President Trump chose not to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy federal troops to cities where protesters had rioted following the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020. He recently expressed his intention not to exercise such restraint again.
“And one of the other things I’ll do – because you’re supposed to not be involved in that – you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in,” Trump told an Iowa audience.
“The next time, I’m not waiting.” He singled out Democratically run cities of New York and Chicago as “crime dens,” reports Politico
Trump’s supporters have boasted that he will execute mass deportations of immigrants, use the Justice Department to punish his political enemies, and – as POLITICO reported a second term Trump administration will embrace “Christian nationalism” to guide federal policies.
Civil Rights Activists Alarmed
In the context of discussing President Trump’s potential second-term agenda, concerns have arisen among civil rights activists and Democratic legislators regarding his statements. They find his comments troubling due to the legal prohibition against utilizing the military for internal law enforcement purposes.
Urban Violence Was Rampant
However, according to a law dating back to 1792, there exists a provision allowing the president to quell a rebellion or instances of violence. Critics argue that this statute is excessively broad, prompting some to seek limitations on its application in anticipation of any potential intentions by Trump to invoke it.
In a likely preview of his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump in his annual speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington, D.C., painted a grim picture of the U.S. overrun by bloodshed, chaos, and violent crime, The Guardian reports.
“If Crooked Joe Biden and his thugs win in 2024, the worst is yet to come,” he said.
“A country that will go and sink to levels that are unimaginable.”
Facing 91 criminal charges in four cases, Trump depicted himself as both a martyr and potential savior of the nation.
“A vote for Trump is your ticket back to freedom, it’s your passport out of tyranny and it’s your only escape from Joe Biden and his gang’s fast track to hell,” he said.
In a rebuttal, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University noted that after “A decades-long decline, violent crime rose during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, President Trump’s last year in office, murder rates climbed by nearly 30 percent and assault rates by more than 10 percent.”
Brennan referenced a report compiled by the FBI that highlighted a decrease of 4 percent in violent crime rates and roughly 7 percent in murder rates as of 2022 compared to 2020. In contrast, the National Crime Victimization Survey indicated a slight increase in violent offenses for the same year, including those that were not reported to law enforcement.
Trump’s Abortion Plans
As Trump seek a second term, he portrayed himself as a centrist on abortion rights and took credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. However, by refusing to publicly support or rule out a nationwide ban, he has irritated anti-abortion organizations.
These same organizations, meanwhile, are working with former Trump administration officials to craft a comprehensive anti-abortion agenda that would virtually outlaw the operation everywhere, including in areas where reproductive rights are protected by law.
The plans would largely rely on executive branch actions, circumventing Congress’s power, and would go well beyond Trump’s anti-abortion laws from his first term, which he has since reversed.
Later this year in November will decide who gets re-elected as president: Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
Reporter CJ Walker can be reached at [email protected]
