For Canadians: the American people are (probably) going to need your help [Evidence provided]

hey all,

Nearly two weeks ago, I read an article in the San Franciso Chronicle which suggested that President Trump may invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the U.S. military and federalised national guard units on the Southern border between the US and Mexico. This is based on a time-sensitive passage in one of Trump's executive orders he signed on his first day, which would expire on Sunday 20th April.

I appreciate that this may be a little difficult to believe so to address that very real, legitimate scepticism, this will be a long piece. I will set out all the evidence I have, with extensive links to other media sources, so that you may decide the validity of the overall argument for yourselves and have an opportunity to independently confirm this. Even with all of Trump's erratic behaviour over the past decade, this would still mark a shocking decent in to authoritarianism. I am sharing this with you, so that Canadians may have some advanced warning if President Trump does use the Insurrection Act and so that this gives you some time. What you do with it and who you share it with, I leave up to you.

In the past week, I took the step of contacting a journalist in the Guardian, and having already shared this information with them, then urged people on the subreddit for the 50501 anti-Trump protest movement to contact their Congressman and state governors about this issue. If you are happy to do so, you may wish to contact members of the press or your elected representatives in Canada to share this information with them. It's a long shot and I hope I am wrong, but it is conceivable some preparations could be taken should Americans wish to leave the United States and head towards Canada through their northern border.

Section 6b and invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807

On January 20th, Donald Trump's first day in office, he signed an executive order titled: "Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States". The link takes you directly to the text of the executive order on the official website at whitehouse.org. If you scroll down, you'll find section 6b which reads as follows:

(b) Within 90 days of the date of this proclamation, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall submit a joint report to the President about the conditions at the southern border of the United States and any recommendations regarding additional actions that may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807*.*

If you are following news in the U.S. you will will be aware that Trump has used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The last time the Alien Enemies Act was used was in World War II as the justification for Japanese Internment. According to the Washington Post, 137 immigrants have been deported using this law, despite the fact that a Judge specifically prohibited the President from doing so. (At time of writing, Elon Musk has described a plan to impeach the Judge "necessary"). Trump referred to the Alien Enemies Act in his inaugural speech. In another Executive order, signed on his first day on office, there was a passing reference to invoking the Alien Enemies Act (See Section 3b). As President Trump has now done that and put this law in to effect, it should give greater weight in demonstrating the Trump administration is prepared to use obscure, archaic legislation to maximise the power of his office and is more than willing to abuse it.

The Insurrection Act "empowers the president of the United States to deploy the U.S. military and federalised National Guard troops within the United States in particular circumstances, such as to suppress civil disorder, insurrection or rebellion." This act provides an exemption to the Posse Comitatus Act "which limits the use of military personnel under federal command for law enforcement purposes within the United States." In order to use the insurrection act, the President is required to publish a proclamation ordering the 'insurgents' to disperse. Hypothetically, this might take the form of a televised national address, which might be the first time the American public actually becomes aware of the danger this presents.

Using the Insurrection Act is slightly different to declaring martial law, as martial law is constitutionally a power that is reserved to Congress (in order to protect the right of habeas corpus as the right to a hearing and trial on lawful imprisonment, or more broadly, the supervision of law enforcement by the courts). However, acting alone without Congress, the Insurrection Act is as close as any President can get to declaring martial law, by having the military and federalised national guard units serve as law enforcement.

A laymen's reading of section 6b suggests that, by the end of the 90-day period, Sunday 20th April, the Secretary of Defence and the Secretary of Homeland Security will present President Trump with a joint report, where they will discuss the possibility using the Insurrection Act which would deploy the U.S. military and federalised national guard units to serve in the capacity as law enforcement. Whether they do so would then at the discretion of the President. (Note: 20th April will be Easter Sunday this year and is also Adolf Hitler's birthday).

In a previous discussion I've had, a user e-mailed their congressman regarding this. They received a response from the Congressional Research Office that says " that activity and the report are internal to the executive branch and specifically for the President, information will only become public to the extent that the Administration chooses to share it or if a final report is produced that would be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act." Furthermore, "it doesn't specify that a report should be in a written form and the President may be satisfied with something like a briefing on the matter". Finally, they finish that "we have the letter of the Proclamation, which does call for a report to the President from the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security by April 20, 2025, but the only person that can hold the secretaries to that directive is the President. Further, unless a report or other information is released by the Administration we have no way of knowing the status of this activity. While the secretaries might eventually produce a report that qualifies as a federal record obtainable via FOIA, there is nothing in the Proclamation itself that obligates the Administration to produce or issue such a report."

President Trump’s History with the Insurrection Act and Martial Law

By trial and error using a search engine, I’ve compiled various news sources which show that Section 6b does not exist in isolation but is part of President Donald Trump's wider history of repeatedly calling for the use of the Insurrection Act or Martial law to use the U.S. military for law enforcement. 

In 2017, Trump threatened to impose martial law, tweeting “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!”. (Vanity Fair, 25th January 2017) 

In the weeks leading up to the 2018 Mid-Terms, Trump dispatched at least 800 active duty troops to the Southern border, calling a US-bound migrant caravan from central America a ‘National Emergency’. (The Guardian, 22nd October 2018 & 26th October 2018) 

In early 2020, amisdt discussions on how to contain the spread of COVID-19, White House advisor Stephen Miller pushed Department of Homeland Security staffers to specify how many troops they’d need to completely close off the southern border. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper later reportedly discovered DHS and U.S. Northern Command had discussed using up to 250,000 troops at the U.S.-Mexico border, an idea he immediately balked at. Administration officials didn’t present the plan to Trump, the Times reported, and former Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said a proposal to dispatch a massive number of troops to the border did not reach his desk, though he said the federal government discussed ways to close the southern border if needed. (Forbes, 21st April 2022) 

 In response to the George Floyd protests of May 2020 and the subsequent events on May 29th, where protesters stormed Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. opposite the White House, on 1st June President Trump summoned Secretary of Defence Mark T. Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Milley to the Oval office. Trump then told them he wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act and order 10,00 troops in Washington to get control of the streets. When Esper and Milley objected, saying the unrest was best handled by civil law enforcement and the DC national guard, Trump threw a tantrum calling them “losers” and repeated his desire to send active duty-troops into the city. “Can’t you just shoot them?” he said to Milley, “Just shoot them in the legs or something?” 

According to Esper, Trump was dissuaded from invoking the Insurrection Act and only calmed down after he was promised that Washington would be flooded with 10,000 civilian law enforcement personnel (FBI, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms personnel, etc) and National Guard troops to protect federal property and assist in riot control. Trump then cajoled both men into accompanying him on his famous stroll across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church (with squads of police and secret service providing a safe cordon on all sides), where he held up a Bible and posed for a photo-op with his top lieutenants. (Esper and Milley later expressed regret for their involvement in the photo-op, saying it misleadingly gave the impression of military backing for a purely political ploy.

Even after the crisis in Washington subsided, Trump proposed invoking the act and sending troops into other cities—Chicago, Seattle, and Portland—as Black Lives Matters demonstrations there gained momentum. In each case, Esper, Milley, and Attorney General William Barr managed to talk him out of it. Choosing to make his stance public, Esper told reporters at the Pentagon on June 3, “The option to use active-duty troops in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.” Trump reportedly was so furious at Esper over this statement that he was ready to fire him at that moment, but was dissuaded from doing so by senior aides. (The Nation, 14th August 2024)

In a bid to retain the White House, President Trump contemplated invoking martial law to force the invalidation of the results of the 2020 election in four swing states, inspired by remarks by then National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Senior U.S. Army officials issued a joint statement saying “there is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election”.(CNN, 20th December 2020)

Trump plans to close the southern border and help build a new network of immigrant detention camps, with some of his supporters repeatedly stating any second administration must treat migrant crossing as a “war” on American soil. One source said Trump said the operation may require anywhere between tens of thousands of even hundreds of thousands of troops, “I have heard anywhere between 100,000 to 300,000 from President Trump, Stephen Miller, and others on what may be required to get the job done right,” one of the people familiar with the matter says. “There are differences of opinion on how many you would actually need, and everyone has their own ideas.… Nothing is set in stone.” (Rolling Stone, 14th December 2023)

The Second Term

This is obviously very dangerous, as currently the Vice President, the Cabinet and both chambers of Congress are under Republican control, meaning they're unlikely to serve as effective legal checks to the President's authority. Furthermore, Trump fired much of america's highest ranking military leadership in February, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the Navy and the judge advocates general in the army, navy and airforce. These are the kind of people who would ordinarily be in a position to challenge the President should he order the armed forces to do something illegal or unconstitutional. Given that the Supreme Court has given the President "absolute immunity for official acts", basically without defining with what those official acts are, isn't not clear how this would affect a President should they decide to deploy the armed forces within the united states, treating them as their own personal private army, to suppress protesters or occupy major cities as Trump has repeatedly threatened to do. Without any of these check and limit to his authority, it may ultimately be unclear if, when or how the state of emergency would ever be brought to an end if a President is unwilling to do so.

Based on search engine results, the story is getting limited attention from some media outlets, such as on justsecurity.org, the New York Times (behind a paywall), 'Livenowfox.com', Blavity and The Mary Sue. I have sent an e-mail to The Guardian in the hope they might look in to this and publish if it has merit. But this isn't much in the grand scheme of things and, if this is what is going to happen, the public probably won't be aware of this until the Insurrection Act already in use and solders are on the streets.  

In finishing, this is obviously not something I would wish for the United States and I hope I am wrong. However many times I share this online, it remains very strange feeling to do so. But this is still important information which if shared strategically with the right people and with enough time may make a difference to the course of events. Use it wisely. Take care of yourselves and good luck.