"Yield, man!"

Another dark moment in United States law and policy

Welcome to the Empty City blog, the name of which is explained here. This blog offers independent law and policy commentary from a liberal constitutionalist perspective. This commentary relies on paid subscriptions to keep going, and so, if you can, please become a paid subscriber.

*

The Speaker of the House of Representative Mike Johnson yesterday told elected civil politicians to "yield" to military force.

A video of the remarks can be seen here.

President Donald Trump is already using ICE and the National Guard like two personal armies.

And Congress and the Courts are nodding along with rather than checking and balancing each abuse of executive power.

There are of course lots of dark moments, lots of points of concern.

Yet the Speaker telling elected civil politicians to "yield" to the domestic use of military force is especially significant.

In both the United States and the United Kingdom, a good deal of our constitutional traditions were borne out of restricting what the executive could do domestically with military force.

The question of who controls “legitimate” coercive and lethal power is perhaps the most fundamental issue in any constitutional politics.

(By “legitimate” is meant that the control will be upheld by the courts if challenged - assuming a challenge is possible.)

And anyone with a knowledge of Northern Ireland knows that the domestic deployment of troops will cause its own social and political problems.

Troops are, by definition, not civil police.

And although there can be some overlap in their training and experience, troops are not especially well positioned to do civil policing.

*

Of course, the suspicion must be that the internal mobilisation of troops is not for the purported reason of addressing crime.

That purported reason makes little or no sense - as there are other ways the federal government could assist Democrat cities with crime. And the crime rate in Washington DC, where troops have already been mobilised, is historically low.

One reason may be that this is being done for perceived political advantage, perhaps with one eye on the mid-terms.

Imagine troops and ICE “patrolling” voting stations.

Indeed, a good deal of what is happening in the United States seems to be Trump and his supporters thinking backwards from the mid-terms and putting in place measures so as to ensure they do not lose votes and seats.

Trump’s supporters are putting a lot of thought and energy into maintaining power.

Another reason for this mobilisation is that - like a dog licking itself - this is being done simply because Trump can do it, and he knows nobody will stop him.

Congress and the Courts could stop all this immediately, if they wanted to do so.

But they will not.

For they have, well, yielded.

**