The militarization of American cities, including Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago, has brought home a perverse irony. Throughout the history of the United States, immigrants have come here to escape authoritarian governments. But, in the twenty-first century, it is Donald Trump’s crackdowns on immigration, and on the protests against them, that are giving him momentum in the direction of ersatz dictatorship. The President has also threatened to deploy troops in more cities, such as San Francisco, Baltimore, and New York, against the will of the states’ governors.

At the nation’s founding, James Madison warned that “a standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” because of the temptation to turn soldiers into “instruments of tyranny a

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