It was 218 years ago that President Thomas Jefferson signed into law the Insurrection Act of 1807, which has only been invoked on rare occasions since then. Under the Insurrection Act, a president can deploy the U.S. military nationally and federalize the National Guard units of individual states.
The last president who invoked the Insurrection Act was George H.W. Bush during the Los Angeles riots in 1992. President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in 2020 during the George Floyd protests but didn't follow through.
But now, in his second term, Trump is threatening to deploy the military on U.S. soil on Sunday, April 20.
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After returning to the White House on January 20, Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency on the U.S./Mexico border. And he left open the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act 90 days later.
In an article published by Salon on April 15, legal expert Austin Sarat (who teaches jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts) lays out some reasons why Trump invoking the Insurrection Act could be so dangerous.
"Given the breadth of the authority the Insurrection Act grants presidents," Sarat explains, "it is unsurprising that President Trump has long thought about using it…. And, make no mistake, the Insurrection Act grants the president broad authority. In 1827, the Supreme Court made that clear."
Sarat notes that in 2024, Trump proposed using the Insurrection Act against "the enemies from within" and "radical-left lunatics."
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"The president alone gets to decide what constitutes an 'insurrection,' 'rebellion,' or 'domestic violence,'" Sarat warns. "And once troops are deployed, it will not be easy to get them off the streets in any place that the president thinks is threatened by 'radical-left lunatics.' That's why April 20 will be so consequential. If Americans take to the streets to protest the president's invocation of the Insurrection Act, the president might use those protests as an excuse to extend the deployment of troops."
Sarat continues, "The prospect of using the military against Americans is a nightmare and would mark a further descent into authoritarianism…. As we contemplate what might happen on April 20, Americans who object to the invocation of the Insurrection Act will be in something of a bind. If they take to the streets to protest, that may give the administration a pretext to expand its use further."
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Austin Sarat's full article for Salon is available at this link.