What Is The Insurrection Act? As US President, Trump Has Power To Send Military To Calm Unrest – By Marcy Kreiter (IB Times) / June 2 2020
- A state’s legislature or governor, if the legislature cannot convene, can ask the president to invoke the Insurrection Act
- The act was used to enforce desegregation orders in the 1960s
- Before invoking the act, the president must give protesters time to disperse
President Trump threatened to invoke a 19th century law that allows the president to call in the military to suppress uprisings in individual states at a state’s request. The Insurrection Act has been invoked frequently since it went into effect in 1807, most recently in 1989 in the wake of Hurricane Hugo and during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. It also was used to enforce desegregation orders in the 1960s.
Trump threatened to invoke the act Monday following violent protests that have swept cities across the country, triggered by the Memorial Day death of a black Minneapolis man at the hands of a white police officer. Indictment of the police officer on murder charges failed to quell racial rage over the killing, which involved Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd as Floyd pleaded for air.
“Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled,” Trump said in remarks made in the Rose Garden before police used tear gas and other measures to clear a path for the president to walk across the street for a photo op in front of an Episcopal church where he held up a Bible.
“If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”
Several states already have mobilized the National Guard to back up police trying to keep protesters safe and prevent vandalism and looting.
Calling the violent demonstrations “acts of domestic terror,” Trump said he would mobilize “all available federal resources — civilian and military — to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.”
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