The American military is not supposed to intervene in domestic politics. This is the long-standing norm governing U.S. civil-military relations. The Constitution asserts civilian control over the military, divided between the executive and legislative branches, as a means of preventing the military from becoming a partisan force of domestic oppression.

President Donald Trump has destabilized this arrangement more than any president in recent memory. He has imposed National Guard forces on unwilling governors and mayors on the dubious grounds that American cities are more violent than battlefields in Afghanistan. He has invoked laws designed to limit the domestic use of the military—the Insurrection Act, for example—for the opposite purpose. And he has openly encouraged military partisansh

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