Nina-Bytes: A Road to Martial Law

NinaIllingworth May 2, 2025 Amerikan Musik, blog, carceral state, Civil Rights, coup, Department of Defense, DHS, dictatorship, Donald Trump, Elie Mystal, FA1, fascism, GOP, ICE, immigration, Insurrection Act, JA5, January 6th, Justice, martial law, mass surveillance, militarized police, MP6, Nina Illingworth, Nina-Bytes, panopticon, Police, police state, Politics, The Nation, War on Terror

Editor’s note: Nina-Bytes is a regular blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today.

Preparations for the War at Home

After Charlottesville in 2017, I wrote a long essay correctly predicting much of Trump’s final six months in office and the coup attempt he’d launch after losing the 2020 election. Although I didn’t discuss whether or not I thought that coup attempt would succeed at that time because I was far more interested in stopping it in advance, I did theorize that as long as the US military stayed out of the equation, Downmarket Mussolini could make a passable attempt to retain power and govern as a dictator through some combination of police forces, ICE, GOP-loyal state National Guard units, the Insurrection Act, and martial law. Naturally then, I was very concerned when Trump spent the final portion of his first term courting that exact coalition and telling anyone who would listen that he wouldn’t accept any election he lost. In the long run however Trump’s coup failed because he didn’t lock down the militarized authority he needed to actually complete and enforce the seizure of power; like a lot of the most desperate things Der Leader does, he tried to bullshit his way over the finish line with a half baked autogolpe and the whole thing flopped.

Given all that, I must confess that Trump’s latest executive order further empowering and militarizing American police forces while integrating their training and operational structures with the military and the Department of Homeland Security, is triggering alarm bells loud enough to shake every fiber of my being right now. For more details let’s check out this April 30th, 2025 article from Elie Mystal, writing for The Nation.

Trump’s Newest Executive Order “Unleashes” the Cops—and Flirts With Martial Law

“Now, Donald Trump has issued an executive order that will make it even harder to hold cops accountable—and flirts blatantly with martial law. Named the dystopian “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” this new order purports to “unleash high-impact local police forces; protect and defend law enforcement officers wrongly accused and abused by State or local officials; and surge resources to officers in need.”

The aggressive language in the order could be cribbed from any military police state in the annals of history, and that’s clearly the kind of polity that Trump would like to create and lead. The order instructs the secretary of defense to put down the bottle long enough to “determine how military and national security assets, training, non-lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be utilized to prevent crime.” It also instructs the Department of Homeland Security to “advance the objectives of this order.”

Careful readers will note that this sounds an awful lot like the prelude to martial law, a framework where national military assets are deployed in American cities to enforce the president’s priorities. That would, of course, be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the president from using the American military as a domestic police force. But I think it’s well established that Trump has never watched The West Wing and doesn’t respect the rule of law in this country anyway.”

While I’m certain that some of his colleagues in the US media will accuse Elie of being an alarmist in this piece, I think it should raise the eyebrows of sensible people when a graduate of Harvard Law, who is also a respected mainstream analyst covering the justice beat and doing MSNBC hits, starts tossing around phrases like “pretty soon, we might not even be able to distinguish between an American police force and a hostile occupying army.” Even if we didn’t know Trump is an unhinged fascist with a penchant for punitive violence, the combination of material state support for police criminality, arming up and training to occupy American communities, and the unification of military, police, and national security assets, including personnel apparently, into a single ad-hoc domestic security force would all be ominous signs of an impending dictatorship under martial law. If I’m being honest I don’t think the author of this piece is being alarmist enough given the scope of this executive order.

If you were purposely trying to create a fascist police state under a perpetual enforcement of martial law, this is the exact kind of policy you’d enact. Democratic countries, even faux-democratic liberal capitalist “democracies,” separate law enforcement, counterterrorism, and military forces for a reason; dictators around the world rely on full state oppression precisely because you can’t control a fascist police state without controlling the entire security apparatus of that state. Integrating local law enforcement with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense the way Trump is trying to do here facilitates that unification, and creates ready-made full state oppression structures. Although Mystal suggests “we are probably two or three unconstitutional executive orders away from” a martial law scenario, I challenge any honest person to articulate a good reason to provide military personnel, training to “aggressively police communities”, and Homeland Security support to American police forces unless you’re planning on using them like an occupying army.

All of which is still ignoring the obvious authoritarian objectives Mystal does discuss in depth. This executive order does make it borderline impossible to hold police, an already protected class in our society, criminally accountable for their actions; in fact it ensures they won’t even be charged by essentially instructing the Department of Justice to go after officials who try to prosecute police for “obstruction” and made-up diversity crimes. This order will also further militarize American police forces, that already resemble the US Army occupying Iraq in the “War on Terror”, thanks to a prior scheme to provide law enforcement organizations with military gear through the Defense Department. Finally, I think Mystal is correct to connect Trump’s promise of free legal aid to cops who break the law, with the regime’s efforts to secure nearly a billion dollars worth of promised pro-bono work from bigtime DC Law firms who sold their soul to Trump out of cowardice and greed; I’m sure some clever nazis in Trump’s immediate orbit will get a hearty chuckle out of strong-arming some of the nation’s top civil rights lawyers into defending fascist muderpigs who’re openly violating the civil rights of American dissidents.

I’ve never claimed to be able to predict the future, but I think Downmarket Mussolini signing an executive order like this one at the precise moment he, his administration, and their agenda are hitting a speed-wobble in the polls because the reality of Trumpism is starting to affect even his own voters in a material way, is a very concerning development for anyone who isn’t a cracker fascist. As the regime’s mass deportation scheme ramps up, the government runs afoul of more and more court rulings, and resistance to Trump’s fascist agenda coalesces in the streets, the pressure on Der Leader to apply state violence to secure his absolute authority will only grow. We’ve already watched this guy try to move heaven and earth to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, what makes anyone think there’s anything he won’t do to retain power now that it’s in his grasp once again? His first hundred days back in the White House certainly doesn’t give me the impression he has any fucks left to give at all; when push comes to shove Trump will use everything at his disposal to assert his authority by force, with the full power of a militarized police state acting as his weapon of choice.