The GOP defense of sending military to cities stops crime. Seriously? Invoking the insurrection act BS? Update 11/9

Update: 11/9/2025 As Trump continues illegally federalizing the National Guard, California doubles down on challenge | Governor of California

Judge permanently bars Trump from deploying National Guard troops to Portland in response to immigration protests

Continuing with original post.

Rep.  Lisa McClain(R-MI) on Morning Joe this AM made a spirited defense for using the military to stop crime in major cities (those with Democratic mayors, I notice). Her argument: when the military went into Washington, DC,  the murder rate not only went down, but there were no murders reported while they were there. Therefore, she argues,  just sending them in to other cities works.(DC has a special federal status that makes this legal, which states and cities do not have.)  A follow-up question I would ask if this means for permanently reducing the murder rate, is this a pitch for permanent military occupation of cities?  

Or is the answer something else, like funding more local resources and police to combat crime? The next question I would ask is what has the Trump regime done to fund more local police resources in cities.  I ran across this information at DOJ Funding Update: A Deeper Look at the Cuts - Council on Criminal Justice  The Trump DOJ has cut $500 million in grant funding to improving police forces since January 2025.

Updaten10/7/25 from my FB post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HALfwHzRkew Trump throws out a trial balloon...he wants to invoke the insurrection act against major US cities run by opposition mayors and governors so he can occupy them with active military. To do so he will have to show it is an organized effort to overthrow the government that involves violence. He tried using it in CA, and the judge denied it. It does explain the Antifa BS. It is not organized, and all those who acted 5 years ago were in protest of George Floyd and police brutality. To try to call that Chicago and Portland are in flames caused by antifa is a fantasy in his brain, that is removed and sheltered from reality..

Update: 10/7/2025  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-considers-invoking-the-insurrection-act-to-restore-order/vi-AA1O0Qjp?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=68e5452eceb4474ebd317d2bbc03b008&ei=7

In the case of California, the judge ruled against using the Insurrection Act. There are tough conditions when that can be invoked. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-considers-invoking-the-insurrection-act-to-restore-order/vi-AA1O0Qjp?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=68e5452eceb4474ebd317d2bbc03b008&ei=7

Google's AI answered my inquiry with the legal definition of insurrection. The major characteristic is that it must be an organized group committing violence.  To meet that definition, the Trump administration claims the group is Antifa (which is not organized) and the violence is a fantasy in Trump's unhinged, from-reality brain . AI Overview    

For an excellent posting on Substack, the BS is the purpose itself...to paint all opposition to Trump's takeover of democracy as antifa, hopefully scaring off participants in the Oct. 18 No Kings rally  Jonathan V. Last (@jvlast): "If antifa is a domestic terror organization and the No Kings protests are an antifa joint, then shouldn’t law enforcement arrest everyone who shows up on Saturday? Oh . . ."

  (or convincing his cult he is justified in arresting and militarizing blue cities.) .

Legally, an insurrection is a violent revolt or rebellion against a government or civil authority, characterized by organized, armed resistance intended to overthrow the government or deny its authority. It differs from a riot or mob violence in its organized nature and purpose to challenge the government's stability. In the United States, engaging in or inciting an insurrection against the U.S. government is a federal crime under 18 U.S. Code § 2383, carrying penalties of fines, imprisonment, and a ban from holding office. 

Key Elements of an Insurrection

• Organized Group: The resistance is typically by a group of citizens or subjects, not just an isolated incident. 
• Violence: The act involves acts of violence against civil or political authority. 
• Intent to Overthrow: The fundamental goal is to deny the lawful authority of the state or to overthrow the constituted government and seize its powers. 

Legal Context in the United States

• 18 U.S. Code § 2383: 

  This federal law makes it a crime to incite, assist, or engage in rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States. 
• Penalties: 

  The punishment for insurrection under this law can include a fine, imprisonment for up to ten years, or both, and results in being barred from holding any U.S. office. 
• Distinction from Riots: 

  Insurrections are distinct from riots or mob violence. While riots are disturbances of the peace, an insurrection involves a more organized, armed uprising with the specific purpose of undermining or overthrowing the government, threatening the stability of political society itself. 

• "In April, the Trump Administration terminated 373 grants from the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP).
• The defunded grants were initially valued at about $820 million, but many were multiyear grants in various stages of payout and implementation. The Administration has rescinded the remaining balances of these awards, which a CCJ analysis estimates at about $500 million.
• The terminated grants provided federal support for violence reduction, policing and prosecution, victims’ services, juvenile justice and child protection, substance use and mental health treatment, corrections and reentry, justice system enhancements, research and evaluation, and other state- and local-level public safety functions."

The Secretary of "war",  Pete Hegseth's remarks to the assembled brass the other day were alarming, a call to arms against US civilians and giving freedom for the military to ignore any rules that forbad harming civilians in combat and occupation.  He, by his pacing, made for TV oratory in many words, was telling the military to ignore the Constitution and to obey orders that they thought were 

 illegal.

Among the retired military and those in our family who appreciate the military, the discussion was, should those brass who sat through that resign now, or stay quiet as long as they can until they are given a direct illegal order to fire on US civilians in their own country or to commit war crimes against civilians in countries they occupy or conquer in the future.. The consensus was pragmatic: option 2. Resignations now would only leave vacancies for some junior officers loyal to Trumpism who would be promoted into those positions. There are always vultures who like to pick up the scraps in any society.

Retired General James Mattis published a response in The New York Times: here's a PDF of it.

In Union There Is Strength I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. Itis a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind.We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens, much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside. We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home,we should use our military only when requested to do so,on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict— between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them. James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law. Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics. Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens, to past generations that bled to defend our promise, and to our children. We can come through this trying time stronger and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite. Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad. "James Mattis

In the meantime, Portland gets a temporary restraining order stopping the immediate deployment of military. Judge temporarily blocks Trump’s National Guard deployment in Portland

The false pretext: President loses a power grab strategy with Harvard, California, migrant due process rulings

The President is losing a power grab strategy with his action on Harvard, the deployment of military in California, and migrant due process ICE policies. The courts are not buying his use of pretexts to justify his actions.   Is Trump using false pretexts to justify military actions to seek regime change and revisit denied court actions, as he kills 11 Venezuelan drug sailors and floods the Caribbean with US military assets in a Wag the Dog scenario and reclassifies drug smugglers as "terrorists"? His most flagrant example of a false pretext is the misuse of revenge on Colorado's mail-in ballot system as a pretext for moving the space command center to Alabama. Trump has been trying to move the center since 2016, but had never tied it to mail-in ballots until now.

  One of the tools of terror to force institutions, private and public, to bend to Trump's power grabs is to use unrelated issues in order to get compliance with his policies and to justify anti-constitutional acts of withholding funding.  The pretext is false, and courts are not being fooled in recent lower court decisions. Most of these rulings will end up in the Supreme Court. (Oxford dictionary:Pretext: a reason given in justification of a course of action that is not the real reason.)  I would add that even the pretext itself can be used and abused and distorted, and it can be just as false as the issue and facts to which they are referring are false, as well.("False Pretense"is the word used in common language, but it also has a meaning  in the law closely associated with criminal real estate transactions so I am using "pretext" to avoid any confusion.)

Trump's attempt to force Harvard to change their curriculum and admissions polices, contrary to Trump's interests, by using the issue of anti-Semitism, just hit the fan.  A judge ruled that Trump's withholding of $2 billion in federal research grants unless Harvard complied with demands that were unrelated to anti-Semitism actions on campus was illegal. Judge says Trump administration unlawfully blocked $2 billion from Harvard | CNN Politics This ruling will be appealed, but in the meantime, the Trump strategy to scare all, including private institutions, engaged in higher ed that dare teach a liberal viewpoint, and the intellectual debate of multiple views, to change curriculum and staff to support his one-sided view, is being stopped.  Trump's attempt to control the ability of all Americans at any level of education to hear or learn views other than Trump is also obvious from attempts to force the Smithsonian to remove or reduce references to the ills of slavery in American history and the resulting civil rights movement. 

The grand daddy of false pretexts: to deploy military, national guard, or active duty contrary to the Posse Comitatus Act as applied to states' rights, is that there is a "national emergency", a loophole that would give him the power to do it. That one also was shot down in flames regarding the deployment of troops to California, and my also echo in other incidents, including his attempt to hype up the crime issue in blue states, when ignoring the even worse rate of crime in red states. After ruling against LA Guard use, Trump vows more deployments : NPR   Next on  Trump's plans: send troops into Chicago.  The use of federal troops in DC is a different situation, since Washington, DC, is not a state, but is subject to degrees of federal control and home rule.. It is obvious that such a declaration of national emergency serves his political ambitions to pull a trick out of the magic political hat." Democrats are always soft on crime, so fear them, and Republicans are hard-nosed." Watch that controversy to be on the top burner if Trump continues with plans in Chicago and Baltimore.

 So far, lower courts have ruled against the pretext of a "national emergency" as a means to circumvent the Constitutional provisions that Trump sees as standing in the way of his power grabs. Many of these rulings will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court.  The terms "abuse of power " and"overreach" are too kind. Recent cases are examples of power grabs by strong leaders who seek to wield the same powers as a dictator, ruling by one person who declares what the law is, rather than being established through a democratic process, subject to compliance and interpretations to justify Trump's real power grab attempts.

 As a recent example, Trump's order to move the space command from Colorado Springs to Alabama because Colorado defied his newest anti-voter access to the ballot box by mail. Trump says he's moving Space Command HQ to Alabama because of Colorado's mail-in voting system. This is purely a matter of revenge (against a blue state) to favor a supporter (red Alabama). In reality, the location of the space command has always been a matter of politics, since his first term, regardless of any financial or military considerations, and mail-in ballots were never linked to the move until now. The false pretext  Trump made in his announcement was not even disguised: He was moving it because of Colorado's mail-in system as retaliation.

 In fact, the anti-mail-in ballots argument rests on a false pretext itself.  There was widespread fraud, ballot harvesting, etc in 2020, caused by mail-in ballots, when nearly every opportunity in courts (at least a minimum of 60 court rulings), or for John Q Public to provide evidence in the past five years has failed.  Conservative group finds ‘absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud’ in 2020 election

Is he now planning military action against Venezuela (yes, we are at war now) to justify defying the Constitution clauses regarding due process and/or breaking international maritime laws and/or force regime change in that country?   Trump announced our military attacked a drug smuggling boat, and now he wants to get Venezuela's drug smugglers classified as terrorists, though, why? I suspect it is either to give legal cover to the US violating territorial waters, or to justify his illegal attempt to violate Venezuelan migrants' due process rights by zealous ICE action, already claiming Venezuela was at war with the US.  under the Alien Enemies Act.  An appeals court rejected the abuse of that act. US appeals court rejects Trump's use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans | Reuters  For those engaged in conspiracy theories, it would not be put past Trump to declare the US was at war against Venezuela in order to take even more action against migrant mass deportation, regardless of whether they had committed any crimes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio from Florida has also had a long held desire to end the Maduro dictatorship. Wag the dog, the use of a false pretext for war can even itself be a false pretext. Inventing and provoking an incident is not just a strategy found in literature and movies.

Sometimes, the pretext to justify an action is not due to a scheme or grand plan, but sheer ignorance or perceived opportunity to make a point without knowing the facts. Within the same 24 hours, Trump confused 5-year-old videos with current facts, and AG Pam Bondi tried to cherry-pick examples of dangerous migrants in big blue cities, when the incidents did not happen in the city she claimed they did. It may also happen because Trump has only yes people advising him, who could intervene and correct him before he opens his mouth and sticks his foot in it. Here is an example of that: Trump, watching FOX, did not realize he was watching a 5-year-old video of George Floyd protests and claimed "last night" he saw Portland being destroyed, so it was time to threaten to send the military into the city and put that city on his list to try to oppress. I wonder how many in MAGAland thought that Portland, Oregon, was being destroyed last night?    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-threatens-to-send-troops-to-city-he-says-he-saw-being-destroyed-last-night-but-it-wasn-t/  In the same24 hour span, AG Pam Bondi claimed migrants committed horrific crimes to justify military action on blue cities when the examples she used took place miles from the city of Boston.  https://www.thedailybeast.com/pam-bondi-takes-aim-at-boston-citing-crimes-from-elsewhere/

The gerrymandering games have just begun: how much is this is racial?

 The gerrymander games have just begun. The sport is to see how many congressional districts can be lopsided in the perp's favor. Texas is making it no secret that the purpose of redrawing district boundaries is to eliminate competitive or blue-leaning districts and replace them with sure-fire majorities for their party, in fear that the 2026 midterms will flip Congress from red to blue. The Supreme Court has taken the position that gerrymandering for political/ partisan gain is ok and not in their purview. However, they are still bound to consider racial gerrymandering due to civil rights laws and constitutional amendments. As major large state Democrat governors are going to go and do likewise to gerrymander to offset the Texas GOP strategy to try to distort the power the GOP has in Congress in the 2026 midterm elections. California is calling this fighting fire with fire.. Their greatest weapon Democrats have against Texas is to point out that this is not political gerrymandering, but simultaneously racial gerrymandering that results in watering down the power of districts once represented by a racial minority member. The case in point is how Texas plans to split up the Austin (more blue) area with mostly blue dominated districts into fragments that reach out like wheel spokes to suburbs...and result in making what used to be the minority race with the majority voters, now become a minority within districts dominated by the white majority. This may still end up in Trump's Supreme Court.

Rucho v. Common Cause - Wikipedia

The antidote to this is to have every state divide Congressional (local house) boundaries through an independent commission whose job is to strike a balance representative of the makeup and registration of their voters. The purpose is to avoid situations like Wisconsin's state house, which had overwhelming GOP domination in the state house because they controlled so many districts due to gerrymandering, when the popular vote went the other way in presidential elections. If legislatures alone draw boundaries, whoever controls the local state house always get their way.  Taking it out of the legislature and giving it to an independent commission, though legislatures usually have a final role in approving what the commissions propose.  Colorado has such a system, but states that have, in good conscience, adopted the independent system, but are unable to participate in the gerrymander games. The answer is to require all states at the same time.

Per Supreme Court makes major announcement 

Louisiana v. Callais, a case challenging Louisiana's congressional map, is set for reargument on October 15. The justices first heard arguments in the redistricting case earlier this year. The Court will consider whether the map is racially gerrymandered to create majority-minority districts and whether the new districts violate the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. use the commission system to get the problem solved on an equal footing to avoid such games.

Oct. 15, the Supreme Court will hear a case that may be relevant to the Texas atrocity