Is the US sliding into autocracy?

Is Donald Trump becoming a dictator, or just enjoying playing the part? It's getting harder to tell, said Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker. Last weekend, tanks rolled through Washington as the president hosted a huge military parade on his 79th birthday.

The event followed his recent decision to send troops into Los Angeles, against the express wishes of California's Democratic governor, to help quell unrest sparked by his immigration crackdown. Trump and his officials warned that they wouldn't hesitate to send troops into other US cities if needed.

Last Thursday, federal agents handcuffed and forcibly removed one of California's senators, Alex Padilla, after he shouted a question at the Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem at a press conference. In his first term, Trump at least nodded to the idea of bipartisanship. Now, with his talk of the "enemy from within" and dismissal of dissent, he's not even pretending to. "This is the line that has been crossed."

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Take all the warnings about America's slide into autocracy with a pinch of salt, said Gerard Baker in The Times. Does Trump enjoy posing as a "tough-on-crime leader"? Of course. But the fact remains that the levels of illegal immigration were allowed to run out of control under President Biden, and it's the federal government's job to police the system. Trump has acted within the law, agreed Rich Lowry in National Review. Removing illegal aliens and deploying troops to protect federal personnel and property in Los Angeles does not make America a police state.

Trump is hardly the first US president to deploy troops on the home front, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. Others, though, have done so reluctantly and have been careful to explain their reasons to the public in measured tones. Trump, by contrast, acted as though he couldn't wait to start busting rioters' heads. "When they spit, we hit," he proclaimed. American presidents don't do that. Nor do they hold "braggadocious" military parades – they leave such things to smaller, more insecure nations.

Nor, as Trump did last week at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, do they give highly partisan speeches in front of cheering uniformed troops. "You think this crowd would have showed up for Biden?" he cried, to elicit boos from the audience. Previous leaders knew better than to put members of the military in a position where they could be seen to be showing allegiance to a particular individual or party. America doesn't do those things, and it doesn't do them for good reasons.