The spectacle unfolding in American cities is the methodical, illegal imposition of military force against American citizens for political purposes by a commander-in-chief who believes the government of the people, by the people, for the people exists to serve him.
In Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Portland, and Chicago, the National Guard has been transformed from a force of disaster response into an instrument of partisan intimidation, deployed under legal pretenses so flimsy they have been shredded by federal judges across the ideological spectrum.
The response from the Democratic opposition to this constitutional crisis has been, in a word, pathetic.
On Dec. 11, Sen. Cory Booker responded to nearly a year of what federal courts have called unlawful military deployments with a legislative whisper: the Notification of Troop Involvement and Congressional Engagement (NOTICE) Act.
His core demand is that President Donald Trump must tell Congress why he is doing what he is already doing.
More recently, Booker proposed better training and body cameras for the Trump administration’s immigration Gestapo, a proposal the neo-fascist administration accepted last week.
This kind of collusion is not a check on power. It is the administrative processing of abuse.
It is the political equivalent of handing a speeding ticket to a driver who has just plowed through a crowded farmers’ market.
To call this a weak response is to gravely understate its dangerous inadequacy. Anti-establishment progressive Democrat Lisa McCormick frames it with the scorn it deserves.
“Cory Booker’s feeble legislation is a weak response to Republican tyranny, from a member of the Capitulation Caucus in Congress that has failed to confront Trump’s dictatorial ambitions adequately,” McCormick said. “President Donald Trump sent the military into American cities to quash dissent, and that seems to have worked because he is recklessly killing boaters in the Caribbean without provocation, and nobody has slapped handcuffs on the murderer.”
She is correct. Booker’s bill operates on a bankrupt assumption: that a president systematically fabricating crises – labeling immigration a foreign “invasion,” recasting protest as “rebellion” – will be constrained by a new form to fill out.
It asks the arsonist to file a report on his intended burn.
McCormick connects this failure to a broader pattern of surrender that has enabled the current emergency.
“Booker failed to prevent the Republicans from outlawing abortion in nearly half the states, gutting the Voting Rights Act, stealing $38 trillion from working-class Americans, and dangerously accelerating global warming,” she said. “So it is unsurprising that he is demanding paperwork before the GOP opens fire on peaceful citizens.”
This critique exposes the hollow theater of establishment opposition. Booker recently broke a 68-year record for the longest Senate floor speech and joined House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries for a 12-hour sit-in on the Capitol steps. McCormick ridiculed the senator for “believing he can stop Trump by literally sitting around and talking.”
She has a point. While performative filibusters and sit-ins generate headlines, they are no substitute for the ruthless, strategic use of existing congressional power. Where is the aggressive movement to defund these illegal deployments using the power of the purse?
Where is the relentless, unified amplification of every federal court ruling that has declared these actions illegal, such as the judge who called the Los Angeles deployment “profoundly un-American”?
Where is the urgent push for a substantive bill that doesn’t request notification but explicitly prohibits these deployments outside of true, congressionally declared emergencies?
Instead, the NOTICE Act offers an audit of future tyranny. It is a solution designed for a world of good-faith actors and normative constraints – a world that this administration has deliberately and violently exited.
The strategic failure is monumental. It signals to an autocrat that his most radical moves will be met with process, not power. It signals to terrified citizens in targeted cities that their protection lies in bureaucratic oversight, not bold defense.
And it signals to history that when faced with a fundamental test, a faction of the opposition chose the comfort of symbolic action over the risks of real confrontation.
McCormick’s indictment is broader than one bill or one senator. It is an indictment of a political strategy that has consistently failed to match the ferocity of the threat. “We need a shake-up… to throw the bums out and replace them with real leaders who care more about saving the world than winning the next election,” she said.
The troops are in the streets now. The lawsuits are won, yet the deployments continue. The time for notification is past. The moment demands nullification. Any response short of that is not just impotent – it is complicit in the normalization of a crime in progress.
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