Donald Trump expects there to be riotous protests if he is elected and has let it be known that he will, the moment he is inaugurated, invoke the Insurrection Act to bring the American military into the streets of our cities to round up and detain protesters.
To reinforce that this is not his idle musing, you might recall that Trump publicly expressed regret that he did not deploy the Act to quell the unrest after the murder of George Floyd. He further said he would not hesitate to use the act in the future. He is a president who thinks the Constitution is just so many disposable words, saying in 2022 that what he fantasized was a fraudulent 2020 election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Invoking the Act to deploy military rule within the United States would show Putin and Xi that he is just as powerful as they, elevating himself into the exclusive club of the world's dictators to which he has aspired.
THE ULTIMATE ZOMBIE LAW
The Insurrection Act of 1807, so named although it dates from even earlier, 1792, has been used responsibly by several presidents. Lincoln in 1861's insurrection in the South; Grant to put down the first Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s; Jackson, Hayes, Grover Cleveland and others, often to intervene in labor disputes (on behalf of employers); Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson during the civil rights movement to enforce desegregation. Most notably it was not invoked on January 6, 2021 to quash an insurrection called to action by then-president Trump
In 1992 George H. W. Bush used troops to quell riots after the police beatings of Rodney King in Los Angeles. But that provides the example that it was not at the president's initiative. It was at the request of the California governor in accord with the first part of the Act which provides for a state’s governor or legislature to ask the president to take action when faced with out of control public disorder.
NO HOLDS BARRED
It is the second part of the act which puts a dangerous weapon in the hands of a president like Trump, the first president to pose such a threat. It gives the president the right to … Continue reading
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