Senate Republicans to Trump: Sic the Military on L.A.

Plus: A tale of two broken promises.

(Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

AS JVL NOTED SUNDAY NIGHT, it’s possible that we’ve entered one of the most dangerous weeks in recent American history. That sense of threat has a lot to do with the president’s eagerness to use the military against U.S. citizens. Yesterday, the Trump administration mobilized a battalion of 700 Marines stationed at Twentynine Palms, California, after giving them instructions over the weekend to assume “prepared to deploy status should they be necessary to augment and support the DoD’s protection of federal property and personnel efforts.” Trump also activated the National Guard, the first time a president has done so in opposition to the will of a governor since the civil rights movement.

Before making my way into the Capitol on Monday—lawmakers don’t hold votes until the evening on the first day of the week—I sought out some Republican senators to ask them for their thoughts on the president’s actions. Were they concerned about this sudden and dramatic escalation? Did the specter of the military clamping down on U.S. citizens as they protested strike some concern within them? Nope and. . . nope. The ones who spoke with me actually seemed eager to see American troops occupy America’s second-largest city.

“I think he needs to restore order,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “I’m mainly concerned about public safety and the president has clearly got authority in his federal capacity to deal with the National Guard. So, plenty of precedent.”

“I don’t think that the president had any choice,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “These weren’t just protests—these were riots. And it was clear that the governor and the mayor—the mayor’s idea of containment was to give them a hug and a cup of hot cocoa. And the president did what he had to do.”

As for whether he was okay with the Marines being deployed as well, Kennedy told me bluntly, “If they’re needed, yeah.”

“I don’t think they’ll do it unless it’s legal,” he added. “But if it’s necessary to contain the riots, yeah. We need to send whatever we have to end [the riots].”

Frankly, it’s hard to imagine an action of Trump’s that Kennedy and other Republicans would object to or not find “legal.” Kennedy’s words suggest as much: If the administration is doing it, it must be legal. You can’t come much closer to saying “the administration cannot do wrong” without just saying it.

The closest thing to criticism over Trump’s use of the guard and military in L.A. I heard from a Republican lawmaker was a comment from Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). The chairman of the Armed Services Committee told me, “I was encouraged to hear that the mayor stated that the city and the federal government are now working collaboratively, and I think that’s the way it should be.”

Except, Wicker seems to not be aware of what’s actually happening. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass actually called the administration’s activation of National Guardsmen “a chaotic escalation,” adding in a later press conference:

Let’s be real about this: This is about another agenda. It’s not about public safety. There is clearly no plan, and I want the people of Los Angeles to know that we stand with all Angelenos no matter where you were born.

There might not be a plan, but there is a longstanding desire. Trump has fantasized about using the military against citizens for much of his political career. In the summer of 2020, he was eager to deploy U.S. soldiers against civilians protesting in various cities across the United States, according to former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

“I lived through that, and I saw over the summer of 2020 where President Trump and those around him wanted to use the National Guard in various capacities in cities such as Chicago and Portland and Seattle,” Esper said in a 2024 interview. “But my sense is his inclination is to use the military in these situations, whereas my view is that’s a bad role for the military,” Esper said. “It should only be law enforcement taking those actions.”¹

“I think President Trump has learned, the key is getting people around you who will do your bidding, who will not push back, who will implement what you want to do,” Esper added. “And I think he’s talked about that, his acolytes have talked about that, and I think loyalty will be the first litmus test.”

This is all in keeping with Trump’s inhumane—but mostly unimplemented—ideas about how to better secure the southern border from migrants, which have included building moats filled with alligators and snakes and shooting migrants in the legs.

These desires from the president are, at this point, well known. What wasn’t entirely clear was how Republican senators would respond to them when they were put into action. We’re getting our first taste of that now and it’s distressing.

ACIP on his shoulder

As soon as Donald Trump began nominating talk show hosts, cranks, and other ne’er-do-wells to cabinet positions, some Republican senators began positioning themselves as “undecided” about confirmation. They did so in order to secure commitments and extract concessions from the nominees in exchange for yes votes. This was meant, in part, to keep their reputations as level-headed institutionalists intact. But it also turned out to be a giant confidence game: One by one, each of those senators has been made a fool.

As I reported in last Thursday’s Press Pass, Pete Hegseth’s promise to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) that he would appoint a senior official with a portfolio dedicated to sexual assault prevention remains unfulfilled. FBI Director Kash Patel faced a much easier path to confirmation than Hegseth did, but when it comes to his own commitments—to not politicize or weaponize the FBI, mainly—the man appears to have thrown down a reverse card.

On Monday, we saw the latest example of this trend when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. retired the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. This breaks a promise Kennedy made to the Senate GOP’s top health care whiz, Bill Cassidy (R-La.), while seeking Cassidy’s vote for confirmation.

When Cassidy finally gave in and announced his support for Kennedy during a February floor speech, he said exactly what that promise was (emphasis mine):

For context, before entering politics, before ever thinking running for political office, I practiced medicine for 30 years in a public hospital for the uninsured. Caring for those who otherwise would not have been able to afford the access to the care that I provided. After seeing patients die from vaccine preventable diseases, I dedicated much of my time to vaccine research and immunization programs. Personally witnessing the safety monitoring, and the effectiveness of immunization. But simply, vaccines save lives. . . .

He has also committed that he would work within the current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems, and not establish parallel systems. If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.

Upon arriving in the Senate Monday evening, Cassidy attempted to explain away what just happened. Shortly before facing a crowd of reporters, he posted on social media that “Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion. I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

When he met the press, he said Kennedy’s commitment to preserve ACIP was actually about refraining from “changing the process, not the committee itself.” Because when you say “maintain the [committee] without changes,” as Cassidy put it in his speech, everyone knows what you mean is “the committee can be changed; it’s the processes of the committee that must be maintained.”

For Cassidy and other senators who “secured commitments” from screwball nominees, there are only a few possible explanations for what happened.

• The lawmakers are not very bright and got duped.

• The lawmakers simply wanted a pretext for voting “yes” on these nominees, and these commitments were the part of the serious reputation–saving strategy.

Either way, it’s not a great look. Both Ernst and Cassidy are up for re-election in 2026, and they face much greater risks in the Republican primaries than the general elections. Voting in favor of all of Trump’s nominees was a practical political necessity for them. Voting against any of them would have earned them the scorn of the base and could have caused a backlash among GOP organizers and donors with the power to make their primaries uncomfortable, as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) complained about late last year.

Though Tillis sounded the alarm about this in December, he quickly got himself on board: The paragon of sensible moderation² among GOP senators ended up shepherding Patel through much of his confirmation process. It turns out that decision hasn’t slowed any momentum for a primary challenge. Tillis did, however, avoid a censure at the North Carolina GOP state convention over the weekend. Ernst and Cassidy should be so lucky.

What’s in your wallet

Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) made a bold promise on May 6 that he would put all of his personal financial holdings into a blind trust and introduce legislation to make stock trading illegal for members of Congress. Starting three days later, Bresnahan went on a trading spree. Over a one-week period, he made 54 more stock transactions for a total value that could be as high as $810,000, according to a newly disclosed filing.

“Members of Congress should not be allowed to profit off the information they are entrusted with—this is a belief I have held since before taking office, and this belief has not changed,” Bresnahan said in his May 6 statement. “I have never traded my own stocks, but I want to guarantee accountability to my constituents. That is why I am working with House Ethics to begin the process of enacting a blind trust. I want the people I represent to trust that I am in Congress to serve them, and them alone.”

Bresnahan’s claim that he’s never traded his own stocks is the brighter side of a half truth. He’s stressed that he is not making the trades because a financial manager is making them on his behalf. However, that doesn’t mean he’s unaware of what is happening. Putting his holdings into a blind trust is an easy solution that would help him avoid obvious conflicts of interests, which are all too common on Capitol Hill. But if he’s really going to do that, it seems Bresnahan is intent on taking his time with it.

Both parties’ leaders in the House have endorsed a ban on trading for lawmakers, but little action has been taken on the issue. While they wait on themselves, Bresnahan and others might as well continue to cash in on the TACO gold rush.

1. Esper’s view accords with U.S. law: the Posse Commitatus Act bars the use of American servicemembers for domestic law enforcement except when “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress,” which is one reason Republicans have described the unrest in L.A. in terms of “rebellion” and “insurrection.”

2. I use this term lightly.