This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown.

The President has promised or threatened, depending on how you look at it, to use the military

to put down protests in American cities. Those protests of course are

against abusive tactics used by police. So under what circumstances is that

legal or constitutional? All of this comes as some members of Congress

are asking the president to go much further

and treat Americans like enemies on a battlefield.

Cato's Gene Healy comments.

In many American cities, there is a lot of dissatisfaction with police.

And many cities have suffered enormous property damage.

Some people have been killed by police.

And the president has essentially said that if mayors and governors are not able to solve this problem, he will solve it for them using the US military.

So walk us through the circumstances

under which the president can do that.

Sure, well, ordinarily he can't. We have something called the Paseicometatitis Act that you and I have talked about on this podcast before.

It's nearly 150 years old,

this federal statute that makes it a criminal offense

to use the US military, use US military forces

to quote unquote execute the laws. The basic idea is you don't want to put

soldiers in a you don't want to turn the US military inward you don't want to put

soldiers in a policing situation. That's something that we've

you know had a long-standing distrust for predates the you know the Constitution. You know we've always had a fear of standing armies being used at home.

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