Two decades after Katrina, a different kind of storm threatens. History will judge our response.
A National Guard Humvee drives through flood waters on the streets of New Orleans in early September 2005. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)
In 2005, as a reporter embedded with a Missouri National Guard unit in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I witnessed one of the largest disaster relief operations in American history.
On the ground with the men and women of a Missouri Guard military police company, I was far removed from the decisions — and the blunders — that would ultimately mar the massive rescue effort. Instead, I saw firsthand how average Americans coped with the hardships and uncertainty of being thrown into a situation without precedent.
It was dirty and messy, and the outcome was uncertain. I ate MREs with the Guardsmen and chatted about their families and listened to concerns about their Constitutional duties as soldiers.
Now, the National Guard is on the streets of the District of Columbia, with live ammunition, summoned by President Donald Trump to assist in a hastily declared and thinly supported law enforcement mission. Trump is also considering other Democratic stronghold cities for such deployments, including Chicago and New York.
The contrast between the deployments could not be sharper.
Twenty years ago, the National Guard was called up in the thousands for a devastating national disaster. Today, the Guard is in DC on a partisan mission that breaks political norms. If Trump federalizes the Guard and sends it to other cities, it would likely violate the Posse Comitatus Act, a foundational 1878 law meant to limit the use of federal troops in law enforcement on American soil.
The storm that struck New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, was devastating. In addition to winds in excess of 100 mph that turned roofs into sails and toppled walls, Katrina also brought a surge of water that overwhelmed levees and flood walls and submerged 80% of the city. A citywide evacuation had been ordered, but some residents stayed, including many from the poorer sections of the city who didn’t have anywhere else to go. Thirty thousand people spent days in the shelter of last resort, the Louisiana Superdome, without lights or air conditioning, food or water, or functioning restrooms. Misery was widespread across the city, especially in the Lower Ninth Ward, a historically Black section of the city that experienced catastrophic flooding.
The hurricane left 1,800 people dead in New Orleans and across the Gulf coast and displaced more than a million. Katrina was also the costliest storm on record, with damage estimated at $161 billion.
But the Missouri National Guard unit I was embedded with didn’t know any of this on its convoy to New Orleans. When the soldiers of the 1138th Military Police piled into their Humvees and trucks at company headquarters at West Plains, Missouri, they had about as much information (or rather, misinformation) about the situation on the Gulf as did anyone who had been paying attention to the news. They expected out-of-control looting and general lawlessness. But the reports of looting were exaggerated and the most lawless element was among the New Orleans police, who shot 10 civilians, including four fatally.
Because I was with the Missouri National Guard unit every hour of every day on the convoy south, I knew what they were talking about. There were earnest discussions among the soldiers about what they would do if ordered to fire on American citizens for looting, and the consensus was that they would refuse. What looked like looting to one individual might just be survival. Somebody might be carrying a television to trade for food and water. Above all, they wanted to help people in need, by effecting rescues or bringing much-needed supplies.
Later, as I walked the French Quarter, I noted maroon-bereted 82nd Airborne soldiers on patrol with automatic rifles at hand. This was a disturbing sight in an American city, one that brought to mind third-world countries. But this was no banana republic. This was New Orleans in distress, and some regular Army troops, in addition to National Guard units from all 50 states, had been sent to help.
The National Guard has been deployed on American soil periodically for disaster relief or to assist local authorities with civil unrest. The latter includes the George Floyd protests in 2020, the LA riots of 1992, and at Kent State.
On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Vietnam war protestors on the Kent State University campus, killing four students. A photograph of one of the dead students, with a girl kneeling and crying out for help behind, shook the soul of America — and won the Pulitzer Prize.
The Ohio Guard had been sent to the campus by Gov. Jim Rhodes, at the request of the Kent mayor, after the ROTC building had been burned to the ground the previous night. The Guard, with bayonets fixed, was attempting to disperse a crowd of 2,000 demonstrators. The students threw rocks, and the soldiers responded with tear gas. Then, in the space of 13 seconds, the Guardsmen fired more than 60 shots at demonstrators.
It is unclear why the soldiers took kneeling positions and opened fire, although one of the survivors said there is audio tape evidence of the command being given. Eight Ohio Guardsmen were acquitted in 1974 after a judge declared, after a two-week trial, that the government had presented insufficient evidence to support the federal indictments.
The National Guard is generally exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act, as it is normally under the control of state governors, but it becomes subject when it is called up under federal service. The District of Columbia is a special case, because the district is under control of Congress and the president is, in effect, the governor of the district.
If Trump were to deploy the Guard elsewhere, there would be a host of legal challenges. But he has already demonstrated his willingness to expand the use of the military on U.S. soil, as his administration has authorized the Guard to be deployed to assist with “alien processing” in 20 states with Republican governors. The states with Democratic governors, including Kansas, would no doubt object.
The militarization of immigration and law enforcement is disturbing. Trump is using it to punish jurisdictions that are Democratic strongholds, many of which have significant Black populations, and others that are hotbeds of dissent. His official justifications don’t pass the litmus test of truth. He claimed to deploy the Guard in D.C. to fight crime, despite violent crime there hitting a 30-year low, according to the Department of Justice.
Some leaders in Kansas City, Missouri, are worried their city may be next.
“I do think Kansas City should be prepared, because this will probably happen to us,” said Kansas City Democrat Barbara Washington, as reported by the Kansas City Star. “I think the actions of our president have shown that he is not open to equality for people of color.”
While other politicians doubt Trump will take interest in any city in a state as deeply red as Missouri, some worry the high crime rates of Kansas City and St. Louis may be enough of an excuse. Kansas, where 101 out of 105 counties went for Trump in 2024, may be relatively safe. Well, except for the city of Lawrence, which might just be blue enough to attract the president’s dictatorial gaze; it went for Kamala Harris by a margin of more than 2-1.
In D.C., the 2,200 Guard members have spent the past week mulching cherry trees and clearing homeless camps. That would be in keeping with Trump’s obsession with the value of real estate and his disregard for human life. But the true goal of the deployment appears to be a further test of just how much the American public will take before standing up to authoritarianism. Congress and the Supreme Court have repeatedly demonstrated their loyalty to Trump, so ultimately any change must come from the ballot box.
In the seven months Trump has been in power, he has upended convention and pursued an unchecked appetite for power. The American landscape has been transformed into a terrain fit for a dictator, with ever-expanding executive power, a masked secret cadre of ICE agents pursuing migrants and sometimes citizens, a crackdown on diversity and dissent, and the growing presence of an armed military in our cities.
How long will it be before there’s another 13 seconds in which the National Guard faces off against unarmed protestors and in the chaos leaves one or more “dead on the ground?” This is something Trump may be actually hoping for, because any act of violence serves as an excuse to call out more troops. And more troops means more intimidation, more control, more power.
Trump is building a case for martial law through a series of immigration and law enforcement “emergencies,” but only for those blue cities he’d like to punish or neutralize. Chicago, New York, Baltimore. It would only be a small step from there to declaring an election emergency. He wouldn’t have to cancel or postpone the 2026 midterms. Just the presence of armed troops at polling places to ensure a “fair” election might discourage enough voters to do the trick. He’s already vowed to end mail-in voting, an anti-democracy pledge that would have sunk any other president quicker than you can say Watergate.
I don’t know what the National Guard troops deployed in D.C. are thinking, or what those who might be tasked with “alien processing” feel about it. All I have is my experience with that Missouri National Guard military police company a generation ago. But based on that, I suspect directing the Guard to deprive American citizens of their civil liberties might be more difficult than Trump thinks. Many will remember their oath is to the Constitution, not to any president or ideology.
Recently, the Trump administration placed on leave some 30 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees who signed an open letter warning of a Katrina-level disaster because of agency mismanagement. The Trump-appointed leadership, the letter said, was simply too inexperienced and too partisan to do their jobs.
The letter cited the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, which exposed the federal government’s failures to prepare for disasters and deliver aid quickly.
There will never be another Hurricane Katrina.
But that’s only because the World Meteorological Organization retired the name after 2005. There will be other storms, equal to or worse than Katrina, and Trump administration ignores the signatories of the warning letter at our peril.
We find ourself in an age of storms.
To survive the current political hurricane, we must find the courage to stand up to political bullying, be guided by reason but moved by compassion, and be willing to help those among us who are in the most danger of being washed away.
The situation is without precedent.
Never before, not even during Watergate, has a U.S. president engaged in such an authoritarian power grab. If we were faced with one or two crises at a time, then it would be easier to know how to respond. But the entire federal government has been turned inside out and made the political instrument of one man. From the dismantling of the intelligence community to the purging of scientific integrity at public health and disaster response agencies, from the war on migrants to the squelching of dissent on college campuses, and now to the use of the military in law enforcement, the house Abraham Lincoln referred to in his 1858 speech is not just divided, but on fire.
“I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in, and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country,” Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said Aug. 25 in Chicago. “If it sounds to you like I am alarmed, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed.”
The odds that either of the Kansas Cities or Lawrence or any other blue dot in a red state will be targeted right now is low, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respond to Pritzker’s tocsin. It will be dirty and messy, the outcome will be uncertain, and there will be a lot of talk about civil disobedience and our Constitutional obligations as citizens. We are beyond the guardrails of a two-party system and are now facing a party of one with ever-expanding executive power. It’s time for us to talk, at our kitchen tables and taverns and community centers, and decide what orders we’ll follow — and what kind of nation we want.
Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.