Trump Threatens Civil War

Donald Trump uses another campaign rally to brag that if he is reelected in 2024, he will use the Insurrection Act to attack citizens in Democratic cities and states.

(Photo by Jeff Swensen/via Getty Images)

Donald Trump claimed that he was prevented from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states during his presidency, while speaking at a campaign rally in Iowa earlier this year. The front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination called New York City and Chicago “crime dens,” and he told his audience, “The next time, I’m not waiting.”

Trump elaborated on his intention to use the Insurrection Act against anyone who might oppose him saying, “We don’t have to wait any longer — the next time, I’m not waiting.” The Insurrection Act is a law that gives the president nearly unchecked powers to use the military as a domestic police force, and Donald Trump has now repeatedly promised to use it on his first day in office, so that he could quash any public protests against him. 

The Insurrection Act allows sitting presidents to call on their reserve or active-duty military units to respond to unrest in the states, and this executive authority is not one that is reviewable by the courts. One of its few guardrails merely requires the president to request that the participants disperse.

The original text of the act, which has been amended several times since it was first passed, reads as follows:

An Act authorizing the employment of the land and naval forces of the United States, in cases of insurrections

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States, or of any individual state or territory, where it is lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed, it shall be lawful for him to employ, for the same purposes, such part of the land or naval force of the United States, as shall be judged necessary, having first observed all the pre-requisites of the law in that respect.

APPROVED, March 3, 1807.