Insurrection Act - Trump's First Resort

The Insurrection Act has been employed 30 times in our 230-year history for various reasons—some honorable and others questionable. Most recently, at the request of the California governor to restore order during the Watts riots in 1992.

The catalyst leading presidents to invoke the Insurrection Act has generally been threats to lives and property and usually comes as a last resort.

President Trump is threatening to use the Act, again.

He’s doing so after spending a lifetime extolling its virtues, calling for its use repeatedly and threatening continually and in varied situations to use it himself.

The Insurrection Act might be needed, he says, to prevent this year’s mid-term election year from being interfered with in Democratic states. He is quite aware that the last attempt to obstruct a national election was when he coaxed thousands of domestic terrorists—they were not patriots by any stretch of the imagination—to the Capitol on January 6, 2021. In that instance, as president, he refused to send in troops even as rioters called for the hanging of his own vice president.

Trump, as president, has the power to carry out his fantasies, but doesn’t have the willpower or insight to restrain himself or to understand the consequences of his actions. We see this in everything he does.

As a candidate, he ran on a peace platform denouncing foreign entanglements as contrary to his “America First” objective.

As president, he has authorized military strikes in seven countries: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen and Venezuela. Some were with cause, but none were with the consent or even acknowledgement of Congress. He may have been a peace candidate, but he has a lifelong reputation as an angry individual always willing to strike out at his perceived enemies.

He has recently threatened to take over Greenland—either the easy way, which I assume means Greenland just surrenders their sovereignty, or the hard way, which based on previous examples could mean missile attacks or invasion or whatever he feels is necessary to get the deal done.

Threats have always been Trump’s main weapon. Threats of attack, threats of tariffs, threats of lawsuits, threats of withholding support, threats of “I don’t know. We’ll have to see.” These threats usually appear in off-the-cuff talk with reporters or in his late-night social media posts.

America finds itself being led by an angry man who feels he has never received the respect he was due. He has made enemies throughout his adult life and been obsessed with destroying his enemies. He has always relished power and used it to his advantage whenever possible, mostly in the business world.

He continues to threaten using the Insurrection Act to send thousands of federal troops into Minneapolis where thousands of federal troops are already swarming the streets. Their presence is what is actually provoking the protests that Trump claims can only be stopped by more troops. The only death in the city has been at the hands of federal ICE agents.

Most recently he has sent investigators to Georgia to re-investigate the 2020 election while threatening federal intervention might be needed to ensure a free mid-term election.

Trump is like the boy who continually cries “Fire!” and then finds a book of matches and immediately sets fire to a building. For years, he is eagerly awaiting an opportunity, valid or otherwise, to enforce the Insurrection Act on his perceived enemies—generally minorities and cities and states with Democratic leadership.

And now he finds himself the most powerful man in the world with access to the world’s largest military on the world stage and an Insurrection Act in this country that gives him virtually all the authority he needs to do anything he wants. He also has a friendly Supreme court and arguably the weakest Congress in recent memory on his side.

In this the 250^th anniversary of our formal break from England, citizens need to forget for a moment all the issues that seem to consume our politics and instead reacquaint ourselves with the Declaration of Independence. It explains the grievances our forefathers had with a tyrannical King George, the last man who wanted to be king over us—grievances serious enough that we went to war to gain our independence.

That king’s rule divided the colonies much the way Trump is dividing the nation now, pitting one party against the other, states against state, and citizens against each other.

If we are not careful, Trump’s threats and possible invoking of the Insurrection Act, along with other attempts to rule by decree will push our nation to a place we haven’t been in since the Civil War.

On March 25, 2025, I had a piece published in the Baltimore Sun, that spoke to the issue of bad governments: https://www.baltimoresun.com/2025/03/20/tocqueville-would-be-wary-of-trumps-overhaul-of-government-guest-commentary/.

I wasn’t talking so much about a government that I didn’t agree with, which most of us would consider to be a bad government. I was talking about the damage a government with bad people in it, unqualified people, people with ulterior motives could do. The answer was provided by 19^th century philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville.

He answered the question “How bad can it get?” this way: “The most dangerous time for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform.”

Just recounting the names that have been in the news in recent weeks—Venezuela, Greenland, Davos, Minneapolis, Fulton County, Epstein—always Epstein, would seem to indicate that this administration is in over its head, and our nation will pay the price for their ignorance.

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