MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump continues to talk about deploying National Guard troops to various cities. On Tuesday, he sent a message to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I would love to have Governor Pritzker call me - I'd gain respect for him - and say, we do have a problem. And we'd love you to send in the troops - because you know what? - the people, they have to be protected.
MARTIN: So here's what Pritzker said about that.
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JB PRITZKER: Let me be clear. The president is begging me to call him to ask him to do something that we don't want.
MARTIN: So what happens now? Can Trump deploy troops to other cities like he says he will, or at least wants to? And what if governors like Pritzker keep saying no? Let's ask Stephen Vladeck about this. He's a professor of law at Georgetown University who has been writing about the legal authority for guard deployments in his One First Substack. Professor Vladeck, thanks so much for joining us.
STEPHEN VLADECK: Thanks, Michel. Great to be with you.
MARTIN: So as we just heard there, President Trump seems to be asking or trying to pressure Governor Pritzker into asking Trump to send in the Guard. Why would he do that? Is that an acknowledgment that the president does not have the authority to send troops where they are not welcome?
VLADECK: I think, at the very least, Michel, it is a concession that it's a lot easier legally for the president to send in troops with a request from the governor. Michel, let's not forget, Governor Pritzker has his own National Guard, the Illinois National Guard, that he would be free to deploy if he thought the circumstances warrant it.
President Trump could invoke some old and not often used authorities, a statute known as the Insurrection Act, for example, to send in troops without the governor's consent. But I think what he's really trying to get at is, can he actually have his cake and eat it, too? Can he send in troops without using that controversial statute and without the governor's consent? That's really the mess that we're seeing this week.
MARTIN: So then the president mentioned the possibility of sending Guard forces to New Orleans, which Louisiana's Republican governor seemed to welcome. And that seems to recall something that you wrote about back in 2020 when the president relied upon friendly governors to send troops to Washington, D.C., in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Now, you know, obviously, they didn't stay for long. It was a different situation. D.C. is a legal unicorn, as we know. But what do you make of this shift to more receptive governors?
VLADECK: I think it really gives up the game, Michel, on how empty all of this is. You know, Governor Landry, like Governor Pritzker, is the commander-in-chief of his own state National Guard, the Louisiana National Guard. If there were enough, you know, lawlessness and disorder in New Orleans to justify more than just an ordinary law enforcement response, Governor Landry doesn't need President Trump. He can do it himself. And so I think what we're really seeing, Michel, is a lot of theater on the part of the Trump administration, where it's trying to look like it is the savior for situations that have far more local, far more legally settled remedies if they actually warrant them.
MARTIN: So let's go back to the Substack. You wrote a lengthy one. And it's very, sort of, interesting and very detailed about what might the legal path be for the president to actually send the National Guard into places that people don't want them, or the governors, the officials there don't want them.
VLADECK: Right. So there are two avenues, Michel. So the first is one we talked about briefly a couple minutes ago, which is federalizing the National Guard, so what President Trump tried to do in California. You know, he just got slapped down on Tuesday by a federal judge in San Francisco. What Trump is contemplating, Michel, is something more obscure.
You mentioned the 2020 use of out-of-state National Guard troops in D.C. Michel, that was in a context in which they weren't federalized, in which 11 states just let the president borrow their National Guard troops. And I think the critical point here is that's where we'd be in uncharted territory, if the governor were to try to use that authority to send, for example, the Texas National Guard into a state that didn't want them.
MARTIN: Before I let you go, just briefly, do you think this matter is going to end up before the Supreme Court?
VLADECK: I think the next move is up to President Trump. If he carries through on his threat to send un-federalized National Guard troops from one state into another without that state's consent, there will definitely be litigation.
MARTIN: Yeah.
VLADECK: It will almost certainly end up in the Supreme Court. And that's a good thing because the alternative is a face-to-face confrontation.
MARTIN: That's Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, and this is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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