Trump may soon try to justify his abuse of our armed forces by invoking the Insurrection Act.
Today, I joined my colleagues to advance legislation that would stop him.
This is what I said:
I stand in this well, in support of my colleague’s request, as the Senator representing both the state first impacted by the president’s abuse of our military, and one against which he has threatened further military action and deployment.
So here we are. The president deploys thousands of members of the California National Guard on the streets of Los Angeles against the wishes of the mayor and governor.
Here we are. The president tells the Marines – those who have trained to land on beachheads and be the tip of our spear – that their next mission will be Los Angeles.
These might sound like hypothetical scenarios. Or the futuristic plot of some film. But this is what actually happened. And the president did not stop there.
From Los Angeles, he turned to our nation’s capital.
He put the National Guard on corner after corner – and even called on them to...pick up trash.
Because this has never been about crime. Or quelling some kind of rebellion or insurrection. For the president who refused to act when our Capitol was under actual insurrection on January 6th, this has never been about public safety.
It has been about control. It has been about squashing dissent. It has been about using our troops as political pawns to show anyone – in any city in America – that the president is not to be crossed.
But such deployments of our servicemembers are dangerous, they are destructive, and they are illegal.
We are grateful to our National Guard to lend a hand in times of natural disasters like fires and floods, and we all have too much experience in both in California. But it is plainly not permitted under the law to use the armed forces to assist the president in some ambiguous campaign of fear, or domestic policing, or indiscriminate immigration raids. That is not the purpose of the military. That is not the function of the military. That is not a lawful use of the military.
And courts around the country have recognized the lawless nature of these deployments, and the false representations made to justify them, or try to, as one judge in Portland observed — the administration’s claims are “untethered to facts.”
And because the legal justification for these deployments has been found legally wanting, the president and his administration, including the chief architect of this campaign of suppression, Stephen Miller, have dusted off and may be prepared to deploy a different archaic law to form an even more dangerous and expansive legal basis for these deployments. And that is the Insurrection Act.
The Insurrection Act was originally enacted in 1792 – during a very different era, when our republic was in its infancy – it was intended to provide the president – in only the rarest and most extreme circumstances – with the ability to federalize our military to respond to and “suppress” a “rebellion,” or “insurrection” against the authority of the United States.
It was not enacted to deploy the military to pick up trash, or to engage in domestic policing, or do things that local police of law enforcement could do on their own.
No it was enacted to suppress a rebellion against the government or insurrection against the government.
The law was in fact intended by Congress as an exception to another law – the Posse Comitatus Act – that otherwise forbids the military from undertaking domestic law enforcement.
The Insurrection Act, therefore, must be understood as an authority that Congress enacted at the outset of our republic for a president to use in only the most narrow and exceptional and extreme of circumstances where all other means of protecting our country and enforcing our laws have been exhausted.
That is clearly not the case here.
The history and purpose of this law is clear and should not be abused by any president.
It should only apply to cases of demonstrable insurrection or rebellion against the United States and where all other means of protecting Americans and enforcing our laws simply do not exist.
Now let’s look at the plain facts of the matter. There is no rebellion or insurrection. Not in Los Angeles. Not in Portland. Not in Chicago. Not in San Francisco. Not in Washington, D.C. No where to be found.
So what’s really going on here? Well, I think the president admitted it very plainly when he spoke to generals and admirals last month at the Pentagon. When he spoke of an “invasion from within.” And he spoke of his real goal which was: “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”
But our cities are not military training grounds and there is no way to assert an insurrection — like the Shay’s Rebellion or the Whiskey Rebellion that had occurred shortly before the Insurrection Act was passed in the 1790s — to justify, today, the unjustifiable.
There is no disorder in this country that can’t be dispersed by state and local law enforcement. But despite the clear letter of the law not being met here, the president continues to flirt with invoking the Insurrection Act anyway.
Because the president’s goal here is not to prevent disorder but to create it. Not to quell unrest, but to provoke it. To enlist the nation’s military in a civil dispute against his perceived enemies; against community organizers; against American cities; against Clergymen; against those who fight to uphold the checks and balances in the Constitution; against a free and fair press; against journalists; against our courts; against anyone who dares to raise their voice against him.
It’s no accident that this president and his administration have deliberately tried to paint all of his political opposition, everyday citizens out protesting on ‘No Kings Day.’ He would paint them all, all who stand up for our Constitution and our rights as Americans. He would paint them all as some kind of terrorists or extremists.
That is the language we hear from the White House, and that is the language we hear from authoritarians who use it to justify using the awesome power of the state, including its military, against its real and perceived domestic opponents.
And we should not take the president’s threats idly. We should make clear – as Senator Blumenthal would do with his legislation – that the president’s flirtations with this law are not within his powers. That the military is not his to deploy for pageantry, political theater, vengeance, or intimidation.
In the president’s words, he calls this law “unquestioned power.” And that is really what the president is after: unquestioned power.
Does that sound like a president who believes in checks and balance?
Does that sound like a president who believes in democracy? Or does that sound like a president who wants to be a king and will use any law, archaic or otherwise as a pretext?
Because the use of this law could forever erase the line between an apolitical military and the political whims of the Oval Office.
Now, Donald Trump has already sought to pit state against state and deploy the Guard from now one state against another state.
And this not only tears at the social cohesion of our nation, but also so undermines our military, which has the broad trust of our people and squanders that trust.
When you consider the sacrifices that are made by men and women in uniform. To squander that sacrifice by deploying the military against our own citizens. To take them away from the focus of their job, the mission of their job, which is to protect our country from foreign enemies and adversaries. It is not only dangerous to our people, but also disastrous to the military.
And I say to my colleagues here, even if your city is not Chicago, like Senator Durbin’s or your state is not Connecticut as Senator Blumenthal, or your state is not California or Oregon, and may not be on the tip of the president’s tongue now – there is nothing that will protect you when he turns to yours next.
Not if you don’t stand up now. This slippery slope only gets steeper. The voice of dissent must get louder.
We must stand now, before the troops are quartered in every city pulling your community’s families out and hog-tying the children in your cities in front of their parents.
Before Black Hawk helicopters are landing on your roofs. Before your citizens are being asked for their papers and paying fines just to go about their lives.
Now is the time to speak louder. Now is the time to insist on adherence to the law. Now is the time to push back against even greater abuses of the law, like we would see with the invocation of the Insurrection Act. I thank my colleague for leading this debate.
