Yes Virginia, the President can use the military to keep the peace

The LA rioting is under full progressive swing; local officials argue “it’s not so bad.” They’re right, if you compare what’s happening now with what happened in 1968 when MLK was shot or 1972 with the Rodney King rioting.

I’m appalled that so many of my friends with law degrees argue Trump, under posse comitatus (PC) law, has no authority to push the California National guard or 700 Marines into LA to quell the car burning, rock throwing and dufus things hoodlums do when left to their own devices and law enforcement is out numbered.

Gavin Newsom claims Trump’s interference isn’t needed. OK. How well has Governor Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, and other California authorities quelled the rioting? Newsom isn’t doing anything except volunteering to be arrested so the rock throwers won’t be.

Nada.

To the extent the military “support” local police, the posse comitatus law doesn’t apply. Historically there have been times when the U. S. Military was needed for law enforcement and protection of federal property and enforcing federal law.

It began in 1878, after a horrid 1876 election filled with voter fraud on both sides. The Democrat (Samuel Tilden) won the popular vote but Rutherford Hayes claimed the electoral votes. An angry Democrat south almost began the civil war all over again. The congress compromised the problem — Hayes was declared President but had to agree to withdraw federal troops from Southern States immediately and not send any more troops into the southern states. Federal troops had been there in former Confederate states since 1865 to protect newly freed black slaves. With the army gone, you can imagine what occurred. White brutality and state jim crow segregation laws went into effect in the South and lasted until 1964-65 with the passage of the civil rights acts.

The fact the posse law doesn’t apply is aptly shown by the dilemma faced by the Little Rock Nine, a landmark moment in the American civil rights movement.

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. In 1957, the School Board in Little Rock, Arkansas agreed to integrate Central High School, starting with nine black students. However, Democrat Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus defied the federal ruling by calling in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the black students from entering the school.

President Eisenhower’s response was to send 1000 soldiers of the famed 101st Airborne Division — the division that ten years earlier had begun the D-Day invasion of France — to Little Rock. The blowhard segregationists in Arkansas weren’t about to mess with the Screaming Eagles! Eisenhower did not have Trump’s confrontational personality, but he decided as President “direct challenges to federal authority” by state or local governments could not be ignored. In addition to sending the 101st, Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National guard, taking them away from Faubus’ control. The 101st deployed to enforce U.S Supreme Court desegregation decisions and protect the nine black students from mobs, threats, and violence, who often facing hostile crowds outside the school.

Eisenhower demonstrated that the federal government would enforce civil rights law, even with military force if necessary.

So. In 1957 it was use of federal troops to enforce civil rights laws. In 2025, it is use of the National guard to stop rioting against ICE operations and protection of federal employees (ICE) enforcing federal immigration laws.

Then another Democrat — Lyndon Baines Johnson — in March 1965, on the eve of the momentous civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. called in the national guard to protect protesters and law enforcement officers from rising angry white rage across the South, bypassing bombastic George Wallace.

The idea that posse comitatus limits Trump’s actions is bogus.

Ron Smith – Special to The Informer

Dean Halliday Smith is a fifth generation Kansan, a retired attorney, a grandfather several times over, a Vietnam veteran, and a civil war historian. Territorial Kansas, the Civil War, and the post-Civil War west are his subjects of interest. Manhattan KS graduate, graduated Kansas Wesleyan in ’73. Worked on Governor John Carlin’s staff in 1980-81. Lobbied for the Kansas Bar Association for 14 years. His small farm is near where the historic Santa Fe Trail converged on the “Pawnee Fork” along the west route of the SFT. Check out Ron's western anthology writing at Amazon.