What is the Insurrection Act and why Trump is considering it now

Trump described it as “a way to get around” recent court rulings that blocked his attempts to send National Guard forces into cities like Portland.

US President Donald Trump said Monday he was considering invoking the Insurrection Act, a rarely used 19th-century law that allows the president to deploy US troops domestically in times of unrest.

Speaking on Newsmax and later in the Oval Office, Trump described it as “a way to get around” recent court rulings that blocked his attempts to send National Guard forces into cities like Portland. “We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he said, suggesting he might use it “if people were being killed and courts were holding us up,” the New York Times reported.

Courts push back on National Guard orders

Trump’s comments followed two federal court rulings over the weekend that restricted his authority. Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, issued a restraining order halting the deployment of hundreds of Guard troops to Oregon. When Trump tried to sidestep the ruling, she broadened her order, warning that his actions were “in direct contravention” of the court. Democratic leaders, including Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, accused Trump of intentionally sowing chaos to justify using the Insurrection Act.

What the law allows

The Insurrection Act, passed in 1807, gives the president broad power to use the military to quell domestic unrest and enforce federal law. Normally, US law forbids using the armed forces as a domestic police force. But under the act, the president can send in troops if state governments request help, or if the president believes unrest is obstructing federal authority. Before acting, the law requires the president to first order “insurgents” to disperse; only if stability is not restored can troops be sent in.

Historical precedents

The law has not been used in more than three decades. The last invocation came in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush sent federal troops to Los Angeles during riots that erupted after the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King. Earlier examples include deployments after Hurricane Hugo in 1989 to contain looting in the US Virgin Islands, and during the civil rights era, when presidents used the act to enforce desegregation orders in the South.

Today’s context

Trump has repeatedly described cities such as Portland and Chicago as engulfed in “criminal insurrection,” though crime data paints a different picture. Chicago recorded 319 homicides through September 2025, nearly half the number seen during the peak of the pandemic. Still, Trump has argued that the situation is “probably worse than almost any city in the world” and even claimed Afghanistan under Taliban rule would “marvel at how much crime we have.”

The stakes of invoking the act

Using the Insurrection Act now would represent a dramatic escalation of federal power. Unlike the clear emergencies of the past, today’s unrest does not approach the scale of nationwide breakdown. Legal experts warn that applying the law in routine law enforcement situations risks undermining civil liberties, politicizing the military, and expanding presidential authority in ways that Congress has long sought to avoid.

For Trump, the calculus is both political and legal. With courts and Democratic governors blocking his National Guard deployments, the Insurrection Act offers a tool to bypass opposition. But invoking it would also ignite fierce debate about the limits of presidential power and the future of American democracy.