>> An already tense standoff in California is getting tense the Pentagon says about 700 Marines are being activated to help protect federal property and personnel in the Los Angeles area amid ongoing protests over immigration enforcement.

It comes after President Donald Trump already deployed around 300 National Guard troops despite objections from California Governor Gavin Newsom.

But Newsom and others are pushing back calling the move unlawful.

Joining us now with more our Kevin Boyle, a professor of American history at Northwestern University and over zoom.

We have David Franklin, a professor of law at DePaul University.

Thanks to you both for joining us.

I'm Kevin.

Want to first get your reaction to this latest news about the Marines also being deployed to LA.

Yeah, this is really an extraordinary my mind, a really dangerous step.

>> For the president, the United States to use federal troops.

On American soil in this circumstance is really quite extraordinary A protest today.

Look, anything like what we've seen before when either National Guard work you know, U.S. military troops were deployed, know the scale of these protests, at least from what I can tell from watching on TV is much, much smaller, points in the past where either the National Guard were deployed or federal troops were deployed.

This is whole whole different scale.

David Franklin, get a similar question to you.

What was your reaction when you saw that the president or that the government was deploying Marines to LA?

>> It's a reaction is professor boil.

This is really alarming and dangerous step by the Trump administration.

You know, even for administration that has crossed many seemingly on cross double lines in terms of taking our country in the direction of frankly authoritarianism undermining the rule of law.

This is a really serious Khan to cross because we have a constitutional history and tradition in this country.

Of civilian control of the military rather than military control of civilians.

So as Professor Boyle was saying, the use of federal federalized troops to perform law enforcement function on civilian American streets is extremely rare.

It's Florida narrowly been done in the past either with the consider invitation of governor of the state where it's happening or it's happened because the government of the state was creating the problem as in the civil rights era in the south.

Neither of those things is true.

And as Professor Boyle mentioned, the scope and scale of these demonstrations don't seem to rise anywhere near the level of what President Trump is now with the kind of cruel irony calling an insurrection.

So I think it's to Trump development.

Yeah, because this move by the Trump administration, it's unprecedented but not necessarily illegal.

California is expected to sue.

What could their argument >> Well, I think that deployment of National Guard troops, if it is done solely to support us.

The ice officers that are already there.

That is saying if the National Guard is slowly being brought To provide protection for federal officials or federal law enforcement are not themselves interacting civilians directly.

That's probably legal calling up the Marines.

Really risks violating not just that constitutional tradition that I referenced a minute but also violating federal statute.

A very old federal statute called the posse comments on And so, you know that there's an exception to that act and want to get too technical here.

But there's an exception in the form of another federal law called the Insurrection Act.

But that a lot of really can only the trigger if there is insurrection.

And I just don't think the factual predicate for that is present here with court's second.

Guess.

The president's judgment that there is some sort of insurrection going That's a lot harder to say.

>> David mentioned, you know, the civil rights movement, other instances where this has happened, what was what was the case in those instances?

>> For the use of federalize National Guard.

President Eisenhower did 1957.

John Kennedy did in 1962, and Lyndon Johnson didn't 1963.

But in all 3 of those circumstances, the president was reacting either to the state itself violated law.

Little Rock where the state was defying a federal court order in a great integration of Little Rock Central High School or the state was refusing to provide the sort of protection the protesters needed 2 protest peacefully in the United States.

This is across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

Well into March from Selma over to Montgomery, which is where they were trying to get to when they're crossing Edmund Pettus Bridge.

And this is a fundamentally different circumstance.

This is using those troops potentially or those federalized National Guardsman against protesters not protection of protesters, which is the circumstance in the 60's.

>> Okay.

And then there was a with a cold and also in 1991, 2 during the Rodney King riots.

Sure that was given a number of times federal troops were called in in Urban uprisings.

But they were called in at the request of the governor, not in defiance of the couple.

circumstances explicitly said he doesn't want.

>> This mobilization, Souther troops called out 1967.

In the Detroit uprising.

1992 in LA.

But in both those circumstances, 68 in Chicago actually after Martin Luther King's murder.

But all those circumstances, local officials asked for troops to be deployed.

It wasn't in defiance of the local officials >> And in this case, Governor Gavin Newsom has said the opposite insisting that La PD has the situation under control.

David, couldn't the Trump administration argued that the state is defying federal immigration policy and therefore it was necessary to send in federal troops or allies, troops.

>> argued that from everything that I can see that just doesn't appear to be the case.

There are protesters on the street.

If those protesters acting violently are unlawfully, they can be dealt with.

But there's no evidence that I've seen that the state itself is defy or violating federal law enforcement.

So, you know, as I say, the predicate for a escalating this to the point of involving federal troops on American streets of American cities just has not been late.

It's dangerous situation.

Well, I mean, and incredibly dangerous situation because this set a precedent that the National Guard could be sent to other cities if the president doesn't like the protests he sees there.

>> And in fact, the Trump issued a in in relation to the situation in Los Angeles.

>> But if you read the memorandum never mentions.

Los Angeles where California.

So he's clearly trying to lay the groundwork for a nationwide use of National Guard perhaps as you've federal troops like the Marines, you know, perhaps he's trying to, you know, just distract and deflect from his own falling poll numbers of difficulty in passing his signature piece of legislation with Elon Musk who knows what his reasons but it's a very dangerous line to cross.

Federal troops are not trained to do law enforcement on the street.

They they don't have.

row training.

creates a completely new and dangerous dynamic.

And that's really relation David.

That's where we'll have to leave it.

Obviously something that will