Insurrection Act could give Trump rare powers

In his push to deploy troops to U.S. cities, president suggested invoking an 1800s law.

- BY SONJA SHARP

SOME fear President Trump may call on the Insurrection Act to quell opposition.

(KEVIN DIETSCH Getty Images)

There are few laws President Trump name-checks more frequently than the Insurrection Act.

A 200-year-old constellation of statutes, the act grants emergency powers to thrust active-duty soldiers into civilian police duty, something otherwise barred by federal law.

Trump and his team have threatened to invoke it almost daily for weeks — most recently on Monday, after a reporter pressed the president about his escalating efforts to dispatch federalized troops to Democrat-led cities.

"Insurrection Act — yeah, I mean, I could do that," Trump said. "Many presidents have."

Roughly a third of U.S. presidents have called on the statutes at some point — but history also shows the law has been used only in moments of extraordinary crisis and political upheaval.

The Insurrection Act was Abraham Lincoln’s sword against secessionists and Dwight D. Eisenhower's shield around the Little Rock Nine, the young Black students who were the first to desegregate schools in Arkansas.

Ulysses S. Grant invoked it more than half a dozen times to thwart statehouse coups, stem race massacres and smother the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina.

But it has just as often been wielded to crush labor strikes and strangle protest movements.

The last time it was invoked, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was in elementary school and most U.S. soldiers had not yet been born.

Now, many fear Trump could call on the law to quell opposition to his agenda.

"The Democrats were fools not to amend the Insurrection Act in 2021," said Kevin Carroll, former senior counsel in the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term. "It gives the president almost untrammeled power.

It also precludes most judicial review.