Police officers and National Guard troops face off with protesters outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025, amid protests over immigration raids.

President Donald J. Trump’s decision to deploy troops against American citizens marks a dangerous escalation not just of the confrontation between protesters and the government in Los Angeles, but of Mr. Trump’s testing of the limits of presidential power.

This is not about law and order, as Mr. Trump would like people to believe. What violence there has been in Los Angeles can and should be dealt with by state and local authorities — as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass have said.

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Rather, this possibly illegal authoritarian show of force by Mr. Trump is the culmination of his long history of threatening to unleash troops on American soil, particularly in the nation’s Democratic-leaning cities, going back to the nationwide........

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