Will Trump invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy more troops in US cities? How will the law empower him?

Donald Trump is facing a battle against states as he pushes for the deployment of the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, and to Chicago to suppress protests and bolster immigration enforcement. Recently, the National Guard was also deployed in recent months to Los Angeles and Washington.

However, a federal judge in Oregon temporarily halted the deployment of National Guard troops in Portland, while another judge in Illinois allowed a similar move in Chicago. And it seems that this move hasn’t sat well with the US president, who on Monday, announced that he was open to using the Insurrection Act to deploy the military if the courts prevented him from doing so.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said, “We have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it I would do that.

“If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure I would do that,” added the US president. However, he noted that he did not yet see the need to use the Insurrection Act.

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Trump "We have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it, I'd to that ... if courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I'd do that." pic.twitter.com/KNrmrMKzri

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 6, 2025

If Trump was to go ahead and invoke this law, it would be the first time that it has been implemented since the 1992 Los Angeles riots. But this isn’t the first time Trump has played with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act — during the 2024 campaign, he said he would use the law to suppress unrest. And at the end of his first term in office, some of his supporters urged him to invoke the law to try to hold onto power after his loss to former President Joe Biden.

But what exactly is the Insurrection Act? Can Trump really implement it and what powers does the law bestow upon the US president?

What exactly is the Insurrection Act?

Typically, the use of federal troops on US soil is mostly prohibited. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act limits the military from being involved in civilian law enforcement unless Congress approves it or under circumstances “expressly authorised by the Constitution”.

However, there’s one exception to it — the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that grants the US president emergency powers to deploy troops on home soil. According to the Brennan Centre for Justice, although it is often referred to as the “Insurrection Act of 1807,” the law is actually an amalgamation of different statutes enacted by Congress between 1792 and 1871.

The Insurrection Act states, in part: “Whenever there is an insurrection in any state against its government, the president may, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened, call into federal service such of the militia of the other states, in the number requested by that state, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection.”

Another provision of the law states it can be used “whenever the president considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

When can the Insurrection law be implemented and how?

The Insurrection Act can be invoked by the US president on the request of a state’s governor or legislature. However, the final authority rests with the US president, in this case — Donald Trump.

One part of the Insurrection Act states that the president could deploy federal troops if a state’s legislature (or governor if the legislature is unavailable) requests federal aid to suppress an insurrection in that state.

The president can also invoke the Insurrection Act against the state’s wishes. In fact, Section 252 permits deployment in order to “enforce the laws” of the United States or to “suppress rebellion” whenever “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion” make it “impracticable” to enforce federal law in that state by the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

Meanwhile, Section 253 allows the president to use the military in a state to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that “so hinders the execution of the laws” that any portion of the state’s inhabitants are deprived of a constitutional right and state authorities are unable or unwilling to protect that right.

Section 253 also permits the president to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

Legal experts note that the law is quite broad and vague and have called for it to be reformed in an attempt to issue checks on presidential power.

How has the Insurrection Act been used in the past?

There’s been a handful of times that the Insurrection Act has been invoked in American history. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, it has been invoked in response to 30 crises, dating as far back as Abraham Lincoln in the US Civil War. Even former US President Ulysses S Grant invoked it against a wave of racist violence by the Ku Klux Klan after the war.

In the modern era, Presidents Dwight D Eisenhower and John F Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act to facilitate school integration after the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v Board of Education ruling, which noted that racial segregation in public schools race was unconstitutional.

The Insurrection Act was last invoked in 1992 during President George Bush’s tenure when massive riots broke out in Los Angeles after four white police officers were acquitted in the beating of a Black man, Rodney King.

Why is Trump talking about the Insurrection Act?

Trump’s comments on the Insurrection Act on Monday (October 6) come after two court rulings over the weekend blocked the US administration from deploying hundreds of out-of-state National Guard troops to Oregon. Judge Karin Immergut, an appointee of Trump, initially blocked his deployment of military forces on Saturday and then broadened her restraining order on Sunday.

Trump has been pushing to National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities such as Chicago and Portland, citing the current law and order over there. Earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Chicago, the third-largest US city “a war zone”. Similarly, Trump has called Portland “war-ravaged”.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, even sued the Trump administration in an attempt to block the deployment of National Guard troops to the streets of Chicago. He told reporters, “There is no insurrection here. Donald Trump is using our service members as political props and pawns in his illegal attempt to militarise our nation’s cities,” he added.

Pritzker: “The Trump administration is following a playbook: Cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem that 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.” pic.twitter.com/bSlHVEaQPo

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) October 6, 2025

And it seems that most Americans are with Pritzker and others who oppose Trump’s National Guard deployment. A CBS poll on Sunday found that 58 per cent oppose deploying the National Guard to US cities.

Now, the question is: Will Trump listen to the American people and pull back the National Guard or will he go ahead and do what no US president has done for more than two decades?

With inputs from agencies