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"Tanks rolling down Main Street": Experts warn law won't stop Trump from deploying mi
Former President Donald Trump said while campaigning in Iowa this year that he was kept from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states during his presidency. The 2024 Republican primary frontrunner called New York City and Chicago "crime dens," telling his audience, "The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,” he said. “Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.”
The former president has not precisely explained how he plans to employ the military during a potential second term, though he and his advisors have suggested they would have a far reach to call its units. While regularly deploying the military within the nation's borders would depart from precedent, Trump has already foreshadowed his aggressive agenda if he wins, including mass deportations and travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries, the Associated Press reports.
A law crafted early in the nation's history would give the former president — as commander in chief — almost unbridled power to call upon the military, legal and military experts told the AP.
The Insurrection Act authorizes presidents to summon reserve or active-duty military units to respond to unrest in the states, a power that is not reviewable by the courts. One of its few limitations requires the president to request that participants in the unrest disperse.
“The principal constraint on the president’s use of the Insurrection Act is basically political, that presidents don’t want to be the guy who sent tanks rolling down Main Street,” Joseph Nunn, a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice, told the AP. “There’s not much really in the law to stay the president’s hand.”
Nunn said the act, which passed in 1792, just four years after the Constitution was ratified, is now a fusion of different statutes enacted between then and the 1870s, a moment when local law enforcement had few restrictions.
“It is a law that in many ways was created for a country that doesn’t exist anymore,” he added.
It's also one of the most significant exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars the use of the military for purposes of law enforcement.
Trump has openly voiced his plans around using the military at the southern border and in cities struggling with violent crime if he wins the presidency. His agenda has also included employing the military against foreign drug cartels, a measure echoed by fellow Republican candidates Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor. Those threats have prompted questions about presidential power, the meaning of military oaths, and who Trump could appoint to further his plan.
He's already floated the idea of bringing back retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as the national security advisor in the Trump administration and twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russian interference probe before being pardoned by Trump. In the wake of the 2020 election, Flynn suggested that Trump could snatch up voting machines and order the military in some states to aid in rerunning the election.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tanks-rolling-down-main-street-193616648.html
Former President Donald Trump said while campaigning in Iowa this year that he was kept from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states during his presidency. The 2024 Republican primary frontrunner called New York City and Chicago "crime dens," telling his audience, "The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,” he said. “Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.”
The former president has not precisely explained how he plans to employ the military during a potential second term, though he and his advisors have suggested they would have a far reach to call its units. While regularly deploying the military within the nation's borders would depart from precedent, Trump has already foreshadowed his aggressive agenda if he wins, including mass deportations and travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries, the Associated Press reports.
A law crafted early in the nation's history would give the former president — as commander in chief — almost unbridled power to call upon the military, legal and military experts told the AP.
The Insurrection Act authorizes presidents to summon reserve or active-duty military units to respond to unrest in the states, a power that is not reviewable by the courts. One of its few limitations requires the president to request that participants in the unrest disperse.
“The principal constraint on the president’s use of the Insurrection Act is basically political, that presidents don’t want to be the guy who sent tanks rolling down Main Street,” Joseph Nunn, a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice, told the AP. “There’s not much really in the law to stay the president’s hand.”
Nunn said the act, which passed in 1792, just four years after the Constitution was ratified, is now a fusion of different statutes enacted between then and the 1870s, a moment when local law enforcement had few restrictions.
“It is a law that in many ways was created for a country that doesn’t exist anymore,” he added.
It's also one of the most significant exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars the use of the military for purposes of law enforcement.
Trump has openly voiced his plans around using the military at the southern border and in cities struggling with violent crime if he wins the presidency. His agenda has also included employing the military against foreign drug cartels, a measure echoed by fellow Republican candidates Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor. Those threats have prompted questions about presidential power, the meaning of military oaths, and who Trump could appoint to further his plan.
He's already floated the idea of bringing back retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as the national security advisor in the Trump administration and twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russian interference probe before being pardoned by Trump. In the wake of the 2020 election, Flynn suggested that Trump could snatch up voting machines and order the military in some states to aid in rerunning the election.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tanks-rolling-down-main-street-193616648.html
