National Public Radio (NPR) is a left-leaning outlet you and I unfortunately fund through our tax dollars. It is, as they don’t like it to be known, government-funded media. They, like most of the mainstream press, are terrified of the Return of Donald Trump, and it appears to be making them (along with some Democrats) rethink the excesses of executive power in the United States.
It is a cyclical event, though the extent is amplified because of Trump. Every time it looks like a Republican could take the reins of power in Washington D.C., progressives suddenly realize the federal government may be too powerful. In this case, it appears that the Democrats have remembered that there is something called the “Insurrection Act,” and it’s not great if it gets abused.
“A bipartisan group of legal experts is sounding an alarm about presidential power this election season,” NPR wrote in its latest story about how terrifying a second term of Trump would be. “They’re pushing Congress to update a cluster of laws known as the Insurrection Act and limit how the White House can deploy troops on American soil, in case a future president takes advantage of that sweeping power.”
You see, Donald J. Trump is a terrible, awful, no-good tyrant who is going to impose his will on all of us and use the American military to do so.
“It’s really up to the president to decide when to use the armed forces as a domestic police force,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “And that is tremendous cause for concern, because an army turned inward can very quickly become an instrument of tyranny.”
The Insurrection Act, which predates the development of modern state and local police departments, gives the president the power to call on the military during an emergency to curb unrest or rebellion here at home.
The last time a president invoked the law was in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush used it to tamp down violence in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted police officers in the beating of motorist Rodney King.
But Goitein said most people remember the law for another moment in civil rights history, when President Dwight Eisenhower called up federal troops to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Ark.
More recently, it’s been on the table after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and before the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
To get more information about how dangerous a President Trump with the ability to utilize the Insurrection Act is, NPR turned to Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, a man who has the potential to be of sound mind if he would just take his anxiety meds.
“Stewart Rhodes, who’s been convicted of seditious conspiracy, which means conspiracy to overthrow or put down the government, was essentially calling on President Trump to use the Insurrection Act for the purposes of perpetrating an insurrection,” Raskin told NPR. “The general principle is that we don’t live in a military dictatorship and we don’t use the military for ordinary law enforcement purposes.”
There is no indication that Trump was, is, or ever will use the American military as his own personal law enforcement agency and wield it against his opponents. There never really was. These people have convinced themselves that Trump is capable of doing so much more than he did, yet they cannot explain why he didn’t do so when Biden beat him. Instead, he allegedly relied on a bunch of unarmed fools who were LARPing as “patriots” to overthrow Congress – something they were so successful in doing that Congress returned to work almost immediately.
We’ve said it time and time again, but Trump has truly broken these people. But, at least they’re starting to recognize that maybe the government has become too powerful. Of course, that fear won’t last if Trump loses in November. They’ll want Joe Biden to have more power instead.
