Now, the Rest of the Story. . .
How Protest Became Pretext: Dissecting the LA Deployment
“And now, the rest of the story…” — Paul Harvey
When I posted Setting Fires, Then Crying Emergency, I expected spirited discussion — and I welcomed it. Many of you reached out to say the piece raised important questions. But some readers were still trying to figure out exactly when the troops arrived in Los Angeles, and how that lined up with when the violence began. Others saw a quote from LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell — that officers had been “overwhelmed” — and assumed that he had asked for the National Guard.
Honestly, I think that confusion is understandable. And if a few of my readers had questions, I imagine there are many more who remained silent but just as uncertain. That’s precisely why I believe in following up — never to defend myself, but to correct an error, rephrase ambiguous language, or clarify, as in this case, with more specificity to make clear what wasn’t clear. All within the objective to serve my readers with the same care I gave litigants in my courtroom.
As a judge presiding over many bench trials, it was my responsibility to weigh evidence carefully, test credibility, and arrive at the truth based on facts — not noise, not narratives. I have been known to reconsider a ruling, bring folks back into the courtroom and inform them I made an error and reverse myself. This may explain why after 21 years on the bench I have never been reversed by the appellate courts, but avoiding reversal was not my primary motive, it’s about doing what is lawful, fair, and respectful. It’s about ethics, and I bring that same ethics to this space. When I write these essays, I strive to ground them in facts that are clear, cited, and verifiable. Because justice — whether in court or in public dialogue — cannot rest on assumptions.
But even when everyone agrees on the facts, we may still disagree on what they mean, how they apply, or what should follow from them. It’s like oral argument at the end of a trial: both sides are working from the same record — the same testimony, the same exhibits — but they interpret that record through different lenses. One attorney sees vindication, the other sees liability. It’s not always about denying facts — sometimes it’s about how our values, experiences, or ideologies shape the way we weigh them. And that’s okay, because thoughtful disagreement is how democracies sharpen their understanding of justice.
And so I offer this follow-up not to lengthen a debate, but to illuminate it. Because sometimes, what won’t fit into a headline or a 900-word column still matters. And it deserves to be heard, especially when there are readers asking and wanting more to better understand the subject at hand.
And in that same spirit of Paul Harvey’s signature approach, I’d like to revisit the events with greater clarity — not to rehash what was said, but to finish what was started. Because sometimes the missing piece of the story is the one that makes all the difference.
Clarifying the Record
Let’s get precise: the initial protest activity on June 7 involved a single car set on fire in Paramount — one car, not dozens. That incident, while concerning, pales in comparison to the kind of damage Los Angeles has seen after major sports events — including Lakers and Dodgers championships — where streets were clogged, police were overwhelmed, and dozens of cars were torched without a single federal troop deployed. Later that day, President Trump announced his plan to federalize the California National Guard. (See graph below showing the timeline of events)
But Governor Gavin Newsom immediately warned that this move would be “purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.” He was right. The troops didn’t actually arrive until Sunday, June 8, and that’s when the real escalation began: multiple vehicles were set ablaze, protesters were arrested, and tear gas and flash-bangs were unleashed on civilians. Even the LAPD chief’s later statement that officers had been “overwhelmed” came after federal troops were already in the city — not before. This wasn’t just an overreaction; it was a predictable result of a federal incursion that local leaders tried to prevent.
Some took the chief’s “overwhelmed” description that as a call for the Guard. But that’s not what happened.
Chief McDonnell’s comment came after the federal deployment had already been announced.
And he never — at any point — made a formal request for military intervention.
The statement about being “overwhelmed” was descriptive, not directive. It acknowledged intensity, not incapacity. In fact, it was city and state officials who remained adamant that they did not need — or want — federal troops.
The Timing of the Violence
Another point that’s easy to lose in headline-driven reporting: The fires and scattered property damage that Trump cited as justification occurred mostly on Sunday — the day after Trump announced troops would be deployed and the same day federal forces began arriving in the city.
So, while media outlets did report that “most of the fires took place Sunday,” they rarely pointed out that Sunday wasn’t the aftermath — it was the moment of military arrival.
That detail matters. Because if the military didn’t come in response to violence — but instead coincided with it or exacerbated it — the justification for their deployment collapses.
The View from a Veteran
That concern wasn’t limited to civilian observers. Paul Rieckhoff, a veteran of Iraq and the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said this in a CNN interview (shared via his Instagram):
“This is not 9/11. This is not Katrina. This is not a collapsed bridge or a terrorist attack. This is sending troops into a community that was managing peaceful protest. That is hard for those of us who served.”
That discomfort — that inner tension veterans feel when domestic deployment doesn’t match the military’s true mission — deserves serious consideration. Especially when the stated threat doesn’t line up with the facts on the ground.
And if Rieckhoff’s perspective is not enough, how about the amicus brief filed by retired four-star generals, admirals, and former Army and Navy secretaries that backs the state’s position. Their message lays out how Trump’s deployment of the Guard poses a grave risk to our service members, our civilians, and our constitutional norms.
Roadblocks, Removed
There’s one more piece of the puzzle that’s come to light: a quote from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about why military legal advisors (JAGs) were abruptly dismissed before the LA deployment.
“We didn’t want there to be any roadblocks.”
In response to this reason given by Hegseth to dismiss the military legal advisors, Mark Nevitt, a former Navy JAG and now a professor at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta stated:
“Sometimes a lawyer has to provide guidance, has to be actually a roadblock if someone desires to do something illegal. And so I think that Hegseth has a very different view of the JAGs that does not understand the need for independent, objective legal advice.”
In other words, Hegseth fired the lawyers to clear the runway — not because a crisis demanded it, but because legality might slow down what the president had already decided to do.
This isn’t the first time President Trump has shown an inclination to use military force against civilians exercising their First Amendment rights. During the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd, then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper revealed in his memoir that Trump asked, “Can’t you just shoot them?” referring to protesters. The shocking question was not hypothetical — it reflected a genuine desire to quell protest with lethal force.
It was the protests in 2020 at Lafayette Square in D.C. when Trump said to shoot the protesters, and Esper said no. My niece and her husband participated in that protest, and if you know my niece and her husband as I do, they would have nothing to with violent protests. At the most, maybe civil disobedience in the style of Dr. Martin Luther King, yes, but not violence. But learning later that my president wanted my niece and her husband shot for speaking up for what they believe in whether or not you, me, or the president agrees, is where I draw the line, and so should every citizen, because the Constitution draws it for us.
And there is more that shows Trump’s propensity to use troops and meet protesters with lethal force. During the George Floyd protests, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, but during one of Trump’s fits demanding to invoke the Insurrection Act, General Mark Milley pointed at a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, who led the Union to victory in the civil war, and told Trump: “That guy had an insurrection. What we have, Mr President, is a protest.”
While the military rebuffed the directive to shoot protesters and resisted Trump’s desire to invoke the Insurrection Act during his first term, the question alone speaks volumes about Trump’s posture toward dissent. His response to protests isn’t to de-escalate — it’s to dominate. When someone sees civil disobedience as rebellion, it’s no surprise they reach for military solutions before diplomatic ones.
And this may be why Trump appointed Hegseth to be secretary of defense—to remove the obstacles he encountered in his first term and replace them with loyalists like Hegseth who will blindly do Trump’s bidding even when the Constitution says “NO”!
Consider what occurred during his Senate confirmation hearing when Hegseth was asked whether he would obey an order to shoot protesters. Hegseth pointedly refused to say he would reject such an order. Instead, he doubled down on loyalty to the commander-in-chief, signaling a dangerous willingness to blur the line between lawful protest and enemy engagement. Where former Defense Secretary Mark Esper had resisted Trump’s unconstitutional directive, Hegseth’s evasiveness offered a strong inference: he would have pulled the trigger.
That kind of preemptive maneuver isn’t about law and order. It’s about eliminating accountability.
A Word on the Tenth Amendment — and Why It Matters Here
One thoughtful reader asked a great question: How exactly does the Tenth Amendment come into play in all this?
I appreciated the honesty in that comment, and I think it’s worth pausing here to explain it — especially in light of a federal court decision handed down just this week.
The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reserves to the states all powers not expressly given to the federal government. Among those powers is control over the state’s own National Guard, unless a specific federal justification (like insurrection or invasion) allows the president to take command of it.
In this case, President Trump federalized California’s National Guard under a narrow provision of Title 10, claiming a rebellion was underway in Los Angeles. But the situation on the ground — as even local officials made clear — involved protests, not rebellion.
And here’s where it gets especially significant.
Judge Charles Breyer issued a ruling in Newsom v. Trump (after I published my essay) asserting that the president’s order to deploy the National Guard violated the Tenth Amendment. Judge Breyer also considered the deployment a violation of the Tenth Amendment. You can read the full opinion here.
In his opinion, Judge Breyer wrote:
“The federal government’s action lacked the constitutional predicate necessary to override the Governor’s authority. The protests in Los Angeles, while intense, did not rise to the level of rebellion as contemplated by Article I or the Insurrection Act. The President’s premature federalization of California’s Guard deprived the state of a core aspect of its reserved police powers.”
In plain terms:
You cannot just call something a rebellion to justify military control.
If the Guard is federalized without a valid constitutional trigger, the state is unlawfully stripped of its ability to use its own forces — a clear Tenth Amendment violation.
This isn’t just a legal technicality. It’s the very mechanism that protects the balance of power between state and federal government, especially when it comes to law enforcement and civil protest.
The administration has appealed the order and oral arguments before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was held June 17. At the time of drafting this “Rest of the Story,” the appellate court has not issued their opinion, but according to reports on the hearing, the panel of three judges, by and through the questions posed to the state’s attorney, seemed “frosty” toward upholding the order. The judges pointed to an 1827 Supreme Court decision, Martin v. Mott, that gives the president exclusive authority to decide whether an exigency justifying the use of military power has arisen. After the state’s attorney pointed out that the underlying facts of the Mott case differ with the facts in the present situation (Bear in mind that the U.S. was at war with England, the war involving British troops invading the U.S. and burning the U.S. Capitol) one judge commented, “Those are maybe good arguments for the Supreme Court to reconsider those cases.” To us lawyers this comment typically means the appellate court will reverse the order of Judge Breyer for the state to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to sort out.
As is usually the case, sometimes the “rest of the story” keeps going!
The Role of the Press — and What Got Missed
I want to be clear: I do not believe mainstream journalists are intentionally misinforming the public. But I do believe that framing choices and a lack of timeline clarity have contributed to public confusion. Hence, why some readers had questions.
For instance, a Good Morning America report quoted Trump’s claim that “a lot of cars went up in smoke” and that LA would be “on fire” without the Guard. They followed it with a factual correction — noting that most fires occurred on Sunday and no buildings were torched — but failed to connect those fires to the arrival of the troops, nor did they challenge the implication that the military prevented worse destruction. The result? Viewers were left to connect the dots themselves — or worse, accept a misleading cause-effect narrative.
Likewise, an NPR host interviewing a Heritage Foundation fellow asked, “There weren’t any protests in LA until ICE agents went in — what do you say?” Framing the issue around the presence of protests rather than violence allowed the guest to argue that federal enforcement was being obstructed, and she is correct— when the real question was: Why send in troops before any widespread violence had occurred? Or, isn’t it true that the widespread violence didn’t occur until after the president announced deployment of troops to Los Angeles?
I can list more news reports that fail to connect the dots or pose soft questions lacking critical facts and dates.
Words matter. Framing matters. And silence on critical facts can sometimes be just as misleading as incorrect ones.
The Bigger Picture
We are living in a time when truth often struggles to breathe beneath a flood of selective perception. And that problem becomes more dangerous when leaders help shape the flood.
President Trump has long painted urban protests as lawless, immigrant neighborhoods as dangerous, and anyone opposing ICE raids as un-American. When he describes peaceful dissent as “rebellion” or cities as “war zones,” it gives license — to law enforcement, to supporters, and sometimes even to the military — to treat them as such.
That is not how democracy works. That is not how the First Amendment works.
Why This Matters
This follow-up isn’t about rehashing debate. It’s about finishing the story.
The military’s role in civil society should never be normalized. It should be rare, justified, and legally sound — not the product of campaign threats or public confusion.
We can — and must — ask more of our leaders. And yes, of our media too.
So now, with the rest of the story in hand, I’ll end where I began:
The real emergency in Los Angeles wasn’t in the streets. It was in the mindset that sent the troops there. What happened on Sunday could have been avoided if Trump followed the advise of those at the state and local level, who best know their citizens, that chaos will result if troops are deployed.
Steven Teske is a retired judge with a Masters in political science. He is a former adjunct law professor and currently teaches college course in criminal justice and business law. He has testified before Congress on four occasions and numerous state legislatures on law and policy.