Legal Scholars: Trump’s Troop Deployment is a Warning Sign

Most of his adult life the Felon has demonstrated that he cares nothing about the law and what's legal as he operated his real estate business like a Mafia don.  Things have only gotten worse as he has aged and some say come to suffer from dementia. Ironically, the Felon wants an investigation into Joe Biden's mental state while in the White House when what the nation truly needs is an investigation of his own mental state and visions of grandeur and dictatorial rule.  Now, with his sending of federal troops to California against the wishes of state and local officials - just days before his military parade like something out of Russia or North Korea - many fear where things may quickly be headed. As noted here numerous times, the Felon wants to rule like Vladimir Putin with no restraints on his powers and the ability to harm those he deems advocacies.  For now, much of the MAGA base is cheering the move, too stupid to grasp that today those they deem liberals are being targeted but they themselves could one day be targets and that the Felon cares nothing about them.  While California is suing the Felon and his regime, I candidly have little faith in the current U.S. Supreme Court which has empowered the Felon while harming millions of Americans.   A piece in Politico looks at the dangerous situation:

Trump’s deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles is stretching the legal limits of how the military can be used to enforce domestic laws on American streets, constitutional law experts say.

Trump, for now, has given the troops a limited mission: protecting federal immigration agents and buildings amid a wave of street protests against the administration’s mass deportation policies. To justify the deployment, Trump cited a provision of federal law that allows the president to use the National Guard to quell domestic unrest.

But Trump’s stated rationale, legal scholars say, appears to be a flimsy and even contrived basis for such a rare and dramatic step. The real purpose, they worry, may be to amass more power over blue states that have resisted Trump’s deportation agenda. And  the effect, whether intentional or not, may be to inflame the tension in L.A., potentially leading to a vicious cycle in which Trump calls up even more troops or broadens their mission.

 “It does appear to be largely pretextual, or at least motivated more by politics than on-the-ground need,” said Chris Mirasolo, a national security law professor at the University of Houston.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the deployment “unlawful” and said he would sue Monday. “This is about authoritarian tendencies. This is about command and control. This is about power. This is about ego,” Newsom, a Democrat, said Sunday on MSNBC. “This is a consistent pattern.”

At issue is the president’s authority to deploy the military for domestic purposes. A federal law, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, generally bars the president from using federal troops — the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force or Space Force — to enforce domestic laws.

But there are exceptional circumstances when the president can use troops domestically. The most prominent exception is the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy the military to suppress insurrections, “domestic violence” or conspiracies that undermine constitutional rights or federal laws. At the end of Trump’s first term, some of his most ardent supporters urged and expected him to invoke the Insurrection Act to push aside state election authorities and essentially void the 2020 presidential election results, although he never did so. During his 2024 campaign, he said he would invoke the act to subdue unrest if reelected.

But so far, Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act. Instead, in a Saturday order, he cited a different statutory provision: a terse section of the U.S. code that allows the president to use the National Guard — but not any other military forces — to suppress the “danger of a rebellion” or to “execute” federal laws when “regular forces” are unable to do so.

“Federalizing Guard troops in this situation — and raising the specter of also sending in active duty military personnel — is a political stunt, and a dangerous one.” . . . . Trump has fueled the fears of further escalation, actively commenting on the protests while attacking the state’s response.

Trump is not the first president to deploy the military over a governor’s objection. But it’s the first time since 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson ordered troops to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama. President Dwight Eisenhower similarly overrode objections from Alabama’s governor, deploying troops to help enforce the desegregation of public schools. When presidents view state and local authorities as being ineffective or recalcitrant, those steps may be justified, some experts say.

“Usually the President calls out the troops with the cooperation of the governor, which happened in LA itself during the Rodney King riots,” said John Yoo, a legal counselor to President George W. Bush.

Newsom has railed against Trump’s unilateral action, saying it will inflame rather than ease tensions on the streets and that state and local law enforcement were appropriately responding to the unrest outside federal buildings. Newsom got backup from Democratic governors across the country, who signed a letter calling Trump’s National Guard deployment an “alarming abuse of power.”

“The military appears to be clashing with protesters in the streets of our country. That’s not supposed to happen,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a national security law expert at New York University’s Brennan Center. “It’s such a dangerous situation. It’s dangerous for liberty. It’s dangerous for democracy.”

Congress passed an appropriations rider in 2007 that explicitly granted the president that authority during “a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or Incident” and in reaction to an “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

While some legal experts said the measure simply reiterated existing law, an unusually broad coalition — including all 50 U.S. governors — called for repeal of the amendment. And the following year, Congress did repeal it, allowing the law to revert to language in place since the 1950s.

Be very afraid.