More than forty members of Congress, including military veterans, are urging President Donald Trump to not violate the Posse Comitatus Act by using U.S. Armed Forces against Americans on American soil.
President Trump has recently and repeatedly threatened to use the Insurrection Act, which is “among the most powerful emergency powers at the disposal of a president, who can use it to deploy the U.S. armed forces and the militia to suppress insurrections, quell civil unrest or domestic violence, and enforce the law when it is being obstructed,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
“I could use it. If I wanted to, I could use it,” Trump said this month. “I’m allowed to use the Insurrection Act.”
“Trump and his team have threatened to invoke it almost daily for weeks,” according to the L.A. Times earlier this month, “after a reporter pressed the president about his escalating efforts to dispatch federalized troops to Democrat-led cities.”
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MSNBC reported two weeks ago that Trump “has been itching to use the Insurrection Act since the George Floyd protests in 2020. But he’s closer than ever to invoking the 1807 law.”
In their letter to President Trump, the 43 members of Congress, led by Army veteran and U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), expressed “grave concern” about “reports that your Administration is considering invocation of the Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty military forces for domestic law enforcement.”
They said to do so would be a “profound departure” from “constitutional traditions and limits established under the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the United States military, including National Guard troops called into federal service, in civilian law enforcement except in the narrowest and most extraordinary circumstances.”
Explaining how the Insurrection Act may be invoked, they made clear: “None of these conditions currently exist.”
“Threatening or preparing to use the military against the American people,” they warn, “is both inappropriate and deeply irresponsible.”
They also chastise his administration’s “rhetoric and subsequent actions singling out communities and states led by elected officials of the opposing political party,” saying, that “only deepens the perception that such actions would be politically motivated rather than grounded in law.”
“We therefore urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to refrain from any action that would violate the Posse Comitatus Act or undermine the principle of civilian governance.”
President Trump has wrongly claimed that about half of the American presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act:
“Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act. Fifty percent of the presidents, almost, have used that. And that’s unquestioned power,” he said, according to Politifact.
CNN called his comment “at least a slight exaggeration,” and noted that, according to the Brennan Center, just 17 of 45 presidents have invoked it.
MSNBC reported that the “rarely used law was last invoked by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King.”
CNN also noted that Trump has wrongly claimed one unnamed president used the Insurrection Act 28 times: “That figure is nowhere close to accurate.”
On Friday, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) wrote: “There is no rebellion. Not in Los Angeles. Not in Portland or Chicago or D.C. Not in San Francisco. And yet Donald Trump continues to threaten invocation of the Insurrection Act to force these cities to bend the knee to his will.”
Congressman Thompson on Sunday wrote: “We won’t be intimidated — and we won’t allow the President to misuse our military to police our communities. The law is clear: the Insurrection Act doesn’t give him that power.”