The District of Columbia’s attorney general said Thursday that he was suing to end the deployment of the National Guard in Washington.
The lawsuit from Brian Schwalb, the district’s elected chief legal officer, alleges that the presence of troops violates the Home Rule Act, a 19th century law prohibiting the use of federal forces for domestic law enforcement.
Schwalb argues that the National Guard units deployed in D.C. are reporting through the military chain of command, making them subject to the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 statute that restricts the use of U.S. armed forces on America’s streets.
“The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military from engaging in domestic policing. Yet the Administration launched a massive, indefinite law enforcement operation in DC under direct military command. This is plainly illegal, and it threatens our democracy and civil liberties,” he wrote.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the lawsuit says that National Guard troops are in D.C. for the explicit purpose of addressing crime in violation of that law, with directions to patrol local neighborhoods while carrying firearms and to conduct law enforcement activities such as searches, seizures, and arrests.
“No American city should have the U.S. military—particularly out-of-state military who are not accountable to the residents and untrained in local law enforcement—policing its streets,” Schwalb said in announcing the lawsuit. “It’s D.C, today but could be any other city tomorrow.”
“Armed soldiers should not be policing American citizens on American soil. The forced military occupation of the District of Columbia violates our local autonomy and basic freedoms. It must end,” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb wrote on X on Thursday.
The president’s use of the National Guard has come under intense legal scrutiny and pushback already. A federal judge ruled this week that Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles over the summer amid ICE protests was illegal.
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Apparently the DNC and all associated with them are against stopping the criminals whether illegal aliens or domestic home grown criminals on our American soil. Vote all of them out of office. Send the DNC and associates packing everywhere. The DNC needs to be voted out and completely lose power in any state of this nation. They are simply not interested in solving crime and want to waste money or just commit fraud and steal it.
Perhaps if the local ‘authorities’ were actually doing their job of protecting their town, the concept of using the national guard to assist them would never have even come up.
BTW – Posse Comitatus applies to FEDERAL troops so unless those troops are mobilized under one of the federal codes that applies they are technically not feds. I may be splitting hairs but OTOH the district of corruption has been a LOT safer in the past couple of weeks.
THE TRUTH IS COMING OUT ON DEMOCRATS AND THEIR STOOLIES. THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN SOLVING CRIME IN THE CITIES. THEY WOULD RATHER HAVE ALL THEIR CONSTITUENTS LIVE UNDER CRIME AND FEAR AND WALLOW IN THEIR FILTH THEY HAVE CREATED IN THEIR LIBERAL CITIES. IF YOU CONTINUE TO VOTE FOR THESE PEOPLE, THEN YOU SHOULD LIVE WITH WHAT YOU VOTED FOR.