Trump's 'war' talk escalates legal battle

Experts say using American cities as military 'training grounds' is illegal.

- BY SONJA SHARP

MARINES guard a federal building in Los Angeles during a pro-immigrant protest on the Fourth of July.

(CARLIN STIEHL Los Angeles Times)

President Trump warned the country's top ranking military officials Tuesday that they could be headed to “war” with U.S. citizens, signaling a major escalation in the ongoing legal battle over his authority to deploy soldiers to police American streets.

“What they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they're very unsafe places, and we're going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump said in an address to top brass in Quantico, Va. “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”

Commanders should use American cities as “training grounds,” the president said.

Trump's words provoked instant pushback. Oregon has already filed a legal challenge, and experts expressed concern that what the president described is against the law.

“He is suggesting that they learn how to become warriors in American cities,” said Daniel C. Schwartz, former general counsel at the National Security Agency, who heads the legal team at National Security Leaders for America. “That should scare everybody. It’s also boldly illegal.”

The use of soldiers to assist with federal immigration raids and crowd control at protests and otherwise enforce civilian laws has been a point of contention with big city mayors and blue state governors for months, beginning with the deployment of thousands of federalized National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles in June.

That deployment was illegal, a federal judge ruled last month. In a scorching 52-page decision, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer barred soldiers under Trump’s command from carrying out law enforcement duties across California, warning of a “national police force with the President as its chief.”