Topix Underground

"...But, unfortunately, buried within this otherwise mundane statute about the normal functioning of the National Guard system is a broader catch-all: “Support of operations or missions undertaken by the member’s unit at the request of the President or Secretary of Defense.” Not order, or command, or after going through the process of federalizing them. But merely at the “request” for participation of state troops who remain under state, not federal, command.

Trump invoked this section last time he was in office when he “requested” red states to send their National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., in response to the George Floyd protests despite the objections of the D.C. mayor. However, that deployment was brief and ended before the legality of using this section for purposes of domestic crackdowns could be tested. Still, D.C. is different from Chicago in that its own National Guard, which was also used, is always under presidential command, unlike state forces.

The potential loophole created in the section by the catch-all phrase lends credence to Pritzker’s story because it offers Trump a fig leaf for evading one of the biggest legal hurdles for domestic use of the armed forces. However, it also opens a new can of worms, because Texas troops under Texas command would not actually have any legal authority to conduct law enforcement, or otherwise be actively deployed at all, in Illinois. This would make the exercise, despite the legalistic obfuscation, patently illegal, unprecedented, and unconstitutional. It would be, in a very real and literal way, an outright invasion of one state by another..."