Democrats Scramble to Strip Away Trump’s Warmongering Powers
Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, requested Tuesday that the Department of Justice scale back the president’s power to use the U.S. military domestically.
In a letter on behalf of the committee Democrats, Durbin urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to “withdraw certain legal opinions by The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) relating to the allocation of war powers and foreign relations powers between Congress and the president.
“I request that the Department of Justice publicly release opinions and manuals pertaining to the domestic use of the U.S. military,” Durbin wrote. “For decades, OLC has issued guidance on the circumstances in which the President may deploy the military within the United States, as well as what servicemembers may do when so deployed.
“The American people have a right to know how the Executive Branch interprets the President’s constitutional and statutory authority to use the military domestically,” Durbin continued. “The need for transparency regarding these legal interpretations is particularly urgent today given the risk of domestic military deployment to suppress protests or carry out mass deportations.”
In a post on X, the committee Democrats alleged that there were five “flawed opinions” that had “run afoul of Congress’s critical check on presidential war powers” that needed to be rescinded.
It seems that Durbin and Senate Democrats are hoping to rein in Trump’s military powers ahead of his return to the White House later this month. Trump has previously claimed he will use the military to conduct sweeping raids as part of his mass deportation scheme. He has also threatened to turn the U.S. military against his political enemies and even foreign allies.