Would Trump and Hegseth Have Protesters Be Shot? See What They’ve Said

Once we’re down the Insurrection Act road, there’s no telling where this leads. It’s not an accident, by the way, that JD Vance called what happened in L.A. an “insurrection”; labeling it as such makes it easier to invoke the Insurrection Act, whose Section 253, passed into law in 1871 when the Ku Klux Klan was terrorizing people, allows the president to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.” Vance undoubtedly used the word to troll us about January 6. But there’s also a legal rationale for using it.

Presidents have invoked the act in the past and our democracy survived just fine. That said, the reasons for those invocations have always been specific, the durations, short. Now, our concern is that if Trump decides that Blue State X isn’t enforcing the law in the way he wants it enforced, he will call the lawlessness an insurrection, and then do who knows what, for who knows how long.

And finally, get a load of this, which Insurrection Act expert Joseph Nunn wrote about last year in Democracy journal (which I also edit): “Because the Insurrection Act refers simply to ‘the militia,’ and not specifically to the National Guard or the organized militia, a president could, in theory, use it to call private individuals into federal service—including members of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other private militias.” Nunn notes Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes used this interpretation of the act in his defense at his trial. No wonder that Nunn calls the Insurrection Act “a nuclear bomb hidden in the United States Code.”