A few days after moving into the White House, President Donald Trump put the third-largest city in the country on notice.
"If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible 'carnage' going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24 percent from 2016), I will send in the Feds!" he posted on Twitter.
The president's ominous _ if vague _ message to Chicagoans, echoed back decades to when federal troops were sent into American cities, as racial unrest roiled the country. Some activists have expressed concern about Trump's statement.
While Chicago often has one of the highest murder counts in the country, it's rare for a president to cast his focus on a specific city. Trump, it seems, is planning to change that _ he also has hinted at withholding federal money from sanctuary cities that don't comply with his immigration mandates.
But can a president really dispatch "the Feds" _ Trump's preferred shorthand _ into Chicago, or any other city?
Here are some answers:
Is there a law that allows Trump to do this?
Yes _ kind of. Under the Insurrection Act of 1807, a president can deploy troops anywhere in the United States in a very specific scenario.
"Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings," the act reads, "he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State."
Abraham Lincoln used the act to launch the Civil War in 1861, sending Union troops into Confederate strong holds, such as South Carolina and Virginia.
Is the Insurrection Act used often?
It has been used, but sparingly.
Perhaps the most high-profile example came in September 1957 when President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Ark., to help desegregate Central High School.
Three years after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case _ the justices ruled that state laws allowing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional _ the Arkansas high school was still segregated.
When nine black students tried to enroll, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the state National Guard to prevent them from entering _ a scene that drew headlines nationwide.
Woodrow Wilson Mann, the then mayor of Little Rock, asked Eisenhower for help. The president then federalized 10,000 Arkansas National Guardsmen and sent in 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers. The students were eventually allowed to attend the school, though tensions remained high.
Years later the act was once again invoked.
In the fall of 1962, President Kennedy sent 30,000 troops to the University of Mississippi when riots broke out over the admission of a black student, James Meredith. In several phone conversations, Kennedy urged Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett to uphold federal law, but he declined.
"I'm a Mississippi segregationist and I am proud of it," the governor said during a speech at a football game on campus that fall.
A year later, Kennedy federalized National Guard troops and sent them to the University of Alabama to force its desegregation.
And more recently, President Bush dispatched thousands of National Guard troops into the Gulf Coast region, which was wrecked with flooding damage after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In each case, the sitting president conferred with local officials before sending in federal enforcement.
Could the act be used for Chicago?
Not really, legal experts say.
Last year, Chicago saw 762 recorded homicides _ a 20-year high that many attribute to poverty, failing schools and a disconnect between police and the communities they patrol.
But the murder toll itself doesn't mean the president can send in troops, said University of California, Berkeley, law professor John C. Yoo.
"Simple murder is not a violation of federal law," he said. "I don't think the conditions in Chicago have any relationship to federal law."
The only way it could possibly fall under the Insurrection Act, Yoo said, is if the murders also violated some aspect of federal law, such as a high rate of murders by drug cartels or terrorists.
Sudha Setty, a professor at Western New England University School of Law, said under the Constitution, police powers fall to the states and that the federal government doesn't usually have standing to make decisions for cities, unless the local jurisdiction asks for help.
What does Trump have in mind for Chicago?
It's hard to tell, though he has given hints.
During the campaign Trump also voiced support for stop-and-frisk to be implemented in Chicago.
The policy, once used by many police departments, gained traction in New York under two former mayors, Rudolph W. Giuliani, now a top Trump surrogate, and Michael R. Bloomberg, now a fierce Trump critic. In 2013, a federal judge ruled that New York's stop-and-frisk policy had violated the rights of minorities.
How have Chicago officials responded to Trump's threat?
No one has challenged him head-on.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, has said he welcomes federal help in lowering the city's murder count _ but not by sending in troops.
"There's a lot the federal government can do," Emanuel told a local public television station earlier this month, citing stronger gun-control measures and money to hire more police officers.
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a statement that his department is "more than willing" to work with the federal government to boost prosecution rates for gun crimes in Chicago.
Asked in August about the possibility of sending state National Guard troops into the city, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, said he'd ultimately decided it wasn't a good idea, after having discussions with police and the National Guard.
"Sometimes ... you get emotional and you say, 'Well, we've got to do something,'" he said at the time. "You've got to think these things through and the implications. And the National Guard right now wouldn't make sense."
(c)2017 Los Angeles Times
