00:00Well, for more analysis, then David Schultz joins us on the program. He is a distinguished university professor in the Department of Political Science, Environmental Studies and Legal Studies at Hamline University in Minnesota.
00:11Professor Schultz, thank you very much for joining us today. So to start, I mean, you've, of course, written dozens of books on various aspects of American political life.
00:18Is what we're seeing in Los Angeles unprecedented, a tipping point of sorts?
00:23It is a tipping point. It is unprecedented. We need to understand a few different things here in terms of the law.
00:29Now, first, in the United States, we have the First Amendment, which guarantees a right to right to protest, certainly not violent protest, but a right to protest as a form of free speech.
00:40That's the first thing to think about. Second, there is a law on the books that dates to after the U.S. Civil War that is roughly in the 1870s that bars the use of the military for domestic policing purposes.
00:53And then a third law, which is important, is that generally the National Guard is under the control for domestic purposes by governors and can't be called out by the president of the United States.
01:06What I'm getting at here is that we're seeing an incredibly unusual situation here where the president is bringing in U.S. military troops, which which appears to be a violation of federal law for domestic policing,
01:19when it should have been, if at all, the responsibility of the governor of California to make a decision regarding whether he needed on the National Guard to come in.
01:29So there's a lot of complex legal issues here about presidential authority, state authority, about free speech rights, rights to protest that are really sort of unfurling here.
01:41And the fact that federal troops are coming in again, we haven't seen anything like this since, I think, what, the 19 early 1990s when Rodney King was assaulted by police officers.
01:53It's highly unusual. And as we're seeing, the bringing of these troops is probably not calming the situation, but just really inflaming an already tense situation.
02:03From a legal perspective, sir, in order to justify this decision to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles and some of his other actions elsewhere,
02:11Trump routinely makes use of the argument that the U.S. is facing a national emergency with respect to the budget, national security, immigration and other things.
02:19The goal being to justify the use of rarely invoked emergency powers.
02:24I mean, what kind of crises do you think that the authors of these statutes had in mind when they included them in the law?
02:29And why do you think that Trump's use of executive authority goes beyond what may have been intended?
02:35Well, this is interesting because the law that he's invoking is called the National Emergencies Act that dates back to the 1970s.
02:43And originally, national emergencies were things like major natural disasters.
02:50They were like World War II. Some of these laws dated back.
02:53And what was happening is presidents were basically abusing their emergency authority.
02:59Congress gets rid of all the emergency powers or rather emergencies in a place in the 70s and supposedly limits with this new law back in the 70s,
03:10the ability of a president to be able to invoke emergencies except in certain situations.
03:14What's really happened now we're seeing is what, 50 years later, is that this law is either being violated or it's no longer able to contain presidential power.
03:25And Trump is exploiting, is exploiting this law, which, again, was really meant to limit presidential power.
03:33And so what he's saying is we have a national emergency and therefore it allows me to do certain types of things.
03:38All of this is highly questionable because the National Emergencies Act does not give the president new power or new authority to do things.
03:48It merely says that that if the president declares a national emergency, he may use certain powers that are already in the law that are not otherwise given.
03:58So from my reading of the law, and again, I've taught law for many, many years, Trump is misusing the law.
04:06And this is partly, I think, the challenge that Governor Newsom is bringing in federal court.
04:11For now, National Guard troops seem to be quite passive.
04:14They're not taking part in arrests.
04:16They've had little interaction with with protesters.
04:18Do you see this as a real, genuine federal crackdown or more of Donald Trump trying to kind of flex his muscles by creating the illusion of something more serious?
04:30I think it's a little bit of both.
04:32So first off, if we look at the area in Los Angeles where the demonstrations are occurring, it's in a very small area.
04:39And it looked like initially the protests were or what blockades and so forth, things that could have been addressed with regular policing.
04:49So it's really debatable regarding whether or not you even needed to bring the National Guard in.
04:54Once they came in, that, of course, escalated and now bringing in the federal troops escalates it more.
04:59The reason why I'm saying all of that, there's a little bit of showmanship here in terms of what Trump is trying to do.
05:04You know, which, again, remember, you know, he is on one level, a person who is kind of a showman, likes to sort of make big statements.
05:12And so I think he's trying to do to basically flex his authority.
05:17And this is a state and this is a governor, California and Newsom, that did not support him in his two presidential campaigns.
05:25And so I think there's also a little bit of a sense of what retribution or trying to sort of say, I'm president.
05:30You're not. You're going to do what I do what I want and do what I say.
05:33Professor David Schultz, that's unfortunately all we have time for.
05:36Thank you so very much for joining us today.
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