Some good-government groups have made their first tangible move to align their cause with protesters nationwide — pressing for 10,000 allies to decry "the unthinkable" use of the military to quell demonstrations.
President Trump has ordered National Guard troops to begin withdrawing from the nation's capital, responding to the widespread condemnation of his use of force to drive protesters away from the White House and his threatening to have troops put down demonstrations in other cities. Some of the rebukes came from current and former military leaders.
But the organizers of the petition drive say it is important to galvanize sentiment against any return of the armed forces to the streets — which they say would trample democracy not only by violating protesters' free speech rights but also by shredding the balance of power.
"Our cities are not a 'battlespace' to be dominated by our military and our citizens' constitutional rights cannot be infringed upon for a photo op," says the petition, which calls on Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, to refuse any order "to turn the U.S. military against American citizens."
The groups started circulating their document online over the weekend, gathering 2,000 signatures as a week of protests against racial injustice and excessive policing spread across the country and were almost completely peaceful.
The groups backing the effort are the Renew Democracy Initiative, Protect Democracy, the Niskanen Center, Freedom House, Third Way, Stand Up Republic and the Lubetzky Family Foundation.
This week, the coalition will begin its digital media campaign to share the petition more widely and rally public support around this issue. The tentative goal is at least 10,000 signatures.
"The use of military might to quell peaceful protests is a tool of dictatorships like Russia or China that rule by terror and force," said RDI Chairman Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, adding that his organization will do "whatever it can to ensure that America sticks to rule of law."
Most notably, the troops had used chemical irritants and flash-bang grenades to clear peaceful protesters outside the White House for a photo opportunity by the president. National Guard helicopters flew low over demonstrators to scatter them and active-duty troops were summoned to just outside the capital.
On Sunday the president said the National Guard soldiers would withdraw "now that everything is under perfect control." But, he added on Twitter, "They will be going home, but can quickly return, if needed."
Claim: President Trump has the rights to invoke the Insurrection Act. Fact check: True
Bing Xiao, Medill School"I am mobilizing all federal and local resources, civilian and military, to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans."
"If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them."
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at a briefing June 1 that President Trump has the prerogative to invoke the Insurrection Act to resolve violent protests that broke out in support of George Floyd across the nation.
According to the definition from the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School, the Insurrection Actt, adopted in 1807, authorizes the president, at the request of a state government, to federalize the National Guard and to use the remainder of the Armed Forces to suppress an insurrection against that state's government. It further allows for the president to do the same in a state without the explicit consent of a state's government if it becomes impracticable to enforce federal laws through ordinary proceedings or if states are unable to safeguard its inhabitants' civil rights. However, the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the government from using military forces to act as a police force within U.S. borders.
Governors prefer relying on National Guardsmen to de-escalate the tensions.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he does not support invoking the Insurrection Act and using active-duty military forces to deal with the unrest in U.S. cities — a statement that puts him at odds with his boss.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.