Congress Must Act Before the Insurrection Act Is Abused

The President has now explicitly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to protests in Minneapolis arising from aggressive federal immigration enforcement operations. This is not a hypothetical risk. It is a stated intent. Congress must act now—before invocation—to prevent the misuse of one of the most dangerous and least constrained emergency powers in federal law. The Insurrection Act was designed for extreme circumstances: when an actual insurrection or widespread violence makes it impossible to enforce federal law, or when states are unable or unwilling to protect constitutional rights. Those conditions are not present in Minnesota. Federal immigration operations are ongoing. ICE continues to make arrests and carry out enforcement actions. Courts are open. State and local governments remain fully operational. Minnesota’s governor and local officials have repeatedly and publicly urged peaceful protest and de-escalation. None of this constitutes an insurrection, nor does it demonstrate an inability to execute federal law. Peaceful protest—even loud, disruptive, or angry protest—is not an insurrection. Courts have been clear on this point. The presence of demonstrators near federal operations does not, by itself, meet the Act’s statutory threshold. There is growing evidence that escalation itself is being used to manufacture a pretext for invocation: an unprecedented deployment of armed federal agents, repeated inflammatory rhetoric from senior federal officials, and efforts to blame state leaders for violence they are actively attempting to prevent. The Insurrection Act cannot lawfully be used to “cure” unrest that the federal government itself has provoked. Invocation of the Insurrection Act would not suspend congressional oversight, halt ongoing investigations, or delay the release of legally required materials—including the Epstein files—and Congress should not allow manufactured chaos to serve as a distraction from its constitutional responsibilities. Some public confusion has arisen about what invocation of the Insurrection Act would mean. It does not authorize martial law, suspend the Constitution, cancel elections, dissolve state governments, or eliminate courts. But the Act does allow the President to deploy federal troops domestically with no statutory time limit and minimal procedural safeguards. That combination—broad discretion, weak guardrails, and indefinite duration—is precisely why congressional oversight is essential. Courts are an important backstop, but they are a late one. Litigation takes time. Damage to civil liberties, public trust, and federal-state relations can occur long before any judicial ruling. Congress is the only branch with the authority to impose prospective limits. We urge Congress to act immediately by: • Clarifying and narrowing the statutory definition of “insurrection” • Requiring time limits and automatic congressional approval for continued deployments • Mandating public findings and transparency prior to invocation • Using funding authority to prevent misuse of domestic military deployments This is not about partisan politics or immigration policy. It is about preserving constitutional boundaries and preventing the normalization of military force in domestic political disputes. Waiting until after the Insurrection Act is invoked is waiting too long. Congress must act now.