Thread on #InsurrectionAct. After Hurricane Katrina, when civil society had broken down and basic food and water needs not addressed, Pres. Bush was presented with the option to invoke the #Insurrection Act to deploy active military. The merits were strong. Still, he declined 1/
https://twitter.com/nytmike/status/1408549200430837762
It will go down as one of the most "what if" questions of that era. Deployments like that are complicated and it is naive to think the military would have solved everything.
But perhaps they could have solved more. And Bush liked military efforts, after all. 2/
But perhaps they could have solved more. And Bush liked military efforts, after all. 2/
In his recollections, and others, it was the idea of deploying active military, not trained for such efforts, opposed by the Governor (a Democrat then), and the precedent it would set for the nation that got him to no. 3/
Tens of thousands of troops were in fact deployed from dozens of states but they were National Guard (not active duty under Pentagon control) and that was because of the Guard's greater training with civilian society. 4/
Looking back and writing about it in his memoir, Bush thought he should have invoked the Insurrection Act. Who knows? But active military in homeland was such a last resort measure that presidents have held off even under circumstances much greater than what Trump ever faced. 5/
So don't just dismiss this story as "Trump being Trump." His authoritarian tendencies were extreme, ahistorical. I remember a GOP leader being quoted "What's the downside for humoring him?" about his election lies. It turns out Trump wasn't joking, ever. @nytmike @maggieNYT 6/6
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