Last weekend, President Donald Trump took the rare step of mobilizing the National Guard, and then the U.S. Marines, sending them into Los Angeles over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom quickly took the president to court for unilaterally calling in the military to clamp down on protests against the administration’s immigration policies.

Trump followed that up with a campaign-style rally at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where uniformed soldiers cheered as he slammed former President Joe Biden, Newsom and other Democrats — raising concerns the president was using the military as a political prop.

The developments this week are the latest and most visible way Trump has tried to turn government institutions into vehicles to implement his personal agenda, and have cast today’s planned military parade in a new light.

The scheduled parade in Washington, D.C., will celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary but happens to coincide with the 79th birthday of a president who warned that protests against the event will be “met with very big force.”

“As many lengths as Army leaders have gone through to depoliticize the parade, it’s very difficult for casual observers of the news to see this as anything other than a political use of the military,” said Carrie Ann Lee, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund who also taught at the U.S. Army War College.

Trump has wanted a military parade since his first term, but senior commanders balked, worrying it would be more like a spectacle one would see in authoritarian countries such as North Korea or Russia than something befitting the U.S.

After returning to the White House, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replaced him with his own pick and dismissed several other top military leaders.

In the wake of protests over the administration’s immigration enforcement operation near downtown Los Angeles, Trump last weekend sent in the California National Guard — and later deployed U.S. Marines — over Newsom’s objections. Trump contended Newsom had “totally lost control of the situation.” Newsom said the president was “behaving like a tyrant.”

It’s the first time the National Guard has been used without a governor’s consent since then-President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama in 1965 to ensure compliance with civil rights laws.

A federal judge late Thursday ruled that Trump violated the law against using the military domestically in his mobilization in Los Angeles and ordered the National Guard placed back under the governor’s control. The ruling, which did not make a determination about the deployment of Marines, was later blocked by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pending a hearing next week.

Military experts warn of the costs of this week’s events to the image of the military as a nonpartisan institution and one that has enjoyed a high level of trust among Americans.

“We don’t want military forces who work as an armed wing of a political party,” Lee said.

Trump has already used other parts of the federal government to reward his allies and punish his enemies. His Federal Communications Commission has launched investigations of media outlets Trump dislikes.