President Trump is close to making a dangerous end run around the legal boundaries surrounding use of the U.S. military to police American cities.

In 1992, Los Angeles was on fire, with people dying, when President H.W. Bush federalized the National Guard, invoked the Insurrection Act and sent active-duty Marines to help California Gov. Pete Wilson quell the violence of the Rodney King riots — at Wilson’s request.

In stark contrast, despite claiming that there are “violent, insurrectionist mobs” here in Los Angeles, and despite having preemptively federalized National Guard troops over the weekend (now numbering approximately 4,000) and ordering them to Los Angeles, Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act. And unlike Bush in 1992, Trump hasn’t given these deployed troops the law enforcement authorities needed in such a situation — powers they are legally barred from exercising currently — despite having sent 700 active-duty Marines to ostensibly protect federal assets from these claimed mobs.

This means that America is witnessing federal troops deployed to our nation’s second........

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