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insurrection act
'Unlawful and Un-American': Trump Claims He Can Send 'Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines' Into US Cities
“Our military exists to defend the nation and protect our freedoms, not to be weaponized against American cities," said critics.
Oct 29, 2025
President Donald Trump alarmed many critics this week when he once again mused about deploying the military on the streets of US cities.
As reported by The New York Times, Trump told a group of American troops stationed in Japan on Tuesday that he could send the military into US cities under the pretense of fighting crime.
"We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled," Trump said. "And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities."
Trump has deployed the National Guard to cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, and Portland in recent months, but local and state officials have opposed the deployment in most cases and have filed legal challenges. Most recently, a federal appeals court voted on Tuesday to rehear the administration's case pushing to send the National Guard to Portland—vacating an earlier decision that allowed Trump to federalize Oregon's troops.
On Wednesday, Trump was asked by a New York Times reporter to specify what he meant when he said he could send "more than the National Guard" into American cities, and he replied that he could send any branch of the military he wanted without any oversight from courts or from Congress.
"If I want to enact a certain act, I'm allowed to do it," Trump said. "I'd be allowed to do whatever I want. The courts wouldn't get involved. Nobody would get involved. And I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines—I could send anybody I wanted."
Q: What did you mean last night when you said you were prepared to send 'more than the National Guard' into American cities?
TRUMP: Sure, I'd do that. As you know I'm allowed to do that
Q: Do you mean other branches of the military you'd send in?
TRUMP: If it were -- who are… pic.twitter.com/5O733Mas5V
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2025
The president threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act earlier this month, falsely claiming the law gives him "unquestioned power." The Insurrection Act allows presidents to deploy federal troops to enforce US laws in cases of extreme emergency, such as violent rebellions—but local officials in the cities Trump has targeted so far have categorically denied that anti-Trump protests there meet the high threshold for invoking the law.
The co-chairs of the Not Above the Law Coalition—Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen; Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center; Kelsey Herbert, campaign director at MoveOn; and Brett Edkins, managing director for policy and political affairs at Stand Up America—condemned Trump's threats on Tuesday as "unlawful and un-American."
"Our military exists to defend the nation and protect our freedoms, not to be weaponized against American cities," they said. "In his remarks today, Trump claimed that he and his administration cronies 'can do as we want to do.' That is as dangerous as it is unlawful and un-American."
Trump's use of the American military for domestic law enforcement purposes was also condemned by Ret. Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, a former top official at the National Guard.
Writing in the Home of the Brave newsletter, Manner condemned Trump's National Guard deployments to US cities as "un-American and wrong."
Manner noted that the National Guard has traditionally existed to augment US forces overseas during times of war, and also to serve at the request of state governors during times of emergencies. Using the National Guard to do standard police work, Manner added, is simply unprecedented.
"Our military is not trained in law enforcement," he argued. "There are absolutely zero situations where our National Guard should be on the streets of America as a status quo measure, absent some acute short-term crisis. We would never send our sheriff’s deputies to Afghanistan for a special operation; it’s just as illogical to send highly trained combat soldiers and put them into civilian law enforcement roles."
Trump first began musing about deploying the US military on American soil during the 2024 election campaign, when he said he could use it to take down a group of US citizens whom he described as "the enemy from within." Trump ratcheted up his threats last month when he told a group of assembled US generals that "we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military."
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Trump Threatens to Invoke Insurrection Act, Take 'Unquestioned Power' Following No Kings Protests
Trump claimed that if he invokes the Insurrection Act, "there are no more court cases, there is no more anything."
Oct 20, 2025
While the nation was fixated on President Donald Trump’s deranged social media antics in response to this weekend’s "No Kings" protests, he managed to slip under the radar with some ominous threats to substantially expand his power.
The president generated bewilderment and outrage when, in response to the mass mobilization of more than 7 million Americans against his abuses of power, he posted an artificially-generated video of himself wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet emblazoned with “King Trump” that dumped what appeared to be a pile of excrement upon demonstrators in the middle of Times Square.
The public was understandably preoccupied with the president of the United States posting a video of himself “literally dumping shit on America,” which Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch called “metaphorically the most accurate piece of propaganda he’s put out this year.”
But it served as a useful distraction as Trump implied that he may use these protests as a pretext to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he incorrectly suggested gives him “unquestioned power.”
“Don’t forget, I can use the Insurrection Act,” Trump said in a Fox News interview Sunday morning. “Fifty percent of the presidents almost have used that. And that’s unquestioned power. I choose not to.”
“I’d rather do this,” he said, referring to his deployment of the National Guard to American cities, including Chicago, Portland, and now San Francisco, which he announced as his next target last week. “But I’m met constantly by fake politicians, politicians that think that they—you know, it’s not a part of the radical left movement to have safety. These cities have to be safe.”
The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows presidents to direct federal troops to enforce US law in cases of extreme emergency, including rebellions against the federal government, beyond the reach of traditional law enforcement. Contrary to Trump’s claim, it has only been invoked by about a quarter of US presidents.
The last president to invoke the act was George H.W. Bush, in response to the riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of the police officers who brutalized Rodney King in 1992. Other presidents invoked it during times of extreme upheaval or war, including President Abraham Lincoln, who used it during the Civil War, and Ulysses S. Grant, who used it to suppress terrorism against newly freed Black Americans by the Ku Klux Klan across the South.
It has not historically been used to put down peaceful protests, like this past weekend’s No Kings marches, which frequently emphasize their commitment to nonviolence.
It is unclear what precisely Trump referred to when he said “that’s unquestioned power.” He may have meant that he has unquestioned power to invoke the Insurrection Act, which is also not true.
The law gives the president the power to invoke it in response to “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy,” which has made it “impracticable to enforce the laws... by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”
Though the Supreme Court has largely granted the president the authority to determine what forms of unrest may meet these criteria, Joseph Nunn, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, explained earlier this year that "there are exceptions to the general rule that courts can’t review a president’s decision to deploy" forces:
The Supreme Court has suggested that courts may step in if the president acts in bad faith, exceeds "a permitted range of honest judgment," makes an obvious mistake, or acts in a way manifestly unauthorized by law.
Even in cases where the courts will not second-guess the decision to deploy troops, the Supreme Court clarified in Sterling v. Constantin (1932) that courts may still review the lawfulness of the military’s actions once deployed. In other words, federal troops are not free to violate other laws or trample onconstitutional rights just because the president has invoked the Insurrection Act.
Comments made by Trump aboard Air Force One later on Sunday suggest a different meaning to his claim of “unquestioned power,” that he was not referring to his ability to invoke the act, but rather saying it gives him authority to act unilaterally without any intervention from the courts.
“Everybody agrees you’re allowed to use [the Insurrection Act], and there are no more court cases, there is no more anything. We’re trying to do it in a nicer manner, but we can always use the Insurrection Act,” he continued. “We wanted to go this route, but we get sued every time you look at somebody, you look at somebody the wrong way, and you end up getting sued. We just want no crime.”
Trump has indeed been sued over his deployment of federal troops to American cities, including in Portland, where a judge ruled earlier this month that his claim that the city was “war-ravaged” was “untethered to facts,” as the protests there against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been overwhelmingly peaceful.
It was also unclear what Trump meant when he said that if he invokes the Insurrection Act, “there are no more court cases, there is no more anything.” The comment seemed to imply that he believes that the Insurrection Act is tantamount to martial law, where the normal forms of due process do not apply, and the courts have no recourse to intervene against abuses of power.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff, implied a similar unchallenged power earlier this month when he asserted that Trump has “plenary,” meaning practically limitless, “authority” to use the military on US soil, however he sees fit. Miller earlier this year also suggested suspending the writ of habeas corpus, the right to challenge unlawful detention, for immigrants.
Trump previously discussed invoking martial law with his advisers in 2020 in an effort to hold onto power following his election loss and later suggested that the supposed “fraud” in his election loss “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
But as Andy Craig, a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies, explains, even if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, which he predicted, “is likelier than not,” it doesn’t give him the power to suspend the Constitution, at least not legally.
“None of this is true,” Craig said. “The Insurrection Act is not a declaration of martial law. It doesn’t close the courts. It doesn’t suspend habeas corpus. It means you can use the military to enforce federal laws, but the laws themselves remain the same.”
“There are lots of disasters waiting to happen in how much we have wired up to pure presidential power,” he continued. “But one thing we don’t have is some state-of-exception button the president can push and instantly become an absolute dictator. That’s not a thing in American law. No emergency power encompasses it.”
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'A Pretext to Take Over American Cities': JD Vance Sparks Alarm With Comments on Insurrection Act
"The guardrails are gone," warned Democratic political strategist David Axelrod.
Oct 12, 2025
Vice President JD Vance sparked alarm on Sunday when he said that President Donald Trump was considering invoking the Insurrection Act under the pretenses of combating violent crime in US cities.
During an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," host Kristen Welker asked Vance if Trump was "seriously considering" invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to use the US military to carry out law enforcement operations.
Vance responded by saying Trump is "looking at all his options," and added that he hasn't felt the need to invoke it for the time being.
Vance proceeded to justify invoking the Insurrection Act, which he said could be necessary to protect the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
"We have to remember why we're talking about this, Kristen," he said. "Because crime has gotten out of control in our cities, because ICE agents, the people enforcing our immigration laws, have faced a 1,000% increase in violent attacks against them. We have people right now who are going out there, who are doing the job the president asked them to do, who are enforcing our immigration laws, they're being assaulted."
Welker countered by noting that a judge in Illinois found last week that the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois has remained entirely open and operational despite being the target of protesters in recent weeks.
She also informed Vance that crime has been coming down significantly in both Chicago and Portland, two US cities where Trump has tried to deploy National Guard forces.
"Kristen, crime is down in Chicago and Portland often because they're so overwhelmed at the local level, they're not even keeping their statistics properly," Vance replied, without providing any evidence to back up his claim.
WELKER: Are you seriously looking at invoking the Insurrection Act?
VANCE: The president is looking at all of his options, right now he hasn't felt he needed to. But we have to remember we are talking about this because crime has gotten out of control in our cities
WELKER:… pic.twitter.com/vBBPkUidPu
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2025
Vance's justifications for invoking the Insurrection Act on the grounds that he laid out drew alarmed reactions from many critics.
"This is a pretext to take over American cities by force," wrote CNN political commentator Karen Finney in a post on X.
Shannon Watts, the founder of anti-gun violence organization Moms Demand Action, linked Vance's comments to the current shutdown of the federal government and questioned whether the government deserved to be funded when its executive branch was threatening to unleash the military against its own citizens.
"Why should Democrats vote to open the government while this is still happening?" she asked.
Cornell William Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former president of the NAACP, argued in a post on Bluesky that Vance's comments show that the Trump administration "insults your intelligence."
"The same administration that fired an economist for reporting statistics on the economy," he wrote, "is asking you to not believe lower statistics on crime, not see safer streets, and accept the National Guard in your front yard."
Democratic political strategist David Axelrod warned that the Trump administration seems genuinely eager to send troops into US cities.
"Believe them when they tell you what they're planning, folks," he wrote. "Trump wanted to use American troops against Americans in his first term, and was dissuaded by responsible civilian and military leaders. No more. The guardrails are gone."
Attorney George Conway, a former Republican who left the party over its embrace of Trump, responded to Vance's comments by posting a video of anti-ICE protesters in Chicago dancing in the streets to the classic Neil Diamond hit, "Sweet Caroline."
Asked by Kristen Welker on Meet the Press this morning whether the White House was seriously considering invoking the Insurrection Act, Vice President Vance said, "The president is looking at all his options." pic.twitter.com/GVKxXf2YmI
— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway3d) October 12, 2025
Talk of invoking the Insurrection Act has ramped up in recent weeks, despite the fact that protests against ICE facilities in Illinois and Oregon have remained overwhelmingly peaceful and have featured impromptu dance parties carried out by people dressed in inflatable animal costumes.
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