There is an old one-liner that goes something like this: What is the secret to a great joke? Timing!’ The punchline, of course, is ruined because there is no pause between the question and the answer. A good joke, in fact, almost everything, depends on timing. And the confluence of events across the country right now has created almost surreal.
On one side of the country, Los Angeles, ICE, the National Guard and the Marines are enforcing the President’s orders to round up anyone who might appear to be undocumented for questioning, detention or deportation. It appears to be an open-ended engagement.
In Washington, it was a full-scale parade featuring tanks, helicopters, flyovers, a full array of 21st century weaponry and more than 6,000 soldiers. It was all to honor the Army’s 250th anniversary, an anniversary that weirdly, coincidentally fell on the president’s 79th birthday.
Though a military parade has long been thought the propagandists’ tool—North Korea, Russia and China have them regularly—this time around, a near unanimous congressional Republican party has swooned over this celebration despite an estimated price tag of $43 million. But critics see things differently, labeling it a dangerous lean into authoritarianism.
It may be too soon to affix the authoritarianism label on the president’s wishes, said University of Denver political scientist, Phil Chen. But, he said, it is also difficult to absolutely rule it out. “When we think about authoritarianism, we think unchecked executive power.” The DU academic said that in some ways the inference could be made about this period in time. Not only is the parade a symbol of the drift, said Chen, but the move also is reflected by the administration’s continued efforts to ignore judicial rulings.
A week ago in Los Angeles, a several block section of the city was rocked by violence following a series of ICE raids on local businesses suspected of employing undocumented immigrants. Among targeted businesses were a garment factory and car wash.
While local authorities responded to the violence, levels of which have been handled before, the president, in a nearly unprecedented way, ordered both the National Guard and Marines to occupy the embattled area. While calling in the National Guard is ordinarily the province of the state governor in times of crisis, including natural disasters, Trump exercised a statute not used in sixty years to call in both the Guard and Marines. California Governor Gavin Newsome immediately filed a lawsuit against the president saying the action was “unlawful, unconstitutional and undemocratic.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, along with 19 state attorneys general, joined in the brief.
The president does have the authority to call in the National Guard and military, but only in a time of invasion to repel an adversarial force. “There is no invasion to repel, no rebellion to suppress” and state and local law enforcement is fully able to handle the situation, say the attorneys general.
Weiser, also now a Democratic candidate for Colorado governor, said Trump’s actions are illegal. The president, he said, “can’t just make up an emergency out of thin air.” Trump’s decision to mobilize the Guard and Marines, Weiser said, “violates our laws and Constitution and undermines the liberties we hold dear as Americans.”
While the situation in Los Angeles has seen sporadic outbursts of violence resulting in the arrest of protestors and a city mandated 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew, police, sheriffs and Highway Patrol personnel, without a need to call on federal troops, seemed to be in control. At the same time, ICE continued making arrests. In one television news video, ICE agents were seen chasing a single farmworker across a strawberry field.
While news video of clashes between protestors and authorities, arrests at garment factories and car washes—and, of course, the ICE farm field chase—played out, it was a news conference last Thursday that captured the news cycle.
California Senator Alex Padilla crashed Homeland Security Kristy Noem’s news conference to ask a question. Before he could ask, he was rushed by Noem’s security team and forcibly removed from the event. Once outside the doors, he was pushed to the floor and handcuffed.
While Noem defended the action, saying Padilla had “lunged” toward her and failed to identify himself, the video dispelled her characterization. Padilla, who is also the son of immigrants, did identify himself as a United States Senator.
The past weekend also reflected a very dark and erratic mood of the nation. In Minnesota, one state legislator—along with her husband—was fatally shot and another legislator was seriously wounded.
Meanwhile in Washington, the president finally got his long-desired wish for a parade, something he has wanted since viewing France’s Bastille Day parade during his first term. “We’re going to celebrate our country for a change,” Trump said.
At the same time, his ordering of the Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests and round up as many undocumented immigrants as possible, is in line with his campaign promise of ‘mass deportations.’
But in more than 2,000 cities and towns across the country, including Denver, it was a celebration of the First Amendment and free speech.
“No Kings” rallies, celebrations of our constitutional right to protest and, at the same time, take dead aim at this president’s stated desire to scrub the country of the people who’ve come to this country to do the jobs Americans are unwilling to do.
The ‘summer of ’25,’ will be remembered in different ways by the left and right, said DU’s Chen. The right will celebrate with a parade, detentions and deportations. The left, said Chen, will focus their energy on November 2026.
“What it is left with are elections,” he said. If, as the left sees things, the first two years of the second Trump presidency have seen untenable drifts toward perceived autocracy, they can vote Republicans out. If successful, he said, they can work to bolster the courts to ensure or, at least, attempt to return their rightful authority.
