On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a federal law that allows presidents to deploy the U.S. military domestically under certain circumstances, purportedly to help local law enforcement amid civil unrest.
Trump baselessly claimed that military presence is necessary in Minnesota’s Twin Cities to quell protests against his administration’s deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents and their violent raids of immigrant communities. His threat comes a week after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good, who was attempting to drive away as agents surrounded her car.
“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,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
The Insurrection Act gives presidents broad military authority over whatever geographical area they deem necessary. The act reads, in part, that:
Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.
It’s likely that, if Trump does invoke the act, state and local officials in Minnesota will file a lawsuit seeking to block the action, citing the fact that laws can still be enforced in the cities and that the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings” is not being interfered with. A challenge purporting that Trump’s invocation of the act is politically motivated could also be brought forward.
But a legal challenge on any basis would face an uphill battle, as the Insurrection Act does not itself have an explicit oversight provision.
Meanwhile, there is myriad video evidence demonstrating instances of federal immigration officials attacking demonstrators in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and other parts of the country without provocation.
On Wednesday night, just a week after the killing of Renee Nicole Good, federal agents in Minneapolis shot a man in the leg, prompting residents to turn out in droves to protest the agency.
“There is still a lot that we don’t know at this time, but what I can tell you for certain is that this is not sustainable,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a press conference following the shooting. “We have ICE agents throughout our city and throughout our state who along with Border Patrol are creating chaos.”
Public Citizen, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting consumer rights and democracy, blasted Trump for threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act.
“This rarely used federal law would allow him to deploy the U.S. military or federalize the National Guard against the American people,” the group said in a Bluesky post. “His authoritarianism is out of control.”
Alejandra Caraballo, a Harvard Law clinical instructor and a frequent critic of the administration’s abuses of power, recognized that Trump’s threat could itself be a means to compel obedience from local officials.
“The city is already under occupation by federal forces,” and the threat of the Insurrection Act could be Trump’s attempting to “scar[e] local electeds into cracking down for him and having preemptive compliance,” Caraballo said.
Polling shows deep opposition to Trump using the military to carry out his policies, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll in October showing that nearly 6 in 10 Americans (58 percent) believe a president should deploy troops to areas of the U.S. only when there is an external threat.
More recent polling shows stark opposition to Trump’s immigration policies in general. A CNN/SSRS survey published this week finds that 58 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, and 52 percent believe his administration’s mass deportation efforts have gone too far.
Furthermore, only 31 percent say ICE is making American cities safer, while 51 percent say the agency is making cities less safe, the poll found.
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