Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has expressed a desire to use the military to address unrest in Democratic cities and states, referring to New York City and Chicago as “crime dens.”
He has not provided specific details on how he would use the military, but his aggressive agenda includes mass deportations and travel bans.
Trump’s plans have raised questions about the Insurrection Act, which grants the president broad power to deploy the military to respond to unrest.
“The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it, and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,” Trump said.
“Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.”
“The principal constraint on the president’s use of the Insurrection Act is basically political, that presidents don’t want to be the guy who sent tanks rolling down Main Street,” said national security expert Joseph Nunn.
“There’s not much really in the law to stay the president’s hand.”
While some have defended Trump’s approach, others, including military experts, have raised concerns about the potential implications and challenges of using the military for domestic policing.
“There are a lot of institutional checks and balances in our country that are pretty well-developed legally, and it’ll make it hard for a president to just do something randomly out of the blue,” said director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank Michael O’Hanlon.
“But Trump is good at developing a semi-logical train of thought that might lead to a place where there’s enough mayhem, there’s enough violence and legal murkiness.”
