Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at a news conference in Dallas on Tuesday that he would not accept federal troops in Texas to quell protests, as earlier offered by President Donald Trump.
In a televised address Monday evening, Trump said, “I have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets… If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the U.S. military and quickly solve the problem for them.”
The president has the power under a 213-year-old law called the Insurrection Act to send troops to a state to “suppress an insurrection,” but this can only happen at the request of a state legislature or governor (when the legislature can’t meet), or when there is a rebellion against federal law that can’t be addressed through normal judicial proceedings.
Besides the legal restrictions, Trump faces political opposition within his own party over the proposal to use military troops against protesters. “Many in the Pentagon and some of the nation’s governors as well as some Republicans are opposed to the move, saying the use of active-duty troops into U.S. neighborhoods to restore order is unnecessary and carries risks of inflaming national unrest,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
“Some Pentagon officials fear the use of federal military forces on the nation’s streets as politically and morally questionable. ‘No one wants to do this. No one wants the military on the streets,’ said one Defense official knowledgeable about the debate.”
The Texas governor said, “We will not be asking the United States military to come into the state of Texas because we know that Texans can take care of Texans.”
“We have tremendous police forces in Dallas, in Fort Worth, in the surrounding suburbs, across the entire state. We have an abundance of resources that are being provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety.”
Abbott has called the death of George Floyd a “horrific act of police brutality” and called for “swift justice.” But he also said, “violence and vandalism are never the answer, and they have no place in the Lone Star State.”
The governor deployed state officers and called up Texas’ Guard forces to assist police forces in several large Texas cities, including 1,000 DPS officers and hundreds of Guardsmen to the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
No Texas Troops to D.C.
President Trump has deployed U.S. troops and federal law enforcement officers in the District of Columbia, which is a federal territory, and saw intense protests over the past few days. But the Trump administration also reached out to some states to see whether they could spare their National Guard troops. Abbott said Texas didn’t receive such a request.
He said, “Texas National Guard are here for Texans and that’s exactly what they will be used for.”
About 1,600 federal troops from Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fort Drum, N.Y., have arrived outside the nation’s capital and are waiting orders to move in, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some military police units and special units from the Department of Justice have deployed to the streets already, as have D.C. National Guard.
