Trump's Insurrection Act threat escalates showdown with cities

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By Sara Merken

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REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Donald Trump's threat to invoke a federal anti-insurrection law to expand his deployment of military personnel to U.S. cities has intensified his legal battle with Democratic-led cities over presidential authority, as hundreds of National Guard troops from Texas prepared to patrol the streets of Chicago.

The president told reporters yesterday he would consider utilizing the Insurrection Act, a law enacted more than two centuries ago, to sidestep any court rulings restricting his orders to send Guard troops into cities over the objections of local and state officials.

"We have an Insurrection Act for a reason," Trump said. "If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I'd do that."

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. Read more from Emily Schmall.

Plus, here's an explainer: Trump keeps bringing up the Insurrection Act. What is it?

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, appearing before a Senate panel, criticized Democratic lawmakers in personal terms as she faced pushback over the DOJ's enforcement efforts in Democratic-led cities and investigations of President Trump's critics.

Bondi, appearing before the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee, said the department under Trump was "returning to our core mission of fighting real crime," citing the surge in federal law enforcement activity in Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tennessee.

Bondi said the DOJ was ending the "weaponization of justice" even as several political adversaries of Trump face federal investigations and prosecutions.

The attorney general parried questions from Democratic lawmakers about her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, a bribery probe into Trump border czar Tom Homan and the case against former FBI Director James Comey by criticizing her questioners in partisan terms unusual for the nation's top law enforcement officer.

Read more about the hearing from Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch.

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sara.merken@thomsonreuters.com

@saramerken

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