ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 Donald Trump would not be the first president to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened, so that he can send U.S. military forces to Minnesota.<\/b>
\nDonald Trump would not be the first president to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened, so that he can send U.S. military forces to Minnesota.
But he’d be the only commander in chief to use the 19th-century law to send troops to quell protests that started because of federal officers the president already has sent to the area \u2014 one of whom shot and killed a U.S. citizen.
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The law, which allows presidents to use the military domestically, has been invoked on more than two dozen occasions \u2014 but rarely since the 20th Century’s Civil Rights Movement.
Federal forces typically are called to quell widespread violence that has broken out on the local level \u2014 before Washington’s involvement and when local authorities ask for help. When presidents acted without local requests, it was usually to enforce the rights of individuals who were being threatened or not protected by state and local governments. A third scenario is an outright insurrection \u2014 like the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Experts in constitutional and military law say none of that clearly applies in Minneapolis.
\u201cThis would be a flagrant abuse of the Insurrection Act in a way that we’ve never seen,\u201d said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. \u201cNone of the criteria have been met.\u201d
William Banks, a Syracuse University professor emeritus who has written extensively on the domestic use of the military, said the situation is \u201ca historical outlier\u201d because the violence Trump wants to end \u201cis being created by the federal civilian officers\u201d he sent there.
But he also cautioned Minnesota officials would have \u201ca tough argument to win\u201d in court, because the judiciary is hesitant to challenge \u201cbecause the courts are typically going to defer to the president\u201d on his military decisions.
Here is a look at the law, how it’s been used and comparisons to Minneapolis.
George Washington signed the first version in 1792, authorizing him to mobilize state militias \u2014 National Guard forerunners \u2014 when \u201claws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed.\u201d
He and John Adams used it to quash citizen uprisings against taxes, including liquor levies and property taxes that were deemed essential to the young republic’s survival.
Congress expanded the law in 1807, restating presidential authority to counter \u201cinsurrection or obstruction\u201d of laws. Nunn said the early statutes recognized a fundamental \u201cAnglo-American tradition against military intervention in civilian affairs\u201d except \u201cas a tool of last resort.\u201d
The president argues Minnesota officials and citizens are impeding U.S. law by protesting his agenda and the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Customs and Border Protection officers. Yet early statutes also defined circumstances for the law as unrest \u201ctoo powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course\u201d of law enforcement.
There are between 2,000 and 3,000 federal authorities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, compared to Minneapolis, which has fewer than 600 police officers. Protesters‘ and bystanders‘ video, meanwhile, has shown violence initiated by federal officers, with the interactions growing more frequent since Renee Good was shot three times and killed.
\u201cICE has the legal authority to enforce federal immigration laws,\u201d Nunn said. \u201cBut what they’re doing is a sort of lawless, violent behavior\u201d that goes beyond their legal function and \u201cfoments the situation\u201d Trump wants to suppress.
\u201cThey can’t intentionally create a crisis, then turn around to do a crackdown,\u201d he said, adding that the Constitutional requirement for a president to \u201cfaithfully execute the laws\u201d means Trump must wield his power, on immigration and the Insurrection Act, \u201cin good faith.\u201d
Courts have blocked some of Trump’s efforts to deploy the National Guard, but he’d argue with the Insurrection Act that he does not need a state’s permission to send troops.
That traces to President Abraham Lincoln, who held in 1861 that Southern states could not legitimately secede. So, he convinced Congress to give him express power to deploy U.S. troops, without asking, into Confederate states he contended were still in the Union. Quite literally, Lincoln used the act as a legal basis to fight the Civil War.
Nunn said situations beyond such a clear insurrection as the Confederacy still require a local request or another trigger that Congress added after the Civil War: protecting individual rights. Ulysses S. Grant used that provision to send troops to counter the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who ignored the 14th and 15th amendments and civil rights statutes.
During post-war industrialization, violence erupted around strikes and expanding immigration \u2014 and governors sought help.
President Rutherford B. Hayes granted state requests during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 after striking workers, state forces and local police clashed, leading to dozens of deaths. Grover Cleveland granted a Washington state governor’s request \u2014 at that time it was a U.S. territory \u2014 to help protect Chinese citizens who were being attacked by white rioters. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Colorado in 1914 amid a coal strike after workers were killed.
Federal troops helped diffuse each situation.
Banks stressed that the law then and now presumes that federal resources are needed only when state and local authorities are overwhelmed \u2014 and Minnesota leaders say their cities would be stable and safe if Trump’s feds left.
As Grant had done, mid-20th century presidents used the act to counter white supremacists.
Franklin Roosevelt dispatched 6,000 troops to Detroit \u2014 more than double the U.S. forces in Minneapolis \u2014 after race riots that started with whites attacking Black residents. State officials asked for FDR’s aid after riots escalated, in part, Nunn said, because white local law enforcement joined in violence against Black residents. Federal troops calmed the city after dozens of deaths, including 17 Black residents killed by local police.
Once the Civil Rights Movement began, presidents sent authorities to Southern states without requests or permission, because local authorities defied U.S. civil rights law and fomented violence themselves.
Dwight Eisenhower enforced integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; John F. Kennedy sent troops to the University of Mississippi after riots over James Meredith’s admission and then pre-emptively to ensure no violence upon George Wallace’s \u201cStand in the Schoolhouse Door\u201d to protest the University of Alabama’s integration.
\u201cThere could have been significant loss of life from the rioters\u201d in Mississippi, Nunn said.
Lyndon Johnson protected the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery after Wallace’s troopers attacked marchers‘ on their first peaceful attempt.
Johnson also sent troops to multiple U.S. cities in 1967 and 1968 after clashes between residents and police escalated. The same thing happened in Los Angeles in 1992, the last time the Insurrection Act was invoked.
Riots erupted after a jury failed to convict four white police officers of excessive use of force despite video showing them beating a Rodney King, a Black man. California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush for support.
Bush authorized about 4,000 troops \u2014 but after he had publicly expressed displeasure over the trial verdict. He promised to \u201crestore order\u201d yet directed the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation, and two of the L.A. officers were later convicted in federal court.<\/p>\n