U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during the White House Faith Office Luncheon at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 14, 2025. REUTERS Nathan Howard
Military, legal, and political experts are warning after President Donald Trump vowed to invoke the Insurrection Act if he deems it necessary — a move some see as the culmination of an authoritarian trajectory he has been telegraphing since taking office. No president has used the law in more than three decades, and then only in limited, localized crises.
In the Oval Office late Monday afternoon, asked if he would invoke the Insurrection Act, the president replied, “Well, I’d do it if it was necessary.”
“So far, it hasn’t been necessary, but we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he continued. “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? Sure, I do that. I mean, I want to make sure that people aren’t killed. We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a well-known MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst, on Substack wrote, “It’s hard to mistake what’s happening here. This is a president in the process of looking for excuses and seeing how far he can go until someone—right now it’s the courts—reins him in.”
“The Insurrection Act is the primary vehicle for circumventing Posse Comitatus, which prohibits the use of the military on American soil to enforce laws against American citizens,” she explained. “That is not the role the military plays in American democracy. The Insurrection Act is reserved for extreme situations like rebellions or invasions. Trump is fully capable of spinning a narrative that would claim one of those preconditions, even while having no resemblance to the truth.”
Indeed, on Monday night, President Trump was asked on Newsmax about his remarks.
“It is a way to get around” opposition to his efforts, Trump said. “If we don’t have to use it I wouldn’t use it.”
“If you take a look at what’s been going on in Portland, it’s been going on for a long time, that’s insurrection, that’s pure insurrection” he added.
The Lincoln Project’s Gregory Minchak commented, “The Insurrection Act is NOT a way to ‘get around’ anything. It’s a break glass law in case of extreme and dire emergency. NOTHING in this country even remotely qualifies.”
Barely hours after Trump made his first set of remarks, Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker had told reporters:
“The Trump administration is following a playbook: Cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act.”
Other experts also responded to the president’s remarks.
“This has always been the plan,” declared political and national security analyst, and well-known veterans advocate Paul Rieckhoff. “Most Americans won’t realize it until he does it.”
Rieckhoff was not alone in that observation.
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, a Berkeley professor of public policy, wrote: “Everything Trump is doing now is a preamble for his regime’s real goal: to invoke the Insurrection Act. I don’t want to unduly alarm you, but you need to be aware of this imminent danger. It’s unfolding very rapidly.”
On Wednesday on Substack Professor Reich wrote: “The direction we’re going is either martial law or civil war.”
He also laid out what he believes the “plan” is to invoke the Insurrection Act, noting that “Trump and his enablers have worked this out in advance.”
U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) wrote: “We have the Insurrection Act for a reason—But it’s not so a President with 34 felonies can ignore court orders and punish cities he doesn’t like with military intimidation. Especially not when the courts are telling him his claims of insurrection are ‘untethered to the facts.'”
U.S. Rep. Primala Jayapal (D-WA) commented, “Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the National Guard to our cities — completely ignoring federal judges’ orders. This is authoritarianism — and from someone who actually incited an insurrection on Jan 6th.”