President Donald Trump consistently asserts that the United States is engaged in war.

Over recent weeks, the U.S. military has conducted strikes against drug vessels at sea, resulting in casualties, as part of a campaign. According to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, these strikes were authorized by President Trump, who has declared that the nation is at war with drug cartels. Describing the attacks as both “violent” and “amazing,” the President hinted that more strikes would follow, including against domestic targets.

These latest drone attacks were preceded by statements from the President asserting that a “war from within” is occurring domestically, potentially justifying sending the National Guard to American cities.

The maritime strikes and the domestic militarization of our nation are part of a broader strategy that, until now, has primarily been advanced under the guise of crime prevention. The President is now escalating this assault by claiming authorities typically available only during wartime. His apparent readiness to use the U.S. armed forces domestically suggests that his “war from within” perspective should be taken literally and seriously, urging intensified efforts to protect our democracy.

By declaring that the U.S. is in an ongoing non-international armed conflict with cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), the President has assumed the powers to kill, indefinitely detain, and search, seize, or surveil individuals he deems affiliated with those cartels. 

In the administration’s own words, this is .

However, the truth is that no non-international armed conflict—no war—exists between the United States and any of the cartels designated as FTOs, let alone all of them. The factual evidence simply fails to meet the legal requirements for the existence of such an armed conflict. All these actions have been undertaken under the flimsiest of pretexts and are inconsistent with the law.

On the domestic front, the militarization of our communities has unfolded with alarming speed. The National Guard and the Marines have been dispatched to city streets to confront Americans. For months, images and videos have documented the militarization of immigration enforcement—featuring masked individuals, wearing camouflage, and equipped like soldiers—allegedly targeting undocumented immigrants (and American citizens). In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security has also applied the logic and tactics of assaulting a military objective to a residential building—raiding it without a warrant, breaking down numerous apartment doors, and detaining men, women, and children forcibly removed from their homes.

Collectively, these actions represent an alarming escalation of Trump’s abuse of military resources and wartime powers—rationalized under a false narrative that intentionally conflates migration, crime, drug smuggling, and war—which should be a concern for all.

Within days of asserting that the U.S. faces a “war from within,” Trump deployed the military into the streets of two more American cities—Chicago and Portland—marking the fourth and fifth such deployments in four months.

Our recent history helps illustrate what is at stake when the President seizes the tools of war. Following the tragic events of 9/11, President George W. Bush claimed sweeping wartime powers to surveil, detain without trial, and even attack suspected terrorists on U.S. soil, broadly defining enemies as anyone “part of or substantially supporting” non-state adversaries. President Trump has now invoked these same wartime powers against cartels, having already overseen the killing of individuals on boats in the Caribbean and the detention of survivors as “unlawful combatants.” If the War on Terror’s logic is applied to Trump’s cartel war, then the 800,000 migrants who recently traversed the Darien Gap—a route used by both smugglers and asylum seekers—could be deemed “part of” cartels and subjected to military attack or indefinite detention on U.S. soil.

Moreover, Trump has now asserted the existence of domestic enemies, directing the tools of war against immigrants in targeted cities and those who support them.

I predict it will only be a matter of time before this authoritarian reach expands to a larger segment of Americans. The question now is not whether this President will continue expanding and using his fabricated war powers both outside and within the U.S., but whether Congress, the courts, and the American people will stop him before the “war from within” becomes the pretext for the entrenchment of a long-feared authoritarian regime.

The precedent of the post-9/11 era taught us that wartime powers, once claimed, are rarely relinquished voluntarily. We cannot afford to learn that lesson again.