Pentagon readies 1,500 troops to possibly deploy to Minnesota, US media say

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-readies-1500-soldiers-possibly-deploy-minnesota-washington-post-reports-2026-01-18/

39•pera•3h ago

Comments

aebtebeten•2h ago

I've said elsewhere on HN that the military (here, specifically a battalion of the 11th airborne, presumably picked because they actually have cold weather gear?) could turn out to be a far more congenial occupier than ICE currently is.

Note the two verbs, adjective, and adverb: "deescalate", "protect", "legal", and "legally"; does ICE operate as professionally?

https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN35675-ATP_3-...

> U.S forces responding to planned rallies and demonstrations, spontaneous crowds, and civil disturbances must follow the procedures best designed to deescalate crowd actions and to protect life, the rights and safety of the persons involved, and property.

https://rdl.train.army.mil/catalog-ws/view/Army-Blue-Book/in...

> All Soldiers are required to obey the legal orders of their lawful seniors.

https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN34403-ADP_6-...

> Commanders are legally and ethically accountable for the decisions they make or do not make, and for the actions, accomplishments, and failures of their subordinates.

EDIT: elsewhere I'd asked if the Soldier's Manual still (post 2002) includes the duty to disobey manifestly unlawful orders. I now guess that it does, as this duty is explicitly described on p.22 of FM-1 "THE ARMY: A PRIMER TO OUR PROFESSION OF ARMS" (01 May 2025).

vjvjvjvjghv•1h ago

Probably not with the current leadership.

mrtksn•1h ago

AFAIK countries that turn totalitarian often end up having alternative force directly under the regime control because the military is very strict in following rules and often non-partisan due to its composition and claim of high moral ground.

To enforce an ideology you need people whom identity is based around the ideology, they need to be losers, goons who don't have anything else for them going on.

Therefore the proper military can indeed be an attempt to de-escalate the situation.

actionfromafar•1h ago

Could be but this administration is just trying out its new Dictator Shoes for the first time, so I wouldn't bet on it.

autoexec•1h ago

> Therefore the proper military can indeed be an attempt to de-escalate the situation.

Considering that our military swore an oath to the constitution and to defend the country against domestic threats the correct thing for them to do might instead be an escalation against that alternative force of losers operating in American cities. I wouldn't bet on the military occupiers marching into Minnesota upholding their oaths though.

sheikhnbake•31m ago

We need a new Smedley Butler

sheikhnbake•50m ago

Based on your reply, I suspect you've never served in the US military. The majority of the US military is comprised of the poor or persons who otherwise have nothing going for them. There's a lot of internal jokes about US servicemembers being uniformed criminals.

Further, under the current regime, you have to remember that military leadership and checks and balances has been systematically eroded for the last 12 months. Military leaders that would oppose trump are/have been removed or retired. Holsey is the latest/biggest example I can think of. Look what happened in Venezuela almost immediately after.

Also, recall the address Hegseth and Trump gave to the gathering of generals in Quantico. If you aren't an ideologue aligned with the administration, there is no place for you in the military. Which is to say that the time of the US military being non-partisan is over.

Lastly, I'd consider the kind of leadership Hegseth and Trump want leading that occupying unit. It's going to be somebody that will be receptive to their orders, legal or not.

crote•1h ago

On the other hand, it was only a couple of months ago when the Navy did a double tap to kill the survivors of their attack on an alleged "drug boat". Clearly the military isn't strictly following the whole "don't follow unlawful orders" any more.

But hey, perhaps things will be different when they are face-to-face with regular Americans who could've been their neighbors, instead of some anonymous pixels of foreigners on a computer screen.

GrowingSideways•1h ago

It's hard to think of an organization that has broken international law more consistently than the US Military.

hackable_sand•53m ago

The CIA, probably.

GrowingSideways•1h ago

I'd like fewer occupiers rather than more congenial ones, personally.

LightBug1•1h ago

I think the USA needs a coup like the rest of the banana republics.

I've heard some very decent Generals speak recently about an America I remember.

Need to exit Don the Long Con Man with a Pong stage left and deport him to Greenland.

embedding-shape•1h ago

Judging from the outside, many (most?) still believe in change through elections. It seems like Senate and House elections are happening in 2026, and seemingly people are waiting for those and hoping that this will trigger change, otherwise hold out to 2028 I suppose.

It seems like the administration been toying with the idea of cancelling both the upcoming 2026 elections, and the 2028, but how feasible that is, I don't know, as far as I know the US always have elections, even when at war, but then also lots of things that has happened had requirements and precedents that were never broken but still were, so not sure what will actually happen. I'm personally not super optimistic the administration won't at least try to stop them from happening.

dandanua•1h ago

And what to do with all of his supporters, which include the entire caste of billionaires, who control media and many other spheres of life, including the development of AGI?

krapp•44m ago

Something something Tree of Liberty something something blood of tyrants.

We could even create a ton of new jobs in the guillotine sector.

And if it means we destroy AI, modern media and most of the web, all the better.

I'm honestly struggling to see a downside here.

Traubenfuchs•1h ago

So the gameplan is provoking a civil war to declare a state of emergency before midterms?

tbossanova•1h ago

Good luck with that

tclancy•1h ago

A good rule of thumb coming out of this, if your country rebrands the military to the Department of War, it’s not to fight Johnny Foreigner. Who knew the capitalism loop of fighting wars for oil and then selling the lightly used weapons to our domestic police could come back to bite us in our collective GLP-1 thinned ass?

OgsyedIE•1h ago

Foucault, you mean?

dudefeliciano•1h ago

people who voted for Trump: do you still defend your choice? If yes, how?

bitlax•1h ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-readies-1500-soldi...

dudefeliciano•1h ago

are you trying to say that you like seeing military deployed to US cities?

bitlax•49m ago

austin-cheney•1h ago

I don’t think this will work the way the administration thinks it work. They can dictate where the military will deploy but they cannot dictate the conduct of the military once they arrive. In fact, this might prove to be extremely counterproductive to the authoritarian objectives the administration is hoping for.

autoexec•1h ago

Something tells me the military won't be joining the protesters

austin-cheney•51m ago

Why not? Serious question. The military cannot join law enforcement, Posse Comitatus, and protesters have a right to protest. The military can only take action to limit violence and property destruction. So what happens if law enforcement is the more violent party?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

sheikhnbake•8m ago

People keep citing law as if this administration has ever respected them. Realize that laws are just pieces of paper with words that are useless without enforcement.

The administration has systematically removed leadership in both the military and the DoJ that aren't ideologues. Case in point: SOUTHCOM

Further, internal DoJ and military checks and balances have been eviscerated for the last 12 months. Specifically military lawyers and inspectors general that are concerned with lawful conduct.

hairofadog•53m ago

The Secretary of Defense is a loyalist and will likely put people in charge of the operation who are on board with the mission to suppress protest.

There's also just the chaos angle. From the same New Yorker article I linked elsewhere in this thread, I thought this anecdote was nuts:

> In Los Angeles, for example, [in 1992] there was a situation where marines were accompanying police to a house where there was a domestic disturbance and the police officers said to “cover me” as they went into the house. “Cover” means something very different in the Marines, and they opened fire on the house. It was only by good fortune that no one was killed.

austin-cheney•46m ago

The people in charge of any such operation would be unit commanders, military officers, who have greater legal restrictions on their conduct than either the President or the SECWAR. Regardless of the orders upon them military commanders are obligated to follow the law and are provided legal representatives for clarity.

hairofadog•31m ago

I'm hopeful that'll be the case. But can SECDEF (it's still called the Department of Defense, regardless of stationery changes) hand-pick the unit commanders and military officers?

austin-cheney•27m ago

No. The closest they could get is hand picking a specific military unit, but there are limitations on even that.

hairofadog•20m ago

Thanks. I appreciate your comments in this thread.

sheikhnbake•11m ago

That's great on paper, but we saw what happened in international waters and Venezuela after the SOUTHCOM shake up

hairofadog•1h ago

Two interesting bits I've read/seen on this recently:

Can Trump Really Use the Insurrection Act?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/can-trump-really-use-...

> The other point that I want to make is that if the military were being deployed to try to bring ice under control, that would be one thing. That’s not the purpose. The purpose of deploying the military here would be to enable the violence and lawlessness that we’re seeing from ice. And so even if the military itself is not engaging in these kinds of destructive actions, it is there to insure that ice is able to do so. It would serve in that way as a force amplifier for ice.

And then a more optimistic take in which Jamelle Bouie talks about how difficult it would be for Trump to disrupt upcoming elections in any meaningful way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRV-9vO4Grs

expedition32•59m ago

They are only demonstrating against the ICE goons nobody is setting fire to buildings or lynching folks in the streets.

If ICE gets the fuck out everything returns to normal. But MAGA and their Repub fellow travellers want to burn down America and rebuild to their fascist ideology.

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