Nancy Pelosi might need to read up on the Constitution before going out in public again.
The former House speaker, who twice held the most powerful job in Congress, went before the Washington press corps on Tuesday to mount a full-throated attack on President Donald Trump for using the California National Guard to crack down on rioting in Los Angeles over the objections of Golden State Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
And she made up sections of the Constitution that don’t exist to do it.
Here is the video from C-SPAN.
.@SpeakerPelosi: “On January 6th…we begged the president of the United States to send in the National Guard. He would not do it…And yet, in a contra-constitutional way, he has sent the National Guard into California. Something is very wrong with this picture.” pic.twitter.com/yHfezvqNf6
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 10, 2025
“I hope the president would read Article 10 of the Constitution, and I urge all of you to do that, as well,” Pelosi said, about the 49-second mark. (Note the nodding head in the background.)
“Because section 12046 of Article 10 says that the National Guard cannot be called up by the president without the consent of the governor.”
Do you think Nancy Pelosi acquired her vast fortune legally?
Well, here’s a news flash for the constitutional scholar from California (and consummate congressional insider-trader): The Constitution has no Article 10.
The foundational document of the United States, which Americans might expect a former House speaker to have a more than passing knowledge of, has only seven articles, ranging from the powers vested in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government to its means of ratification.
What Pelosi was attempting to refer to was Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which deals with the “National Guard in Federal service.”
But even in that, she was wrong, as a passing knowledge of American history would show. In 1965, then-President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat revered by his party today, did exactly the same thing as Trump. As the Washington Examiner noted, Johnson invoked Title 10 to use the Alabama National Guard to protect civil rights protesters after the rabidly racist then-Gov. George Wallace (also a Democrat, of course) refused to do so.
Newsom called Trump’s move an “unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.” Does anyone think Democrats are going to start accusing Johnson of being an “authoritarian” when he stepped in for civil rights marchers?
As conservative commentator Matt Margolis wrote Tuesday on PJ Media:
“The statute explicitly states that the president may call the Guard into federal service and that orders ‘shall be issued through the governors,’ which is an administrative process, and not a requirement of consent. Federal law has long acknowledged the president’s right to federalize the National Guard, and the Supreme Court has affirmed the president’s right to federalize the National Guard without gubernatorial consent multiple times.”
And that doesn’t even get into Pelosi’s historical revisionism when it comes to the events surrounding the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021.
Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who has been publicly scathing about Pelosi’s handling of Jan. 6, covered that in an X post after Pelosi’s news conference.
FACT: On January 6, I was restricted by Federal Law (2US1970) from bringing in ANY federal support, including the National Guard, without first receiving permission from the Capitol Police Board, which included both Sergeants at Arms who reported to Pelosi and McConnell.… https://t.co/Hg7nn0iAuH
— Chief Steven Sund (@ChiefSund) June 11, 2025
“FACT: On January 6, I was restricted by Federal Law (2US1970) from bringing in ANY federal support, including the National Guard, without first receiving permission from the Capitol Police Board, which included both Sergeants at Arms who reported to Pelosi and McConnel,” he wrote.
But relitigating the events of four years ago (and Pelosi’s role in them) isn’t the point here.
The point is, one of the most prominent leaders of the current Democratic Party, the 85-year-old woman who played a key role in pushing now-former President Joe Biden to the sidelines because his self-evident cognitive decline spelled doom for Democrats in November, is apparently no longer capable of remembering the difference between the United States Constitution and the U.S. Code.
And she has the gall to “hope the president would read Article 10 of the Constitution” and urged reporters to do so, as well. (Imagine the establishment media firestorm if Trump had made a mistake like that.)
She might want to look it up herself, before she goes out in public with the idea again. She might be surprised at what she doesn’t find.
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