President Trump said on Monday he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act — an 1807 law that grants the president emergency powers to deploy troops on U.S. soil — in response to recent court rulings that have blocked his efforts to deploy the National Guard in major American cities.
In an appearance in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump was asked under what circumstances he would exercise those emergency powers. Mr. Trump replied that “we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” and “I’d do it if it were necessary, but so far it hasn’t been necessary.” He laid out a set of conditions that he said could justify invoking the act, including “if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or mayors or governors were holding us up.”
In Mr. Trump’s worldview, at least some of those conditions have already been met. Mr. Trump has described Portland, Ore., one of the cities he has targeted for National Guard deployments, as “on fire for years,” adding “I think that’s all insurrection, really criminal insurrection.”
Democratic officials have resisted the National Guard deployments, most prominently Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois. On Monday, Mr. Pritzker accused the president of causing chaos and confusion to create a “pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send the military to our city.”
Mr. Trump’s remarks came after two court rulings over the weekend blocked the Trump administration from deploying hundreds of out-of-state National Guard troops to Oregon. Judge Karin Immergut, an appointee of Mr. Trump’s, initially blocked his deployment of military forces on Saturday and then broadened her restraining order on Sunday after Mr. Trump tried to sidestep it, telling Justice Department lawyers that the president had been “in direct contravention” of her order. On Monday, Mr. Trump said that Judge Immergut had “lost her way.”
Generally, the Insurrection Act gives the president the power to send military forces to states to quell widespread public unrest and to support civilian law enforcement agencies. Before invoking it, the president must first call for the “insurgents” to disperse, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in 2006. If stability is not restored, the president may then issue an executive order to deploy troops