A decision isn't expected to be imminent, one source said, but debate within the administration has shifted recently to more deeply exploring how and when the act might be invoked.

WASHINGTON — White House officials have held increasingly serious discussions in recent days about President Donald Trump’s invoking the Insurrection Act, a rarely used 19th century law that gives the president the power to deploy active-duty troops inside the United States for law enforcement purposes, five people with knowledge of the talks told NBC News.

  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
    10·
    5 months ago

    Trump’s plans to deploy the National Guard have occasionally hit legal hurdles. A federal judge in Oregon on Sunday blocked him from sending guard members from any state to Portland. The next day, Trump said publicly that he would invoke the Insurrection Act “if it was necessary.”

    “If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I’d do that,” Trump said. As of now, he said, it has not been needed.

    …

    “Ultimately it’s the president’s vision and the president’s policies that he got elected to implement that the attorneys are just working hard to defend,” the White House official said. “We’re working hard to look at the law and say, ‘How do we achieve the president’s vision?’”

    Trump considered invoking the act in his first term during the protests after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis in 2020. He declined despite the urging of some allies and later regretted that decision, according to the senior administration official. He is viewing his current decision through that lens, the senior administration official said.

    One of Trump’s deputy chiefs of staff, Stephen Miller, has been a leading and longtime proponent of invoking the Insurrection Act.

    • flandish@lemmy.world
      9·
      5 months ago

      basically his buried lede and dog whistle here is that he is setting up a manufactured consent: he wants an attack on an ice agent to happen so he can have an “excuse” to do this.