Society for the Rule of Law joins a letter to Congress: “Rein in domestic deployments”

The Society for the Rule of Law has joined in submitting a letter to the House of Representatives “to express our strong concerns about escalating presidential use of military force for routine law enforcement actions on American soil.” Federal law allows the President to federalize the National Guard and even deploy the U.S. military on American soil, but only under the most extreme circumstances. Yet, those circumstances do not exist. “The executive branch is claiming sweeping legal powers to federalize and deploy these National Guard units despite the absence of any extraordinary crisis that might warrant such action – including a natural disaster, a foreign invasion, or an overwhelming collapse of civil order.” This course of action risks putting the U.S. military in a delicate situation for which it has neither been trained nor equipped to handle, with consequences that threaten both our safety and public liberties. “Today’s domestic deployments are… escalating in the wrong direction to normalize the use of armed military personnel in domestic law enforcement and security operations — endangering public safety, threatening the apolitical integrity of our armed forces, and damaging effective crime prevention, all the while threatening our liberties.” Continued delay increases the risk of serious consequences. “The dangers of normalizing any president’s excessive use of the military on home soil are profound, especially given the unchecked expansion of executive power across Democratic and Republican administrations…”Congress has the ability, through its appropriations power and potential amendments to existing law, to mitigate the current policies before those consequences occur. “Given the urgency and seriousness of this matter, lawmakers must act now, on behalf of both our military and our civilian communities. Congress must not idly wait for the federal courts to intervene.” By remaining inactive, Congress allows the abuse of executive power and the growing misuse of our armed forces to further accelerate.

Read the letter here. See also this action mentioned in Politico’s National Security newsletter. To be connected with spokespeople for comment, please contact [email protected].

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