Re: Posse Comitatus.
1. This 1878 law is a big deal, passed not to keep troops out of the South, but to keep troops from being used against strikes after President Hayes called them out at the bequest of railroad baron Thomas A. Scott during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike.
1. This 1878 law is a big deal, passed not to keep troops out of the South, but to keep troops from being used against strikes after President Hayes called them out at the bequest of railroad baron Thomas A. Scott during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike.
2. It said that troops (army, amended 1956 to include Air Force, and others say they abide by it even if not specifically named) could not be used domestically unless authorized by the Constitution or Congress (which meant they could be used to put down domestic insurrection)...
3. Under the 1871 Enforcement Act (passed to put down the Ku Klux Klan). This exception is how President Grover Cleveland could call out the troops to put down the Pullman Strike of 1894. When strikers refused to handle trains that had Pullman cars on them...
4. Cleveland's A.G., railroad lawyer Richard Olney, got Cleveland to put US Mail cars on each train, so strikers refusing to handle them were rebelling against the US government. Sneaky. (And deadly.)
5. This law also meant that Plains Indians were screwed, because the army could no longer protect them from setters who stole their horses and cattle. Because Posse Comitatus.
6. States turned to their own troops to handle unrest (usually strikes at first) within their borders, with the belief that local men would be less likely to murder their fellow citizens wantonly. Hence the rise of what came to be called the National Guard (state troops).
7. After 1933, National Guard troops became reserves for US Army, so they can be called into federal service. But the opposite is not true. So in 1957, for example, when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus worried about the integration of Little Rock Central High School...
8. he called out the Arkansas National Guard to "preserve the peace." And when President Eisenhower realized that Faubus was protecting segregation rather than the black students, he-- Eisenhower-- federalized the Guard and told it to switch sides.
9. Why do I know so much about the PCA? Because Vice President Dick Cheney was obsessed with repealing it. When I had to write about it for West From Appomattox, I found a government document that assembled all the relevant discussion, laws, uses, etc. of it that he had ordered.
10. Who cares? Well, in 2006, at the urging of President George W. Bush, Congress modified the law to permit the use of the US armed forces domestically whenever he-- the president-- concluded it was necessary to do so to enforce the laws.
11. Please reread that last tweet.
The 2006 law put into a president's hands the power to use the army against anyone whenever s/he wanted. (It fell under most people's radar screens, and this was a HUGE reworking of our governmental balance of power.)
The 2006 law put into a president's hands the power to use the army against anyone whenever s/he wanted. (It fell under most people's radar screens, and this was a HUGE reworking of our governmental balance of power.)
12. But then, in 2008, Congress repealed these changes, to limit once again the power at the disposal of the president to use against his (or her) own people. Thanks, Obama.
13. So, technically, Trump cannot use troops against American citizens. And he cannot send troops into a state at all without a request from the governor saying that s/he cannot keep order with state troops alone.
14. BUT... Why should anyone think that a man who has shown no inclination ever to be restricted by laws or norms would not simply do this under some pretext? This thread tells the history... but the future is unwritten. END
PS. Thanks for asking.
