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President Trump takes on the Judiciary
From Supreme Court rulings on deportations and birthright citizenship to federal troop deployments in Los Angeles, the courts are becoming ground zero for challenges to executive authority. Emily Bazelon tells Ian Bremmer that the judiciary can’t save American democracy alone—and with Congress sidelined and the DOJ increasingly politicized, checks and balances are wearing thin. “The judges cannot save the country from an authoritarian president… by themselves."
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
President Trump has launched a revolution. Will it succeed?
President Donald Trump calls himself a revolutionary—and I actually agree with him. His second term has ushered in sweeping attempts to expand executive power and defang oversight institutions. Congress has rolled over. The DOJ? Under pressure. The only remaining institutional check appears to be the courts—especially the lower ones. So far, federal judges across the country, including some Trump appointees, have pushed back on illegal overreach. As has the Supreme Court on some high profile immigration and trade cases. But what happens when Trump gets tired of losing in court?
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
Israel strikes Iran: Could the US and Gulf States be pulled in?
Tensions in the Middle East escalate as Israel launches a surprise military strike against Iran, prompting international concern and speculation about broader conflict.
In his latest Quick Take, Ian Bremmer calls Israel’s strike on Iran “a huge success for the Israelis” and a significant blow to Iran’s regional influence. “A fair amount of Iran’s top military leadership has been decapitated by Israel,” he notes. While the US did not take part directly, Ian says President Donald Trump “gave at very least, a blinking yellow light, if not a direct green.” He warns of three high-risk responses Iran may pursue: a push for nuclear weapons, disruption of oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, or a harsh domestic crackdown. All are high-risk and carry the potential to draw the US and Gulf states into deeper conflict.
Was it legal for Trump to deploy federal troops to Los Angeles?
In this clip from a larger interview for the latest episode of GZERO World, New York Times Magazine staff writer and Yale Law School fellow Emily Bazelon sits down with Ian Bremmer to unpack President Trump’s unprecedented decision to send National Guard troops and US Marines into Los Angeles without the governor’s consent. She argues the administration may have intentionally provoked the unrest through targeted immigration raids in the Latino neighborhoods of a densely populated city.
As California Governor Gavin Newsom sues the federal government, Bazelon makes clear that legal recourse may be limited. Even if Newsom wins, she says, Trump could comply with consultation requirements after the fact and proceed as planned. “The judges cannot save the country from an authoritarian president... by themselves,” Bazelon warns.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
Iranian policemen monitor an area near a residential complex that is damaged in Israeli attacks in Tehran, Iran, on June 13, 2025.
The world on edge: Israel bombs Iran
Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities Thursday night, causing “significant damage” at the country’s main enrichment plant, killing leading Iranian military figures and nuclear scientists, and sparking fears that the Middle East is on the verge of a wider war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday morning the operation hasn’t ended, with strikes continuing into the afternoon.
The United States denied any involvement in the attacks, even though previous reports have suggested that Israeli Defense Forces couldn’t destroy Tehran’s nuclear facilities without Washington’s help. US President Donald Trump nonetheless used the opportunity to press Iran into making a deal – the US and Iran were supposed to hold talks in Oman on Sunday, but it’s now unclear whether Iranian officials will attend.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pledged a “harsh” response, but their ability to respond has been hindered by Israeli strikes on Iran’s long-range missile facilities and air defenses. The IDF reported on Friday morning that Iran launched 100 drones into Israel, but there were no reports of significant damage.
The strikes mark a seminal moment for Netanyahu. The Israeli leader has long threatened bombing Iran, as he sees this as the only effective method of preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon – he doesn’t believe the US nuclear talks can achieve this. Netanyahu never followed through with this threat when former US President Barack Obama was negotiating a nuclear deal with Tehran a decade ago. This time is different: Netanyahu believes Iran is weak – many of their allies in the Middle East are either severely diminished or in exile – so he took his chance.
The strikes went much further than last year’s exchanges, in which Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria and Iran responded with a volley of 300 drones and missiles at Israel, which inflicted little visible damage.
Israel’s strikes yesterday didn’t come totally out of the blue. US and European officials warned earlier in the week that Israel was preparing a strike. Washington also evacuated nonessential staff from its embassy in Baghdad, as well as family members of military personnel at its Middle East bases, amid concerns about a widening conflict.
Where does it go from here? We asked Eurasia Group’s Middle East expert Firas Maksad to shed some light on a complex and dangerous situation. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Q: How will Iran respond, and what can it do now that some of its military capabilities have been damaged?
- Maksad: “It has to respond forcefully, if only to save face with a domestic audience, which is important for regime stability, but also to have leverage if there is any return to negotiations further down the road. However, its ability to reach Israel and effect significant damage is fairly limited. Its other options – including closure of the Straits of Hormuz, impacting oil prices or attacks against American basing facilities or even energy facilities in the GCC – those are all options that can backfire and provide the United States with enough pretext and reason to join the war.”
Q: Who, if anyone, can help Iran respond?
- Maksad: “Iran will naturally look towards its proxy network in the region in pursuit of its forward defense strategy, essentially having Hezbollah, but also the Houthis and the militias in Iraq, to come to its aid in a response. However, [the ability of these groups to respond] has been greatly diminished as a result of the past 18 months or so of war.”
Q: Will Israel attack more?
- Maksad: “The Israelis have said that this is only the beginning, the opening salvo of a long and sustained military campaign. I believe that to be the case. They can, in fact, inflict significant damage against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. However, that will require multiple waves of strikes for days and weeks to come, and so I suspect that this will be with us for quite some time.”
Q: Are there any hopes left for a US-Iran nuclear deal?
- Maksad: “Diplomacy is dead for the foreseeable future. It is very unlikely that the Iranian government will return to the negotiating table without at least having attempted a retaliatory strike first, for the purposes of saving face and gathering leverage. This will require some time, particularly as these Israeli strikes are ongoing, and so it is very unlikely, despite President Trump's call for Iran to come back to diplomacy, that the diplomatic off ramp will be Iran’s preferred path forward for weeks to come.”
We also asked Eurasia Group’s Director of Analysis Marc Gustafson whether the United States could be dragged into a regional war.
- Gustafson: “Trump will try to avoid getting involved. Not just because it is risky for the US military, but also because his campaign promise has been to get the US out of foreign wars. This message resonates with his base. That said, the US could get pulled into the conflict. [For example,] if Iran starts attacking US bases within range of Iran’s short-range missiles, Trump will be under considerable pressure to respond militarily.”
A tank on display at a park in Washington, D.C., on June 12, 2025, two days ahead of a military parade commemorating the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary and coinciding with President Donald Trump's 79th birthday.
What We’re Watching: Trump’s parade prompts protests, Kenya protests turn deadly, Mongolia picks new leader
Trump’s military parade sparks backlash
The official reason for this weekend’s military parade in Washington DC is to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the US Army – but the occasion also just happens to fall on President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday. That coincidence has raised alarm among Trump critics worried about his perceived authoritarian inklings. Hundreds of “No Kings” protests are planned across the country for the same day. Meanwhile, the courts are still trying to decide whether Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles was legal. The decision will set an important precedent for Trump’s handling of protests going forward.
Protests erupts in Kenya after blogger dies in custody
Protests erupted in Nairobi, Kenya, this week over the death of a 31-year-old political blogger in police custody. Albert Ojwang was arrested last week on charges of criticizing the country’s deputy police chief. While police originally claimed that his death was caused by self-inflicted injuries – authorities said he hit “his head against a cell wall” – doctors later determined that it was more likely the result of an assault. Ojwang’s death has only added to the population’s long-held anger at Kenya’s security services.
Mongolia gets a new prime minister
After protests toppled his predecessor ten days ago, Zandanshatar Gombojav became Mongolia’s new prime minister on Thursday in a near-unanimous parliamentary vote. The former head of Mongolia’s largest bank takes power amid political unrest over the belief that the country's rich mineral wealth has only lined the pockets of the elite. He says his first priority is to increase taxes on luxury consumption, but also to decrease government spending. Let’s see if he can get the protesters onside.8 thoughts on Trump’s Los Angeles crackdown
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump activated 2,000 members of the California National Guard to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation efforts in Los Angeles, after small but highly visible demonstrations had popped up across the city in the days prior – with some instances of violence, opportunistic looting, and property damage. California Governor Gavin Newsom disputed that federal intervention was necessary and condemned Trump’s deployment decision as illegal and inflammatory, blaming it for stoking the protests.
Though the protests had largely petered out by then, on Tuesday the president dispatched an additional 2,000-plus National Guard troops and 700 active-duty Marines to the area. Downtown LA had a quiet night on the back of a curfew, but anti-ICE (and, more broadly, anti-Trump) demonstrations have started to spread to other major cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, and Atlanta, with more planned in Las Vegas, Minneapolis, San Antonio, and Seattle. Texas Governor Greg Abbot has already called in the National Guard ahead of any potential unrest in his state.
Here are my eight key takeaways:
- Trump’s decision to send federal troops into Los Angeles was extreme. It marked the first time in 60 years that the National Guard had been deployed to a US state without the consent of its governor. The last such instance was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the Alabama Guard in defiance of Governor George Wallace, one of the nation’s leading segregationists, to protect civil rights demonstrators led by Martin Luther King Jr. from violence. Needless to say, federal supremacy over states’ rights is being asserted in a very different context, by a very different president, and in service of a very different goal today.
- It’s legal – for now. Trump’s deployment pushes the envelope politically, but as long as the troops limit their role to protecting federal personnel and facilities while refraining from taking law-enforcement actions (as they reportedly have thus far), it will stay within the bounds of presidential authority. That’s a key legal distinction, as the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act bars active-duty forces from engaging in domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the 1807 Insurrection Act. That’s a step Trump hasn’t taken (yet at least), suggesting that he still sees as high a bar for it as he did during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
- The door is open to a more radical use of emergency powers. The counterpoint is that Trump referred to the LA protesters as a “violent insurrectionist mob” (he does know a little something about those) and on Tuesday refused to take the invocation of the Insurrection Act off the table. He also warned that any protesters at this weekend’s military parade in Washington, DC – peaceful or not – “will be met with very big force,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hinted at a desire to use military forces on domestic soil more extensively going forward. This pattern suggests that Trump’s threshold for activating emergency powers or using troops against Americans is lower than last time around, when he was repeatedly talked out of extreme steps by institutionalist advisors. I wouldn’t be shocked if the administration invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (aka IEEPA, the same law it used to levy reciprocal tariffs on Liberation Day) to freeze the assets of individual American citizens and organizations it accused of aiding and abetting “foreign invaders” (aka undocumented aliens). Or if it used the Communications Act to pressure internet platforms into throttling protest-related content. These scenarios may sound far-fetched, but so did the unilateral deployment of the National Guard and Marine Corps to Los Angeles less than 200 days into the first year of the Trump presidency. In his second term, Trump has proven willing to push the legal and political limits of executive power, against precedent and despite long odds of success.
- Trump’s LA deployment was designed to score political points, not restore peace. The City of Los Angeles was unaffected by the protests, which were confined to a handful of downtown city blocks. The Los Angeles Police Department had things under control (at least until Trump escalated the situation), and local officials saw no reason to request federal help. In fact, they warned that adding federal troops to the mix would risk heightening tensions and endanger public safety. But Trump wasn’t trying to solve a security problem – he was playing politics.
- Trump is eager to pick public fights over immigration. This is the one issue area where the president has had consistently positive approval ratings, save for a brief dip underwater caused by the administration’s mishandling of the Abrego Garcia case. For Trump, the political upside of doubling down on the migrant crackdown is twofold. First, it shifts attention toward his biggest strength and away from headlines that are more problematic for the administration, such as his failure to secure trade deals, his inability to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and his messy breakup with Elon Musk. Second, it forces Democrats into defending politically unsympathetic targets and positions, much like they did with Abrego Garcia (before the White House overplayed its hand) and Harvard University.
- The optics of the LA protests play straight into Trump’s hands. Images of burning Waymos and protestors flying Mexican flags lend credence to the White House’s false claim that undocumented immigrants are dangerous foreign invaders and their defenders are radical anti-American traitors, allowing the president to discredit opponents of mass deportations as threats to public order and safety. That only a small number of troublemakers were illegal aliens doesn’t matter; Trump is betting (correctly, in my view) those visuals will drive public opinion away from the demonstrators and toward more aggressive deportation policies.
- More deportations are coming. Trump has made measurable progress in curbing illegal border crossings, but so far, deportations have fallen far short of his campaign pledge (and even of deportations during Joe Biden’s last year in office). That’s not surprising; large-scale interior removals are much more politically, economically, and logistically fraught than border enforcement. But according to the Wall Street Journal, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller recently ordered ICE to step up its game, demanding that they stop targeting migrants with criminal records, asylum requests, and court petitions and instead “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens” at their jobs and schools. In other words, snag anyone who looks illegal, no probable cause (let alone warrant) needed. That approach was reportedly what sparked the LA protests last week. The backlash was instrumental to Miller’s goals: by signaling that Trump is making good on his deportation promise, standoffs with law enforcement can make deportations more popular and give Trump the political capital to ramp up more visible and disruptive workplace and neighborhood raids, particularly in Democratic-run cities. These operations will trigger more protests, which will in turn be met with more repression and stepped-up enforcement, and so on.
- On immigration, don’t bet on TACO. Trump faces fewer internal constraints in implementing his policy agenda on immigration than in any other area. Unless and until it starts dragging on his approval ratings, he is likely to double down: more aggressive raids, more confrontations with Democratic governors and mayors, more troop deployments to quell public protests. Mass deportations will disrupt local life in places like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. Backlash to aggressive enforcement tactics, family separations, and mistaken detentions will be the primary source of domestic unrest in the coming months, but Trump won’t back down. This is a fight the White House is happy to fight.
Trump's deployment of troops to Los Angeles was less about taking control of the streets and more about taking control of the narrative. The strategy is confrontational by design, with immigrants and Democrats as foils and civil unrest as a feature, not a bug. This playbook may work politically. But in the long term, the result will be more conflict: between cities and Washington, between red and blue, between civilians and the military, and between competing visions of American identity. The most politically divided and dysfunctional industrialized nation will only become more so.
Abomination
Trump tells Elon to say it to his face. #PUPPETREGIME
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