These Days Before the Vote: "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures."
Fort Atkinson, Wis. — Today’s entry this clear Friday evening continues These Days Before the Vote, a series addressing each day before the November election a principle or position on which our liberal democratic tradition rests.
Consider the Declaration’s charge against the British monarch: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” This accusation concerned who could authorize military forces to remain among civilians during peacetime. Boston’s September 13, 1768 town-meeting resolutions expressed the argument particularly clearly: they invoked the English restriction on peacetime standing armies without parliamentary consent and claimed an equivalent right to consent through their own elected representatives:
And whereas in the aforesaid Act of Parliament [Act declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, and Settling the Succession of the Crown] it is declared that the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with the consent of Parliament, is against law; it is the opinion of this town that the said declaration is founded in the indefeasible right of the subjects to be consulted, and to give their free consent in person, or by representatives of their own free election, to the raising and keeping a standing army among them; and the inhabitants of this town being free subjects, have the same right derived from nature and confirmed by the British constitution, as well as the said royal charter; and therefore the raising or keeping a standing army, without their consent in person or by representatives of their own free election, would be an infringement of their natural, constitutional, and charter rights; and the employing such army for the enforcing of laws made without the consent of the people, in person, or by their representatives, would be a grievance.
See Resolutions of the Boston Town Meeting (Sept. 13, 1768), Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
On October 4, 2025, Trump federalized 300 Illinois National Guard members to protect federal personnel and property around Chicago. Texas Guard members were federalized and sent to Chicago the following day. The administration fabricated claims of threats and violence that were supposedly interfering with immigration enforcement.
Illinois rightly challenged Trump's order, and lower courts restricted the Guard's deployment. Over two months later, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the administration’s application to stay those restrictions. The high court's preliminary analysis concluded that “regular forces” in 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3) likely meant the regular military, rather than civilian federal officers. The federal government had not established authority allowing the military to execute the laws in Illinois under the Trump administration's thin claims. See Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443, slip op. at 1–3 (U.S. Dec. 23, 2025).
10 U.S.C. § 12406 compels attention in full:
Whenever—
(1) the United States, or any of the Commonwealths or possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation;
(2) there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States; or
(3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States;
the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws. Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.
While the Court decided narrowly on 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3), Illinois was neither invaded nor in rebellion nor posing a danger of rebellion against the United States. A man who would fabricate so outrageously an excuse for deploying military force (regular or otherwise) was manifestly unfit to deploy any force among our people.
(Later, in April 2026, the Illinois Attorney General issued a statement after the federal government conceded that the deployment orders were no longer operational:
The American people, regardless of the city or state in which they reside, should not live under threat of military occupation simply because they live in a jurisdiction that has fallen out of a president’s political favor. I am pleased that today, the court has declared the Trump administration’s unlawful orders defunct and said it is absolutely clear that the administration cannot use the Illinois orders to federalize or deploy National Guard troops in Illinois. I am proud of the attorneys from my office who diligently fought to uphold the rule of law, because in Illinois, we recognize that the Constitution is not merely a suggestion.
See Ill. Att’y Gen., Attorney General Raoul Issues Statement After U.S. District Court Declares National Guard Orders “Defunct” and Case Moot (Apr. 20, 2026)).
The Declaration’s accusation was a justified grievance about British coercion by order of a British tyrant, without elected representatives' authorization. And yet, and yet, these centuries later, we've now seen American coercion at the whim of an American tyrant.
