On Friday, September 12th, President Trump announced that he would deploy the national guard in Memphis, Tennessee. This would be the fourth city that he has either deployed the national guard in or stated his intentions to (the others being Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.). Although this is an extremely popular action, there are unintended consequences that the Trump administration is overlooking. 

Trump is unapologetically a populist; the actions that he takes are meant to help the most people possible and he rarely cares if this breaks tradition. Additionally, he frequently ignores the precedent that his actions could set.

The first city where he deployed the national guard was Washington D.C. Although statistics show that the city was getting safer year after year, anecdotal stories show a different story. Any person who has been to Washington D.C. has witnessed rampant drug use on the street, and heard of violence that people have experienced while in the city. The final straw for the President was when a DOGE employee was beaten by five people while trying to protect a woman who was getting her car broken into; after that he deployed the national guard.

Since they have been deployed in D.C. the city has undoubtedly seen improvement. Murders are down and people are feeling safer in the city. Obviously, this is a benefit, as a nation we should strive for our capital to be a safe place where world leaders, as well as American citizens enjoy spending time. Additionally, Trump has every right to deploy the national guard in this city. D.C. does have their own local government, however, because of its status the federal government is allowed to step in and take control if there is an emergency. This was a good move by Trump, yet bringing it to the states is another issue.

The genius behind Trump is that safer cities are a nonpartisan issue. There is no American that would argue that they want cities to be more dangerous. Every politician is trying to find a way to make cities safer, and Trump deploying the national guard in D.C. did just that. He has a clear goal and now has precedent to prove that his way is effective. However, going into D.C. and states are not the same thing. 

When deploying the national guard into a state there is an infringement on state sovereignty. The executive is leap frogging the state and local governments taking matters into their own hands. This is not how the United States was set up to work. The United States was supposed to be a collection of states that band together because of shared social values: the belief in the American experiment. This move brings us closer to a group of states that are crushed by the federal rulemakers in Washington. The reason for the revolution was that we believed that we could govern ourselves better than a large federal government across the ocean; we are now seeing decisions that prove the federal government believes they would rule better than the local ones and they are forcefully enforcing this ideal. Overall, the federal government gets even larger with each move, and the states lose power.

For our experiment to work, states must have the power to do what they believe is right. This is a much slower process, but the outcomes are more positive for the nation as a whole. Each state becomes its own mini experiment where the people can decide on new legislation testing it for the rest of the country to watch. If that legislation is effective other states pick it up quickly and they are far more receptive to it. When the federal government forces legislation onto states, they will always fight it: no children follow the rules of overbearing parents. Additionally, state sovereignty allows the United States to be the most liveable country in the world. There are fifty different governments that all have different ideals where every person can find a place that fits them perfectly and still be a proud American. States push states to improve. Without state sovereignty America is not America and we cannot be the best country in the world if we lose this founding ideal.

Besides being antithetical to the founding ideals, expanding federal power has another major drawback: administrations change hands. Therefore, every time that an administration gives the federal government more power, they are giving more weapons for the other side to use when they inevitably get into office next. 

Following this line of reasoning to its worst conclusion, we get a country where every time a new party gets into power they deploy the national guard to silence their opposition. When Democratic leaders get into power they could flood red states with the national guard to halt dissent and when Republican leaders are in power they can use the national guard against blue states. This is a dangerous situation that puts us one step closer to losing our way of life and falling into tyranny.

One rule that political leaders should live by is “never make a sword so sharp that you would not want it used against you”. When the government gets larger and larger, they fast track means to get their agenda finished, but they also give those means to the opposition to use when they get into power. The “imperial president” was first created under Lydon Johnson when he started firing away executive orders to push his agenda. To this day, we have seen each president expand government more, using this new power to get their agenda done; the drawback is that the next one uses those same means to tear down what was done and do the opposite agenda- stunting America in this constant push pull. There will come a time when the power is so big that the federal government will not have restraints, any dissent they see within states will be swiftly cracked down on and it will hurt both sides: during conservative administrations blue states will be silenced and put on defense and the opposite will be seen when liberal administrations are on power. There will be an utter censorship of the side not holding power.  

Again, it is hard to be against this because we all want our cities to be safer. No one wants to walk out into their city and fear that they will not make it home that night. However, we need to trust the systems that we have. If leaders are not keeping their cities safe, then we have to trust that citizens will either leave their cities, causing leaders to react to this migration, or that the citizens will vote out the poor leadership and vote in officials that will actually protect them. If state leaders need more help making their cities safer and they ask for the national guard, then the federal government has the right to step in, but going over state leader’s heads creates a dangerous precedent.

We must trust the systems that brought our country to where it is today. The larger we make the federal government, the easier it is for a leader to step in and take absolute power. The last thing the American people want is a tyrant, however, it is irrational to trust that people will not be ambitious. Therefore, we have created a system that counteracts ambition with ambition: no single person in the United States should ever have all the tools to take absolute power. The larger we make the federal government the more we break this system down. We are setting precedents that give too many tools to the federal government. If this is allowed the United States could look very different from the place that we love as citizens.