Trump threatens to trigger Insurrection Act amid ongoing protests - but what is it?

US president Donald Trump has been accused of ‘waging war’ on American cities with his deployment of the National Guard, in places such as Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Memphis), but now there are fears the Republican could ramp things up even further by invoking centuries-old legislation called the Insurrection Act to crackdown on protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Putting aside the irony of Trump – a politician whose supporters launched an insurrection on the Capitol in January 2021 – eyeing up a piece of legislation on the subject of insurrection, the US president said on Monday he would trigger the act “if it was necessary”, but “so far it hasn’t been necessary”.

He added: “If I had to enact it, I didn’t. I 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.”

JB Pritzker accuses Trump of ‘creating the pretext’ to invoke the Insurrection Act by ‘causing chaos’

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Illinois governor JB Pritzker warned of Trump building towards the triggering of the legislation on Monday, when he said at a press conference: “The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusing, 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, so that he can send military troops to our city.”

But what is the Insurrection Act of 1807?

The Brennan Center for Justice, an independent law and policy organisation, describes the legislation as one which “authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations”.

It’s an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which “disallows the use of federal troops as a police force unless Congress overrides it or the use of force is ‘expressly authorized by the Constitution’”.

It was last invoked in 1992, when President George H. W. Bush sent troops into Los Angeles to respond to the Rodney King protests.

If Trump wishes to invoke it, then he first needs to order a proclamation requiring those obstructing law enforcement to disperse peacefully within a set time period – that hasn’t happened yet.

A ‘legal insurrection’

Talk of the Insurrection Act also comes after White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, slammed a temporary order by a federal judge in Oregon blocking the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard in the state, branding it a “legal insurrection”.

“The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life. (There are more local law enforcement officers in Oregon than there are guns and badges in the FBI nationwide).

“This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself,” he said.

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