Three weeks ago, President Donald Trump declared that “the District of Columbia has lost control of public order and safety,” and ordered armed troops into the streets of Washington, D.C., to fight crime. His additional comments — that the nation’s capital is filled with “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people” — were all basically untrue; Washington, D.C., is actually experiencing lower crime rates than it has in decades. But my primary interest here is more local than that.

At the time he spoke, the FBI listed the District of Columbia as the 29th most violent city in the U.S., with an average of 926 violent crimes per each 100,000 residents. That’s above the national average — but also well below Kansas City, Kansas, which the FBI ranked 21st, with an average of 1,047 violent crimes per 100,000 people. (Kansas City, Missouri, is ranked higher still.)

So, could Trump invoke emergency authority to send troops into Kansas City? After all, KCK has seen two law enforcement officers killed just this past summer, and its police department has a sad legacy of corruption. Maybe the Unified Government of Wyandotte County has “lost control” as well?

My response to this speculation is: highly unlikely, but unfortunately not impossible.

President Trump likes declaring emergencies (10 so far in his first seven months in office), which at least in his mind allows him to take action without supporting legislation from Congress. When he’s done this to federalize National Guard troops and use them for domestic enforcement purposes without any request from the state’s governor — as he did when ICE agents faced public opposition in Los Angeles — it likely violated the Posse Comitatus Act (and possibly the Declaration of Independence, which condemned King George III for imposing “Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures,” and the 10th Amendment, which stipulates that powers not specifically mentioned in the Constitution are “reserved to the States,” as well).

Much of this doesn’t apply to Washington, D.C.; it’s a federal district, not a city within a state, and consequently the president has complete control over its National Guard (though constitutional questions remain). Still, it is relatively clear that were Trump to do what he did in D.C. in KCK (or more broadly), beginning with federalizing the Kansas National Guard, he would be on very shaky ground legally, assuming Gov. Laura Kelly hadn’t contacted him for help.

Lately, though, it’s been clear that political interests often trump (pun intended) the law. The cities that Trump has mentioned sending specialized military units into are Democratic-leaning cities in mostly Democratic states: Chicago, New York, Baltimore, etc. Kansas, of course, is not mostly Democratic. But Wyandotte County is, having elected Sharice Davids, Kansas’ lone Democratic Congressperson, four times in a row — and Kansas City, Missouri, is even more so. And Trump has been pretty explicit about seeking to change the prevailing politics in the Kanas City area.

So could Trump’s desire to turn up the heat on urban areas that have pushed back against his policies (as Kansas City definitely has), and put pressure on their internal political dynamics and boundaries, extend to the KC metro region? Kelly would surely rather avoid a fight with the president — unlike California Gov. Gavin Newsom — but I’m also sure that, absent a truly unprecedented emergency, she’d deny him access to Kansas’ National Guard. How would the Republican supermajority in Topeka — led by representatives strongly supportive of Trump’s policies — respond to that?

Let’s keep hoping we never find out.

— Russell Arben Fox teaches politics at Friends University in Wichita.