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Is it time to do something about the Insurrection Act?
As the self-proclaimed "President of law and order," Donald Trump spent much of his time in office threatening to deploy military forces domestically to quell instances of civic unrest, insisting at one point that sending troops to cities rocked by protests over the 2020 death of George Floyd would "quickly solve the problem." While Trump "did not mention it by name," his suggestion of a domestic military deployment was invoking the Insurrection Act — legislation allowing a president to use troops as law enforcement "under some conditions," The New York Times explained at the time. The act, actually a series of combined statutes stretching back more than 200 years, "temporarily suspends the Posse Comitatus rule" which ordinarily bars military forces from acting as a domestic police force, and is intended to be applied only in exceptional cases "truly beyond the capacity of civilian authorities to manage," according to the Brennan Center for Justice. It also affords presidents powers that are, per the Center, "dangerously overbroad and ripe for abuse."Read the rest:
Is it time to do something about the Insurrection Act?
New worries over an old law have prompted calls for legislative change ahead of Trump's potential return to office
theweek.com
