![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/86556748007-20251006-vpc-pritzker-presser-on-national-guard-thumb-getty-00-00-00-00-still-005.jpg\"\/)
![\"play\"](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/appservices\/universal-web\/universal\/icons\/icon-play-alt-white.svg\"){kind=icon}
<\/p>\nPresidents have invoked this throughout history — but normally not against the wishes of local leaders except to enforce federal law. Will Trump break the mold?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Trump says Insurrection Act is on the table if unrest escalates<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump told reporters he\u2019d invoke the Insurrection Act “if it was necessary.”<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2212 \u00a0President Donald Trump<\/a> says he\u2019d consider invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807<\/a> to fight crime and battle protesters in Democratic-controlled cities.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d do it if it was necessary,” if courts block his deployment of National Guard troops, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office<\/a> on Oct. 6. “So far, it hasn’t been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it, I’d do that.”<\/p>\n “It’s been invoked before,” Trump told reporters a day later. “We want safe cities.”<\/p>\n And Vice President JD Vance<\/a> on Oct. 12 said Trump was not opposed to invoking the act.<\/p>\n Asked by NBC News “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker whether the White House was seriously considering using it, Vance said, \u201cThe president is looking at all his options.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRight now he hasn\u2019t felt he needed to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Insurrection Act, or its predecessors, have been\u00a0invoked 30 times<\/a>\u00a0in American history since George Washington suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. The last time it was used was George H.W. Bush\u2019s defense of Los Angeles during the 1992 riots.<\/p>\n The law gives the president the power<\/a>\u00a0to deploy U.S. armed forces to suppress rebellions and civil unrest or when federal laws are being obstructed. Presidents have rarely deployed troops domestically against the wishes of state and local leaders \u2212 even though they have the authority to do so.<\/p>\n When presidents have used that power against the wishes of state or local officials, it was in response to those officials not enforcing Supreme Court decisions and federal laws \u2212 or failing to quell an insurrection against the government.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last time presidents invoked it against the wishes of state leaders was to suppress violent massive resistance to civil rights in the 1950s and \u201860s,\u201d presidential historian Matt Dallek told USA TODAY.<\/p>\n “Presidents have a duty under Article Two to take care that the laws are faithfully executed,” Claire Finkelstein,<\/a> a University of Pennsylvania law school professor noted.<\/p>\n Since America \u201cbecame a multiracial democracy in the mid-sixties,\u201d Dallek said, the Insurrection Act has been used only once, under extraordinary circumstances and at the California governor\u2019s request, to quell widespread riots in Los Angeles in 1992.<\/p>\n Trump threatened to invoke the act during his first term in 2020 but pulled back when Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly opposed the move. In this term, Trump has invoked other statutes to deploy the National Guard and even the U.S. military to states such as California and Illinois against the wishes of those governors.<\/p>\n The White House did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Here are some of the more notable uses of the Insurrection Act, usually to quell rebellions or in cases where local or state authorities were unable or unwilling to maintain order or uphold the Constitution.<\/p>\n 1794 \u2013 The Whiskey Rebellion<\/strong><\/p>\n While this was before the Insurrection Act existed, and helped lead to its creation, President George Washington invoked the\u00a0Militia Acts of 1792<\/a>\u00a0to put down an armed uprising in western Pennsylvania where farmers were rebelling against a federal whiskey tax.<\/p>\n Washington is said to have personally led more than 10,000 militia troops in what is believed to be the first \u2013 and only \u2013 time a sitting president has commanded troops in the field. The federal response quashed the rebellion without significant bloodshed and was seen as an important precedent in how the federal government could \u2013 and would \u2013 use the military if needed on U.S. soil to enforce its laws.<\/p>\n 1807 \u2013 Insurrection Act is passed<\/strong><\/p>\n President Thomas Jefferson\u00a0signed the Insurrection Act into law<\/a>\u00a0after Congress formalized the principle established by Washington 15 years earlier. It authorized presidents to use the U.S. military \u2013 an Army and Navy at the time \u2013 to suppress insurrections and rebellions and enforce federal law when and where it was being obstructed.<\/p>\n Specifically, the Insurrection Act allowed the President to act unilaterally to federalize the militia of any state, and to use the armed forces, and to deploy them in response to requests by governors or state legislatures.<\/p>\n Jefferson did so in part to respond to efforts by the vice president in his first term, Aaron Burr, to\u00a0muster a private army and seize land<\/a>\u00a0in the Southwest after his duel with Alexander Hamilton ruined his political career.<\/p>\n 1861 \u2013 The Civil War<\/p>\n President Abraham Lincoln invoked the Insurrection Act on April 15, 1861 to call up 75,000 militia troops following the\u00a0secession of 11 Southern states<\/a>\u00a0and the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor. His effort to suppress the rebellion and restore federal authority marked the beginning of the Civil War.<\/p>\n Lincoln’s response ultimately became the biggest and longest use of presidential military power on U.S. soil in history, as Union and Confederate forces clashed in battles that also tested the limits of executive power.<\/p>\n 1871\u20131876: Ku Klux Klan Terrorism in the South<\/p>\n In the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, President Ulysses S. Grant invoked the Insurrection Act and recently established related laws multiple times to combat widespread white supremacist terrorism targeting Black people and their newfound civil and political rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Oct. 17, 1871, Grant sent federal troops into South Carolina\u00a0to suppress Ku Klux Klan violence<\/a>\u00a0using the new Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which allowed him to suspend habeas corpus to fight the domestic terror organization. Grant\u2019s troops arrested hundreds of Klansmen, effectively dismantling the organization. He later intervened in Louisiana, Arkansas and then in South Carolina in the run-up to the 1876 election to quell violence by white supremacist paramilitary groups known as “rifle clubs.”<\/a><\/p>\n 1894\u20131921: Pullman Strike and other labor union battles<\/p>\n President Grover Cleveland deployed federal troops to Illinois \u2013 over the governor\u2019s objections \u2013 to\u00a0break the Pullman railway strike<\/a>\u00a0that he said was interfering with interstate commerce and mail delivery. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson invoked the Insurrection Act to combat a Colorado labor uprising, and President Warren Harding invoked it in 1921 to quell a labor uprising by coal miners<\/a> in West Virginia.<\/p>\n 1957\u20131968: The Civil Rights era<\/p>\n President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard, and deployed the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, to\u00a0enforce desegregation in Arkansas<\/a>\u00a0after Gov. Orval Faubus used the National Guard to block nine Black students from entering a Little Rock high school. \u00a0<\/p>\n President John F. Kennedy invoked the Act to\u00a0enforce federal desegregation orders<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Mississippi in 1962 and again in 1963 after Gov. George Wallace said he would\u00a0“stand in the schoolhouse door<\/a>”\u00a0to block the admission of two Black students to the all-white University of Alabama. President Lyndon B. Johnson invoked the Act to send troops into Detroit during the\u00a01967 riots and again in 1968<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 in cities including Washington, Baltimore, and Chicago \u2013 to quell unrest after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n 1992 \u2013 Los Angeles Riots<\/p>\n President George H.W. Bush invoked the Act on May 1, 1992 after the acquittal of LAPD officers who severely beat Black motorist\u00a0Rodney King sparked rioting<\/a>\u00a0in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere. Bush deployed the National Guard and U.S. troops to restore order after California Gov. Pete Wilson and Mayor Tom Bradley requested federal assistance.<\/p>\n