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insurrection act
‘Alarm’ at White House After Vance and Miller Pushed Insurrection Act, Habeas Corpus Suspension During Anti-ICE Protests
Reporting in The New York Times reveals Vance wanted to use the military "to crush the unrest in Minnesota."
Jun 15, 2026
A Monday report in The New York Times revealed what it described as the "alarm" felt by some White House lawyers at proposals made earlier this year by Vice President JD Vance and Trump adviser Stephen Miller as the administration was forced to contend with widespread anger over its anti-immigration agenda.
Among other things, the Times reported that Vance pushed for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow for the US military to be deployed on American streets, in an effort to shut down mass protests in Minnesota against federal immigration enforcement operations in the state.
A few days after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers fatally shot demonstrator Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, the Times reported that Vance—who had also elevated a baseless claim by Miller that Pretti had been a "would-be assassin"—said invoking the Insurrection Act was necessary "to crush the unrest in Minnesota."
Vance also believed invoking the law would send a “message” that “paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations”—even though, as the Times noted, there is no evidence that Pretti; demonstrator Renee Good, who was also killed by federal agents; or any other organizers in Minnesota or elsewhere received any money in exchange for protesting.
However, right-wing attorney Will Scharf quickly shot down Vance's suggestion, noting that the Insurrection Act is an instrument aimed at putting down armed rebellions rather than groups of citizens blowing whistles at ICE officers.
Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair then made the political case against invoking the Insurrection Act.
"The scenes of federal agents in Minnesota already looked chaotic, he said, and the public was recoiling," reported the Times. "He put three questions to the room: What does the Insurrection Act give us that we don’t already have? What changes on the ground would be worth the heat? What else could they win that would justify the public relations cost?"
"The room was quiet," the Times added. "Nobody had a good answer."
The Times report also revealed that Trump adviser Stephen Miller, Trump's homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff, repeatedly pushed the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants, which would give the administration the power to carry out mass deportations without being subjected to judicial oversight.
As in the case of Vance's proposal, Scharf pushed back against Miller's suggestion, noting that courts have long held that habeas corpus cannot be suspended unilaterally by the president and must be done by an act of Congress.
"Even where Congress has explicitly suspended habeas corpus rights," Scharf wrote in a legal memo obtained by the Times, "the Supreme Court has held that some alternative process must be provided to defendants, with procedural safeguards akin to a habeas corpus action."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the Times' reporting showed Miller "would happily shred the Constitution into little pieces if he could," before hopefully noting that "even he wasn’t powerful enough to do it" in this instance.
University of Michigan Law School Professor Leah Litman argued that the Times report showed some in the administration were at least still somewhat conscious of public opinion when making decisions.
"In the story about the administration weighing suspending habeas corpus and invoking the Insurrection Act, what moved the needle against the Insurrection Act was concern about 'public relations,'" Litman wrote. "Public pushback, agitation, and outcry can work. Even now. Keep it up."
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Be Warned: Trump May Still Pull the Insurrection Act Trigger
During his first term, Donald Trump was reportedly dissuaded from invoking the act by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and other “grown-ups” in his first administration; this time around, there are no grown-ups in the building.
Feb 13, 2026
Donald Trump hasn’t forgotten about the Insurrection Act, and neither should you. In the face of plummeting poll numbers and public outcry over the deaths of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, Trump may appear to be retreating from his threats to deploy the military to Minneapolis and other blue state cities, but any retreat is likely to prove temporary and tactical rather than a reversal of policy.
Throughout his career, Trump has been guided by the “lessons” he learned as a young real estate hustler from his odious one-time mentor and fixer Roy Cohn: Never retreat, apologize, or admit wrongdoing, and always remain on the offensive. In keeping with Cohn’s teachings, Trump has made threats to invoke the Insurrection Act dating to June 2020, when he vowed to use it to quell mass demonstrations related to the murder of George Floyd. He was reportedly restrained at the time by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and other “grown-ups” in his first administration.
This time around, there are no grown-ups in the building.
Since retaking the White House, Trump has doubled down on this threat. On the first day of his second term, he issued a presidential proclamation declaring a state of emergency at the southern border that directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security head Kristi Noem to develop plans, including using the Insurrection Act, to combat the now-familiar fantasy “invasion” of “cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, and unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries.” The proclamation laid the groundwork for Trump’s mass-deportation program and for giving US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol the largest budgets of any police agencies in the country.
Invoking the Insurrection Act would be the biggest gambit of all, likely resulting in a historic showdown before the Supreme Court.
Trump again threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act last June, in response to protests in Los Angeles, and then again in October over demonstrations in Chicago. Although he stopped short in both instances, he has ramped up the rhetoric to new heights in reaction to the growing resistance movement in Minneapolis. Taking to Truth Social on January 15, he warned:
If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.
Despite removing Border Patrol “commander at large” Greg Bovino from Minneapolis on January 26 in a gesture some observers saw as a modest measure of conciliation, the threats have escalated.
On January 27, Trump received a letter from the House Freedom Caucus, urging him to use ”all tools necessary,” including the Insurrection Act, “to maintain order in the face of unlawful obstructions and assemblages that prevent the enforcement of the laws of the United States.” Bolstered by the endorsement, Trump returned to Truth Social three days later to denounce Pretti as an “Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.” And in another Truth Social screed on January 31, he pledged to “guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.” In a veiled reference to Pretti, he added that anyone caught “punching or kicking the headlights of our cars” or throwing bricks or rocks “at our vehicles, or at our Patriot Warriors […] will suffer an equal, or more, consequence.”
Whether Trump ultimately pulls the Insurrection Act trigger may depend on how he applies another of Roy Cohn’s lessons: Use the legal system to crush critics and opponents. Trump’s affinity for litigation is legendary. He has been involved in over 4,000 lawsuits, including several defamation actions taken against major media outlets like the New York Times, ABC, and CBS. In his second term, he has transformed the Department of Justice into his personal law firm, imposing sanctions on liberal law firms and elite universities by executive orders, and launching prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, and scores of rank-and-file anti-ICE protesters across the country. Even when the gambits fail, as they have with Comey and James, they send the chilling message that no one who defies or offends the president is safe.
Invoking the Insurrection Act would be the biggest gambit of all, likely resulting in a historic showdown before the Supreme Court. Trump has enjoyed extraordinary success in his Supreme Court cases, and with three of his nominees on the bench, he has reason to be optimistic about any final confrontation. Still, the outcome of any such move is uncertain.
In December, the court dealt Trump a surprising setback with an interim “shadow-docket” ruling (Trump v. Illinois) that blocked him from deploying National Guard troops in and around Chicago. The ruling was widely praised by liberal legal commentators, who saw it as a hopeful sign that the nation’s highest judicial body was willing to stand up to Trump’s incessant power grabs, at least on the use of the military for domestic law-enforcement purposes.
Unfortunately, the decision was temporary—all interim orders are—and narrow. It was also a split decision, with Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.
At issue in the case was the administration’s interpretation of a vague phrase in a statute that empowers the president to federalize members of the Guard if he is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” The administration argued the phrase referred to the inability of federal civilian law enforcement to maintain order during protests. The majority ruled instead that the phrase referred to the regular military, and that because Trump had not attempted to deploy the military and shown that it was unable to maintain order, he had not met the statute’s requirements.
As Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in a concurring opinion, the decision said nothing about the president’s authority to invoke the Insurrection Act. Rather, Kavanaugh suggested, it opened the door for Trump to proceed. “One apparent ramification of the court’s opinion is that it could cause the president to use the US military more than the National Guard to protect federal personnel and property in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote.
To be sure, any invocation of the Insurrection Act would face legal challenges over whether the country is facing an actual rebellion, and the extent to which the military, if activated, is subject to the same constitutional restraints as civilian law enforcement. The challenges could succeed at the district court level, but from there, all bets would be off. The mad king would no doubt follow the advice of his erstwhile mentor, refuse to retreat, and ask his friends on the Supreme Court to intervene and allow his attacks to continue.
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'This Is a Dangerous, Dangerous Moment': AOC Warns Trump, Noem Laying Groundwork for Insurrection Act
"Mayor Frey is executing on the municipal laws passed by duly elected officials, by the people of Minneapolis," said Ocasio-Cortez. "That is what it means to live in a democracy."
Jan 25, 2026
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that President Donald Trump has "considered" invoking the Insurrection Act a day after Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that Border Patrol agents' killing of Alex Pretti had plunged the US into a "dangerous, dangerous moment" in which the White House appeared to be "laying the groundwork" to use the law to deploy the US military for domestic law enforcement.
Noem and other top White House officials, said Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), have been suggesting that leaders like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—both Democrats who have demanded federal agents leave the city and state—are "breaking the law" by following local ordinances that protect immigrants and citizens from immigration enforcement.
Noem has claimed that the two leaders are "'inciting,' that their resistance and difference from this administration, that their political difference in policy from this administration—she is equating disagreement with incitement," the congresswoman told CNN Saturday.
AOC: "In directing this around Mayor Wray and Gov. Walz, claiming they are 'inciting,' Noem is equating disagreement with incitement ... she is laying the groundwork for the Insurrection Act ... they are taking issue with the people of Minnesota who have duly elected their own… pic.twitter.com/u4y6qLsHLa
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2026
She suggested the narrative appears aimed at convincing Americans that actions taken by local and state leaders could result in Trump invoking the Insurrection Act and sending the US military into cities, if he doesn't agree with the leaders' policies.
Like Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have in recent days, Noem on Saturday accused the mayor and governor of "encouraging" violence against "our citizens and our law enforcement officers."
"The Minnesota governor and the Minneapolis mayor need to take a long, hard look in the mirror," Noem said. "They need to evaluate their rhetoric, their conversations, and their encouragement of such violence."
She added that Walz "encouraged residents and citizens and violent rioters to resist."
Over a week ago, Leavitt also accused Walz of "inciting the harassment" of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and said the governor should "pick up the phone and say that he will cooperate with the president and federal government in making Minnesota safer."
Leavitt held up a photo of people she claimed were undocumented immigrants who had come into the country under the Biden administration and committed violent crimes, but analyses by the libertarian Cato Institute has shown nearly three-quarters of people booked into ICE detention in recent months had no criminal convictions.
The press secretary also accused Democratic governors and mayors of holding state and local law enforcement "hostage" with ordinances barring them from cooperating with ICE.
On CNN, Ocasio-Cortez said that while framing their attacks as though they are targeting Frey and Walz, Noem and Leavitt have actually been "taking issue with the people of Minneapolis and the people of Minnesota, who have duly elected their own elected officials to enact their will. They may not like it, but that is what the people of Minnesota and the people of Minneapolis want. They want people's civil liberties and civil rights protected."
"Mayor Frey is executing on the municipal laws passed by duly elected officials, by the people of Minneapolis," said Ocasio-Cortez. "That is what it means to live in a democracy, and that is precisely what they are trying to threaten and undermine in this moment."
On Fox News Sunday, Noem said that the question of whether to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow Trump to deploy the US military to American cities for domestic law enforcement purposes, is "up to the president" before repeating claims that Pretti was to blame for his own death.
The killing was caught on video by witnesses who saw him holding a cellphone as he tried to help a woman who'd been pushed to the ground by an agent, being pepper-sprayed, and then being thrown to the ground and surrounded by several officers, at least one of whom shot him 10 times after another agent had taken his legal firearm away.
Noem claimed, as she and other Trump officials did immediately after Pretti was killed, that he was "confronting" the officers and "impeding" their operations—assertions that are directly contradicted by videos of the incident.
AOC on Noem's lies: "They are asking you to give up your belief in your own senses and instead hand over your belief to anything they say ... look at it for yourself and what you will see is an innocent man being executed in the street." pic.twitter.com/kbUhJau3ZK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2026
Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN that following the fatal shooting, the administration has been "asking the American people to not believe their eyes, to not believe their ears, and to not believe what they are seeing right before them... They are asking you to instead hand over your belief to anything they say."
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To Threat of Troop Deployment, Minneapolis Mayor Vows City 'Will Not Be Intimidated'
"The best way to get safety is not to have an influx of even more agents and, in this case, military in Minneapolis," Mayor Jacob Frey said.
Jan 18, 2026
Responding to the news that the Department of Defense had put 1,500 active duty troops on standby for a potential deployment to Minnesota, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had a clear message for the Trump administration: "We will not be intimidated by the actions of this federal government."
"This act was clearly designed to intimidate the people of Minneapolis, and here's the thing: We're not going to be intimidated," Frey told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday morning.
The news of the troop deployment was first broken by ABC and confirmed to the Washington Post late Saturday night. It came two days after President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act due to widespread protests against a major federal immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities that has already led to the death of legal observer Renee Good and the shooting and injuring of Venezuelan migrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
It is not certain that the soldiers, who belong to two Alaska-based infantry battalions, will actually be deployed. The White House said it was typical for the Pentagon “to be prepared for any decision the President may or may not make.”
"I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government."
However, if they were deployed, Frey told Tapper it would be "ridiculous."
He noted that there are already around 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in the area compared with around 600 local police officers.
"The best way to get safety is not to have an influx of even more agents and, in this case, military in Minneapolis," he said.
Frey told Tapper that the situation that Minneapolis found itself in was "bizarre."
"I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government," he said.
However, he praised the response of ordinary people in the city: "One of the beautiful things that's taking place is that the people here in Minneapolis are not just resisting. They're standing up. They're standing up for their neighbors, they're loving people, they're making sure that they've got a ride to the grocery store, a safe walk to their car. They're making sure that they have those basic necessities that they need, because we've got a whole lot of people who are afraid to go outside at the risk of getting torn apart from their own families."
"In the face of a whole lot of adversity, I'm so proud to be from Minneapolis. I'm so proud to be the mayor of this awesome city with these extraordinary people," Frey said.
The news of the potential military deployment came the day after the revelation that the Department of Justice was investigating Frey as well as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over their criticism of federal immigration enforcement operations in the Minneapolis area.
Frey also spoke out against this second form of intimidation.
"If it were true, the targeting would be the product of performing one of the most basic responsibilities and obligations that I have as mayor, which is to speak on behalf of our great city, speak on behalf of our constituents," Frey told Tapper. "And that the federal government would be going after me because of that speech should be deeply concerning not just for people in Minneapolis, but for anybody throughout the country."
In addition to a potential federal deployment of the military, Gov. Walz also ordered the Minnesota National Guard to mobilize on Saturday.
"They are not deployed to city streets at this time, but are ready to help support public safety, including protection of life, preservation of property, and supporting the rights of all who assemble peacefully," the Minnesota Department of Public Safety wrote on Facebook.
Tapper asked Frey if he was worried about a situation in which ICE, CBP, and the military might end up physically fighting with the Minnesota National Guard and local law enforcement.
"We can't have that in America," Frey answered, adding that he hoped the judicial system would step up to restrict the Trump administration from invading American cities. Already, a federal judge has ruled that ICE must not retaliate against, pepper spray, or detain peace protesters and observers in Minnesota, and there are other lawsuits pending against the deployment.
Frey also appealed to people across the country.
"I know that you love your town, regardless of where you are," he said. "And just imagine what it would feel like if you suddenly had an administration deployment of troops, of agents come into you city by the thousands, vastly outnumber the police department, and cause chaos on your streets."
Frey added that there was a very simple way for ICE to resolve the situation.
"If the goal here is to create peace and safety and calm, there's a very clear antidote here, which is leave," he said.
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Fearing Midterm Loss, Trump Once Again Says 'We Shouldn't Even Have an Election'
"Take Trump at his word here," said one Minnesota attorney. "But know his word isn’t law."
Jan 15, 2026
As armed federal agents roam the streets of American cities and amid threats to declare the Insurrection Act and use military force to quell protests in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump said once again that the next elections should be canceled because he expects his party to lose.
“It's some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don't win the midterms,” Trump said in a closed-door interview published by Reuters on Thursday. He added that because he's accomplished so much during his first term, “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.”
It's at least the second time this month that Trump has floated the idea. He previously did so less directly during a speech commemorating the five-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, during which his supporters attempted to violently overturn his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden after he told them it was the result of fraud.
During that speech at the Kennedy Center, Trump described it as an outrage that Republicans even have to contest elections against Democrats later this year, suggesting canceling the election, but later backing off the idea.
"How do we even run against these people?" Trump said. "I won't say cancel the election; they should cancel the election, because the fake news would say: 'He wants the elections canceled. He's a dictator.' They always call me a dictator."
In the same speech, he warned: "You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don't win the midterms, they'll find a reason to impeach me. I'll get impeached."
Trump is correct that sitting presidents rarely see their parties do well in midterm elections two years after being elected. No sitting president has seen their party gain seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate since 2002, when former President George W. Bush's Republican Party was able to capitalize on fears of terrorism following the September 11 attacks just over a year before.
The president's grip on a legislative trifecta is nearly as thin as it could possibly be, with Republicans holding just 218 seats to the Democrats' 213.
Democrats were already favored to retake the House in November, and now appear even more likely to do so amid Trump's consistent unpopularity. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved a total of 18 House races in the Democrats' direction in its latest assessment of the odds to win the chamber.
However, Trump is wrong that elections can be "canceled," at least legally. Under the Elections Clause in Article I, Section 4 of the US Constitution, the administration of elections is vested in the states, with Congress holding the power to "make or alter such regulations." The president has no authority to determine the timing of federal elections.
The United States has never once postponed a presidential election in its nearly 250-year history: They were carried out on schedule during periods of extraordinary crisis, including the Civil War in 1864, the influenza epidemic in 1918 and 1920, and World War II in 1942 and 1944.
Elections were also carried out on schedule in 2020, though Trump, who was then the president running for a second consecutive term, also suggested that they should be delayed then due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the time, he claimed that the widespread use of mail-in ballots, necessitated by the illness, would make it "the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history” and asked if he should "delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” But Trump never pursued the idea seriously, as it was shot down by top Republicans.
After losing the election, he wrote in 2022 that what he called “a Massive Fraud” allowed for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" in order to address the 2020 result.
Trump has more recently suggested that a war could give him the ticket to cancel elections. While speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in August of 2025, he spoke approvingly of the leader's invocation of martial law and suspension of elections following Russia's invasion three years prior.
"So during war, you can't have elections?" Trump said with a smile. "So let me just say, three and a half years from now— so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.”
Since then, Trump has notably launched a war to take over Venezuela's oil and threatened to launch several more, including with Greenland, Iran, and Mexico.
Asked on Thursday about why the president keeps talking about canceling elections, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: "The president was simply joking. He was saying, 'We're doing such a great job, we're doing everything the American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling.' But he was speaking facetiously."
Ryan Broderick, the writer of the political newsletter Garbage Day, said that with his latest comments—and "the threats of invoking the Insurrection Act in Minnesota this morning—he is very clearly exploring how to cancel the midterms."
Trump has in recent days suggested using the National Guard to seize voting machines, stating that he regretted not doing so as he attempted to overturn his loss in 2020. His handpicked election officials have previously urged him to declare a "national emergency" that they said would give the federal government unprecedented powers to override the states and write their own election rules.
On the question of canceling the midterms outright, Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and First Amendment litigator, agreed that Trump "wants to, it’s plausible he’ll try, and his people would support it," but said "it’s vastly harder and more complicated than people are suggesting and can’t be done by his fiat."
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued that even if Trump wanted to cancel the midterms, he would face many logistical hurdles in doing so.
"How does Trump force 50 separate state boards of election to cancel their midterms?" he asked on social media. "How does he convince Republican House members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?"
"[US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] can't even deal with irate middle-aged Midwesterners. How does he occupy hundreds, if not thousands, of polling sites and precincts?" he continued. "Trump v. Illinois clarified that he has no legal authority to unilaterally commandeer national guards. How does he move forward from there?"
Minnesota lawyer Andrew Rothstein encouraged people to "take Trump at his word here... but know his word isn’t law."
Even if this year's elections go forward as planned, Trump is working to influence the results by bullying Republican state legislators to rig their congressional maps for the GOP and attempting to seize sensitive voter data.
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'Unnecessary, Irresponsible, and Dangerous': ACLU Slams Trump's Insurrection Act Threat
“What’s needed now is not federal escalation, but deescalation."
Jan 15, 2026
President Donald Trump and other White House officials have sought to portray protesters against their mass deportation campaign, including in Minneapolis, as out of control and violent—but in condemning the president's threat to invoke to Insurrection Act in order to crack down on growing dissent, a top civil liberties group Thursday said it's clear where the danger to public safety is coming from.
"The real risk to people’s safety comes from [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and other federal agents’ violence against our communities," said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project. “What’s needed now is not federal escalation, but deescalation."
Instead, Trump said Thursday morning—hours after a federal agent shot and wounded a man during a traffic stop in Minneapolis and a week after Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent—officials in Minnesota must "stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of ICE who are only trying to do their job.”
Trump officials have provided no evidence that protesters in Minneapolis or elsewhere are "professional agitators" rather than grassroots community members who have banded together to protect their neighborhoods.
The president didn't detail how he believes officials in the state could bar residents from protesting ICE or observing and filming their violent arrests—which, as Department of Homeland Security officials on the ground recently reminded agents, are protected activities under the First Amendment and other statutes—but said if they didn't do so he would invoke the Insurrection Act.
Invoking the law would allow Trump to deploy US military troops to Minneapolis for law enforcement purposes. The president—who has been accused of inciting an attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021 after losing the 2020 election—has threatened to use the Insurrection Act at other times to clamp down on protests against his anti-immigration agenda. The law is rarely used and was last invoked in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush during riots in Los Angeles.
"It’s hard to think of another instance in which a president would deploy troops to enable further federal deprivation of people’s rights."
Shamsi said that "invoking the Insurrection Act is unnecessary, irresponsible, and dangerous."
"President Trump is continuing to stoke fear in a situation his administration created by unleashing lawless, armed federal agents against our communities," she said. "It’s hard to think of another instance in which a president would deploy troops to enable further federal deprivation of people’s rights."
Even if Trump were to send the US military to Minneapolis or other cities, Shamsi issued a reminder that "no matter what uniform they wear, armed federal agents and military troops are bound by our constitutional rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, and due process. If troops or federal agents violate these boundaries, they and their leadership must be held accountable."
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'Minneapolis Is the Test Case': Trump Threatens Insurrection Act to Put Down Protests
"The Insurrection Act was always the plan," warned one critic of the president.
Jan 15, 2026
President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to put the US military on American streets, unless demonstrations against federal immigration operations in Minneapolis come to an end.
In a Truth Social post, Trump demanded that Minnesota elected officials "stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], who are only trying to do their job."
If this doesn't happen, the president said, he would invoke the Insurrection Act and "quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place" in the state.
"The Insurrection Act was always the plan, and Minneapolis is the test case," said Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health. "They sent ICE in to terrorize and attack Black and brown communities to provoke a response that would justify deploying the military domestically in Blue cities. This has never been about immigration."
“Invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces against the American people is the exact opposite of what Minneapolis — and the country — needs right now." —Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) made a similar warning last week, amid protests that erupted after the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal agent.
“What we are seeing right now," said Omar, "not only from the surge of 2,000 federal agents—now we have another 1,000 apparently coming in—it is essentially trying to create this kind of environment where people feel intimidated, threatened, and terrorized. And I think the ultimate goal of [Homeland Security Security Secretary] Kristi Noem and President Trump is to agitate people enough where they are able to invoke the Insurrection Act to declare martial law.”
“There is,” she continued, “no other justifiable way to describe what is taking place in Minneapolis at this moment. There is no justifiable reason why this number of agents is here in our state.”
The Insurrection Act has not been used since 1992, when President George HW Bush invoked it at the request of then-California Gov. Pete Wilson to quell riots that had broken out in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted police officers who were caught on camera beating Rodney King.
“Invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces against the American people is the exact opposite of what Minneapolis — and the country — needs right now," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen in a statement Thursday morning.
“The violence in Minneapolis is being perpetrated by ICE. The solution is to end the ICE surge, not to further militarize the city, " added Gilbert. "Deploying military forces against the city and its citizens would be a doubling down on the threat Americans are facing from their own government. Trump should abandon this idea immediately and stop threatening to use the military against the American people.”
Mass protests have erupted throughout Minneapolis since ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot local resident Good, whom the Trump administration posthumously smeared as a "domestic terrorist."
Protests against ICE presence in the city intensified on Wednesday night after a federal agent shot a man in the leg during what the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called a "targeted traffic stop."
The Trump administration last week began surging thousands of ICE agents into Minneapolis, resulting in mass school closures and the disruption of daily life for the city's residents.
The editorial board of the Minnesota Star Tribune on Thursday described the city as being "under siege" by the federal government.
"Battalions of armed federal agents are moving through neighborhoods, transit hubs, malls and parking lots and staging near churches, mosques and schools," the editorial explains. "Strangers with guns have metastasized in spaces where daily life should be routine and safe. It feels like a military occupation."
The editors then declared that "what we are witnessing is the storming of the state by the federal government," insisting that "the occupation of Minnesota by ICE cannot stand."
A local Minneapolis resident who was out protesting against the ICE presence on Wednesday night told Status Coup News that he felt like the entire city was under assault.
🚨"This is nuts! What the f*ck is going on, this is insane! ICE is just trying to scare people; they tell you it's only immigrants—it's f*cking anybody!" -furious Minneapolis resident tells our @ZDRoberts after ICE shot a man in the leg tonight. LIVE NOW ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/7edvCRpDNk
— Status Coup News (@StatusCoup) January 15, 2026
"This is nuts!" he said. "What the fuck is going on, dude, this is insane... You know what really pisses me off is the fact that they detain people, cuff them, and then still beat the shit out of them! They tell you it's immigrants, it's only immigrants? It's fucking anybody! I have friends who got detained and all they were doing was driving home from work!"
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Omar Warns Trump Aims to Provoke Enough Agitation in Minnesota So He Can Declare 'Martial Law'
"There is no other justifiable way to describe what is taking place in Minneapolis at this moment," said the Minnesota Democrat.
Jan 10, 2026
Amidst national outrage this week over the killing by Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good by a federal agent, members of Minnesota's congressional delegation on Saturday were blocked from full access to a federal immigration detention center in the city—but at least one lawmaker among them warns something much more sinister is now taking place in the state.
"I was just denied access to the ICE processing center at the Whipple Building," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who represents the state's 5th District. "Members of Congress have a legal right and constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight where people are being detained. The public deserves to know what is taking place in ICE facilities."
Omar shared a video of herself, along with Reps. Angie Craig and Kelly Morrison, outside the facility as large numbers of masked federal agents in protective gear blocked the driveway entrance.
Happening NOW: US Reps Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig are attempting to enter Whipple Fed Building- met with federal agents on other side. @wcco pic.twitter.com/3eIWxiLaW7
— Adam Duxter (@AdamDuxter) January 10, 2026
In a telephone interview with MSNOW, Omar later explained that she and her colleagues arrived at the facility Saturday morning in order to conduct oversight activities. While Omar said they were initially allowed to enter the building, they were shortly after told they "had to wait until higher-ups were able to come speak with us."
It seemed to Omar, she said, that the order to halt their visit "maybe came from Washington to deny us the proper access that we needed to complete those oversight duties that we are obligated as members of Congress."
Calling it a clear violation of their oversight authority, Omar and Craig explained to reporters what happened after they were denied further access to the facility:
"This is beyond the pale." Democratic Congresswomen Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Annie Craig had their access to a federal detention facility revoked while touring the building. pic.twitter.com/KthvotCREX
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 10, 2026
Congresswoman Craig also spoke to MSNOW's Ali Velshi:
Rep. Angie Craig: "We were told because this facility is being funding by the 'Big Beautiful Bill,' not the congressional appropriations act, that we would not be allowed to enter the facility. That's complete nonsense ... I informed them they were violating the law. They said… pic.twitter.com/vCOqgldB2Q
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 10, 2026
Noting the size and scale of the presence of armed federal agents now deployed in her state, Omar suggested in her interview with MSNOW that the recent Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) operations being conducted serve no purpose other than to harass and terrorize local communities. That militarized presence has only grown since Trump ordered more agents to the city following Wednesday's killing of Good and the protests that have erupted as a result.
" Protest is as American as apple pie," said Omar. "People come out to register their opposition to what they do not like or want to accept. It is important for people to be able to do that in a democracy."
"What we are seeing right now, not only from the surge of 2,000 federal agents—now we have another 1,000 apparently coming in—it is essentially trying to create this kind of environment where people feel intimidated, threatened, and terrorized. And I think the ultimate goal of [Homeland Security Security Secretary] Kristi Noem and President Trump is to agitate people enough where they are able to invoke the Insurrection Act to declare martial law."
"There is," she continued, "no other justifiable way to describe what is taking place in Minneapolis at this moment. There is no justifiable reason why this number of agents is here in our state."
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Trump Delivers Darkest Thanksgiving in US History
A story from the nation's founding to bring us hope in these terrible times. There is a way out of this.
Nov 28, 2025
Yesterday was probably, politically and spiritually, the darkest Thanksgiving for our nation in our lifetimes. So how about a quick story out of America’s earliest history that eerily echoes this moment and may give us some hope?
Donald Trump has told us he’s going to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to declare a state of emergency, which will allow him to round up not only undocumented immigrants but also his political opponents, who he refers to as “the enemy within.” He came to power using Willie Horton-style ads trashing trans people and is happy to demonize anybody else who stands up to his hunger for absolute power.
In an age-old technique usually employed during wartime, Trump regularly uses the rhetoric America has employed against foreign enemies to characterize Americans who disagree with him and his policies. Remember the “raghead” slurs against Arabs from the Afghan and Iraqi wars? Or politicians referring to Vietnamese in the 1970s as “slants” and “gooks”?
My dad, who volunteered to fight in WWII straight out of high school, called Germans and Japanese “krauts” and “Japs” to his dying days; American propaganda during wartime encouraged popular usage of these racist characterizations.
America has been burdened by lying presidents before, and even one who tried to destroy our Constitution like Trump is today threatening to do.
In this regard, Trump’s trying to lie us into two different wars. The first is an external war against Venezuela, using America’s drug problem as an excuse; the other is something very much like a 21st century version of a second civil war. A war by Americans against Americans, with his masked secret-police ICE army at the forefront.
Often history tells us how the future may turn out: Trump isn’t the first American politician to use lies and slanders to whip up a war-like frenzy. Or to use the language of war for political gain.
Bush Junior wasn’t the first president to have lied to us about foreign affairs and war, or to use lies to justify eviscerating the Constitution. For example, Lyndon Johnson lied about a non-existent attack on the US warship Maddox in the Vietnamese Gulf of Tonkin. William McKinley (the presidency after which Karl Rove has said he’d modeled the Bush presidency) lied about an attack on the USS Maine to get us into the Spanish-American war in The Philippines and Cuba.
But most relevant to today's situation were John Adams’ version of Trump’s slanders when Adams sent three emissaries to France and criminals soliciting bribes approached them late one evening. Adams referred to these three unidentified Frenchmen as “Mr. X, Mr. Y, and Mr. Z,” and made them out to represent such an insult and a threat against America that it may presage war.
Adams’ use of “The XYZ Affair” to gain political capital — much like Trump demonizes the pilots of small boats off the coast of Venezuela and anti-ICE protestors in his fantasized “war zones” like Portland for political gain — nearly led us to war with France and helped him carve a large (although temporary) hole in the Constitution. Similarly, much like Trump’s anti-media “enemy of the people” rhetoric, John Adams then used that frenzy to jail newspaper editors and average citizens alike who spoke out against him and his policies.
The backstory is both fascinating and hopeful.
At that time in the late 1790s, Adams was President and Jefferson was Vice President. Adams led the Federalist Party (which today could be said to have reincarnated as the Republican Party), and Jefferson had just brought together two Anti-Federalist parties — the Democrats and the Republicans — into one party called The Democratic Republicans. (Today they’re known as the Democratic Party, the longest-lasting political party in history. They dropped “Republican” from their name in the 1820-1830 era).
Adams and his Federalist cronies, using war hysteria with France as a wedge issue, were pushing the Alien & Sedition Acts through Congress, and even threw into prison Democratic Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont for speaking out against the Federalists on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Adams was leading the United States in the direction of a fascistic state with a spectacularly successful strategy of vilifying Jefferson and his Party as anti-American and pro-French. He was America’s first Trump, albeit nowhere near as toxic or psychopathic.
Adams’ rhetoric was described as “manly” by the Federalist newspapers, which admiringly published dozens of his threatening rants against France, suggesting that Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans were less than patriots and perhaps even traitors because of their opposition to the unnecessary war with France that Adams was simultaneously trying to gin up and saying he was working to avoid.
On June 1, 1798 — two weeks before the Alien & Sedition Acts passed Congress by a single vote — Jefferson wrote a thoughtful letter to his old friend John Taylor.
“This is not new,” Jefferson said. “It is the old practice of despots; to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. And those who have once got an ascendancy and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage.
“But,” he added, “our present situation is not a natural one.”
Jefferson knew that Adams’ Federalists did not represent the true heart and soul of America, and commented to Taylor about how Adams had been using divide-and-conquer politics, and fear-mongering about war with France (the XYZ Affair) with some success.
“But still I repeat it,” he wrote again to Taylor, “this is not the natural state.”
Jefferson did everything he could to stop that generation’s version of Trump, but Adams had the Federalists in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and pushed through the Alien and Sedition Acts. In protest, Jefferson left town the day they were signed, never to return until after Adams left the presidency.
Jefferson later wrote in his personal diary how it would — like today, with California and Illinois leading the charge against Trump’s neofascist agenda — fall to the states to prevent the loss of American democracy:
“Their usurpations and violations of the Constitution at that period, and their majority in both Houses of Congress, were so great, so decided, and so daring, that after combating their aggressions, inch by inch, without being able in the least to check their career, the [Democratic] Republican leaders thought it would be best for them to give up their useless efforts there, go home, get into their respective legislatures, embody whatever of resistance they could be formed into, and if ineffectual, to perish there as in the last ditch.”
Democratic Republican Congressman Albert Gallatin submitted legislation that would repeal the Alien & Sedition Acts, and the Federalist majority in the House refused to even consider the motion, while informing Gallatin that he would be the next to be imprisoned if he kept speaking out against “the national security.”
Adams then shut down almost thirty newspapers, throwing their publishers, editors, and writers in prison. The most famous to go to jail was Ben Franklin’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache. Within a few months, Adams had effectively silenced the opposition.
Then he went after average citizens who spoke out against him.
Adams and his wife traveled the country in a fine carriage surrounded by a military contingent. As the Adams’ family entourage, full of pomp and ceremony, passed through Newark, New Jersey, a man named Luther Baldwin was sitting in a tavern and probably quite unaware that he was about to make a fateful comment that would help change history.
As Adams rode by, soldiers manning the Newark cannons loudly shouted the Adams-mandated chant, “Behold the chief who now commands!” and fired their salutes.
Hearing the cannon fire as Adams drove by outside the bar, in a moment of drunken candor Luther Baldwin said, “There goes the President and they are firing at his arse.” Baldwin further compounded his sin by adding that, “I do not care if they fire thro’ his arse!”
The tavern’s owner, a Federalist named John Burnet, overheard the remark and turned Baldwin in to Adams’ thought police: The hapless drunk was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for uttering “seditious words tending to defame the President and Government of the United States.”
It was the darkest moment in our new nation’s short history. But then a new force arose.
When Adams shut down the Democratic Republican newspapers, pamphleteers — that generation’s version of Substack writers not affiliated with national publications — went to work, papering towns from New Hampshire to Georgia with posters and leaflets decrying Adams’ power grab and encouraging the state governments to stand tall with Thomas Jefferson.
One of the best was a short screed by George Nicholas of Kentucky, “Justifying the Kentucky Resolution against the Alien & Sedition Laws” and “Correcting Certain False Statements, Which Have Been Made in the Different States” by Adams’ Federalists.
On February 13, 1799, then-Vice President Jefferson had a courier hand-deliver a leter and copy of Nicholas’ pamphlet to his old friend Archibald Stuart (a Virginia legislator, fighter in the War of Independence, and leader of Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans).
“I avoid writing to my friends because the fidelity of the post office is very much doubted,” he opened his letter to Stuart, concerned that Adams was having his mail inspected because of his anti-war activities.
Jefferson pointed out that “France is sincerely anxious for reconciliation, willing to give us a liberal treaty,” and that even with the Democratic newspapers shut down by Adams and the Federalist-controlled media being unwilling to speak of Adams’ war lies, word was getting out to the people.
Jefferson noted:
“All these things are working on the public mind. They are getting back to the point where they were when the X. Y. Z. story was passed off on them. A wonderful and rapid change is taking place in Pennsylvania, Jersey, and New York. Congress is daily plied with petitions against the alien and sedition laws and standing armies.”
Jefferson then turned to the need for the pamphleteers’ materials to be widely distributed across the states that might resist Adams.
“The materials now bearing on the public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness in the course of the present summer,” he wrote, “if the knowledge of facts can only be disseminated among the people. Under separate cover you will receive some pamphlets written by George Nicholas on the [Alien & Sedition] acts of the last session. These I would wish you to distribute....”
The pamphleteer — today he would have been called a Substack writer — was James Bradford, and he reprinted tens of thousands of copies of Nicholas’ pamphlet and distributed it far and wide. Hand to hand, as Jefferson did with his by-courier letter to Stuart, was how what would be today’s independent progressive writings are distributed via email.
In the face of the pamphleteering and protests, the Federalists fought back with startling venom. It was led by a media machine — the remaining newspapers — largely owned by wealthy Adams backers as the Jefferson-backing newspapers had been shut down and their publishers and editors imprisoned.
Vicious personal attacks were launched in the Federalist press against Jefferson, Madison, and others, and President Adams and Vice President Jefferson were no longer on speaking terms. Adams’ goal was nothing short of the complete destruction of Jefferson’s Democratic Party, and he had scared many of them into silence or submission.
“All [Democratic Republicans], therefore, retired,” Jefferson wrote in his diary, “leaving Mr. Gallatin alone in the House of Representatives, and myself in the Senate, where I then presided as Vice-President.
“Remaining at our posts, and bidding defiance to the brow-beatings and insults by which they endeavored to drive us off also, we kept the mass of [Democratic] Republicans in phalanx together, until the legislature could be brought up to the charge; and nothing on earth is more certain, than that if myself particularly, placed by my office of Vice-President at the head of the [Democratic] Republicans, had given way and withdrawn from my post, the [Democratic] Republicans throughout the Union would have given up in despair; and the cause would have been lost forever.”
But Jefferson in the Senate and Gallatin in the House held their posts and fought back fiercely against Adams, thus saving — quite literally — American democracy. Jefferson and Madison also secretly helped legislators in Virginia and Kentucky submit resolutions in those states’ legislatures decrying the Alien & Sedition Acts. The bill in Virginia, in particular, gained traction.
As Jefferson noted in his diary, between his and Gallatin’s resistance in Washington, DC and several state governments standing up against Adams’ having shut down their newspapers and using the army to threaten their protestors:
“By holding on, we obtained time for the legislatures to come up with their weight; and those of Virginia and Kentucky particularly, but more especially the former, by their celebrated resolutions, saved the Constitution at its last gasp. No person who was not a witness of the scenes of that gloomy period, can form any idea of the afflicting persecutions and personal indignities we had to brook. They saved our country however.
“The spirits of the people were so much subdued and reduced to despair by the XYZ imposture, and other stratagems and machinations, that they would have sunk into apathy and monarchy, as the only form of government which could maintain itself.”
The efforts of that century’s truth-tellers made great gains. The states were fighting back, even challenging Adams’ massive, naked power grab and war-mongering. As Jefferson noted in a February 14, 1799 letter to Virginia’s Edmund Pendleton:
“The violations of the Constitution, propensities to war, to expense, and to a particular foreign connection, which we have lately seen, are becoming evident to the people, and are dispelling that mist which X. Y. Z. had spread before their eyes. This State is coming forward with a boldness not yet seen. Even the German counties of York and Lancaster, hitherto the most devoted [to Adams], have come about, and by petitions with four thousand signers remonstrate against the alien and sedition laws, standing armies, and discretionary powers in the President.”
Americans and several state leaders were so angry with Adams, Jefferson noted, that the challenge was to prevent people from taking up arms against Adams’ Federalists. He worried out loud that the resistance may, if it erupted into violence, give Adams an excuse to declare an insurrection and totally end democracy:
“New York and Jersey are also getting into great agitation. In this State [of Pennsylvania], we fear that the ill-designing may produce insurrection. Nothing could be so fatal. Anything like force would check the progress of the public opinion and rally them round the government. This is not the kind of opposition the American people will permit.”
Like today’s progressive movement led by people like Bernie Sanders, JB Pritzker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gavin Newsom, and Elizabeth Warren, Jefferson knew that peaceful protests had greater power than police violence or even threats like Trump‘s war-mongering against Venezuela today.
“But keep away all show of force,” he wrote to Pendleton, “and they will bear down the evil propensities of the government, by the constitutional means of election and petition. If we can keep quiet, therefore, the tide now turning will take a steady and proper direction.”
A week later, February 21, 1799, Jefferson wrote to the great Polish general who had fought in the American Revolution, Thaddeus Kosciusko, a close friend who was then living in Russia. War for political purposes was the great enemy of democracy, Jefferson noted, and peace was its champion. And the American people were increasingly siding with peace and rejecting Adams’ call for war.
“The wonderful irritation produced in the minds of our citizens by the X. Y. Z. story, has in a great measure subsided,” he noted. “They begin to suspect and to see it coolly in its true light.”
But Adams was still President, and for him and his Federalist Party even a “little war” with France would have helped tremendously with the upcoming election of 1800. And in France some leaders wanted war with America for similar reasons.
Jefferson continued:
“What course the government will pursue, I know not. But if we are left in peace, I have no doubt the wonderful turn in the public opinion now manifestly taking place and rapidly increasing, will, in the course of this’ summer, become so universal and so weighty, that friendship abroad and freedom at home will be firmly established by the influence and constitutional powers of the people at large.”
And if Adams’ rhetoric led to an attack on America by France?
“If we are forced into war,” Jefferson noted, “we must give up political differences of opinion, and unite as one man to defend our country. But whether at the close of such a war, we should be as free as we are now, God knows.”
The tide was turned, to use Jefferson’s phrase, by the election of 1800, as Dan Sisson and I document in our book The American Revolution of 1800: How Jefferson Rescued Democracy from Tyranny and Faction — and What This Means Today.
The abuses of the Federalists were so burned into the people’s minds when Jefferson's party came to power in 1801 and he freed the imprisoned newspaper editors, that the Federalists disintegrated altogether as a party over the next two decades.
As may well happen to Trump’s GOP two or four years from now.
All because average citizens and pamphleteers — and a handful of progressive politicians and states — stood up and challenged the lies of a fear-mongering president, and politicians of principle were willing to lead.
America has been burdened by lying presidents before, and even one who tried to destroy our Constitution like Trump is today threatening to do. But in our era — like in Jefferson’s — we are fortunate to have radical truth-tellers and political allies to warn us of treasonous acts for political gain.
If we stand in solidarity with today’s truth-tellers, and more politicians step forward to take a leadership role, then it’s entirely possible that with the elections of 2026 and 2028 American democracy can once again prevail.
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'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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