I am interested in comments on this as there are two interesting points on opposite sides of this argument.
Erick Erickson and others are on one side and believe that President Trump should let cities live with the consequences of their choices.
Dan Bongino and others are on the opposite side and believe that law and order should be enforced and that President Trump should send federal officers to do it if the local and state governments won’t.
I think there are 3 dimensions to this discussion:
1. The BIG Twenty cities (NY, LA, Seattle, etc) geared their political system to the Democratic Party. It’s been that way for 30 to 40 years. For each riot/demo, with destruction...there is no outcome favorable for the city, if the Feds don’t pay for damage or reconstruction. More property tax can only come out of this.
2. If you gaze at the four big cities of the west coast, and measure up homelessness, drug use, etc...they are manufactured over the next ten years to become the next ‘Detroits’. Even Silicon Valley will become a dismal location and start-up IT companies will seek new locations in the south rather than mess with the SF/San Jose region.
3. Finally, all of this anti-police chatter is going to have consequences that linger (not just 2020/2021, but going through the whole decade). They won’t be able to recruit, and police will be less likely to take actions. Fenced in neighborhoods with private security ‘army’ thugs to protect them? Doesn’t that sound like Capetown, SA? I’ve been to Capetown and seen how security works. I see the same thing developing in LA and SF over the next decade.
The residents of each state are Constitutionally guaranteed a small “r” republican form of government. If Trump determines that in some states the government has ceased to function, either deliberately or unintentionally, and been replaced, effectively at least, with mob rule by a minority of violent anarchists he has the power to act in that state to try to restore republican government.
Tell that to B.J. Clinton, Janet Reno, Elián González and the Branch Davidians.
There is a difference between what should be done, and what may be done. I’m not going to address the question of what should be done, in this post, only what can be done.
If I’ve got this, both the states, and the United States, are sovereign. The state has the authority to enforce state law, and the United States has the authority to enforce federal law. The US Government cannot require the states to enforce federal law, but may send law enforcement forces, or the militia, into a state, to enforce federal law itself. When the rights people hold under the United States Constitution, or under federal law, are being violated, the United States has the power to intervene, by force, to protect people’s federally guaranteed rights.
The Federal Government also has to right to enforce state law, but only when requested by the state. The United States can back up a state, but doesn’t have to authority to enforce state law on its own hook.
Protecting federal property, such as preventing rioters from burning down a US courthouse, is within the Federal Government’s purview. The notion that law within a city should break down to the extent that any such thing would be needed, is absurd. It is, however, happening.
Do any of our legal eagles have a correction to this?
If the left means to have war let them attack a federal courthouse defended by federal officers. If the cities are left to burn, tax payers who have had nothing to do with it will be asked to rebuild the basic infrastructure.
Police power:
“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”
“he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”