Experts warn there are dangerous loopholes in Trump's new threat

Former Senior government lawyers Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith warn the New York Times that The Insurrection Act is a “dangerous law that gives the president broad powers” to use the military on U.S. citizens.

“During the Biden administration, we — and many others — failed to persuade Congress to reform this alarming law. Now, in the second [President Donald] Trump administration, the president is threatening to invoke it for sweeping domestic military deployments in big cities across the country,” they said. “We have no illusions that a Congress entirely under President Trump’s thumb will act on this matter now. But if we see instances of reckless or accidental uses of force by American soldiers against American citizens, the public would quickly rediscover the dangers of militarizing the homeland and the politics on these issues would quickly change, too.”

The act authorizes use of the regular armed forces in addition to the Guard, which they argue gives the president access to a much larger military force without the need to deal with complications that come of simply federalizing and organizing state-level National Guard troops.

The act also uses what they consider to be “extremely broad and vaguely worded triggers” that affords a president “the widest conceivable discretion.”

“One provision says the president can use the armed forces ‘as he considers necessary’ to enforce federal law against ‘obstructions,’ ‘combinations’ or ‘assemblages’ that make laws ‘impracticable to enforce.’ Another authorizes the president to order armed forces to ‘take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress’ any domestic violence, among other powers.

Once invoked, Trump could also use the military as a substitute for local law enforcement and he would not be limited to using it for immigration. Soldiers could soon be “suppressing violence” in cities, regardless of what that actually means according to the “lax rules for invoking the law.”

And there is no reason the Supreme Court will do anything to rein in Trump’s power, they argue. If the president invokes the act, litigation will almost surely follow. States and localities could sue, but suits will be very hard to win, given the sweep of the authority the court has already granted the White House.

“Conservatives once cared a lot about the dangers of the military in the domestic realm and about protecting state and local authorities from federal military interference,” they write, adding that the act was “written for a different century.”

“It will be a tragedy if Congress does not enact reforms until after the law’s dangers have become undeniably clear.”

Read the New York Times report at this link.