President Donald Trump says he’s willing to use the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against Americans in U.S. cities if federal courts continue to thwart his agenda.
In an ominous sign of things to come, the president also vowed “to go city by city” using federal troops to crack down on crime, insisting it was for the good of the country.
The comments came after the White House ordered 300 Illinois National Guard troops to be deployed to Chicago—plus hundreds more from Texas—to protect federal buildings and ICE immigration agents from “radical left” protesters.
Trump also tried to surge the military in Oregon, but a federal judge has temporarily blocked his plan after finding there was no violent insurgency to justify it.
“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” wrote U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who Trump appointed in 2019.
As tensions within the White House escalated on Monday, Trump said he would consider using the Insurrection Act to bypass the legal system to surge the military if federal courts and Democratic leaders continued to block him.
“We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump told reporters. “If I had to enact it, I’d do that.”
“If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure I’d do that… We have to make sure our cities are safe.”
The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a federal law that allows the president to deploy the U.S. military or federalize state National Guard troops in order to quell what he deems an insurrection against the United States.
The president floated the idea of using the act to deal with civil unrest while he was campaigning to return to the White House last year, but has yet to invoke it.
However, the administration has ratcheted up its rhetoric in recent days, with top White House aide Stephen Miller—the architect of Trump’s deportation strategy—even claiming a “legal insurrection” was taking place against the president by members of the judiciary.
“We need to have district courts in this country that see themselves as being under the laws and Constitution and not being able to take for themselves powers that are reserved solely for the president,” Miller said.
Invoking the Insurrection Act would almost certainly be challenged by those who believe the president is manufacturing a crisis to expand his authority over Democratic cities.
Trump insisted he simply wants to make America safe, describing Portland as a “hellhole” and Chicago as a “war zone” filled with violent crime.
“We’re going to make Chicago really great again, and we’re going to stop this crime, then we’re going to go to another one and we’re going to go city by city,” he told reporters.
In Portland, protesters have gathered for months in a block surrounding an ICE building.
While there have been relatively few flare-ups in that time, clashes have escalated enough in recent days for the administration to claim the city is “under siege” by far left militants.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, a weekend of clashes between federal law enforcement and protesters also resulted in Trump moving to deploy more troops to the Windy City.
Trump’s push for troops in Chicago and Portland comes days after the president told a meeting of top generals last week that “dangerous” U.S. cities should be used as military training grounds.
“We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms,” he said.
“At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out.”
