Hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers gathered on Tuesday at an Army facility outside Chicago, as Donald Trump’s threat to invoke an anti-insurrection law and deploy troops to more US cities intensified the battle over the limits to his authority.
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The Republican president on Tuesday again left open the possibility that he might use the centuries-old Insurrection Act to sidestep any court rulings blocking the dispatch of Guard troops into Democratic-led cities, over the objections of local and state officials.
A federal judge has temporarily barred Guard troops from heading to Portland, Oregon, though a separate judge has allowed for now a deployment to proceed in Chicago, where federal agents have embarked on a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration.
“Well, it’s been invoked before,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. He has claimed troops are needed to protect federal property and personnel in carrying out their duties, as well as assisting an overall drive to suppress crime.
“If you look at Chicago, Chicago is a great city where there’s a lot of crime, and if the governor can’t do the job, we’ll do the job. It’s all very simple,” he said.
The law, which gives the president authority to deploy the military to quell unrest in an emergency, has typically been used only in extreme cases, and almost always at the invitation of state governors. The act was last invoked by President George H.W. Bush during the Los Angeles riots of 1992.