Two thousand and sixty-eight years ago, a Roman magistrate named Julius Caesar crossed a river in Italy. The Senate long forbade its proconsuls from commanding Rome’s legions outside of their respective jurisdictions—especially into Italy itself, where the Rubicon marked the legal and physical demarcation of senatorial power. Caesar’s decision to cross that boundary in 49 BC sparked a civil war. While the Republic was already in decline well before then, the fateful move hastened Rome’s transition to autocratic rule.

President Donald Trump’s Fourth of July plans, by comparison, don’t pose a similar threat to the American constitutional order. The United States military spent the week transporting tanks and other military equipment into Washington, D.C., for a grandiose military-centered celebration organized by the White House. Trump will cap the celebrations with a speech at the Lincoln Memorial. It will reflect many of his personal shortcomings: His conflation of military power with American greatness, his disdain for the nation’s civic values and small-“r” republican culture, and his unquenchable thirst to always be at the center of American political life.

Though treating the Pentagon like a personal Hot Wheels collection is hardly the worst of Trump’s sins, the sight of tanks rolling down D.C. boulevards in peacetime will still be disquieting for many Americans. In this case, however, it’s a malady that can be easily remedied by Congress. Trump’s misuse of his power as commander-in-chief should prompt lawmakers to enact curbs against future abuses. Banning presidents from deploying military forces inside the District of Columbia without congressional consent would be an excellent start.

Trump first got the idea for Thursday’s events after attending the Bastille Day parade in Paris in 2017, where he was apparently awed by the French military display on the Champs-Élysées. Another country’s traditions don’t necessarily mesh well with American political culture, however. In France, the parade symbolizes the strength of republican government after the collapse of the Bourbon and Bonapartist restorations in the late nineteenth century. The Founding Fathers, by contrast, generally resisted the creation of standing armies, which they associated with dictatorship and the British crown. The early American republic maintained only a token military force in peacetime, and instead relied heavily on state militias for national defense.

That doesn’t mean the United States is unfamiliar with the practice, of course. Large military parades usually followed the end of major wars. Two-hundred thousand soldiers in the Union Army marched through Washington in May 1865 after the conclusion of the Civil War, though Abraham Lincoln’s assassination muted the festivities. The most recent event took place in 1991 to mark the U.S.-led coalition’s victory in the Gulf War, though even that parade drew criticism from some veterans who viewed it as a Republican political stunt. Beyond victory parades, tanks and other military hardware only appeared during the now-defunct Army Day and the occasional presidential inauguration.

