President Trump threatened federal troops for Baltimore on August 24, 2025, responding to 🦀Maryland Governor WMWes Moore's August 21 invitation to walk Baltimore streets in September, after Moore highlighted the city's 22% decrease in homicides and criticized performative National Guard deployments as ineffective political theater.

🌽Illinois Governor JPJB Pritzker held a defiant press conference on August 25, 2025, aboard a Chicago water taxi passing Trump Tower, telling Trump 'do not come to Chicago' and explicitly stating he was targeting Fox News and Newsmax coverage because 'I know he doesn't read but watches television.'

Trump federalized 2,000 🌴California National Guard troops in June 2025 without Governor Newsom's consent, citing 10 U.S.C. § 12406 (1903) rather than the well-known Insurrection Act to avoid political firestorm. Federal Judge Charles Breyer ruled this violated the statute, but the Ninth Circuit overturned using 'extremely deferential' review of presidential emergency claims.

🌴California Governor Gavin Newsom's support in 2028 Democratic primary polling surged from 5% in March to 19% in August 2025, according to Morning Consult, as his confrontational anti-Trump messaging and congressional redistricting campaigns resonated with Democratic voters rewarding aggressive resistance over collaboration.

Six Republican governors voluntarily sent over 1,200 National Guard troops to Washington 🏛️D.C. at Trump's request, with federal taxpayers funding the deployment while Trump simultaneously threatens to federalize Democratic governors' National Guards against their will. 🌴South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster confirmed 'the federal government will pay for the deployment.'

Trump deployed 700 Marines alongside National Guard troops in Los Angeles, using the untested 'protective power' constitutional theory claiming presidential authority to protect federal property and personnel. MGMajor General Scott Sherman testified that Trump officials questioned his 'loyalty to the country' when he objected to potentially illegal military requests.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was originally passed to end federal military enforcement of civil rights in the South during Reconstruction, demanded by Southern Democrats as the price for accepting Rutherford Hayes's disputed presidency. Trump's domestic troop deployments invert this historical precedent by using federal military power to suppress rather than protect constitutional rights.