high ranking federal court tells him he can't do that anymore, but in the meantime, he gets to do it. Um, for the most part, I mean, there have been a few injunctions, but they tend not to last. So, there's no there's no penalty for going too far, right? The way our system is set up

right now, the president can kind of do whatever he wants. He can take whatever power grabs he wants, and the worst thing that's going to happen is that maybe a few years later, a court says, "Nah, you can't do that anymore." What did the National Guard and the Marines do while they were in Los Angeles? I mean, some are still there, I should say but

Right. Mostly they just kind of provided support for the federal agencies. I I I think there was maybe one instance where um some active duty Marines detained uh and arrested someone who was later shown to be an American citizen and and just sort of wandered into the wrong area. Um I don't think that I if I recall correctly I don't remember seeing a whole many incidents where either National Guard or Marines were actively using force or making arrests.

Um what then happened in MacArthur Park? you had uh border patrol and I I believe National Guard was there for support uh conducted this sort of sweep of a park where you know in in an immigrant heavy area but where there was nothing going on there was no reason for them to be you know displaying force at this park. Uh but yeah they they kind of marched through the park. The entire exercise was a demonstration of force. It was, you know, we're going to show we're going to create these images showing the the community how powerful we are. Um, and you know, that again, that is the kind of thing you see regularly in totalitarian countries, right? We don't use the military uh or or militarized police uh purely for imagery, purely for symbolic purposes.

But I mean, this administration is doing it regularly. I mean they they they do this to create videos that they can post on social media you know to to scare people and and to you know uh inspire I guess their followers.

Everything is a spectacle but everything too is a test or a um a model. So Corwandowski, who is a top adviser to Christine at the Department of Homeland Security, said, "I want everybody to understand the Trump administration is bringing this path across this country to make sure every sanctuary city understands that we can touch people at any place, any time." Then there is an internal Department of Homeland Security memo that was written by Pete Hegs brother, who for some reason has become a significant event.

Only on merit, of course. Hired only on merit. Yes. The the best people. Um he wrote this memo leaked to and reported by the New Republic describing the need for the military to quote more effectively support DHS during the next instance of LA type operations. He wrote the US military leadership uh need to feel for the first time the urgency of the homeland defense mission. So there's clearly a internal structure being built, a case being built, um attempts being made. We'll talk about DC in a minute, but to merge the military and the, as Phil Haggsath put it, the homeland defense mission.

Tell me about the ways the military and homeland have typically been kept separate and what it might mean for them to be uh merged.

So, you know, in this country, we've had we've long had a tradition of keeping the military out of domestic law enforcement. Um, and it it goes back to the founding. I mean, there was a fear that I mean, the founders didn't even want to have a full-time standing army because they saw what happened in cities like Boston during the colonial era where the British crown stationed uh soldiers in the city for the mostly for the purpose of tariffs and enforcing um or ending black markets. Um, but it resulted in a lot of anger and resentment and violence. um you had these general warrants where they could go into any house at any time. Um and to to enforce u you know tariffs and import bans uh and it ultimately led to the Boston Massacre which is one of the kind of precipitating events of the American Revolution. The point here with the history lesson is that u this is why we have a third amendment a fourth

amendment. You could argue what's why we have a second amendment is that there was this fear that standing armies create problems and that using particularly using the military for routine domestic policing. That's not what the military does, right? The military's job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Uh the job of law enforcement is to protect our rights and and enforce public safety. Um and we've done actually a pretty good job over the course of our history of keeping the two separate. Um there have been times very briefly when the military has been called up to put down riots or insurrections. Um and you could argue about whether that was justified or not.

Um the only time the military was brought in to sort of consistently enforce routine um domestic law enforcement was during reconstruction. That was obviously a hopefully once in our country's history sort of event. Um, but you know, we've kept these two things separate and and one of the really healthy things about our democracy is that the institution that's been most uh consistent and aggressive about enforcing that separation has been the military. Um, during the 80s, the Reagan administration and and members of both leaders of both parties in Congress wanted the military to come in to do to uh enforce the drug war. They wanted Marines marching up and down streets and conducting raids and arresting people.

And it was the military that said, "We want nothing to do with this." Um, there was a high-ranking military official who testified before Congress and basically said something effective. You know, history is replete with examples of countries that have brought the military in for domestic law enforcement and disaster is always the result. Uh and so while there was some, you know, there was some use of the military for training, um there was the transfer of military equipment to local police agencies, uh the idea of using the military for active day-to-day law enforcement uh was shelled because because of opposition from the Pentagon.

Um throughout sort of the course of my entire career writing on these issues, I've always been worried about the idea that our police are getting more militarized, right? They're getting more and more like soldiers. They're seeing their job as more like soldiers. Um, and that means, you know, they're seeing the people they're supposed to be serving as the enemy. And what I feared was another September 11th, you know, style event was going to exacerbate that process and and make the police even more militarized. Um, you know, even in kind of the worst case scenarios, I never thought we'd reach the day where a president would just start openly deploying the military in cities across the country simply because they don't support him. I mean, that is I I mean, it's it's hard to a lot of people made this point. It's hard to sort of describe what is actually going on right now without sounding crazy

because the idea that the president is going to deploy the military into cities and states that didn't vote for him uh you know because he's angry at them for that or or he's going to you know stop sending them disaster relief because they didn't vote for him. I mean that is that is clearly the stuff of totalitarian regimes.

I both agree and I guess they would say it's not because they didn't vote for them. It's because of something else. So in the LA case, it's because of protests. I so want to try to do the fairmind thing of describing this in the way they would describe it,

but also to say they are unleashing ICE agents in a way that seems to be designed to create backlash. And then they use the backlash. We talked about this at the beginning as an escalation cycle.

But um but at least at least in air quotes in the LA case it was connected to this immigration mission which is very central to the Trump campaign. DC wasn't.

Yeah. DC isn't. What's been their rationale for taking over I mean it it feels to when I talk to the people there occupying militarily occupying Washington DC.

So the justification is this kind of unique relationship that Washington DC has with the federal government. Um so the federal government ultimately um has jurisdiction over DC pretty much in in any way that it wants to assert itself. Uh now Congress Congress is the primary sort of um overseer I guess of DC and Congress has passed various home rule um bills over the years that has given uh DC a certain amount of autonomy. Um so you know what what Trump is doing is violating those uh those bills that were passed by Congress. But, you know, as we've seen in just about every other area, in order for that to matter, uh, Congress would have to sort of stick up for itself. Uh, and that clearly isn't going to happen here. So, you know, you could argue that LA was tied to immigration enforcement, which is a federal power. You could argue that what's happening in DC, uh, is based on this, you know, unique relationship that

DC has with the federal government. And in both cases, you could say, you know, these are exceptions. But Trump is openly promising to send troops into Chicago, into Oakland, into Baltimore. He is not claiming that he wants to send troops into those cities to enforce immigration. He's saying it's because crime is out of control in those cities. And incidentally, all three cities have seen dramatic drops in crime. Baltimore is uh is at a um I think a 30 40-year low in violent crime. Oakland, it's dropped pretty dramatically. Uh Chicago's dropped a little bit, but you know what he's promising to do going forward makes it clear that this isn't about federalism or or keeping the nation's capital safe. It's not about immigration enforcement. I mean, these are all very blue cities. They're cities with large black populations with black political leadership. Uh and they're cities that Trump has been disparaging,

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When I think about this rolling forward, when I look at what they did in DC, when I look at what they did in LA, when I when I look at what they are talking about doing, the potential for genuine catastrophe feels very high. So, I'm in I'm sitting here in New York City, so let me spin out a scenario that's been on my mind. Zoran Mdani is the front runner to be the next mayor of New York. To the Trump administration, I think Zoran Mdani is the exact kind of politician they would relish confrontation with, that they would find immensely offensive, his very existence, the fact that he has been elected in New York City, a city that obviously Donald Trump has uh very deep feelings about,

they want to deport him. They want to deport him. They would, I think, also see him as a soft target of a certain kind, very inexperienced, you know, has not been a mayor for a long time, does not have a lot of uh, you know, political background, political alliances. You can really imagine Mumani coming into office, the administration stepping up ICE rates even above where they are now. I mean, Brad Lander during the campaign, the comproller of of New York City, ended up arrested as he was doing um as he was accompanying uh immigrants and at at court during these ICE raids.

You can imagine them really stepping up ICE rates, then using some kind of backlash to that as pretext for sending in the National Guard as they did in LA or sending in, as Phil Hexath wants, the National Guard plus more Marines and other kinds of military uh um officials or uh soldiers and something going really wrong or maybe from their perspective, right? So in in DC there's a case a guy who appears to be drunk. I think there's a sandwich. They made a very big deal out of this. Maybe in New York or elsewhere it's not a sandwich. Maybe it's a rock or maybe there's gunfire or maybe there's not gunfire. There is a car backfiring that some member of the National Guard thinks is gunfire and they open up retaliatory fire.

Maybe there's all of a sudden a bunch of people dead. Maybe there's violence. Right? There's already been tear gas at these things, right? that the it is there for this to get, you know, for a a crisis point to be reached where then they're saying, well, it's, you know, this it's an insurrection, right? And now we're invoking the powers of the insurrection act. It just when you look at this both what it seems to me they want and even if they didn't really want that, the conditions they are creating, um, it seems very frightening.

Yeah. And I think it it puts the residents of these cities in a, you know, really a can'twin position, right? I mean, you either submit and and allow this to happen and get accustomed to the idea of looking out your kitchen window and seeing soldiers march by. Um, or or you you put up resistance, in which case you create exactly the kind of scenario that that you just described, which I think they want. if say uh Pritsker in in Illinois uh activated the Illinois National Guard to protect uh immigrant neighborhoods in Chicago from these raids. I mean, particularly if we see they're, you know, arresting or harassing US citizens and people who are here legally. Uh and then you've got this standoff, right?

Especially if you get what we're seeing in DC, which is red states are now sending National Guard troops into Washington DC to, you know, assist with whatever it is they're doing there. I mean, all of a sudden, now you've got red states sending guard troops into blue states who don't want them there. I mean, it is it is a a recipe for exactly the kind of catastrophe you're talking about. I mean, I think the Trump administration relishes the idea of an incident like that because it'll allow them it'll give them an excuse to um to to grab more power and to become even more aggressive.

And you think back to something that happened in the first term that you actually mentioned. So you have um the murder of George Floyd. You have nationwide protests that break out afterwards. You have Trump wanting to unleash the military on these protests and and saying suggesting to top military brass they should open fire at their at their knees. And the military says no. But you write that, quote, "Narly everything he Trump has done in his second term with respect to the military appears to have been done to ensure that no order he gives will ever be questioned again, no matter how cruel, abusive, or unconstitutional."

So tell me what he has done. What is different about the chain of command and oversight in the military now than in say 2020? Well, I mean, he has I mean, part of project 2025 was to purge uh federal agencies of institutionalists of people who had these silly, you know, allegiances to the rule of law and the constitution and replacing them with people whose primary loyalty was to Trump. So, you know, we could start at the top with Hexath. I mean, Hexath is, you know, wrote in his book about his fierce loyalty to Trump. This is a guy who thinks that the military should be enlisted in a holy war um and believes that Trump was sent by God. I mean that is who you know is heading up the the largest most powerful military in human history. Um one of the other things they did they immediately uh you know purged all of the the generals that they thought were uh insufficiently loyal people who who you know uh still clung

to ideas like separation of the military from domestic law enforcement. Those people were ousted. They got rid of all the Jag core, the the the senior ranking uh legal uh lawyers in the military who, you know, do things like write um uh use of force policy in the military. Uh the people that the president consults when wanting to do policies like this and are usually the ones who tell him no. Um they're gone. Instead, you have this policy written by uh not, you know, not the least qualified person. I think to ever have been nominated to head up a federal major federal agency, but by that guy's brother, right? I mean, that is the person who's writing up the policy about Trump when Trump's going to start sending active duty military into cities around the country.

It's so it's so grim. Um, I mentioned a minute ago the possibility of Trump invoking the the Insurrection Act. Uh, so what is the Insurrection Act? What does it allow him to do if he in invokes it and why haven't they yet?

So, it it allows him to bring up active duty military to put down a a you know a threat to take over the country or to depose the government. Um I believe the first instance of it was Washington invoked it to put down the whiskey rebellion. Um it's been used pretty sparingly over the years. Um but it's supposed to be something the president can invoke in the case of an emergency. Um eventually they're supposed to get approval from Congress uh after doing so. And you know it's supposed to be temporary. It's supposed to be you know there's this immediate threat that we have to address quickly uh and put it down. Um it is not supposed to be a way to suppress disscent or suppress protest. Uh Trump you know wanted again wanted to invoke it in his first term.

Um, if I recall correctly, I think Mike Pence supported the idea. Um, but it was Esper uh and Millie uh who said no, you know, that's completely inappropriate for for what we're looking at right now.

The defense secretary and Millie the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both both of whom Trump is since accused of treason. Um, and Millie I think he actually suggested should be executed for treason. Uh, in part because of that and telling people about it afterward. Uh so yeah, but it's supposed to be, you know, it's supposed to be in response to a direct threat to the sovereignty of the country. Um and you know that the reason they haven't invoked it is because they found ways around invoking it. I mean I think invoking it they they know at this point would be hugely controversial. There would probably be a lot of backlash. So they found these other ways around it without having to go through the um the insurrection act which I think even they realized would be really divisive.

I I really I try temperamentally as a person and as somebody with a public platform to not be overly alarmist and to make people completely panicked about things they they cannot control. But something I've been saying when I talk to people I know about my work recently is that um like I can tell you a story where these things maintain some kind of containment. I mean they're already much much worse than I would have imagined. You know the masked officers pulling people off the street. But things didn't get as bad as I thought they might in Los Angeles, right? Maybe maybe everybody holds back from where it could go.

But if I imagine reading a book, reading a history of this period in 10 years and this period having gone really badly, having either created a tipping into authoritarianism in a way that you cannot deny or having created some kind of genuinely violent flash point between the government and it citizenry that resolves in some way we we can't predict right now. This is the way I would have expected this set of chapters in the early months to read,

right? These are the chapters where if you were reading them and it gets worse, it wouldn't feel like a surprise. It would feel like a linear progression.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's almost a cliche at this point to say, you know, how how would this latest thing that Trump has done read if it were happening in say, you know, Albania or, you know, um Peru or Uganda, right? I mean, we would say that seems pretty clear like there's an authoritarian takeover going on. Um I was at a conference on liberalism and democracy last weekend and one of the keynote speakers was a a Russian dissident um who kind of saw Putin's rise and you know what I found particularly haunting was the similarities between the just speed with which he started dismantling institutions. Um and you know that is project 2025. I mean, part of of the strategy there is to move so quickly on so many fronts that, you know, you overwhelm people and it's impossible to keep track of everything that's going on. Now, you know, Russia was a, you know, much much much younger democracy with much weaker institutions,

so it was easier to topple them, you know, within a year. Um, but what we're seeing right now, like you said, I mean, I if if you were trying to to replicate that path to autocracy, I don't know what you would be doing differently than what Trump is doing now. What then is the the role of civil society, of political opposition here? You you talked earlier about the no- win position these cities and people in them are being put into. On the other hand, you know, opposition to this seems to have revitalized Karen Bass's maralty in Los Angeles. Um, seems to have, you know, lit a fire under Gavin Newsome in interesting ways.

You know, you said you're a bit of a student of history. I I don't ever think it's fair to ask people like what like what works in these scenarios. You know, everything is different and it's all very complicated. But what when you see civil society and political opposition when you see them doing X makes you think, okay, like there's life in this versus what worries you that we're on the speedway to authoritarian takeover. So I think the least optimistic I feel is when we see these powerful institutions cave uh and crumble out of out of fear. So watching, you know, these the Ivy League schools falter when it's I think even the most cynical uh, you know, Supreme Court watchers seem pretty certain that they would win in court and that these are what Trump is doing to these schools is pretty clearly an attack on free free speech, free expression, academic freedom. Um, watching the law firms cave, which I

mean the case that they would have in court is even stronger. um watching media companies cave. I mean you know the 60 Minutes edit of the Kla Harris interview was just basic standard journalism and the idea that you know their parent company capitulated over that. I mean these are extremely powerful wealthy entities that um could stand up to Trump if they wanted to um and they've chosen not to. And I think that is um watching them sort of fall one by one has been really dis disheartening and and disorienting. Um I think sources of optimism I think the the no king uh no kings protest um you had literally I think the count estimate was around 5 million people around the country had come out. You know, my wife and I were in uh at my parents place in Nashville, Indiana, uh at the time, uh which is a overwhelmingly white rural part of of Indiana. And there was a protest with about 100 people, maybe

maybe a little less. Um I mean, the interesting thing to me is that where we're seeing kind of the bravest resistance is from the people with the least amount of power, right? You see like the little league coach in New York who told ICE agents off when they started questioning his his kids, his players about their immigration status. Um, you look at people, um, there was just an incident where a bunch of kids in backpacks in DC, uh, basically ran off a bunch of, uh, ICE and federal and maybe National Guard or probably u, it's hard to tell them apart at this point.

Uh, but federal agents who were there to do immigration enforcement and literally, you know, school children yelling at them until they had to leave. Uh so you know that we are seeing um the kind of you know inspiring resistance from people with the least amount of power um and who would be easiest for the administration to kind of target. Um, I mean, even Sandwich Guy, you know, I don't recommend throwing sandwiches at police officers, but uh, you know, he kind of became a um, you know, a bit of a a folk hero after that. Um, because, you know, I think when you see troops in your backyard, you know, literal troops marching in your backyard, it's a there's a visceral reaction to that and you it's, you know, it's angering. Um, but then also you see the the administration's reaction to that, right? like he wanted to turn himself in. They wouldn't let him.

Instead, they had to send, you know, a bunch of um a SWAT team basically with a a video recorder to his apartment so they could post on social media, you know, that this kind of that sort of resist resistance was not going to be tolerated. Um, as a lot of people pointed out, I mean, um, you know, saying kill the cops to your comrades during an insurrection on the capital gets you a high-ranking justice department uh position whereas throwing a sandwich at a police officer uh, in this administration gets you a felony charge. I mean, that speaks volumes about where we are. to answer your question, you know, I think we need to, you know, we need to take heart in in that little league coach and then the people who who don't want to live in a country where um their their neighbors and friends and people they go to church with and eat breakfast with and landscape their yards are being, you know, yanked off the

street into unmarked vans and taken to undisclosed locations. like um you know if the if the big institutions and the law firms and the universities are going to roll over to that I think we need to take inspiration from the people who are standing up to it.

Ben was our final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

Yeah. So I was trying to think of three sort of interesting maybe a little off topic books. So first I'll be on topic but um Jessica Pishko's book highest law in the land which um is a a narration of sort of how uh the sheriff in the US has become uh such an integral part of of Trump the Trump movement in MAGA and and how they've um lent a lot of sort of institutional support for it. Uh including some you know pretty outrageous um tactics and how how they're kind of above the law in a lot of part in much of the country. Uh so that's that's one that's kind of on topic. Um, I'm going to recommend for a kind of a fun history. Uh, David Mitchell, the British comedian, has a book came out, I think maybe a year or two ago called Unruly, which somehow manages to make a history of of medieval age British royalty, uh, interesting and funny. Um, and so it's kind of a review of sort of all the early British or

English kings, um, but in his kind of style. Uh, which I found it very endearing. and uh I listen to it on tape so in his voice it's it's particularly fun to listen to. Um and I guess the last one would be um my uh friend and former colleague Carrie Alli's book um Bottoms Up and the Devil Lasts which is a book on the uh the surveillance state uh and um reality winner and kind of how um the national intelligence community has kind of evolved into what it is now. And you know, I think it's particularly relevant because of the way Trump has been able to manipulate these tools that have been, you know, put into place by previous administrations that are really um opaque and unaccountable and and pretty dangerous. And now I think we're going to see just how dangerous they are when they're in the hands of the wrong person.

Rather, thank you very much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Hey, hey hey.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force | The Ezra Klein Show"?

In order: 0:00 Los Angeles, Bradley Balco, Caitlyn Dickerson, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); 10:00 Home Depot, Due process, Insurrection, Insurrection Act; 20:00 National Guard, Public defender, T Priority from T-Mobile; 30:00 Los Angeles, National Guard, Due process, Nebraska; 40:00 Los Angeles, National Guard, Laura Loomer, MacArthur Park; 50:00 Chicago, National Guard, New York City, New York, Washington, D.C.; 1:00:00 Insurrection, Civil society, Insurrection Act, Los Angeles; 1:10:00 Carrie Alli, David Mitchell, Highest Law in the Land, Jessica Pishko.

What is mentioned in this The Ezra Klein Show episode?

59 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including National Guard, Los Angeles, Insurrection, Washington, D.C., Due process, Insurrection Act. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force | The Ezra Klein Show"?

The episode runs 1 h 13 min; the transcript is about 12,854 words in 120 timestamped sections.

More from The Ezra Klein Show

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.