Trump Threatens Insurrection Act, NYT Forgets Precedent
The New York Times breathlessly reports that Donald Trump threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act to send troops to Minnesota, framing it as a radical, almost unheard-of escalation. What the Gray Lady conveniently omits is that Trump already invoked this act during the George Floyd protests in 2020. The media — and politicians across the aisle — were quick to declare it an authoritarian overreach
then, too, proving that the criteria for 'outrage' often depend more on who is invoking the power than the act itself. One might wonder if the NYT's institutional memory only extends as far back as their morning coffee, or if the selective amnesia serves a broader narrative. It's almost as if the groundwork for such executive power grabs has been laid and normalized over decades, and the outrage
only spikes when it's politically expedient, or when the specific optics aren't quite right for the current administration who have their own issues with militarized responses. (Perhaps they're just waiting for the current President to deploy it to find their 'concern' again.)