MEMPHIS, TN — July 5, 2026, 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson, a student and father, was killed by Memphis National Guard troops. The Memphis Police Department’s statement about the killing was vague, stating that they were in the area responding to a report of gunfire, and shot Johnson after he turned towards troops with a gun. A community organizer representing Johnson’s family stated that independent video contradicts this narrative and shows that Johnson was unarmed. The involved guardsmen were 19 and 20 years old, below the age requirement of 21 for all police in Tennessee.
Johnson’s grandfather said that Johnson was preparing to lead the family construction business and spoke of his passion for making music. “I believed in him, and I know he still had so much life ahead of him. The heartbreaking reality is that he will never have the chance to enjoy what we were building together.”
An executive order issued by President Trump last year formed the “Memphis Safe Task Force” to “restore law and order,” assembling representatives from thirteen federal departments and agencies. Six days earlier, the Memphis Police Department announced that crime in the city was at a 25-year low.
At that time, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee acquiesced to Trump’s request to deploy the state’s National Guard. He stated that the National Guard would be in a supportive role, would not be armed, and would not be making arrests. Memphis Mayor Paul Young stated that the National Guard troops would serve as “a large-scale neighborhood watch” that would help to “bring more resources.” Tyrin Johnson was one of four people killed by the Memphis Safe Task Force within a 60-day period, along with Darrin Pigram, Jonah Neal, and Alfonso Ivy.
Governor Lee’s deployment of the National Guard was met with opposition from local representatives. The deployment contradicted state law, as the legislature never held a vote, and local leaders did not request the deployment. A temporary injunction blocked the deployment but was lifted after the state appealed the case. Last September, Governor Lee stated that the National Guard deployment would consist of no more than 150 troops. Court rulings a few months later indicated that the actual number was around 700. By this July, the number had grown to 1,450.
At the time of the executive order creating the Memphis Safe Task Force, Trump suggested to top military generals that American cities would be used as “training grounds” to confront an “enemy from within.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller said to law enforcement officials being sent to Memphis that they were “unleashed” and free to be “ruthless.”
Trump has used the deployment of the National Guard and federal police as a tactic throughout his second term, with other examples being Chicago, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. He has also suggested using this tactic in Baltimore, Minneapolis, New York City, Oakland, St. Louis, and Portland.
This tactic is one element in the fascisization of the Old State, the naked centralization of coercive power in the executive as the ruling class abandons even the pretense of bourgeois-democratic restraint. Every court injunction defied, every governor and mayor overruled, every meager reform on policing swept aside, confirms the status of the police, the National Guard, and the standing army as the armed fist of the capitalist state, deployed wherever the ruling class judges it necessary to discipline the working class and the oppressed nations.
Tyrin Johnson died because the apparatus of the state functioned exactly as intended. Only the organized power of the multinational proletariat, armed with a genuine revolutionary line, can put an end to this machinery of murder, constructing in its place a New State which answers solely to the masses.
