The headline in The New Republic (TNR) on August 2 was dire: “Trump’s Domestic Use of Military Set to Get Worse, Leaked Memo Shows,” it blared.

Well, maybe.

TNR said it had been leaked a confidential memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The memo listed talking points for top DHS staff to parrot at a July 21 meeting at the Pentagon, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and two top generals.

The session’s ostensible goal was to ratchet up support among the military brass for a nationwide blitz of military-backed incursions into “sanctuary cities” and other targeted locales, a la the recent ICE sweeps that brought several thousand national Guard troops and several hundred Marines into Los Angeles.

The memo outlined the “itinerary” (aka agenda) for the meeting, which was getting to better coordination of the agencies’ activities in “defense of the homeland.”

“Participants listed comprise the very top levels of both agencies, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs chairman Dan Caine (an Air Force general and former CIA Associate director) and NORTHCOM Commander Gregory Guillot (another Air Force general). Staff include Phil Hegseth (Pete Hegseth’s younger brother, and DHS liaison —aka go-between— with the Pentagon) and acting ICE commissioner [Todd] Lyons. . . .

“Due to the sensitive nature of the meeting, minimal written policy or background information can be provided in this briefing memo,” it said.

Experts [that TNR’s Greg Sargent] spoke with were surprised at how bluntly [the memo] suggested [Homeland Security] pressure the Defense Department for more military involvement in immigration enforcement, and alluded to potential tension between top officials at both agencies over this imperative, and even possible resistance to it by Pentagon officials. The memo said aligning both agencies this way “is a priority of POTUS,” meaning Trump. . . .

More concretely, the memo said that DHS hoped to secure “a verbal agreement to find places where DoD can detail personnel within ICE and CBP (and vice-versa) to increase information sharing, and specifically support nationwide operational planning capabilities.”

Among the memo’s talking points for the DHS officials . . . are . . . references [to] attacks on DHS officers and Central and South American cartels and gangs, noting that they’ve been designated terrorist organizations.

“That puts this threat on the same plain [sic] as having Al Qaeda or ISIS cells and fighters operating freely inside America,” the memo says. . . .”

TNR also quoted several anti-Trump think tank observers who saw in this memo a scheme for nationwide domestic deployment of the military. But while this is clearly a priority for POTUS and Hegseth, the memo can also be read as something quite different, such as damage control.

This possibility more than leaked out. It practically squirted from between the memo’s lines. About the recent “joint” military operations in L.A, it acknowledged:

“It hasn’t been perfect, and we’re still working through best practices together, but I think it’s a good indicator of the type of operations (and resistance) we’re going to be working through for years to come.”

The L.A. “occupation” — not perfect? Who knew?

Really: all it did was help spark a record-breaking nationwide wave of June 14 protests.

Then it produced stacks of poll results showing deep public revulsion against the snatching of overwhelmingly peaceable, working people by masked agents in unmarked cars for deportation to foreign torture prisons with no warrants, bail or due process.

Then the manhandling of members of Congress for trying to do lawful oversight, not to mention building open air concentration camps in broiling summer swamps and deserts

For starters.

What career-conscious general wouldn’t want to scramble right onto that bandwagon?

Instead, maybe Phil Hegseth, in his interagency liaising,  had been getting some inklings of that old Pentagon standby, interservice rivalry.

After all, what did the epic L. A. Confrontation turn into? Following a few rowdy nights in a handful of downtown blocks, it left hundreds of Marines, reputedly the toughest of American warfighters, doing long tours in summer heat as security guards for buildings which were conspicuously not under attack.

Further, they were backing up several times their number of national guard troops, already sweating in the same unmolested area.

These in turn were running cover for the facilities’ regular security details, whose biggest threat likely came from stumbling over some of the other defenders.

That is, the Siege of L. A. was not exactly a clash for the ages, set to yield many Medals of Honor. (Not even any Purple Hearts, unless they’re now awarding them for Extreme Ennui, or Boredom Above and Beyond . . .)

No wonder the memo’s DHS talking points sound like the delegation was all but begging the generals to lend them real soldiers to teach the burgeoning ICE squads some tricks of the trade — err, “best practices” — other than handling zip ties and fracturing families.

And frankly, their asking to set up such arrangements only on a “verbal agreement” basis, skipping such bureaucratic/legal niceties as written orders, reinforces TNR’s suspicion about resistance from the uniformed branches.

Why would the generals resist? Well, for one thing, there’s this matter of a law, about not using the military domestically, or against U. S. citizens; plus an oath, which the brass all take, to the Constitution rather than His Putative Highness, POTUS.

True, Hegseth is busy tossing out generals and admirals who want to stick to these hoary notions; but the academies and service command schools have been teaching them for a lot longer than he’s been around, so it takes time to bend or replace them all.

For that matter, every commanding general — whatever their combat specialty, is also a PR specialist, carefully guarding and polishing their service’s public image. While the military generally ranks high in polls of public trust, that confidence has been declining since the Iraq-Afghanistan wars, and recruiting has been tough:

So the brass in 2025 are even more sensitive than usual.

To be sure, they aren’t afraid to fight. But are they keen to become another target of the reaction against ICE sweeps with secret police tactics, the new gulags, and deportations to foreign torture prisons, without some very good reason?

This memo strongly suggests, not so much — yet.

Clearly, Hegseth (& POTUS) still dream of taking their L.A. production all the way to Broadway. (The title of Hegseth’s 2020 book, American Crusade, tells you all you need to know about where he’s headed.)

Beyond seeking “new ideas for how the two departments can better plan for national security and illegal immigration,” the memo added this:

The U.S. military leadership (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and NORTHCOM) need to feel – for the first time – the urgency of the homeland defense mission. They need to understand the threat, what’s at stake, and the political importance the administration has placed on this issue.”

We don’t yet know how the July 21 meeting turned out. Surely the Hegseth brothers will keep pushing for their national, gloves-off-masks-on crusade. And maybe POTUS will have a brainstorm in the golf cart and order an invasion of Boston to divert media attention from the Epstein files.

But in the meantime, are the generals feeling the urgency yet?

I mean, really feeling it?

It could make a lot of difference.