The president of the United States, Donald Trump, required the National Guard in California against the Council of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, saying that he wanted to restore the order in Los Angeles after the fights.
He then ordered the mobilization of 700 marinas to lend a hand to the approximately 2,000 members of the National Guard that were already temporarily placed under the authority of the federal government.
• How can Trump use the National Guard in California?
When requesting for 60 days the National Guard against the will of the Governor of the State in question, the first since President Lyndon Johnson in Alabama (South) in 1965 to protect civil rights protesters, Donald Trump invoked a law on “rebellion or risk of rebellion against the authority of the United States government.”
The governor of California brought an appeal, accusing him of going beyond his powers. He asked the Justice to immediately suspend the presidential decision, in particular with the argument that none of the conditions established by the law is fulfilled.
These conditions are the invasion of a foreign power, or the rebellion against US institutions, or the inability for the President to enforce the laws by ordinary means at his disposal.
Questioned Tuesday at Congress about knowing which of these conditions corresponded to the situation in Los Angeles, Defense Minister Pete Hegseth replied: “People can have their own idea, but in my opinion every three.”
The law authorizes soldiers, thus, they mobilized to guarantee the protection of federal buildings, but not to achieve order maintenance missions.
• Does mobilization in the reinforcement of the armed changes the situation?
On a legal level, the participation of the armed is governed by the same rules as that of the National Guard military.
But these elite troops aimed at projection in external operations theaters are particularly inadequate for the US territory, observe Rachel Vanlandham, law teacher and former lieutenant crowns in the Air Force.
“It is not because of its main mission, or secondary … or tertiary,” she says. “The armed are not trained to patrol the streets of our cities. It is true that they can have a basic domain of the crowds, but they use it in combat areas, not in angels,” he adds.
• Can American soldiers carry out control missions?
No, the principle is clearly made by the “Possse Comitatus Law”, which prohibits the use of soldiers against US citizens.
But Donald Trump could, while evoking, going beyond invoking the “Act insurrection” if he believes that these measures, although already exceptional, are not enough.
• What does the law against rebellion or “insurrection law” allow?
The “Act Insurrection”, compilation of laws of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is an “exception to the POSSE committus,” explains Chris Mirasola, law professor and former legal advisor of the Pentagon.
“He legally empowered the president to use the Army in order to maintain order within the United States in certain defined circumstances, generally linked to the obstruction of the maintenance of the federal order,” he said at the site of the law.
“To summarize, the conditions under which they can be used, is when everything goes into turn,” said William Banks, another law teacher.
He was last invoked in 1992 by President George Bush’s father at the request of the Republican Governor of California Pete Wilson, faced with unprecedented disturbances in Los Angeles after the acquittal of police officers who had spent Tobac Rodney King, a black motorist, the previous year.
Source: BFM TV
