“Alarming”: Trump’s Threat of Troops in Cities Just Got Much Scarier

The Defense Secretary surely will throw this letter in the garbage. But, as hopeless as the prospects for real congressional oversight look right now, Democrats should make it absolutely clear that if they capture the House (and the Senate) in next year’s midterm elections, it will mean relentless scrutiny of every aspect of Trump’s corrupt abuses of the military toward domestic political ends.

“It’s particularly alarming the way Trump is merging Homeland Security and DoD into his personal domestic police force,” Smith told me. “If Democrats take back the House, we will exercise aggressive oversight to stop him from taking over the military and using it for domestic enforcement.”

The letter from Smith and Reed also asks Defense Secretary Hegseth about a July 21 meeting that apparently took place between top DHS and Pentagon officials. As TNR reported, the DHS memo in question laid out the view of top DHS officials that the senior military leadership must be persuaded to get much more serious about their involvement in operations within the country, particularly on immigration.