A President Against the Separation of Powers - Trump’s National Guard Deployment and America in a State of Emergency

What is unfolding these days in the United States is more than a political conflict - it is an open stress test for American democracy. Donald Trump has turned the National Guard into his domestic instrument of power, a tool of presidential demonstration that pushes the Constitution itself to its breaking points. While judges in Oregon and Illinois are trying to uphold the federal legal framework, armed units are already marching through American cities that the president himself describes as "training grounds" for the military. At its core, the issue is whether a president can deploy the National Guard against the explicit will of the states - and how far his powers as commander-in-chief actually reach. The boundary drawn by the Posse Comitatus Act for almost 150 years - the clear separation between military action and internal security - no longer seems binding for Trump. As early as September, he "federalized" California’s National Guard against the protest of Governor Gavin Newsom, placing it under federal command. Now the same soldiers are to be deployed in Oregon, even though a court in Portland has explicitly prohibited the deployment.

Legal scholars speak of an assault on the balance of powers. "What will happen when the president loses the lawsuits?" asks Alex Reinert of the Cardozo School of Law. "Will he use that as a pretext to act even more authoritarian?" The question is not rhetorical. Trump’s lawyer and chief strategist Stephen Miller has already publicly declared that a single federal judge has "no authority whatsoever" to prevent the commander-in-chief from "defending the United States." Words that echo the language of states of emergency - and reflect an attitude that sees the judiciary not as a check on power but as an obstacle.

The White House itself has also reacted with unusually sharp attacks on the decision of federal judge Karin Immergut, who temporarily halted Trump’s Portland deployment. In an official statement, it said that the judge had "endangered public safety" and "interfered with the work of the president." That a government attacks a sitting federal judge in this way marks a new level of conflict: the executive is no longer just questioning rulings but the legitimacy of the judiciary itself.

The legal confrontation intensifies with each passing day. Three states - Illinois, Oregon, and California - have filed lawsuits. In Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, soldiers are already on the streets, some carrying assault rifles, others stationed near protest zones. There are no official figures on the number or mission of the troops; the Department of Defense refers inquiries to the White House, while press secretary Karoline Leavitt insists that the deployments serve only to "restore safety in the cities."

But the justification hardly holds. By law, National Guard members, even when federalized, cannot take on police duties. They may not block roads, make arrests, or disperse demonstrations. The deployment is in truth largely symbolic - but politically explosive. Trump uses the military to project toughness, to make control over the state’s monopoly on force visible. William Banks, a constitutional law expert at Syracuse University, calls it a "display of power that generates more fear than order."

The historical comparison shows the dimension: when President John F. Kennedy deployed the National Guard in Alabama in 1963, it was to enforce a fundamental right - to end racial segregation at the University of Alabama. Trump’s deployment pursues the opposite: he seeks to discipline political opponents and circumvent court decisions. The purpose is not the protection of civil rights but the enforcement of his own claim to power.

Even more serious is that Trump is openly toying with the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act - an emergency law that allows the president to use the military even against the will of the states if uprisings or violations of law occur. "If people are being killed and courts are holding us up," he said on Monday, "then I will act." It is a sentence that turns the Constitution upside down: from the obligation to uphold the law becomes a pretext to bypass it. The logic behind it is dangerous. In practice, it would mean that the executive decides when the law no longer applies. The fact that Trump and war secretary Pete Hegseth view the National Guard’s domestic deployments as "training opportunities" for foreign operations reinforces the suspicion that this is no longer about security but about militarization at home. "What the military is trained to do is fight and destroy enemies," warns Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice. "The president wants American soldiers to practice that battle on American streets."

Amid this escalation, the White House has hardened its tone. It no longer speaks of "operations" but of "defense" - as if protesters were enemies, not citizens. Miller calls them "domestic terrorists." At the same time, judges who oppose Trump’s decisions are personally attacked. The rhetoric recalls that of authoritarian systems in which the judiciary is declared an enemy the moment it acts independently. Legal scholars warn of a threshold that the United States has not crossed since the Civil War. Should the government actually defy a court order, it would be an open constitutional crisis. "That is our last safety net," says Banks. "The independence of the courts is what keeps our democracy on the rails."

But Trump keeps testing that net further. With every court ruling he attacks and with every new troop movement he initiates, the boundary between government and the rule of law shifts. What is being sold as "protection of the cities" is already an attempt to rewrite the structure of power itself. In Washington, it is said that the president wants to make the National Guard "more effective." In reality, he is shaping it into a tool of intimidation - a reflection of his political self-concept: a president who tolerates no institution above him.

The legal proceedings will take weeks. But the political message is already clear: Trump governs in a mode of permanent emergency - and anyone who reminds him that power is divided becomes an enemy. What remains is a dangerous mix of symbolism, threats, and legal vacuum. The president who claims to protect the country is endangering exactly what holds it together: adherence to the law - and he is risking a civil war.