Soldiers with the California National Guard and Marines form a line outside the North Los Angeles Federal Building during a “No Kings” protest in response to a series of ICE raids, in the city on June 14.

The stage is set for one hot summer on America’s streets.

Last week’s U.S. Court of Appeals hearing on whether President Trump exceeded his authority — first, by unilaterally calling up thousands of California’s National Guard troops to restore order in roughly six city blocks of Los Angeles and then by deploying hundreds of active-duty Marines specializing in urban warfare — was jaw-dropping.

A Trump administration attorney argued before the court that his boss has the unreviewable power to call up the guard, not only as he has already done in the Golden State, but simultaneously in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. And to deploy, alongside these guard members, unlimited numbers of active-duty armed forces, such as the Marines, whose primary mission Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly pledged will focus on “lethality, warfighting and readiness.”

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The court signing off on this shocking authoritarian overreach was paired with Trump’s recent comments suggesting that Los Angeles is just the beginning (“We are going to have troops everywhere”), and Hegseth’s belligerent refusal in last week’s Senate oversight hearing to answer the simple question of whether or not he had given the order authorizing “live ammunition” (one might, reasonably, assume the answer is “yes”).

Outrage over the court’s sanctioning of Trump’s military deployments was quickly overwhelmed by his bombing of Iran. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement has continued its provocations in Los Angeles — including the apparent racial profiling and arrest of a U.S. citizen on her way to........

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