Military, legal, and political experts are warning after President Donald Trump vowed to invoke the Insurrection Act if he deems it necessary — a move some see as the culmination of an authoritarian trajectory he has been telegraphing since taking office. No president has used the law in more than three decades, and then only in limited, localized crises.

In the Oval Office late Monday afternoon, asked if he would invoke the Insurrection Act, the president replied, “Well, I’d do it if it was necessary.”

“So far, it hasn’t been necessary, but we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he continued. “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 do that. I mean, I want to make sure that people aren’t killed. We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”

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Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a well-known MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst, on Substack wrote, “It’s hard to mistake what’s happening here. This is a president in the process of looking for excuses and seeing how far he can go until someone—right now it’s the courts—reins him in.”

“The Insurrection Act is the primary vehicle for circumventing Posse Comitatus, which prohibits the use of the military on American soil to enforce laws against American citizens,” she explained. “That is not the role the military plays in American democracy. The Insurrection Act is reserved for extreme situations like rebellions or invasions. Trump is fully capable of spinning a narrative that would claim one of those preconditions, even while having no resemblance to the truth.”

Indeed, on Monday night, President Trump was asked on Newsmax about his remarks.

“It is a way to get around” opposition to his efforts, Trump said. “If we don’t have to use it I wouldn’t use it.”

“If you take a look at what’s been going on in Portland, it’s been going on for a long time, that’s insurrection, that’s pure insurrection” he added.

The Lincoln Project’s Gregory Minchak commented, “The Insurrection Act is NOT a way to ‘get around’ anything. It’s a break glass law in case of extreme and dire emergency. NOTHING in this country even remotely qualifies.”

Barely hours after Trump made his first set of remarks, Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker had told reporters:

“The Trump administration is following a playbook: Cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act.”

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Other experts also responded to the president’s remarks.

“This has always been the plan,” declared political and national security analyst, and well-known veterans advocate Paul Rieckhoff. “Most Americans won’t realize it until he does it.”

Rieckhoff was not alone in that observation.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, a Berkeley professor of public policy, wrote: “Everything Trump is doing now is a preamble for his regime’s real goal: to invoke the Insurrection Act. I don’t want to unduly alarm you, but you need to be aware of this imminent danger. It’s unfolding very rapidly.”

On Wednesday on Substack Professor Reich wrote: “The direction we’re going is either martial law or civil war.”

He also laid out what he believes the “plan” is to invoke the Insurrection Act, noting that “Trump and his enablers have worked this out in advance.”

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) wrote: “We have the Insurrection Act for a reason—But it’s not so a President with 34 felonies can ignore court orders and punish cities he doesn’t like with military intimidation. Especially not when the courts are telling him his claims of insurrection are ‘untethered to the facts.'”

U.S. Rep. Primala Jayapal (D-WA) commented, “Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the National Guard to our cities — completely ignoring federal judges’ orders. This is authoritarianism — and from someone who actually incited an insurrection on Jan 6th.”

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A coalition of hundreds of former senior national security and law enforcement officials is expressing “deep alarm” in condemning President Donald Trump’s executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, and calling it “a signal that the foundations of American democracy itself are under threat.”

The group likens the order to “pre-crime,” a concept from the film “Minority Report” in which people are arrested for crimes they have not yet committed — where thought itself, ahead of action, becomes criminalized.

The Steady State, a group that includes more than 330 former ambassadors, inspectors general, flag officers, defense and Homeland Security officials, and senior intelligence officers, warns that the Trump executive order is “dangerously broad,” as it calls “for scrutiny of ‘networks’ and ‘organizations’ that may ‘foment political violence,’ and even of ‘potential’ crimes.”

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“This pre-crime approach,” The Steady State explained, “invites surveillance and targeting based not on evidence of criminal acts but on associations, ideologies, or mere suspicion. American history teaches that such preventive policing sweeps up bystanders, political opponents, and peaceful activists, eroding due process and equal protection.”

The signatories also express concern over the “troubling” use of vague ideological “indicia,” including, as the memo stated, “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

The group says that these “undefined categories give sweeping discretion to enforcers. Advocacy for LGBTQ rights, criticism of government policy, or support for progressive reforms could easily be miscast as falling within them—even though such advocacy is protected by the Constitution.”

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The Trump memo specifically offers as an example: “Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin engraved the bullets used in the murder with so-called ‘anti-fascist’ rhetoric.”

The Steady State explained that the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI “may investigate crimes—arson, conspiracy, violence—but not constitutionally protected views or associations. The President’s order erases that distinction, treating a diffuse, decentralized ideology—anti-fascism—as if it were a formal organization subject to designation and criminalization. No federal statute grants the president authority to designate domestic groups or movements as terrorist organizations.”

The group’s members include Richard Danzig, the 71st Secretary of the Navy under President Bill Clinton; Asha Rangappa, a former FBI Special Agent; Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Russia, and South Korea and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense; and Edward “Ned” Price, a former State Department official.

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The White House appears to be telegraphing President Donald Trump’s plans to expand the domestic deployment of military forces across U.S. cities — defying opposition from local leaders — while attacking the press for reporting it.

Describing the President’s deployment of the National Guard and U.S. military, ostensibly to protect ICE agents, federal buildings, and patrol city streets, as a “proven formula” to curb crime — which FBI data show was already declining nationwide — Leavitt rebuked the press for “framing this like the president wants to take over the American cities with the military.”

Asked at Monday’s briefing if Democrats have “reason to be concerned that there are long-term plans by this administration to keep U.S. military or the National Guard in American cities, like what we’re seeing here in Washington,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “Why should they be concerned about the federal government offering help to make their cities a safer place?”

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Aside from Washington, D.C., no mayor who has been notified of possible federal troops on their streets has supported the idea. Mayor Bowser has taken a reserved stance, given the District’s federal constraints. Federal law, in most cases, requires the governor to ask the President for troops.

“They should be concerned about the fact that people in their cities right now are being gunned down every single night, and the president, all he’s trying to do is fix it,” Leavitt insisted, despite troops largely being unwelcome.

She decried what she alleged was a “complete smear campaign by the Democrats and the media, quite frankly.”

“I was reading Politico Playbook this morning — one of the most inside the Beltway newsletters you can find — and you guys are framing this, like the president wants to take over the American cities with the military. The president wants to help these local leaders who have been completely ineffective in securing their own cities,” Leavitt claimed, before suggesting plans for further militarization.

“And we have already seen, there’s a positive formula for that. Look at Washington, D.C. The murder rate has declined significantly. Our streets are safer. People who live here feel safer. All of you in this room, I know you do. You just won’t admit it.”

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“And it’s a proven system that works, and the president wants to make America’s cities safe again,” Leavitt added. “And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

Critics blasted Leavitt’s remarks.

“Troops are being deployed to US cities where the crime rate has plummeted—against the wishes of states, cities, and local residents. It IS a takeover. No other way to frame it,” wrote political strategist Sawyer Hackett.

Democratic activist and strategist Olivia Julianna pointed to a headline that read: “Trump says military should use U.S. cities as ‘training grounds’.” She commented, “This was LAST WEEK btw.”

Author and political commentator Brian Tylor Cohen remarked: “Probably because that is *quite literally* what’s happening.”

Leavitt: I was reading Politico Playbook—you guys are framing this like the president wants to take over the American cities with the military. pic.twitter.com/JxKI8J4sXv

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 6, 2025

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