This might be one area where our layered system of government is an advantage, though, because State governments have real power that is separate from the Federal Government. The Founders valued this, too: the 10th Amendment in the Bill of Rights explicitly says that any power not explicitly delegated to the Federal government belongs to the States (and to the people).
So even this President, who aims to rule as a dictator, can't exercise every power unless the States roll over and let him. And say what you will about Newsom and his pivot to the Right, but he will not roll over for Trump, nor will other Democratic governors.
Other democracies devolved into Dictatorship because the dictator effectively captured all the levera of government. Here, that is extremely hard. Even after capturing Congress and (mostly) the Supreme Court, he still doesnt have it all.
That is a lot harder to do, within the bounds of the law at least.
Ironically, though, California is one of a small handful of states that allow for recall elections of all elected office holders, up to and including the Governor. Recall that Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governer there due to a recall election. So if his goal is to start ejecting Governors he doesn't like, California is a good place to start.
But Newsom has already survived one recall attempt, and since he seems to be the Next One Up for Democrats to nominate in 2028, Trump may not be eager to run a recall campaign that might lose, because Newsom will remind everyone that he "beat Trump" on the campaign trail. (And there is no guarantee that Musk won't start tossing money at Newsom, who is enough of a schemer to accept it.)
Walz hit a nerve when he called them all weird. Because they are! We don't need to double down on memes, but we do need to explain, in simple terms, why Trumpism is so awful.
And I don't say "simple" because people are dumb, I say it because people are busy and don't always have time to think things through.
I'd love it if you were right, and this is what breaks Trump's stranglehold on the electorate. but the advantage Trump and his friends have is that they have no shame, and lie with impunity. Those lies are attractive. Even now, I am reading that Trump released a statement saying that the troops are quelling the unrest in LA, while the Mayor says no troops have arrived. Which do you think folks in the Conservative Cinematic Universe believe?
It's hard to break these folks out of their bubble when the side pushing the bubble can lie without consequences. Their opposition has the burden of logical consistency to overcome.
The pattern I see is that most on "the right" here will not be able to break out of their disinformation bubble unless it affects them personally. So only the small portion who have seen someone they know ("one of the good ones") harassed by ICE will respond.
I mean, this is technically exactly that, albeit in a much more limited scope.
The last time this was invoked was in 1965, during civil rights demonstrations in Alabama. But the Federal Government sent in the troops to protect the demonstrators from their local police.
They are under the direction of each state's governor, but could be mobilized into duty by the President under specific circumstances. In fact, many units were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan during those conflicts.
It's unclear, though, whether the President has any ability to direct troops from one state to conduct activities in another. That may require the governor's of both states to actually do the mobilization. However, there are a bunch of Republican states who would be happy exchanging troops to help arrest brown people.
Passport cards should be trivially easy for government officials to validate, if they care to. Border agents can, after all. Simply confiscating them and saying "they're fake" shows they don't care whether it is fake or not.
If you have any melanin at all, you should carry your passport card with you at all times, but also keep your full passport at home, in a location that your family and/or trusted friends know about, so they can produce it when ICE comes for you and confiscates your passport card.
Remember, his cronies have already uploaded every department's data to Starlink, which I believe is directly compromised by Russia (as well as other foreign actors). Imagine the chaos that Russia can do here if they start weaponizing all those SSNs....
Each country sets their own laws, so it's ultimately up to the destination country. When an ordinary citizen visits another country, they have to meet requirements for entry, but countries can negotiate any terms their government allows them to. So as long as the US government works out terms with the other country in aadvance, they can send anyone.
The US government does have an advantage other countries lack: we have military bases all over the world, including a lot of "shithole countries". There are separate agreements negotiated over the use of that land, but I bet that the US can send whoever they want there without declaring to fhe local authorities who they are. Then the US can "conveniently" lose track of them and.... poof! No more undesirables....
There is an important and subtle distinction to be made here. A lot of noise is made calling people who are here without authorization "illegals", but that's not always true. Being present in the country without authorization is not automatically a criminal matter. It is true that many of the avenues for being here without authorization (crossing illegally, overstaying a visa) also violate the law, but that is handled as a separate matter.
Since immigration status is mostly a civil matter, ot a criminal one, these immigration courts are not under the Judicial Branch, like criminal courts are. They are actually "administrative courts" which are part of the Department of Justice, under the President, just like ICE is.
So while the courts occasionally provide a check on this Predident's power, the immigration courts never will. They ultimately report to the President through the DoJ, and the President has much more direct influence over it. So it doesn't surprise me that these people are stuck in a Kafkaesque hell, where ICE ignore their pleas that they are citizens and says "tell it to the judge", and when they finally get to the judge they get ignored.
Is it any wonder that Trump was so dead set against the immigration bill last year? He needed the process to stay chaotic, in order to have a better chance of winning.
But if I remember from back in the day, the DMCA doesn't have any exception for that. This is why CD ripping was legal, while DVD ripping was not. It had nothing to do with fair use or backups, but rather that DVDs have encryption, and CDs do not. Circumventing that encryption for any reason was illegal.
I don't think it has changed, but it's been a hot minute since the Cypherpunks all wore DeCSS T-Shirts....
NYT has some video of some troops guarding the "Metropolitan Detention Center", so we have proof of at least the seven troops pictured.