Trump’s Use Of The Military In LA Is ‘Unprecedented.’ It Could Be Just The Beginning.
HuffPost
The DOJ argued Trump has the power to take control of state National Guard units whenever he wants — a chilling preview of what could happen in cities across the U.S.
The president can seize control of states’ National Guard units whenever he sees fit — even during peacetime, and even to simply back up Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents working to meet daily arrest quotas, a Justice Department lawyer argued Tuesday.
“That would be the president’s decision, based on all of the facts available to him,” Brett Shumate, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said when presented with that specific hypothetical scenario. Shumate was arguing at a court hearing about the fate of a temporary restraining order that would have briefly paused President Donald Trump’s federalization of California National Guard soldiers at anti-immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles, but which the appeals court has blocked for now.
The brazen assertion of presidential power showed just how far the Trump administration is going to empower the president — and hints at what the president might do next.
Joseph Nunn, a counsel at the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program who focuses on the U.S. military’s domestic activities, told HuffPost after Tuesday’s hearing that the administration had offered an “unbelievably maximalist” position on Trump’s authority to use the military domestically. The stance, he said, was “completely incompatible with American civic traditions.”
The president’s deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines in California is the latest example of Trump working to erode a long-standing tradition that keeps the military from being used for domestic law enforcement. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 says the military can’t be used in that way, outside of specific exceptions like invocations of the Insurrection Act, which Trump hasn’t used.
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