What federal law says about National Guard deployments

Protesters in Los Angeles threw eggs and clashed with ICE agents carrying out immigration raids over the weekend

Donald Trump's response? A National Guard deployment. The president signed a memorandum calling 2,000 National Guardsmen into federal service to protect federal employees and facilities

The deployment is controversial, it's being described as unlawful, and it's the first time a president has deployed the National Guard to a state without the governor's consent

since LBJ sent troops to protect civil rights demonstrators from segregationists in Alabama in 1965

So what does federal law say about a president's authority to deploy the National Guard

Here are the answers. The presidential memorandum cites Title X, U.S. Code Section 12406

which allows the commander-in-chief to call the National Guard of any state into federal service

whenever there is a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the government

The memorandum states, To the extent that protests were acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws

they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States California Governor Gavin Newsom called the deployment unlawful and formally asked the Pentagon to rescind the order Newsom pointed out that the law President Trump cited requires the president to give the orders through the state governors

But in this case, President Trump gave the orders directly to California's adjutant general

There are other federal laws governing military deployments. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits

the armed forces from being used to execute laws unless it's expressly authorized by the

Constitution or an act of Congress. It was enacted in 1878 to prevent the U.S. Marshals from calling

on the Army for assistance with enforcing federal law. It's been updated and reaffirmed as recently

as 2021. According to the Brennan Center, a posse comitatus is a group of people who are authorized

by a sheriff to suppress lawlessness in a county. The Insurrection Act allows the president to call

the National Guard whenever unlawful protests or rebellion against the United States make it

impractical to enforce the law through the normal means. If you want to know more, head to our

website, san.com, where you can read these laws for yourself and make your own decision

I'm Ray Bogan for Straight Arrow News. For more reporting, download the SAN app