“They Never Warned Mayor Johnson — And Now the Panic Is Setting In” says Victor Davis Hanson

The Theater of the Absurd: When Law Becomes a Litigation Strategy

We are witnessing a peculiar, almost comedic ritual in the twilight of the American Republic. It is a spectacle where everyone drapes themselves in the flag and the Constitution while actively dismantling the very foundations of a functional state. The recent skirmish over the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant President Trump an emergency green light for deploying federalized National Guard troops into Chicago is not just a legal footnote. It is a glaring indictment of a system that has replaced governance with a hollowed-out theater of procedural roadblocks and selective morality.

The facts, stripped of the predictable media spin, reveal a startling collapse of shared reality. In early October 2025, the administration invoked 10 USC Section 12406, a statute designed for moments when the “regular forces” are unable to execute federal law. The claim was straightforward, if grim: federal immigration officers in Chicago were facing systematic resistance, assaults, and the destruction of property. In response, the President federalized units from Illinois and Texas to restore a semblance of order.

Naturally, the political machinery of Illinois pivoted instantly to the courts. A district court blocked the move, the Seventh Circuit froze the deployment, and now the Supreme Court has signaled a temporary “pause.” The legal hair-splitting centers on whether “regular forces” refers exclusively to the U.S. Military or includes civilian federal law enforcement. If it means the former, the administration is trapped in a statutory cage where the military can only act in the rarest of circumstances—circumstances the court claims haven’t been met.

The Hypocrisy of “Emergency” Scruples

What is truly nauseating about this episode is the sudden, convenient rediscovery of “constitutional restraint” by the very people who spent the last few years treating the Bill of Rights like a mere suggestion. We have just emerged from an era where executive orders shuttered churches, decimated small businesses, and mandated medical procedures with the stroke of a pen. During those “emergencies,” the same activists and judges now weeping over the Posse Comitatus tradition were remarkably silent about federal overreach.

When power is used to redistribute wealth or micromanage social behavior, it is hailed as “bold governance.” But the moment that same power is used to ensure a border is respected or a federal building isn’t besieged, it is rebranded as “repression.” This asymmetry is not a misunderstanding of the law; it is a weaponization of it. The critics are not defending Chicago’s record—which is objectively a shambles of non-enforcement—they are defending the right of a political enclave to nullify federal law whenever it suits their ideological agenda.

The Myth of Good Faith

The American Founders built this system on an assumption that has proved to be tragically naive in the 21st century: the assumption of good faith. They imagined a world where, despite intense political friction, all parties remained committed to the basic execution of the law. They did not envision a scenario where local officials would effectively hold federal property hostage by refusing to provide security, and then sue the federal government for trying to provide its own.

By insisting on “procedural purity” while federal officers are being assaulted, the courts are essentially subsidizing disorder. This is governance by injunction. It creates a reality where law is no longer a set of binding rules, but a series of negotiations. If a city government disagrees with a federal policy, they simply create a “zone of de facto non-enforcement” and dare the executive branch to navigate a decade of litigation to fix it. This isn’t federalism; it’s a slow-motion insurrection led by bureaucrats.

The Danger of a “Safe” Paralysis

The majority of the Court may feel they are being wise by pressing pause, but they are merely deferring a reckoning. The dissenters—Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch—correctly identify the danger: paralysis. We are creating a system where the Executive is held responsible for the safety of the nation but denied the tools to ensure it.

History is littered with republics that died not because of a sudden coup, but because they became incapable of performing the basic functions of a state. When uniform troops enforcing civilian order becomes a “shocking” sight, but a city where federal law is a dead letter is considered “normal,” the scales are dangerously tilted. We are being asked to accept a military solution to problems that local police claim they can manage, yet clearly cannot—or will not—handle.

The obsession with the “normalization” of military posture is a red herring used to distract from the normalization of anarchy. If the federal government cannot protect its own personnel without a three-year court battle, then the “center” hasn’t just failed to hold; it has vanished.

A Republic of Slogans

Ultimately, this case exposes the grim truth that we no longer have a shared understanding of what a “Republic” even is. One side views any assertion of federal order as a precursor to a security state. The other views the refusal to enforce the law as a betrayal of the social contract. Both are right in their fears, but only one side is currently using the legal system to ensure that nothing ever gets done.

The tragedy of the “stress test” that is the Trump presidency is that it reveals the institutions are failing. The courts are ill-suited to manage street-level operational realities, yet they have become the ultimate arbiters of them. This ensures that authority moves sideways into a gray mist of delay and ambiguity.

We are quietly conceding that our civilian institutions are too broken, too politicized, and too cowardly to impose authority. If we continue to treat enforcement as an ideological act rather than a baseline requirement for civilization, we shouldn’t be surprised when the “limits” we argue about today become entirely irrelevant tomorrow. A state that cannot enforce its own laws will eventually cease to be a state, no matter how many “emergency motions” are filed to preserve the illusion.