President Trump declared Monday that he may invoke the Insurrection Act in order to restore law and order to American cities in the face of violent riots and attacks against law enforcement officers, including ICE.
During a press availability in the Oval Office, Trump addressed ongoing legal and political challenges to his administration’s deployments of National Guard troops to major U.S. cities, including Chicago and Portland, Oregon.
Trump was asked directly about invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807—a rarely used federal law that empowers the president to deploy U.S. military forces domestically to suppress insurrections, rebellions, or domestic violence when local authorities are unable or unwilling to maintain order.
The Act bypasses typical restrictions on military use for civilian policing and has been invoked only about 30 times in U.S. history, most recently during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Trump stated “Well, I’ll do it if it was necessary… We have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it, I’d do that if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up. I want to make sure people aren’t killed.”
Hellbound and Down 