Over on X, DataRepublican’s reporting on documents and recordings from the Democratic Socialists of America and allied networks lays out a calculated strategy for the run-up to the 2028 elections. The goal is sustained mass violence and street clashes designed to push President Donald Trump into invoking the Insurrection Act. Once invoked, Democratic governors and progressive organizations would treat the order itself as evidence of “fascism” and a reason to undermine federal authority.
Groups including the United Democracy Alliance, invoking Erica Chenoweth’s 3.5 percent rule, appear ready to coordinate the street actions, legal support, and media framing. Neville Roy Singham, operating from Shanghai and connected to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, is positioned to amplify the disruption from abroad.
The plan assumes Trump will choose immediate order over patience, and hand his opponents the optics they have prepared. Whether that assumption holds depends on the costs of each path.
Policing power in America is overwhelmingly local. The FBI fields about 13,700 special agents nationwide. The New York Police Department alone has more than 34,700 sworn officers. A president can protect federal property, personnel, and functions without becoming the default response for every city whose leaders have weakened policing and tolerated disorder. Broader federal action is also available. Both options carry consequences, and progressive networks are organized to contest either one.
One set of costs is political. Invoking the Insurrection Act and placing federalized National Guard or active-duty forces in law-enforcement roles inside Democratic cities would supply the “fascism” narrative. Local Democratic officials who have criticized aggressive policing and treated destructive unrest as legitimate expression would likely resist or litigate the deployment. That resistance would become part of the story.
The 1992 Los Angeles riots illustrate a different situation. After the Rodney King verdict, the LAPD initially pulled back. Democratic Mayor Tom Bradley requested help. Republican Gov. Pete Wilson activated the California National Guard. President George H.W. Bush then invoked the Insurrection Act. I was a National Guard captain then, leading patrols with live ammunition in the Crenshaw district. Residents thanked us. Visible force restored order with relatively few rounds fired. The local, state, and federal-level agreement mattered. But today’s Democratic mayors and governors are more likely to oppose federal assistance in restoring order, turning the deployment itself, not the violence, into the central political fact.
The alternative — limiting federal action to clear federal interests and leaving local order to the officials voters elected — also has costs. Residents of Democratic cities and states would live with the results of reduced policing capacity, progressive prosecutors, and a political culture that has treated sustained disorder as expression. Burning businesses, looting, and overstretched local police would be visible realities. That visibility could accelerate the ongoing migration of residents and businesses toward states that prioritize public safety.
Those effects are not cost-free. Destroyed property, disrupted commerce, injured officers and civilians, and longer-term damage to major cities affect people who did not vote for the governing approach, workers who commute in, and markets that still depend on those cities. Progressive media and political groups would work to reframe the disorder as the product of federal non-intervention or systemic factors rather than local choices.
Recent unrest in France offers a different kind of parallel. Cost-of-living protests were joined by organized groups that torched buildings, looted shops, and injured officers. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez later said police “lost control” in major cities despite large deployments. European governments have often hesitated to apply sustained force when violence can be framed as protest. The result has been prolonged disorder followed by recrimination. American leaders watching that record face a version of the same tension — how much disorder to accept before the practical price of inaction exceeds the political price of action.
The reported DSA-linked planning treats the Insurrection Act as a trap that works only if Trump walks into it on their timetable and terms. Refusing the invitation does not require ignoring anarchy. Accepting it does not guarantee a clean narrative win. Protecting federal interests while the consequences of progressive local governance stay localized is one coherent approach. Direct intervention to restore order, even against the wishes of the elected officials of the affected jurisdictions, is another. Both carry political, economic, and human costs.
The left’s apparent intent is to force the decision and then contest whichever path is chosen. How much disorder materializes, how local authorities respond or decline to respond, and how voters process the resulting images will shape the outcome. The planning is the warning.
Chuck DeVore is chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. He's the author of “The Crisis of the House Never United—A Novel of Early America.”