The question has moved beyond hyperbole to settle at the heart of the American political debate. When a president mobilizes federal forces to suppress protests in state jurisdictions, openly defying mayors and governors, and then threatens to extend this measure across the entire country, the question becomes fundamental: who, exactly, is the enemy? The evidence, with increasing force, points towards his domestic political adversaries and the very constitutional foundations of a union he swore to preserve.
The recent ruling by a federal magistrate—originally appointed by President Trump himself—to halt the deployment of the California National Guard to Portland represents more than a simple legal check. It is a telling symptom of a nation immersed in what some have begun to call a “domestic cold war.” This is not a conventional conflict, with bullets and trenches, but a struggle fought in the courts, in the streets, and across the broad spectrum of public discourse.
This stance found a disturbing echo during a meeting with high-ranking military officials, where the president, accompanied by his Secretary of War, Pete Hegset, asserted that the military apparatus could—and should—be deployed within national borders. The statement was widely interpreted in political and security circles as a ratification of his willingness to instrumentalize the Armed Forces for internal control purposes, erasing the traditional line between external defense and domestic order.
This confrontational approach creates a nearly surreal dichotomy when contrasted with his parallel—and so far unsuccessful—campaign to secure a Nobel Peace Prize. The pursuit of the award reveals a telling duality: a leader who cultivates the image of a peacemaker abroad, while advancing agendas that fracture social cohesion within his own country.
An analysis of the facts on the ground leaves little room for doubt. Portland, Chicago, Seattle… the administration’s targets are not random. They form a carefully selected list of Democratic strongholds. The argument is “rampant criminality,” but the effect—and perhaps the intention—is to project the image of a nation under siege, a scenario of chaos where only the firm hand of the president can impose order.
According to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, the United States might be heading towards a civil war, a disaster he attributes to the “intolerable” differences dividing its population. In his view, diversity—not just racial, but of beliefs and origins—is the cause of disunion, a historical weakness and not the strength that many proclaim.
The rhetoric employed by critics is no less eloquent. The Governor of Illinois, J. B. Pritzker, called the proposed deployment in Chicago an “invasion.” The state’s Attorney General labeled it an “occupation.” These are terms that should not be part of the vocabulary of a peaceful federal union, but they reflect the perception of a people besieged from within.
In the face of this, the White House wields an absolute “legal authority” and threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act, an instrument conceived to quell rebellions, thus treating dissenting citizens and governors as insurgents. The strategy is clear: criminalize the political opponent.
The crucial question then arises: which America is the true target in this conflict? Everything indicates that it is those sectors that dare to dissent. It is the system of federalism itself—that delicate balance between states and federation—that is under siege. When a president consciously undermines that balance, he is challenging his constitutional order.
The real contest is not against crime, but against the very concept of pluralism that supposedly shaped the country. It is a campaign to replace a complex and diverse political structure with a model of vertical authority, where loyalty to the leader becomes the supreme value.
The fundamental issue, ultimately, is not whether Trump is at war with the United States, but with which vision of the nation he is willing to confront. It is not the nation that offers him unconditional support, but the constitutional nation—that of checks and balances, equilibrium, and state sovereignty—that appears to have become his target. And in this struggle, every citizen, whether Chinese, Muslim, or Latino, must choose which side they are on: that of unlimited presidential power, or that of the republic, imperfect and conflicted, that the Founding Fathers once dreamed of.
(Gustavo Suárez, researcher at the Center for International Policy Research -CIPI-)
