President Donald Trump waves while meeting with members of law enforcement, including National Guard soldiers, in Washington on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025. | Jacquelyn Martin / AP
Not since the days of Hitler’s S.A.—the “Brownshirt” stormtroopers—has a leader in an advanced capitalist country wielded a private political army outside the regular military and police forces that is answerable only to them. But if a new scheme hatched by President Donald Trump and his top adviser Stephen Miller comes to fruition, that may be exactly what the MAGA mogul will have.
A new executive order signed by Trump on Monday grabbed headlines for its creation of special “law and order” National Guard units that can be called out by the president and the Defense Secretary without having to go through state governors—who by law are the commanders of the Guard—for the purpose of “quelling domestic disturbances.”
The move is raising serious questions about legality, the separation of powers, and civil liberties, but another part of the same executive order potentially poses even more dangerous possibilities.
It authorizes a Trump-created task force to start recruiting civilian volunteers “with law enforcement or other relevant backgrounds and experience” to work alongside established federal law enforcement entities to carry out Trump’s orders in places he designates as facing a “crime emergency.”
D.C. was first on that list and would see the initial deployments of both the Trump-controlled National Guard units and the private MAGA army. His executive order explicitly says, however, that these troops could be sent “whenever the circumstances necessitate” to “other cities where public safety and order has been lost.”
It will be at the president’s sole discretion to make the call as to when the order has been lost. Chicago stands as the likely second target for this new vigilante unit.
‘Maybe we like a dictator’
It can be expected that the private Trump army will be flooded with “volunteers” from the ranks of the president’s political base. Ex-cops, former soldiers, and others eager to help round up immigrants and repress Trump’s political opponents and the people’s movements will likely be among the first to sign up.
Members of groups like the white supremacist Proud Boys and others who played the role of shock troops during Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt will have a new outlet for their violent propensities.
The order mandates the Miller-led task force, along with Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice, to “immediately create and begin training, manning, hiring, and equipping” this “specialized unit.” There are no indications where the funding will come from, but recruitment is to start immediately via the creation of an online application and intake portal.
The establishment of such a private armed body outside regular law enforcement channels—along with the takeover of the National Guard under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—takes the U.S. further down the road toward fascism.
After signing the orders Monday, Trump himself injected the idea of a dictatorship into public conversation. Purportedly responding to those opposed to his actions, Trump claimed he’s not a dictator but said that Americans may actually like to have one. “They [critics] say: ‘We don’t need him. Freedom, freedom, he’s a dictator, he’s a dictator,” Trump told the television cameras. But, he then alleged, “a lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’”
It is not the first time Trump has dismissed criticism of his dictatorial moves while also signaling his interest in unlimited power. In December 2023, while running for another term, he said he would not be a dictator “except for Day 1.” He later said he was being sarcastic but that “a lot of people” liked the idea of him being dictator, and he regularly muses about running for a third term, even though it’s unconstitutional.
There is nothing sarcastic about Monday’s executive orders, though. They carry the country headlong down the road toward the establishment of a presidential dictatorship.
A poll from earlier this year showed that many Americans could already see what was coming. Conducted in February and March 2025, an Axios poll showed 52% of people in the U.S. saw Trump as “a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.”
Almost half a year later—after the deportation blitzkrieg, the damaging trade war, the undermining of the courts, the gerrymandering of electoral districts, the campaign to destroy all labor laws, the military occupations of L.A. and D.C., and now these newest executive actions—certainly even more people would agree.
Monday’s executive orders also take other steps to strengthen executive branch control over D.C., presumably previewing what is planned for other Black- and progressive-led cities across the country.
The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is empowered to investigate “non-compliance with crime-prevention and safety requirements” by the District of Columbia Housing Authority or HUD housing landlords and to call out the police to deal with them. This sets the stage for an assault on the residents in public and subsidized housing, who are overwhelmingly poor and working-class people of color.
Similarly, the door is opened to a crackdown on those who rely on public transit in D.C., with the Secretary of Transportation given power to “take appropriate remedial action” if crime is determined to be an issue on trains or buses. As with other parts of the order, determining when crime is a problem is the sole prerogative of the executive branch.
The National Park Service is ordered to hire more U.S. Park Police officers to patrol the parks and presumably kick out any unhoused people looking for a place to rest or demonstrators looking for a place to protest.
It’s a ramping up of militarism in all areas of public life.
Democracy in danger
Taken as a whole, the executive order creates a double-sided framework for unrestricted presidential control over “law and order” nationwide: Hegseth’s federalized National Guard and Trump’s private MAGA army. Using the fake excuse of a crime emergency, it lays the foundation for domestic military operations throughout the United States.
The takeover of the Guard violates the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which made it illegal to use federal troops for policing purposes except in times of a complete breakdown of local or state governments. None of the cities on Trump’s hit list—not Los Angeles, not D.C., not Chicago—face such a situation. This is purely a power grab with dangerous consequences.
As for Miller’s civilian volunteers, they are nothing more than a presidential paramilitary that can be deployed at will wherever Trump wants to assert control or silence dissent.
The current Republican-dominated Congress is, of course, no bulwark against what’s happening; under Speaker Mike Johnson, it is an accomplice. Despite that, the House and Senate must be bombarded with messages of opposition from the public.
The courts are one outlet to challenge these actions, but even there, MAGA control has already extended far and wide, including to the Supreme Court.
The midterm elections of 2026 stand out as the first chance to establish a legislative beachhead against Trump, but U.S. democracy—already so compromised—may not make it until then. It’s time for action now.
On Aug. 28, there will be a March on Wall Street to demand economic justice. On Labor Day, there will be hundreds of protests around the country. The people and labor movements have to participate in them all.
The danger to democracy is undeniable, but its further decline is not inevitable. If ever there was a time that demanded a united front against fascism, that time is now.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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