It’s hard to think of a more dramatic question than the issue before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Illinois.

President Donald Trump wants to use federalized troops to quell protests outside an immigration detention facility near Chicago. Two federal courts have ruled that federal law does not permit Trump to do this. But the case is now before a Supreme Court dominated by six Republican justices who rarely part ways with the leader of their political party.

Trump’s arguments in the Illinois case, moreover, are quite aggressive. His lawyers claim that the question of when the president may exercise his power to take control of National Guard members, who are ordinarily under the command of state officials, “is committed exclusively to the president” and cannot be reviewed by federal courts. Once Trump does so, his lawyers also claim, “the Guardsmen serve under the command and control of federal military officials and ultimately the President as Commander in Chief.”

Thus, if the justices embrace this argument, Trump could potentially gain unchecked authority to call up the National Guard and order armed guardsmen to “protect” voting precincts in Democratic regions of the country.

The case arises out of Trump’s decision to place several hundred members of the Illinois and Texas National Guard under his control and order them to an immigration detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, about 12 miles west of Chicago. Since September, a small group of people have protested against the Trump administration’s immigration policies outside of that facility, and some of them have allegedly vandalized federal law enforcement vehicles. Some people have also been arrested for violent crimes, such as aggravated battery.

According to Judge April Perry, a federal district judge who temporarily blocked this deployment, “the typical number of protestors is fewer than fifty,” and “the crowd has never exceeded 200.”

To justify Trump’s decision to deploy military personnel to an American town, his lawyers rely on a federal law that permits the federal government to take command of National Guard members if there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” or if “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

Trump, in other words, claims that a small crowd that ranges from a few dozen people to a couple hundred has so overwhelmed the United States’ capacity to enforce its own laws that it justifies using the military against US citizens on US soil.

Needless to say, the stakes in the Illinois case are breathtaking. If Trump is allowed to use military personnel to suppress a tiny group of protesters and vandals, then it is unlikely that........

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