Posse comitatus... Just another law to break..

What powers does Trump have to deploy Marines to LA?

Lucy Gilder

President Trump and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have said US Marine troops may be mobilised, if the unrest in Los Angeles continues.

Some online have questioned the legality of this and California Governor Gavin Newsom has said, external “threatening to deploy active-duty Marines… is deranged behaviour”.

It wouldn’t be the first time in US history that this has happened though.

About 1,500 Marines were deployed to LA during the riots of May 1992, which followed the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, a black man., external

The president at the time, George H W Bush, used a mechanism called the Insurrection Act to deploy the Marines.

This law gives the president the power to use US military personnel domestically to assist civilian authorities, for example in law enforcement.

“Federal military participation in civilian law enforcement like this has been rare, particularly over the past half century,” says the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Center says that - according to US law - the Insurrection Act should be used “only in a crisis that is truly beyond the capacity of civilian authorities to manage”.

But, it adds, because the Act doesn’t clearly define the situations in which it can be used, it gives the president “significant power” to decide when and where to deploy military personnel on American soil.