An authoritarian’s dream, the Insurrection Act is ripe for abuse — and Trump’s Cabinet is already setting up his justification to use it.

Archive article: https://archive.is/t7O5z

“The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them,” JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, where Trump’s storm troopers already wreaking havoc in Chicago, said on Monday. “Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send the military to our city.”

Legal experts have long warned that the two-century-old statute is dangerously broad and in desperate need of updating for the exact reasons it’s such an appealing tool for Trump.

The language of the law is vague — a gift to a president with dictatorial aims. It grants the federal executive power to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.” “Nothing in the text of the Insurrection Act defines ‘insurrection,’ ‘rebellion,’ ‘domestic violence,’ or any of the other key terms used in setting forth the prerequisites for deployment,” noted Nunn. “Absent statutory guidance, the Supreme Court decided early on that this question is for the president alone to decide.”

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    74·
    3 days ago

    The same asshole that plotted a coup while stoking an ACTUAL insurrection and then sat by for hours, hoping that they’d carry out violence, possibly murder, on his own VP and people like Pelosi. Wanting to invoke the Insurrection Act.

    • Tilgare@lemmy.world
      61·
      3 days ago

      He thinks we’re both the same. Problem is, violence comes predominantly from the right - that’s why they did exactly what he wanted, and why the left is not. That, and education I guess.

    • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
      16·
      3 days ago

      funny thing is any inserection that happens is about fighting him to restore the rule of the constitution.

        • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
          53·
          3 days ago

          The one we have is pretty darn good. I would love a tribunal executive and a parliment style house.

          • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            91·
            3 days ago

            The one under which Native Americans didn’t have the right to vote until the 1970s? I don’t agree that it’s pretty good.

            • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
              41·
              3 days ago

              As you point out that is no longer the case. Its a living constitution and what we have currently is different from the outset.

              • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
                61·
                3 days ago

                And yet it’s nearly impossible to amend despite the desperate need for amendments being glaring to anyone

    • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
      181·
      3 days ago

      Further descent into fascism is not a distraction.

      The pedo is doing a lot of bad things all at once, because he is a bad person, not to distract you from one bad thing in particular

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        41·
        3 days ago

        Why is it not an option that he’s doing both? That’s what he’s doing whether intentionally or not. And you have to assume a lot of these ideas came from other people who want the Epstein files to stay unreleased