President Trump began his day on Thursday by threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which could allow him to deploy troops to Minneapolis to stamp out the increasingly volatile clashes between protesters and federal agents that have gripped the city since an immigration agent shot and killed a woman there last week.
It was a dramatic — yet familiar — provocation from this president.
He has mused about using the Insurrection Act in the past. Last summer, he took to calling protesters in Los Angeles “insurrectionists”; by the fall, he was talking openly in an interview on Newsmax about turning to the Insurrection Act to get around court rulings that blocked his efforts to dispatch troops into American cities. One of his central promises on the campaign trail in 2024 was that he would find ways to send troops into cities (or “crime dens,” as he called them) whether local officials wanted them there or not — which is what the act could allow him to do.
But he has never actually gone so far as to try it.
Invoking the act would be a major escalation in a state already riven by chaos. The Trump administration has flooded the Minneapolis-St. Paul region with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. One thousand more were just ordered to join the 2,000 who are already there. Videos have proliferated of agents using forceful tactics. Roughing people up. Yanking people out of their vehicles. Smashing car windows.
Another person was shot Wednesday night. Public schools have been canceling classes. Minneapolis’s mayor and the state’s governor have both repeatedly said that they do not want any more interference from the federal government.
“Minnesota needs ICE to leave, not an escalation that brings additional federal troops beyond the 3,000 already here,” Mayor Jacob Frey wrote on X Thursday.
In his second term, Mr. Trump has given the impression that he has been creeping up to at last using the act to deploy troops in American cities. In an interview with The New York Times last week, he brought it up during a discussion about restraints on his power.
“Look, I’ve been stopped on some things,” he said in that interview. “I mean, the judges have held things up, and they’ve made it bad. Now, I will say, if I feel it’s important to invoke the Insurrection Act, which I have the right to do, that’s a different thing, because then I have the right to do pretty much what I want to do. But I haven’t done that.”
He pointed out that several of his predecessors had used it but added, “I haven’t really felt the need to do it.”
The last time the act was used was 1992, when President George H.W. Bush sent troops into Los Angeles to quell riots that broke out after the acquittal of four white police officers involved in the beating of Rodney King, an unarmed Black man.
But the act has not been commonly called upon throughout American history and is regarded by many legal experts as a major exception to U.S. law, which generally forbids using the military for the purposes of domestic law enforcement.
Mr. Trump’s threat to use it came in a social media post at 8:04 a.m.
He wrote: “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.”
At a press briefing Thursday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, framed Mr. Trump’s threat as more of a shot across the bow to Democrats, whom she accused of egging on violent protests. Still, she admitted, she didn’t know what would have to happen in Minnesota for the president to go ahead and invoke the act — only he could say.
Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, told reporters at the White House on Thursday that she discussed the topic with the president that morning. “He certainly has the constitutional authority to utilize that,” she said.
She then put the burden on Minnesota officials.
“My hope is that this leadership team in Minnesota will start to work with us to get criminals off the streets,” she said.
Asked if she recommended to the president that he use the act, Ms. Noem replied, “No, we just discussed it, that it was one of the options that he had constitutionally.”
But did she think it was likely that he would finally make good on his threat to use it this time?
“I don’t know,” she answered.
Later, in the afternoon, the president appeared in the East Room of the White House to honor the Florida Panthers for winning the Stanley Cup, which gleamed on a table nearby. He looked around at all the burly hockey players arrayed behind him.
“Good-looking people; young, beautiful people,” he said. “There’s power behind you.”
He paused and then cracked, “I’ve got power, too. It’s called the United States military.”
Shawn McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.
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