Overview
- Speaking aboard the USS George Washington in Yokosuka, Japan, President Trump told sailors he would dispatch “more than the National Guard” to ensure what he called safe cities.
- In comments to reporters en route to South Korea, he asserted he could deploy active-duty troops and claimed “the courts wouldn’t get involved.”
- Since June, the administration has sent National Guard units to Los Angeles, Memphis and Washington, D.C., while federal courts have blocked planned deployments to Portland and Chicago.
- Reuters reports the White House has left open invoking the Insurrection Act to use active-duty forces for policing, testing limits set by the Posse Comitatus Act.
- Retired senior officers and analysts criticized the partisan tone of Trump’s military speeches as politicizing the armed forces, as he also defended maritime strikes that the U.S. says targeted drug smugglers and that killed 57 people.