the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Washington DC, President Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 means the statute could be used for the first time in the 21st century.
The U.S. federal law allows the president to deploy military troops within the nation to suppress civil disorder, insurrection and rebellion, among other threats. It allows the president to federalize the National Guard and use U.S. armed forces to combat insurrections against states and the federal government.
The law, signed by President Thomas Jefferson, has been invoked 14 times, most recently in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush in response to the Los Angeles County riots after the Rodney King verdict.
Four Los Angeles police officers were found not guilty of using excessive force during a violent arrest of King, a decision that sparked race riots and violence throughout the nation.
In modern times, presidents have typically assumed the power to deal with the American agony of racial conflict, even relying on the provision to uphold federal civil rights in the Deep South.
In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower called on the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to safely escort nine black students into Little Rock Central High School after the Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus, using the Arkansas National Guard under the guise of maintaining peace, tried to prevent the students from entering the school.
President John F. Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act in 1962 and 1963 to send federal troops to Mississippi and Alabama to enforce civil rights laws. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to Detroit when deadly riots broke out between police and residents and again invoked the law in 1968 in response to protests sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
And in 1992, President George H.W. Bush responded to a request from Gov. Pete Wilson of California to help quell rioting in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the four LAPD officers who brutally beat Rodney King.
The act was revised after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to expand presidential power and though contemplated for use in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Bush administration used other authorities to send thousands of active duty troops to New Orleans.