Keep your eye on Trump's attempts to use the National Guard to put down the protests in Los Angeles. Yesterday he praised the National Guard for doing this - but the 2,000 troops he ordered to the area haven't even arrived, and it's not clear to me that they're even en route!

Instead, it was Los Angeles Police Department and ICE agents involved in the fighting in the neighborhoods of Compton and Paramount.

I have long thought Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act to federalize the National Guard as protests against him grow - thus reducing the power of state governors to stop his actions. Instead, the directive signed by Mr. Trump on Saturday cites another law:

Department of Defense Security for the Protection of Department of Homeland Security Functions

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE                THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

The White House (www.whitehouse.gov)

This allows the president to control National Guard forces if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States", and use them "in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws.”

From what happened in Hong Kong and elsewhere, I'm not at all optimistic about violent street protests being able to stop an authoritarian regime. Instead, the regime thrives on violence, since that's a sphere where it has the upper hand. The regime will also try to tip nonviolent protests into becoming violent by using excessive force and/or propaganda that claims the protests are more dangerous than they actually are.

Here are 198 methods of nonviolent action compiled by Gene Sharp in his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action:

198 Methods of Nonviolent Action — AEI/ Empowering Humankind

AEI/ Empowering Humankind (www.aeinstein.org)

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