After President Donald Trump announced on Fox News Friday that he plans to send the National Guard into Memphis, city leadership and legal experts were both left with questions.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Trump called Memphis “deeply troubled. We’re going to fix that just like Washington.”
The move is part of Trump’s efforts to deploy military forces to Democrat-led cities, a move that some legal and military leaders have raised concerns as threatening democracy and possibly disregarding state laws.
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Tennessee Code addresses the governor’s power to order the National Guard into active service. That power comes “in case of invasion, disaster, insurrection, riot, attack, or combination” and “not to exceed the duration of the emergency for which they may be called.”
Alternately, the governing body of a city or county — in this case the Memphis City Council or Shelby County Board of Commissioners — can request by resolution that the governor call on the National Guard if “there is a breakdown of law and order, a grievous breach of the peace, a riot, resistance to process of this state, or disaster, or imminent danger thereof.”
This month, a federal judge in California ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles this summer was illegal. In Washington, D.C., the district’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit to stop the deployment of the National Guard troops, calling it “illegal.”
In his televised comments, the president suggested that Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat, and Republican Gov. Bill Lee both were on board with his decision to send in troops. “We’re going to Memphis. Memphis is deeply troubled. The mayor is happy, he’s a Democrat, and the governor of Tennessee,” Trump said.
However, at a press conference Friday, Young disputed Trump’s characterization of his response. “I do not support the National Guard. However, they are coming. So it’s not the mayor’s call,“ he said. “The mayor doesn’t have a say or the authority to stop them.”
Earlier in the day, on a press call Friday with the American Civil Liberties Union, MLK50: Justice Through Journalism asked about the legality of sending troops to Memphis. “It’s hard to opine on what hasn’t happened yet, and when we haven’t seen the justification,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the national security project at the ACLU. “I’m also very conscious that the administration sometimes takes action and then provides its legal justification and arguments after the fact, to the extent that it has legal arguments.”
Shamsi said that while we don’t know whether the troops will be under state authority or called out by the governor or the governor and the president, “State law always governs what authorities state governors may have.”
The New York Times reported Friday that the troops could be mobilized under Title 32 orders, which gives the governor control but allows the federal government to fund the Guard, and is used for “homeland security” issues. Under Title 32, Guard members can act as law enforcement.
Flanked by nearly two dozen political and community leaders, Young tried to focus on the federal resources that could be coming once the National Guard is deployed.
He continued to frame his answers around crime prevention, which Trump has used as a pretext for National Guard intervention in cities with Democratic leaders.
Young said last year the city saw reductions across several crime categories, including murders and car thefts.
Even though the crime trends are declining, Young said the city could still use the help of agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“Those are the things that I believe will truly help us be able to support law enforcement and reduce crime,” Young said.
Young said he hopes to have some influence on the manner in which the National Guard’s troops operate in the city, but he did not yet have answers to many questions: When will they come? How many troops will be deployed in the city? What will they do? And how long will they remain?
“Those are all questions that we have and that we are going to work through together as a community,” Young said.
“My team and I will be discussing those questions with the governor and the federal government.”
In the ACLU call, Shamsi strongly questioned Trump’s motive with the National Guard deployments, calling it a “dangerous escalatory move.”
“…if the political leaders truly cared about the people of Memphis, then there would be investment in proven public safety strategies such as investment in health care and education and housing, instead of political theater and the deployment of untrained strangers or federal agents for that purpose,” she said.
“The reality is that troops and/or federal agents in a show of force turn the streets of our cities, including Memphis, into places that feel unsafe for residents, who fear that they are going to be profiled, interrogated, detained because of their opinions, the color of their skin, or the language that they speak.”
Michael Finch II and Rebecca Cadenhead contributed to this story.
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