What began as a fairly small protest against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at an apparel manufacturer in the Fashion District in downtown Los Angeles on June 6, led to an immediate response by federal agents in riot gear. [On June 7], President Donald Trump ... called in the National Guard. The deployment of troops in Los Angeles is the brutal culmination of a yearslong campaign to systematically erode and circumscribe public assembly rights, enabled by both Democrats and Republicans at all levels of government. Political scientists call this "democratic backsliding": the gradual erosion of basic rights, civil liberties, and other political institutions that allow the public to hold the government to account. This war on dissent is the most visible sign of democratic backsliding in the U.S. By using the National Guard to silence dissent in Los Angeles, the Trump administration is eroding a core pillar of democracy: the right to assemble in public to express opinions contrary to government action and to advocate for change. U.S. police forces developed [an] approach to public order policing called "negotiated management" in the 1980 and 1990s. Under negotiated management, police tried to respect the right of public assembly. However, in response to the anti-globalization protests at the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle ... police shifted to a new set of tactics called "strategic incapacitation" that would provide them with more control.