Democrats urge Trump over Quantico speech on domestic troops

Twenty-five House Democrats, including several Iraq War veterans, sent an open letter on Wednesday to President Donald Trump charging that remarks he made to senior military leaders on Sept. 30 at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, risk politicizing the armed forces and crossing constitutional limits on domestic troop deployments. The lawmakers said the president’s comments about sending U.S. troops into American cities and using some urban areas as “training grounds” for confronting domestic threats amounted to an unacceptable blurring of military and political roles.

In his address to generals and admirals, Trump said some U.S. cities were “very unsafe places” and that “we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” calling efforts to quell violence there “a war from within.” He also said, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” The lawmakers’ letter said those remarks summoned an image of the military being used against fellow citizens and could undermine the long-standing principle that the U.S. armed forces remain apolitical.

The letter, led by Representative Pat Ryan of New York, who served in Army intelligence, was signed...