Originally published at: Trump Threatened to Invoke the Insurrection Act — He’ll Need an Insurrection First
The Trump administration has flooded Minneapolis with thousands of immigration enforcement officials who have killed, shot and brutalized its inhabitants. Protests have ramped up accordingly. Videos show ICE officers using force against the protesters, in some cases reportedly taunting them with ICE officer Jonathan Ross’ killing of U.S. citizen Renee Good last week. Minnesota Gov.…
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With US House of Representatives support crumbling for this tin-pot despot, I think it’s the guy who threatens insurrection who better be careful not to lose his job
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WHO exactly is going to stop ICE? As soon as anyone steps up, TRUMP will have the troops going around in humvees with 50 Caliber machine guns. The fact that the Military has not yet said no to anything TRUMP wants to do means we are screwed.
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The way fascists usually roll, by the time that SCOTUS rules that the Trump administration cannot use the Insurrection Act, it will be too late. Indeed, I would not be surprised if they used the Insurrection Act on the court. But they probably will not need to do so, the fascists on the court will probably roll over once they determine there is not much they can do.
That is the issue by not putting bounds on a fascist early, as Europe found out.
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He’ll Need an Insurrection First
That will be news to Trump. I will be surprised if he doesn’t invoke the act, regardless of the circumstances; he almost always telegraphs his intentions.
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My prediction: If some other shiny toy turns up on his high-chair tray, he’ll forget all about the Insurrection Act.
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Trying to put shackles on American citizens for exercising their God-given rights to free speech, assembly and protest has not worked well in the past - ask King George. Ask Richard Nixon about shutting down the Vietnam War protests. Free men and women don’t scare easily.
The Insurrection Act works better as a threat than as a thing. The Republic has about 340M people and over 400M guns. With all the power the military has, those are poor odds in what could be a long, drawn out guerrilla-style civil war and political fight when the public disagrees with your position.
Trump should not start something he cannot stop. 60% of the country already hates his guts. The next Democratic President could strip his SS detail down to three guys and a pop gun and tell the aggrieved to pursue vigilante justice.
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“[I]invoking it [the Insurrection Act] in response to ICE-instigated protests in Minneapolis would be ‘flagrant abuse,’ Joseph Nunn, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program focusing on domestic military activity, told TPM.”
Trump: “Hold my Super-Sized McDonald’s milkshake.”
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True then, true now:
“As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” ― Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Letters
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Comment section is toying with me…
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“5. There’s also no statutory specification regarding which troops should be”
Well, all recent presidents in recent memory, and this current …thing… is no exception, have always liked bombing and strafing. Blowing stuff up. Hey, look how good it worked in Iraq! And the Israelis live by it!
Plus, if “the current thing” desires a massive public uprising, bombing Minneapolis would be a pretty good way to trigger it.
Here’s hoping I’m crazy.
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Hell, he needs to understand what an Insurrection is first. My guess he got stumped by the latter part of the word
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My five points:
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Flagrant abuse is
4:brain:s’s specialty. -
So is Lack of self restraint.
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The only time limit is his remaining life span.
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Lack of proper law enforcement training is a feature not a bug.
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Yeah, he would send tanks. If for no other reason than to tear up blue city streets.
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Is there any limit on location in the statute, or can he just declare an insurrection in MN and then send troops to SF as well?
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The Supreme Court ruling that Trump could not send the National Guard into Illinois may have been a warning shot, but perhaps not the kind described in the article. As I recall - and my memory could easily be wrong - the reason for the ruling was that the Guard can only be used as a last resort, if the “regular forces” can’t control the situation. There was some speculation as to what was meant by “regular forces”, with some (mostly pro-Trump) saying that meant the local police, while others saying that meant the military. If the SCOTUS majority meant the latter, then it would be more likely to support an invocation of the Insurrection Act, even if there was no insurrection. After all, there was no rioting in any of the cities that could not be controlled by the local police anywhere yet; Trump just declared a bogus Emergency, and to deal with it, sent in the Guard and, in Los Angeles, some Marines. So, I’m not at all sanguine about what SCOTUS will do, especially based on their recent performance.
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Expecting 
4:brain:s to follow any part of any law is futile (I was going to say silly, but I want you to take me seriously so I changed it to futile).
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Trump is reckless enough to start plenty of things that he can’t stop. That’s the essence of the problem. The man almost crtainly has a faulty frontal cortext–the seat of impulse-control in a normally functioning, mature brain. That lack of impulse control makes him both say and do damgerous things that have very bad consequenses.
I don’t think that we’ve ever had a president with this degree of failure to control impulses. Before this, they’ve all (apparently) had the impulse control to stop–to pull back–before doing something truly catastrophic. Maybe Andrew Jackson came closest.
The truly dangerous part of having Trump, with his recklessness unchecked, in a position of vast power comes when we recall the only truly comparable case among world leaders, at least in recent times. (Thus I’m not talking about crazed Roman emperors or tribal leaders like Genghis Khan.) That case is Adolf Hitler. Stalin, Mao, and the Kims, by contrast, were cold calculators–bloody mass murderers, but not reckless; they pulled back when they realized that they’d gone too far. (E.g., Stalin not proceeding from th Berlin Blockade to all-out war in 1948.) And that’s what made MAD (mutually-assured destruction) work to prevent nuclear wars from the time that the Soviets and then also the Chinese got the Bomb.
As long as Trump is in the White House and in control of the awesome power that any president wields, we are going to be in grave danger.
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Expecting 4:brain:s to follow any part of any law is futile (I was going to say silly, but I want you to take me seriously so I changed it to futile).
PS I hope the governors send their own state National Guards to protect the populace. That is the NG’s job after all.
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I hope enough members of the US military paid attention to their training & that recent PSA by Sens Mark Kelly & Emily Slotkin and friends that they would not obey illegal orders.
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Believe it when I see it.
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