President Donald Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act while people in Minnesota are pushing back against the 3,000 immigration agents who have been sent to the city.
"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 on TruthSocial. "Thank you for you attention to this matter! President DJT"
The law has been invoked many times in the past 100 years dealing with issues like the Civil Rights Movement, the Los Angeles riots and a prison riot in Alabama. It was also weaponized against workers' rights uprisings in the early 1900s. Most of the time, the act has been invoked with the support of state and local officials.
Examples of the president invoking the act at the objection of the governor only date back to the Civil Rights Movement.
“In all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States, or of any individual state or territory, where it is lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed, it shall be lawful for him to employ, for the same purposes, such part of the land or naval force of the United States, as shall be judged necessary, having first observed all the prerequisites of the law in that respect,” the Act outlines.
The law enables Trump to deploy thousands of military members into a state or city to quell any protests, however legal or nonviolent they may be. He has been making the threat since protests erupted in cities against ICE agents.
It's unclear whether Trump would invoke the act nationally or only in Minnesota or Minneapolis.
However, not all of Trump's allies are supportive of the move.
Speaking to CNN, senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak said despite threats in the past, the president has "never gone through it."
"The president's advisers (are) not necessarily all bought into the idea that this would benefit the president in the end. And so certainly a calculation that they're all making as the president ramps up his threats," he said.
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