Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the US and legacy law gives him few guardrails

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

48% : "There's not much really in the law to stay the president's hand.
48% : Presidents have issued a total of 40 proclamations invoking the law, some of those done multiple times for the same crisis, Nunn said.
47% : George H.W. Bush was the last president to use the Insurrection Act, a response to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the white police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King in an incident that was videotaped.
46% : Nunn said it's an amalgamation of different statutes enacted between then and the 1870s, a time when there was little in the way of local law enforcement.
45% : William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor and expert in national security law, said a military officer is not forced to follow "unlawful orders."
44% : "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 Joseph Nunn, a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice.
40% : It also is one of the most substantial exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits using the military for law enforcement purposes.
40% : During the Civil Rights era, Presidents Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower used the law to protect activists and students desegregating schools.
37% : Attempts to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military for domestic policing would likely elicit pushback from the Pentagon, where the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is Gen. Charles Q. Brown.
36% : "CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINERNunn, who has suggested steps to restrict the invocation of the law, said military personnel cannot be ordered to break the law.

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