President Trump directed the Defense Department to take a larger role in domestic law enforcement, including by “quelling civil disturbances,” as he threatens to broaden deployments of the National Guard in cities run by his political enemies, reported The New York Times.
The executive order, released by the White House on Monday
morning, also formalizes the creation of specially trained National Guard units
in the District of Columbia and all 50 states that can be mobilized quickly for
“ensuring the public safety and order.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions about
the order, which came two weeks after Mr. Trump declared a “crime emergency” in the District of Columbia and
deployed National Guard troops to the nation’s capital, over the objections of
local officials who have said crime in the city is at its lowest level in
decades.
In a statement, the White House said the president was
ordering “common-sense measures to ensure long-term safety of our nation’s
capital.”
The statement said the executive order would increase
“participation across agencies” in enabling more specially trained personnel to
deliver on Mr. Trump’s campaign promise and “constitutional obligation to make
D.C. safe and beautiful again.”
Mr. Trump has mused openly about expanding the deployments
to other cities, particularly Democratic strongholds like New York, Chicago and
Baltimore, saying crime there is out of control. On Monday, Mr. Trump said he
could “solve” crime in Chicago in a week, though he hedged about whether he
planned to move ahead with sending troops there.
While Guard troops have been temporarily mobilized by
governors in the past to respond to natural disasters and occasionally for
civil unrest, the order appears to carve out a much larger domestic role for
the National Guard.
According to government documents, Guard troops can be
mobilized for duty within a state or territory by a governor in response to “a
crisis or a natural disaster, or in support of special events when local,
tribal and state capabilities are overwhelmed, exhausted or unavailable.” The
president can also federalize the Guard himself, as Mr. Trump did in deploying
members of the California National Guard to Los Angeles in June — over the objections
of the state’s governor.
Monday’s order appears to create a force of Guard soldiers
that could be called out by the White House regardless of whether state and
local law enforcement are available and able to handle civil disturbances,
raising significant legal questions.
“Quelling civil disturbances is the responsibility of state
and local law enforcement except in the most extreme instances,” said Elizabeth
Goitein, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York
University’s law school. “Having soldiers police protests, as this order
envisions, threatens fundamental liberties and public safety, and it violates a
centuries-old principle against involving the military in domestic law
enforcement.”
Under an 1878 law called the Posse
Comitatus Act, it is normally illegal to use federal troops on domestic soil
for policing purposes. But Mr. Trump, in federalizing the California Guard,
invoked a statute, Section
12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, that allows him to call National Guard
members and units into federal service under certain circumstances, including
during a rebellion against the authority of the federal government.
In California, where Mr. Trump deployed roughly 4,000
members of the National Guard to Los Angeles, citing protests over immigration
raids, state officials opened a
legal challenge to the deployment, which a federal judge had ruled
to be illegal before an appeals court blocked
the ruling.
The order also directs a task force in Washington led by a
White House adviser, Stephen Miller, to create an online portal for “Americans
with law enforcement or other relevant backgrounds and experience” to apply to
join federal agents in enforcing Mr. Trump’s “crime emergency” order in the
District of Columbia.
As of Sunday, there were 2,274 Guard troops deployed to
Washington. Only 934 of those troops are part of the D.C. National Guard. The
rest have been mobilized from units in Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South
Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
On Sunday, Guard soldiers in Washington who were previously
unarmed began
carrying their service weapons while on patrol, a task that is outside
traditional norms for Guard troops on domestic missions. According to a report published by the Congressional Research
Service in April, the typical jobs given to U.S. military personnel who have
been mobilized to assist civil authorities include transporting supplies,
clearing or constructing roads, and controlling traffic during missions such as
border security, natural disaster response and public health emergencies.
The specialized force proposed for the Guard in Washington
would be deputized to enforce federal law, according to the executive order,
which also directs the creation of a standing National Guard “quick reaction
force” that would be available for rapid deployment anywhere in the country.
(Federal law enforcement entities already maintain a nationwide network of
trained special agents who can respond in times of crisis, like the F.B.I.’s
Hostage Rescue Team based in Quantico, Va., which can be rapidly deployed
anywhere in the United States for counterterrorism missions, and special
weapons and tactics teams at each F.B.I. field office.)
By directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to train a
specialized D.C. National Guard unit dedicated to “ensuring public safety” in
Washington, Mr. Trump is essentially requiring the city’s Guard to come up with
a rapid-response-style unit that can deploy quickly when he decides the need has
risen.
Military analysts say that is what the National Guard trains
to do anyway — deploy quickly, although usually in the event of a natural
disaster like a hurricane. Guard troops have also deployed to respond to
political crises, like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s
supporters, and during the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted after the
Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in 2020.
It is unusual, though, for National Guard troops to just
live on standby waiting for the president to decide he wants to target crime in
a city of his choosing. Guard troops train part time, often one weekend a month
and two weeks a year, to respond to emergencies. They do not sit around waiting
for the president to deploy them as a law enforcement arm.
“Most of them are not full-time soldiers; they have separate
jobs,” said Pete Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University.
“Maintaining a specialized force at a high amount of readiness is tantamount to
mobilizing them.”
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