Elizabeth Jo

speaker

2,299 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2025 last heard 27 Mar

Elizabeth Jo’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.

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99% Invisible · Constitution Breakdown #1: Nikole Hannah-Jones · 25 Jul 2025 podcast

There haven't been any prosecutions like that.

So that remains a kind of a mystery.

Well the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act is called the Insurrection Act.

It's a name we give to a series of laws that were first passed in seventeen ninety-two.

And the Insurrection Act allows the president to use federal troops, and that includes federalized National Guard troops in three situations.

The first is when a state asks for federal help to suppress what the law calls an insurrection.

The second is when the president determines that you need the military to enforce the laws of the United States or to suppress rebellion.

And the third is when the president uses the military in a state to address what the law calls any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy that hinders the execution of federal law.

So the important thing here uh for us is to note that the military here can include the National Guard.

Now, the National Guard is normally under the authority of each state, but the president is allowed to federalize these troops in the right circumstances.

So when the president does that, the National Guard essentially becomes no different than the rest of the military.

Yeah, that's right.

The exceptions have been used quite a bit.

Um, most often presidents have used the insurrection act to send federal troops in times of civil unrest.

And it's happened about 30 times.

And so, for example, the first president Bush in nineteen ninety-two invoked the Insurrection Act to send out federal troops during the Rodney King riots in LA.

So in that kind of situation, you can see that that happens with the request or at least the consent of the state's governor.

The one notable time in American history when a president did not do that was in nineteen sixty five, when LBJ sent troops to Alabama, but that was to protect civil rights activists who are marching from Selma to Montgomery.

And the non consenting governor was George Wallace, who was a pretty open segregationist and racist.

So you can understand why he did that.

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