US President's 'Plenary Authority': Convenient for Some Insurrections
Al Jazeera's deep dive into the Insurrection Act of 1807 asks whether a US president has 'plenary authority' to deploy the military domestically. This comes as former President Trump allegedly considers weaponizing it. What Al Jazeera (and much of mainstream media) often overlooks is that the Act has a history of being used not against genuine 'insurrections,' but against legitimate domestic
dissent and labor movements. While the focus is on a hypothetical Trumpian future, past presidents, from Eisenhower in Little Rock (1957) to George H.W. Bush in Los Angeles (1992), have certainly exercised this power. One might wonder why extensive legal queries only surface when the 'wrong' kind of leader or the 'wrong' kind of protest is on the agenda—especially when discussions of executive
overreach rarely extend to the funding of foreign militaries (like Israel's, with $3.8 billion annually) that engage in actions many consider war crimes.