The Department of Wars, Drug Boats, Immigration, and Landscaping

When “mission creep” is the mission

Once upon a time, there was a presidential candidate who vowed that the “era of endless wars” was coming to an end. If you have a reasonably long attention span, you may remember that yourself because it was Donald Trump saying it last year. Actually, he’s been saying it for the past few years.

The “peace presidency” didn’t last long. Even ignoring Trump’s threats to invade Greenland, Canada, and Panama several months ago and the unsupported claim that he ended six or seven wars, the Trump Administration is now claiming that Trump is a "wartime president” in official social media posts.

Screenshot from Reuters Twitter post

The Trump Administration has attempted to rebrand the Defense Department as the Department of War, a strange move for a man angling for a Nobel Peace Prize. (In case you had any doubts, that ain’t happening.) The rebrand goes back to the old name for the military department, which was changed in 1949. Trump said the old name “had a stronger sound.”

The name change is so far not legal because it was enacted through an Executive Order. To be legitimate, Congress has to act, but that hasn’t stopped the Trump Administration from changing signs and websites, changes that will ultimately cost millions or billions of dollars. So much for cutting waste.

Two recent incidents, once just before the pretend name change and one just after, shed some light on the mentality of the Trump Administration. First came a military strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. Reuters reported that 11 people were killed when the US military attacked a boat that Trump claimed was operated by Tren de Aragua, which he claims is controlled by the Venezuelan government, on September 2. There are a lot of unanswered questions about the incident.

The Trump Administration has not presented evidence that drugs were on board the boat or cited any legal authority for the attack. The Administration claims the boat was a legitimate target because of the alleged connection between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government, but the US is not at war with Venezuela (although Tren de Aragua was designated a terrorist organization last February), there is no congressional authorization for military force against either the cartel or Venezuela, and there seems to have been no threat or attack on US forces by the boat’s crew.

There is also the question of whether the boat carried drugs at all. Eleven people on a small boat would not leave much room for a cargo of drugs, aside from which, the fentanyl that plagues American cities these days does not come through Venezuela. Further, in the past, the Navy and Coast Guard have intercepted and boarded smuggler boats rather than blowing them up.

An alternative theory put forth by a “former senior federal law enforcement official” who spoke to the New York Times. The anonymous official believes that the boat may have been involved in smuggling of another kind: humans.

“In all of my years of doing this,” the source said, “I’ve never seen the U.S. military say, ‘OK, this is a drug shipment,’ and then just blow it up.”

We will probably never know if boat was carrying drugs or not. The evidence is in pieces at the bottom of the ocean. That’s another good reason not to get trigger happy in law enforcement matters… unless destroying evidence is the point.

If the boat was legitimately carrying drugs (or at least the Trump Administration legitimately thinks that it was), the strike could be part of a new era of using the military against drug cartels. Trump, JD Vance, and Marco Rubio have all claimed the attack was ordered to send a message to drug cartels. Trump did campaign on using the military to attack drug gangs, likely after watching the movie adaptation of Tom Clancy’s “Clear and Present Danger” on television. (I’m pretty sure he’s not a reader.) The operation in that movie did not end well.

An additional motive for the Trump Administration might be to paint Venezuelans as a security threat so they can be deported under the Alien and Sedition Act. The Administration has invoked the Act in the past with some success at the Supreme Court, but they may feel that stoking hostilities would boost their case.

Immigration definitely plays a role in the second incident, which was one of the first things to happen after Trump ordered the DOD to cosplay as the War Department. In a Truth Social post that referenced the movie, “Apocalypse Now,” Trump threatened, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

Internet screenshot

So yeah, one of the president’s first acts for his new “War Department” was to threaten an American city. It is telling that the shift from “Defense” to “War” was marked by aiming the military inward at one of America’s largest cities.

When authoritarians tell you what they plan to do, believe them.

There is more detail in the post. The first line read, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning…” That line goes a long way towards explaining Trump’s motive in deploying the military to both Washington and Chicago, and presumably other cities as well. It’s about immigration.

In Washington, statistics show that immigration arrests have spiked since Trump federalized the Metropolitan Police Department and deployed the National Guard. Giving ICE a free rein may have been an ulterior motive in the occupation all along.

Maybe, if we are lucky, it’s just a war on immigrants.

But the law is different when it comes to Chicago. The president has more authority to control the District of Columbia, while laws like the Posse Comitatus Act limit the use of troops for law enforcement elsewhere. Further complicating a deployment to the Windy City is a recent ruling that Trump’s use of the National Guard in Los Angeles was unconstitutional.

Despite Trump Administration claims that they are refocusing the military on its primary mission, we are seeing the opposite. Under Pete Hegseth and Trump, there is lots of “mission creep,” a gradual shift in military objectives, and distraction on a variety of topics including being “anti-woke,” taking on civilian criminals, guarding federal property, immigration enforcement, and even picking up the trash and doing landscaping in Washington, DC. These hardly seem to be efficient uses of military resources that are intended to defend America and its allies from foreign aggression.

Of course, the benign nature of Trump’s domestic military deployments could change in short order. There is still a distinct possibility that he is looking for an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act for more heavy handed actions against homegrown political opponents in the name of handling emergencies.

Any number of Trump’s individual actions would constitute a red flag, but taken together, the warning indicators are flashing red all over our national cockpit display, and the emergency chimes are chirping away. The sheer number of alarms going off creates a sense of inevitability and resignation, but the key for Trump opponents is to not give up, but keep working to hold the Administration accountable. Prioritize and focus on issues where we can have an effect.

We don’t know exactly what Trump has in mind, but it’s likely that we will see more brazen attacks on drug cartels, including the possibility that American forces will be deployed inside countries that we aren’t at war with, a la “Clear and Present Danger.” We are also likely to see more federal encroachment into US cities and expansive use of emergency powers.

Yeah, that Nobel Peace Prize is not happening.

ANOTHER BAD JOBS REPORT: The August jobs report announced disappointing employment numbers. The 22,000 jobs created were about a third of what economists had expected. Unemployment increased to 4.3 percent, and the country reached a point where there are more unemployed workers than available jobs for the first time since the pandemic. It is likely that heads will roll at the BLS this week.

GEORGIA HYUNDAI RAID: ICE arrested hundreds of people at a Hyundai plant in southeast Georgia. Hyundai said that the detainees, who were mostly Korean, were not direct employees of the factory, but many were employed by subcontractors building the factory.. Trump and Gov. Kemp both claim to want to increase foreign investment, but unfriendly immigration policies, such as difficulty getting visas and the fear of having employees detained or harassed, will likely complicate that goal.

SEALS IN NORK: The NYT reported that a secret SEAL mission ordered by Trump in 2019 resulted in the killing of several North Korean fishermen. The SEALs were attempting to plant an electronic surveillance device when they were discovered by the fishermen. The Administration never notified Congress, which may have violated the law. The Times said that the sources for the article were concerned about the possibility of escalation if policymakers underestimated the risks of covert missions.

TRUMP WAS AN FBI INFORMANT, at least according to Mike Johnson, who said that Trump worked with the FBI to investigate Epstein. Law enforcement records show that Epstein’s victims reported his activities. Trump has variously claimed that he never worked with the FBI and that the Epstein files were a Democrat hoax, so choose your own adventure.

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Note: Corrected Iceland to Greenland