Noem’s Threat to Remove Elected Officials in California Mimics Authoritarians Abroad

For Erdogan, Putin and Bukele, Removing Local and Regional Officials is Part of Consolidating Power

"We are not going away,” Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced at a press conference on June 12 about a federal-level operation in Los Angeles to “protect” ICE roundups of immigrants and respond to protests against those roundups. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."

Some may dismiss Noem’s threat as “just rhetoric.” Yet authoritarians use language to shift the perception of what is possible to think and do. In fact, removing elected officials from office for political reasons, or abolishing their offices, is a common practice in authoritarian states such as Turkey, Russia, and El Salvador.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem holds a press conference in Los Angeles, June 12, 2025. Photo: AP

Habituating Americans to a New Authoritarian Reality

The march to authoritarianism in the United States has seen the arrests of a judge, a mayor, a union leader, and a member of Congress. The growing image bank of state security agents using force against those who dissent from its policies includes a senator being roughed up and handcuffed at Noem’s press briefing, and a violent arrest of New York City’s comptroller at an immigration court.

All of these incidents are testing the waters and habituating the public to the sight and fact of violations of democratic understandings of the law and individual rights. Noem’s dangerous proposition seeks to normalize the idea that President Trump should be able to assert his executive authority over states and cities and target those territories run by political enemies –in this case, Democrats.

One of the most beloved authoritarian conspiracy theories is that political enemies have links to or are abetting criminals and terrorists who come over the border to destabilize the country. MAGA is using this propaganda to provide the purported rationale for this “liberation,” which has mobilized federalized National Guard members and a Marines battalion that participated in regime change in Iraq.

Trump used his election campaign speeches to get his followers used to the idea that areas of the United States must be “liberated” from immigrants, perhaps with military assistance. Now he is back in office, his state propaganda apparatus has settled on a narrative meant to build support for the authoritarian goals of “regime change” at home to protect the nation. This is why White House policy chief Stephen Miller and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth use similar language in describing the role of Democratic state and city officials in creating this “crisis.”

In Miller’s words, Governor Gavin Newsom has made California into a “criminal sanctuary” for “millions of illegal alien invaders, cartel killers, foreign terrorist gangs and insurrectionist mobs.” Hegseth is equally direct, charging Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom with aiding and abetting “terrorists.” Hegseth depicted the protests as a collusion among an domestic enemy (“Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil”), an external enemy (“Foreign Terrorist Organizations”) and a third party: the “violent mob” of protesters who are a “NATIONAL SECURITY RISK” for supporting this “dangerous invasion.”

Turkey, Russia, El Salvador: Removing Officials and Consolidating Power

Foreign autocrats make similar linkages of internal political enemies with gangs and terrorists to argue that their crackdowns are in the interest of national security. As of June 2025, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has removed 11 mayors from office. Traditionally, Erdogan removed mayors who were Kurdish (regardless of their party affiliation) or had supposed links to Kurdish political parties and organizations that the Turkish state sees as terrorist entities.

The October 2024 detention and removal of Ahmet Özer, the mayor of the Esenyurt district of Istanbul, is an example. As reported by Human Rights Watch, while Özer is a member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP, the main opposition party), he is Kurdish and was arrested on charges of “membership of a terrorist organization” for supposed links to the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

As popular discontent has grown in Turkey due to a worsening economy, and Erdogan fears losing his grip on power, he has expanded his mayor-removal operations to extend his control over Turkey’s political life. In March 2025, he arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who was going to run against Erdogan in the 2028 presidential election, and 100 other officials. Imamoglu was arrested on charges of corruption—calling your political enemies corrupt and deposing them on that basis is another perennial authoritarian strategy, one used for years by Chinese Communist leaders.

In Russia, the Vladimir Putin personal power-expansion playbook has long entailed smearing and removing people from positions of influence by linking them with foreign interests, terrorism, or other criminal activities. Murdered anti-corruption investigator and opposition politician Alexei Navalny faced repeated charges of terrorism.

Before a presidential election, or during times of popular discontent and protest, the Kremlin has also removed governors and other elected officials. “The Kremlin’s regional policy –a year of dismissing governors,” reads the headline of a 2017 report by the Warsaw-based Center for Eastern Studies on the 19 mayors removed to create the proper political climate for Putin to win the 2018 presidential election.

But why go to all the trouble of changing your state and municipal officials when you can just abolish their positions? That’s what El Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele did. Before the 2023 elections, Bukele eliminated 70 percent of publicly-elected local and national positions, including 218 mayoral positions. Bukele’s excuse for this move was ridding El Salvador of rampant corruption —the same reason he gave for his 2021 purge of one-third of the judiciary.

Media coverage of Bukele always focuses on his strongman treatment of gangs and the same transnational criminal networks that Miller and Hegseth claim have overtaken Los Angeles. Yet his tough stance on crime has always been a means of power consolidation. Tellingly, Noem traveled to El Salvador to pose in front of Bukele’s “Terrorist Confinement Center,” calling the gulag-like prison “one of the tools in our toolkit we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”

Removing members of the opposition party from elected positions on charges of corruption or collusion with terrorists could be another thing that the Trump administration borrows from Bukele and other authoritarians. Understanding how authoritarians operate is crucial for an understanding of how extremist rhetoric may translate into policy in America.