Executive Power

Jacob Sullum | 1.21.2026 12:01 AM

President Donald Trump, who has periodically threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act before reconsidering, performed that familiar two-step again last week. "I don't think I need it right now," Trump told reporters the day after he said he might deploy active-duty military personnel against "professional agitators and insurrectionists" in Minnesota.

The Pentagon nevertheless told 1,500 soldiers stationed in Alaska to be ready for that assignment, just in case the president changed his mind again. It therefore seems like a good time to recall why critics of the Insurrection Act, which on its face gives the president alarmingly broad authority to send in the troops, say it desperately needs reform.

That law, which descends from legislation that Congress approved between 1792 and 1871, includes two provisions that could be especially useful to any president who is itching to use the military for law enforcement. Both include outmoded language that is puzzling to modern readers, and both seem........

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