Pentagon Rushes to Create New Rules as Trump Sends Marines to L.A.

Defense officials are working overtime to throw together guidance in the event that U.S. Marines—sent to Los Angeles Monday—are required to use force on civilians.

The rare prospect is the design of Donald Trump, who ordered 700 Marines to the city amid ongoing protests intended to block ICE raids and thwart his administration’s immigration agenda.

The soldiers are coming from Twentynine Palms, California, and have been trained in deescalation, crowd control, and self-defense, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. But rules on how the active duty soldiers should engage in force are still being drafted, according to nine anonymous U.S. officials who spoke with the AP.

The troops are experienced in active combat zones, having spent time in Syria and Afghanistan. But sending troops overseas is starkly different from sending them to one of America’s most populous cities. In war zones, soldiers are guided by the rules of engagement, but on American soil they will be guided by standing rules for the use of force, which must be agreed upon by Northern Command.

One U.S. official told the AP that each Marine should receive a card indicating what they can and cannot do. Another U.S. official told the publication that the troops will be armed with “normal service weapons” and will be carrying helmets, shields, and gas masks, but they will not be carrying tear gas.

Drafted use-of-force documents obtained by the newswire indicate that the Pentagon has so far written off warning shots, deciding that they should be prohibited. Marines sent to the city are instructed to deescalate but are not prohibited from acting in self-defense, according to the documents.

They are also drafting rules on how Marines should go about protecting federal personnel and property, or detaining civilians if troops are under assault.

Trump’s order violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The White House could have bypassed the military doctrine by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to utilize the military during periods of rebellion or mass civil unrest, but had not done so by the time of the order. (Trump has still not invoked the Insurrection Act, as of the time of publishing.)

The Marines are joining 4,100 National Guard members that Trump similarly tasked with disassembling the protests, against the wishes of local government officials. On Monday, California sued the Trump administration to roll back the National Guard’s deployment, citing logistical challenges that L.A. and state officials said would make it more difficult to safely handle the protests.

In a press conference announcing the lawsuit Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters that Trump had “trampled” California’s sovereignty.

“We don’t take lightly to the president abusing his authority and unlawfully mobilizing California National Guard troops,” Bonta said.

The president claimed on Truth Social Tuesday morning that Los Angeles would be “burning to the ground” without his militaristic directive.

Trump also endorsed threats to arrest Newsom, telling reporters that he’d “do it.”

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman was spotted Monday night chatting with Steve Bannon, according to Politico Playbook.

Fetterman, who has displayed his own dramatic rightward shift, was reportedly dining at a top MAGA hangout near Capitol Hill with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle, when the conservative news site’s old director wandered up and spoke to the pair for roughly 20 minutes.

Bannon took over Breitbart in 2012, and directed the site to publish patently pugnacious rhetoric and conspiracy theories cooked up by far-right activists and white supremacists. In 2016, Bannon stepped down to join Trump’s presidential campaign as its CEO, and went on to mastermind the authoritarian MAGA movement.

Fetterman broke with his party yet again on Monday to condemn the anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles. “I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that. This is anarchy and true chaos,” he wrote in a post on X.

“My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement,” he added.

Bannon has a slightly different view of the unrest in Los Angeles, which has been spurred on by Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard, and now the Marines. “We’re in the Third World War,” he said in an interview published on Monday. “And it’s a battlefield that’s everywhere, including in downtown Los Angeles.”

Last month, a damning report said that some of Fetterman’s staff were concerned about his increasingly erratic behavior, and Republican lawmakers flocked to support the Democratic senator with whom they’d inexplicably come to agree.

Fetterman was one of the more than two dozen Democrats to support the Laken Riley Act, which would, among other things, allow the government to detain undocumented immigrants accused of committing nonviolent crimes.

President Trump is sending 700 Marines to Los Angeles, allegedly to help police—who have not asked for it—with protests that have occurred in downtown Los Angeles. This is an extreme escalation from the Trump administration, an aggressive demonstration of force by the government against its own citizens.

The troops are set to arrive on Monday evening, and without rules of engagement—which puts the lives of countless demonstrators at risk. 

“The rules of engagement here, we are told, are still being finalized,” said CNN’s Natasha Bertrand. “And defense department lawyers are also looking at the kinds of rules of engagement these Marines will have as they encounter protesters, possibly on the streets of Los Angeles.” 

Hundreds of Marines in a city on edge from the impact of ICE’s indiscriminate deportation raids is a recipe for a devastating tragedy.  

The deployment, moreover, almost certainly is illegal. No leader in Los Angeles or California has said that it’s necessary—the situation is not out of control, and it certainly does not need hundreds of Marines and National Guard soldiers to maintain order. Instead, this is a blanket display of force, meant to intimidate protesters and municipalities that dare to stand up to an administration that is sweeping thousands of people off the street. 

This piece has been updated.

MAGA-whisperer Steve Bannon—while claiming that he’s “taken out” Elon Musk—believes the L.A. anti-ICE protests are the start of World War III.  

“We’re in the Third World War,” he told The Spectator in an interview published on Monday. “And it’s a battlefield that’s everywhere, including in downtown Los Angeles.” He also posited that the clash between police and protesters is just the beginning of a summer-long Democratic psyop designed to destabilize the country.

“[Democrats] allowed in 10 to 13 million illegal alien invaders into this country. They all must go home. All. Not some. All must go home. They must be deported. They must go home or we don’t have a country, OK?” he said. “We’re in for another summer of riots. They just kicked it off.… The question here is, who told the police to step down? I think there’s only 10 arrests. The LAPD allowed that thing to metastasize. Who gave the order? Whoever. Whoever was the government official that gave that order should be arrested this morning.”

Bannon also echoed Trump, calling for suspension of habeas corpus and the arrest of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, comparing the latter to John C. Calhoun and his conflict with President Andrew Jackson. 

“Andrew Jackson said, ‘Hey, if this guy goes against me, I’m assembling the US Army, and I’m going to hang him from the first lamppost.… If Gavin Newsom is saying, ‘hey, come on, arrest me.’ Hey, well, if he gets in the way of federal officials trying to sort this mess out, he should be arrested.”

Bannon, cantankerous as ever, then moved on to his plans to financially attack Elon Musk and the other monopolistic “tech bros,” who he thinks are a “bunch of fucking pussies.” 

 “We’re going to break up Facebook,” he told The Spectator. “We’re going to break up Google. We’re going to break up Amazon. We’re going to break … I think hopefully we get to eventually break up Walmart. You’ve got too much concentration of private power. It’s obvious it’s anti-populist. It’s anti–economic nationalist.’

This “we” that Bannon keeps referring to is troubling. While he was relegated to the periphery of the MAGAsphere after his fallout with Trump a week after the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, the former White House chief executive has returned to the fold with a more naked commitment to fascism. It is Bannon who lies at the heart of the internal GOP rift between more traditional conservatives, or “neocons” to him, and the right-wing ethnonationalism of MAGA. 

Trump’s extreme immigration agenda, along with the recent ouster of Elon Musk, aligns seamlessly with Bannon’s perspective, suggesting that he is very much back as a close confidant and adviser to the president. And that will only result in an even more brutal, more authoritarian Trump administration.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother is not popular with the D.C. Bar.

Bradley Bondi was practically crushed in his bid to become the president of the D.C. Bar Association Monday, earning just a fraction of the votes that his opponent, employment lawyer Diane Seltzer, received.

Seltzer earned more than 90 percent of the vote with 34,982 ballots. Bondi, the sibling of the nation’s most prominent attorney, received just 3,490 votes.

The D.C. Bar has approximately 121,000 members, making it the largest unified bar in the country. But the number of votes cast against Bondi makes this election season “extraordinary,” D.C. Bar CEO Robert Spagnoletti explained, during a press call Monday afternoon. That’s because the average number of ballots cast per election for the last five decades has been roughly 7,000, meaning that five times the typical number of voters turned out to naysay Bondi’s chance to run the group.

“Dozens of D.C. Bar members put themselves forward for leadership positions during the call for nominations, and each candidate on the slate is very well qualified to serve in a leadership role,” Spagnoletti said, underscoring the “apolitical” nature of the Bar.

Seltzer was endorsed by nearly two dozen former D.C. Bar Association presidents, who sidled up to her at a time when Donald Trump has made the judiciary a clear target of his administration. The president and his allies have slandered judges who rule against his executive agenda as “rogue” and “deranged,” undermined the courts’ authority by deriding their constitutionally provided powers as “tyrannical,” and have attempted to root out dissent among the branch by placing MAGA loyalists in key seats.

As concerns over Bondi’s familial political ties grew among Bar members, Bondi released a statement insisting that he would not allow the legal association to become a political organization.

“The D.C. Bar is not, and must not become, a political organization,” Bondi said in March. “I will fight vigorously against any attempts externally or internally to change that. The D.C. Bar should continue its role as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical organization committed to the service of its members.”