‘The Die Is Cast’ — My Latest Hot Type Column in Byline
In my Hot Type column for Byline Supplement, I try to make sense of a brutal week in American history
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As I sat down to write my weekly Hot Type column for Byline Supplement, I sent a message to intellectual historian Marci Shore and asked her what it signifies when a leader deploys the military on his own citizens. She wrote back: “Nothing good.”
As I was preparing the copy on Thursday, Dr. Emma Briant sent me a link to the video of Senator Alex Padilla being wrestled to the ground after asking Reality TV Fascist Kristi Noem a question.
I know Senator Padilla personally, as I know Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, so I wrote about my personal observations this week.
Here is that report:
I normally have boilerplate language here about supporting independent investigative reporting. Today, I am using this space to request a moment of silence for those assassinated and wounded in Minnesota.
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Below is an excerpt of today’s column in Byline Supplement:
Hot Type: The Die Is Cast
As Trump turns the military against US citizens in her home city of Los Angeles, American political correspondent Heidi Siegmund Cuda tries to make sense of a terrible week in the history of America
Julius Caesar stood on the banks of the Rubicon River contemplating the fate of his country and the world. The legions were expressly forbidden to return to the city of Rome for the Roman Senate knew very well that if they did, the Republic would lost.
Caesar is reputed to have uttered the words “the die is cast”, as he ordered his troops to make the crossing.
Ever since Caesar’s pivotal decision, mankind has understood that the deployment of a nation’s armies against its own people marks the end of that nation.
The United States has long maintained the fig leaf of distinguishing between the para-military National Guard, and the actual United States Military. Now that fig leaf is gone, and with it, goes the Republic.
A handful of California Democrats stand in the breach — I happen to know each of them personally.
Governor Gavin Newsom
When I worked as an investigative producer in broadcast news in Los Angeles, I often interviewed Gavin Newsom, who was then California’s Lieutenant Governor. He was always a seasoned political operative, able to navigate both sides of the aisle, while remaining firmly entrenched in Democratic policies. When Covid hit, Californians were well protected due to his sensible response. While much of the nation was under the spell of anti-science quacks, Newsom stayed the course and California’s economy is now the fourth largest in the world. Much of this got lost in the information war, where people like Elon Musk attempted to paint California as failing, but facts are facts.
Senator Alex Padilla
The first time I interviewed United States Senator Alex Padilla, he was a California State Senator. Hanging in his office in the San Fernando Valley behind his desk was a framed newspaper clipping. He told me it was about his father, who had been a short order cook at a popular LA diner for forty years. He told me his mother had worked as a housekeeper. After graduating from MIT and working as an engineer, he began his political career as a member of the LA City Council. As he told me his story, I felt grateful I lived in a state that cherished its immigrants, for I too, am a daughter of immigrants.
When I saw the video of Padilla being wrestled to the ground after being forcibly removed from one of so-called ‘Homeland Security Secretary’ Kristi Noem’s reality TV fascism press conferences, I felt visibly sickened. All Padilla did was ask a question, an attempt to puncture her stream of lies.
Mayor Karen Bass
I knew Karen Bass would make an excellent Los Angeles Mayor. I had been close with previous Mayor Richard Riordan and well acquainted with LA’s 41st Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. I also knew former LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, who used to appear regularly on a business series I hosted. No politician is perfect, but each in their way had LA’s best interests at heart.
I knew Bass — a former member of the California State Assembly and US House of Representatives — would be good at her job because she is both competent and compassionate. More importantly, she beat a billionaire businessman with close ties to Elon Musk to win the mayoral seat.
But as the Great Information War drags on, we are supposed to believe all bad things about Los Angeles and California. The decent are being painted as indecent because California stands in the way of Trump’s complete autocratic capture of the nation.
So California becomes a flash point.
Using the fascist playbook, Trump had to scare up an ‘other’ and chose an immigration crackdown to further his narrative war in his quest for power consolidation.
His administration's brutal tactics sparked protests in Los Angeles, prompting Trump to call up the National Guard and deploy US Marines despite the protests being largely peaceful. A ruling in a lawsuit brought by Newsom maintained that Trump must return control of the National Guard to the Governor, but Trump maintains temporary control on appeal.
When leaders turn the military on their own citizens, the die is then cast.
At an appearance on Tuesday in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Trump used his bully pulpit to viciously attack California leaders and senior Democrats, to an audience of carefully curated military members, who cheered him on.
“Trump's egregious abuse of the military to create political propaganda in this way is an insult to the many soldiers who respect and obey long-standing rules of military service,” Dr Emma Briant told Byline Supplement. “Their unequal treatment also raises an alarming question of the gendered and politically selective experiences of soldiers and it speaks to who is valued in Trump's military.”
Briant, who is Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Lucy Institute for Data and Society, said Trump’s “politicisation of the military will further erode trust in the institution even as he deploys soldiers to American streets.”
Jackie Singh, a US Army veteran and lead threat analyst for the Biden 2020 campaign, told Byline Supplement:
“James Madison warned us that a ‘standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.’
“To Madison and his peers, using the army against your own people was the ultimate red flag. It meant the Government had given up on leading with the people’s consent and was now resorting to violence to stay in power, which is the very definition of the tyranny they had fought the Revolutionary War to escape.”Hundreds of active-duty Marines have been deployed against civilians exercising their American right to protest ICE roundups of immigrants and the disappearances of people. Trump and his new reality TV sidekick Kristi Noem are painting the protestors as a violent mob, despite reports I’m receiving on the ground that they have been mostly peaceful, with the occasional agent provocateur mugging for the camera.
I don’t want to repeat the words that are being used to tarnish Newsom, Padilla, and Bass, because they have the ring of Russian propaganda, dark and brutal lies for dark and brutal objectives.
I can never unsee the video of a US Senator being forced to the ground.
It’s been a terrible week in American history. It’s hard to watch a democracy turn to tyranny.
Julius Caesar, by crossing the Rubicon, may not have intended to terminate the Republic, but surely, Trump does.
Special thank you to Dr. Emma Briant and Jackie Singh for their excellent commentary.
After the column was published, geopolitical analyst Dr. Michael MacKay got back to me with his comments on the week’s events. He believes the week’s events signify the end of the American experiment. Judging by reports on the ground from protests, the people are not having it and are mounting a full-throated resistance.
Here are his comments:
Trump deploying troops to Los Angeles and holding a military parade in Washington, D.C. are meant to be public demonstrations that personal loyalty to the leader has overtaken loyalty to the Constitution in the U.S. military. This is an essential feature of fascism, comparable to the SS in Nazi Germany that was personally loyal to Hitler or the NKVD in the Soviet Union that was personally loyal to Stalin.
I want to point out that in Ukraine, even during the height of EuroMaidan, Yanukovych never deployed the military in Kyiv. Yes, the Ukrainian military was corrupt in 2014 but it was never personally loyal to Yanukovych. It was never fascist as the U.S. military has become today.—Dr. Michael MacKay
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The above is excerpt of my Hot Type column, which was originally published Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Byline Supplement.
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