New reporting based on a leaked briefing memo from a recent meeting between high-level officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Defense Department sparked fresh warnings on Saturday about the Trump administration’s internal plans to increase its domestic use of the U.S. military.
According to Greg Sargent of The New Republic, who obtained the memo, the document “suggests that Trump’s use of the military for domestic law enforcement on immigration could soon get worse.”
The “terrifying” memo—which the outlet recreated and published online with certain redactions that concealed operational and personnel details—”provides a glimpse into the thinking of top officials as they seek to involve the Defense Department more deeply in these domestic operations, and it has unnerved experts who believe it portends a frightening escalation.”
Circulated internally among top Trump officials, TNR reports the memo was authored by Philip Hegseth, the younger brother of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The younger sibling, though lesser known by the public than his controversial brother, currently serves as a senior adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acts as DHS liaison officer to the Pentagon.
“To Make America Safe Again, DHS and DoD will need to be in lockstep with each other, and I hope today sets the scene for where our partnership is headed,” states the memo, which also compares transnational criminal gangs and drug cartels to Al Qaeda.
Lindsay Cohn, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, was among the experts TNR spoke with who called that comparison particularly worrying. “The conflation of a low-level threat like transnational criminal organizations with Al Qaeda, which was actually attempting to topple the United States government, is a clear attempt to use excessive force for a purpose normally handled by civil authorities,” Cohn said.
Sociology professor Kim Lane Scheppele, a scholar who studies the rise of autocracy at Princeton University, was among those who raised alarm in response to the published reporting and the contents of the memo.
“Here it comes,” wrote Kim Lane Scheppele. “The worst we’ve been waiting for.”
Joseph Nunn, counsel for the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told TNR it was “disturbing to see DHS officials pressing the U.S. military to turn its focus inward even further.” Nunn added that the memo suggests that “military involvement in domestic civilian law enforcement” is set to become “more common” if the policy recommendations put forward by Phillip Hegseth take hold.
