Domestic deployment blues
The National Guard deployment to Memphis might be easy to ignore — don’t
Fifty-seven years ago, 4,000 National Guard troops were deployed to Memphis, Tennessee. They had been requested by the mayor in response to the sanitation workers’ strike, the same strike that brought Martin Luther King Jr. to town. King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel — now home to the National Civil Rights Museum — and Memphis’s role in the struggle for civil rights was cemented in the history books.
Now, the National Guard is coming to Memphis again.
Last week, after my local leaders in Chicago stalled the Trump administration’s plans to send National Guard troops here, the president announced a new target: my hometown.
This is not what Memphians asked for. County mayor Lee Harris called on the administration to send additional resources for law enforcement and gun violence prevention, not troops or “occupation.” It’s true — local law enforcement could use additional resources and support. For instance, the FBI field office was recently moved 200 miles away to Nashville.
That call, though, went unheeded. Instead of genuinely bolstering local law enforcement, the Trump administration chose boots on the ground.
One of a few tiny blue dots in an otherwise crimson state, Memphis, like Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Atlanta — the other cities where Trump has either sent in troops or threatened to — is a predominantly Black city with a Black mayor, large immigrant population, and large Latino community.
Tennessee also voted for Trump three times, in 2024 by 30 points. It has a Republican governor, two Republican senators, and all but of its members of the U.S. House are Republicans. There are Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature.
In this context, it would be all too easy to say that Tennesseans are getting what they voted for. Or that this deployment is somehow justified or not an abuse of power.
That is a dangerous mindset. And it’s wrong.
There are Americans deeply opposed to authoritarianism in all 50 states. Collectively, we must be willing to defend the rights and freedoms of all Americans — regardless of whom they voted for.
Governors, partisanship, and the National Guard
The biggest difference between Memphis and Chicago is partisan reality: Tennessee has a Republican governor willing to support, not resist, the deployment of troops. To his credit, Memphis mayor Paul Young opposed the deployment (which he only found out about from watching Trump on Fox News), but he’s also acknowledged the limits of his own authority — at this point, all he can do is try to mitigate the harm.
That makes the process for the White House much simpler in both political and legal terms.
Trump signed a largely — perhaps entirely — ceremonial executive order commanding Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to deploy the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis. Gov. Lee agreed to deploy the Guard, and the federal government is going to foot the bill.
Politically, this is a convenient out for the administration: Trump gets to save face for backing down in Chicago by flexing his muscles in a different largely Democratic city, and Gov. Lee and Sen. Marsha Blackburn — who appeared in the Oval Office for the signing of the order and is running in the GOP primary to replace Lee — get to prove their loyalty to Trump once again.
As an added bonus, Tennessee Republicans get the appearance of trying to do something about crime in Memphis without having to spend state resources or dig into real policy solutions.1
The losers, of course, will be Memphians; primarily the people of color and immigrants who are going to face the practical and security consequences of an increasingly militarized city — as we’ve seen in other cities. Expect checkpoints on city streets inhibiting free movement, reduced sales for local businesses, and potential physical harm (in Washington, for example, a military vehicle collided with a civilian car, injuring the driver).
The other loser of all this is our democracy.
Because this isn’t about Memphis and its crime rate. Just like in Los Angeles and Washington, the White House deploying soldiers on the streets is not a genuine effort to combat crime. This is a show of force meant to intimidate the president’s political adversaries and stifle protest, dissent, and opposition.
Trump is seizing on Memphis’s vulnerability to try to score a political win
Growing up, we would say Memphis is either the biggest small town or smallest big city in the country. At about a million people in the metro area, Memphis is a small city that isn’t particularly politically or economically significant. It’s not full of highly engaged politicos with large social media followings like Washington. It’s not the beacon of the American entertainment industry like Los Angeles.
Memphis is also a city that is self-conscious of the challenges it’s currently facing.
While things are starting to improve, crime (particularly gun violence) increased in the years during and immediately following the pandemic. Memories of 2023, with its near-record-high homicide rate — including, in the same week, the brutal abduction and murder of an elementary school teacher and a shooting spree that locked down the city and killed three — are still all too fresh in the city’s collective psyche. To make matters worse, people are moving away, and the city’s biggest employer has conducted waves of layoffs.
Instead of offering genuine support, Trump is capitalizing on Memphians’ fear of crime to normalize using the military against American citizens.
By picking a vulnerable target, Trump has positioned himself well politically. It’s harder to fight authoritarian overreach when it’s presented as a popular policy initiative, when the reaction from segments of the community isn’t outrage but openness. As Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks told NPR:
It continues to get Americans used to the idea that [putting troops in the streets of American cities is] a normal thing, and that as you go about your daily business, you should just get used to it, and that's the way it's going to be. And is that intimidating? Is that chilling to most ordinary people? It is to a lot of people.
At the same time, if Memphians respond with violence or disorder (which they emphatically should not), it will only benefit the administration, providing further justification to escalate and expand their efforts in Memphis and across the country.
A resilient community
During the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike, business leaders, faith leaders, and labor leaders — of different races, religions, and denominations — joined together to advocate for justice, care for the city’s most vulnerable, and prevent an escalation into violence and unrest.
Today the strike is remembered principally as the setting for Dr. King’s assassination — and his powerful last speech, “I’ve been to the mountaintop” (which is worth revisiting in these times). But it should also be remembered as a moment where the city came together through intense hardship to forge civic unity against divisions that felt intractable.
Clergy from across the city wrote an open letter, published in the city’s daily newspaper, “appeal[ing] to the conscience of our fellow citizens to express in their lives the ideals of justice and righteousness, love and peace.”
And business leaders worked tirelessly to meet with strikers and affected communities and lobby the mayor to resolve the crisis.
It’s a testament to all of those efforts that the city did not spiral out of control and into violence after King’s assassination. It’s not a stretch to say that the unity forged across class, racial, and religious differences — thanks to the business, labor, and interfaith efforts — was central to Memphis’s ability to weather the storm peacefully.
At times, though, those efforts must have felt hopeless. As Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi Dorothy Sanders Wells writes:
On the evening of April 4, Dr. King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
On the morning of April 5, the Dean of St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, the Very Rev. William Dimmick, picked up the Cathedral’s cross and led a procession of clergy and other citizens to Mayor Loeb’s office, where the group implored him to settle the strike.
Joe Orgill reflected that he and the other Episcopalian men who called on Mayor Henry Loeb “didn’t do anything.” The clergy and lay persons who marched to the Mayor’s office might have come away from that experience feeling that they, too, had accomplished nothing.
Perhaps, too often, we picture an objective, and we believe that we have accomplished nothing in spite of our best efforts when that specific objective isn’t realized. And, in doing so, we may miss the forest for the trees.
Five Episcopalian businessmen set out with a goal of putting out the proverbial fire around the Mayor’s stalemate with the sanitation workers.
On April 8, four days after King was assassinated, 42,000 people marched silently through the streets of Memphis.
On April 16, the city settled with the striking sanitation workers.
There’s a saying among Memphians, referencing our city’s geographic location in the state, that “when you’re bad, they put you in the corner.”
A half-century later, Memphis is still a generous city with a robust network of nonprofits, interfaith organizations, local activists, and civic-minded community leaders.
There’s a saying among Memphians, referencing our city’s geographic location in the state, that “when you’re bad, they put you in the corner.”
We’ve always felt that we’ve been on our own, that we couldn’t count on politicians in Nashville or Washington (or even our own city hall), and that we had to look out for each other. I think that’s why Memphis is regularly one of the cities with the highest per capita charitable giving — even as our city has some of the nation’s poorest ZIP codes.
Community leaders in Memphis and in cities across the country can prepare for the worst, strengthen their resolve, and find some wisdom in Memphis’s past. Unity is the key to resistance without escalation.
History has shown that all we really have is each other. When communities come together, justice prevails.
An under-the-radar effort to curtail civil society
Not all abuses are as blatant as troops in the streets. Jennifer Dresden has a report on a quiet, creeping, and bureaucratic effort to stifle dissent and hobble civil society: changes to the Department of Education’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
The intent is clear: The proposed changes would politicize the program, giving the secretary of education the ability to disqualify employers whose work is disfavored by the administration. Staff at a nonprofit that was barred from the program could not continue to work there if they wished to remain eligible for eventual loan forgiveness. This would drain nonprofits and other PSLF employers of talent, effectively squeezing and neutralizing civil society.
This would also have obvious chilling effects, even for organizations not already penalized. Organizations couldn’t know for sure if doing lawful work in service of their mission would run afoul of the administration’s politics and cause them to lose eligibility and therefore their staff. Individuals may also steer clear of working for organizations they worry could be targeted and look instead to work for organizations favored by the current government in order to remain eligible for loan forgiveness.
All told, the proposal would turn the PSLF into another way that the government could punish independent organizations whose work it simply doesn’t like. With no due process and political but vague criteria, it is one more way to close off civic space and quash dissent.
Read more.
What else we’re tracking:
The White House is poised to fire an important federal prosecutor because he apparently failed to fabricate a criminal case against NY Attorney General Letitia James.
Highly recommend this piece by The Ringer’s Brian Phillips on why surrendering is not just immoral — it’s bad business: The age of corporate capitulation won’t work.
Read Ben Raderstorf’s essay on the damage political violence does to democracy, how violent events like Charlie Kirk’s assassination have historically been used as the pretext to crack down, and how violence always benefits authoritarianism: Violence is toxic to democracy.
Vox’s Zack Beauchamp has an excellent and detailed explainer of what authoritarianism would look like in America — and what can be done to stop it. This is how Trump ends democracy.
The right wing is coming for Wikipedia. Listen to Protect Democracy’s Rachel Goodman on NPR’s On Point on how autocrats attempt to suppress facts.
Donald Trump’s eyebrow-raising lawsuit attempting to intimidate The New York Times was quickly dismissed. The court order, which is only four pages, is worth reading in full. I promise.
What you can do to help:
As you certainly are aware, Jimmy Kimmel was suspended because of jokes in his opening monologue Monday night. If you missed it yesterday, Genevieve Nadeau and Rachel Goodman have an excellent summary of why this sort of FCC censorship is so concerning: The FCC vs. the Constitution.
Part of why the FCC has so much leverage is the growing consolidation of media conglomerates. Per Anna Dorman:
Now more than ever it’s critical to do what you can to support local, public, and independent media. Here are two ways to help.
Support your local newsrooms. FindYourNews.org can help you locate trusted, independent, and nonprofit newsrooms in your area. Any one of them could use your support – and many of them have excellent thank you gifts.
Demand Congress protect independent media. Protect My Public Media has all the information to help you take action.
The Tennessee National Guard is operating under Title 32 or “hybrid” status. That means that Guard personnel are legally under state control, but the federal government is footing the bill. For more on the legal ins-and-outs of Guard deployments, check out this explainer on our website.
If the federal Government were really interested in helping to solve crime it would not be attacking anti-poverty programs. Instead of sending in troops, it would be supporting anti-crime and anti-poverty programs that have been successful in cities like Baltimore.
Thank you for your excellent article. Bringing National Guard troops who lack the experience needed in this situation is NOT a serious effort to solve the problems that city leaders and residents are facing in Memphis. It’s a thinly veiled threat to a Democratic city.