Outside California Governor Gavin Newsom’s presser in Little Tokyo announcing that California will hold a special election to determine whether to engage in midterm redistricting in reaction to Texas’ gerrymandering to give Trump the five additional House seats he demanded, dozens of heavily armed and masked federal agents appeared. Why then? Why there?

They did arrest one person who was selling strawberries, but there was no reason why they would be outside Newsom’s presser except to make a statement. We have the guns and can go and do whatever we want. And there is nothing you can do about it.

As the governor was preparing to speak inside the Japanese American National Museum in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, the agents assembled outside, many of them masked and armed, and some wearing tactical helmets and carrying rifles.

Coincidence?

“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law — not about Gavin Newsom,” [Tricia] McLaughlin said.

It’s not as if ICE hasn’t already engaged in pointless shows of force in Los Angeles. In the District of Columbia, Attorney General Pam Bondi has declared that the head of the DEA is taking control of the police department, replacing Chief Pamela Smith as the “emergency police commissioner,” with “all the powers and duties” invested in the city’s police chief.

The police department, including Chief Smith, must now receive approval from Mr. Cole before issuing any directives, the attorney general declared.

Can she do that?

In a legal opinion, the D.C. attorney general, Brian Schwalb, told Mayor Muriel Bowser that Ms. Bondi’s directive removing power from the police chief was “unlawful.”

“You are not legally obligated to follow it,” he advised her.

Maybe Schwalb is right. Maybe not. But what, praytell, is DC Mayor Muriel Bowser supposed to do about it? She could, of course, go to court to obtain a temporary restraining order, and she may well get one, eventually, that would then be appealed, eventually receiving a ruling from the DC Circuit Court. But what happens until then?

In a social media post late Thursday night, Ms. Bowser appeared to agree. “There is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official,” she wrote, referring to Ms. Bondi’s directive.

Will the DC police follow the orders of their chief, or will they do as their new “emergency police commissioner” directs, ignoring the regulations of the past two years that Bondi has declared “invalid”?

When ICE deployed agents to stand outside the Japanese American National Museum for no cognizable law enforcement purpose, did any agent refuse to go, refuse to be a prop in a power play whose only point was to let Newsom and his supporters know that they could take them down any time they wanted?

When the possibility was raised that Trump could circumvent the constitutional limitation on a third term by putting a puppet in place, some scoffed at the possibility that the military would ignore its constitutional duties and allow itself to be used to enable Trump. But as the sight of military dressed and armed personnel, weapons and vehicles, on the streets of cities becomes normal, and as no one has as yet refused to engage in shows of power serving no legitimate law enforcement purpose when ordered to do so in furtherance of Trump’s control, where does it stop?

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and DC Mayor Bowser may have a lot to say about the armed federal takeover over their cities, the fact remains that there is little they can do about it. Will their local police departments block the way of federal agents when they seize the police chief’s office or wait outside the doors of the arena of the California governor’s press conference? What if ICE decided to go inside and check everyone present to decide whether they were an “illegal”? Could Bass or Newsom have stopped them? Would their police have stopped them?

It doesn’t necessarily happen in one fell swoop, that breaking laws and norms in furtherance of control reveals itself to have crossed the line that the majority of people find intolerable. It can happen in steps, even baby steps, that have the cover of being in furtherance of the safety and control that some people want, like deporting illegal aliens and arresting criminals. After all, what could possibly be wrong with that?

But when enforcing some laws means ignoring or violating others, even as we watch it happen, the only thing that protects us from the slide down the slippery slope is faith that the person in charge won’t abuse power for his own benefit. Does Trump deserve such faith that you can turn a blind eye to federal takeovers of American cities?