President Trump said he has not ruled out invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring a national emergency around the November midterms, keeping federal force on the table if laws are obstructed.
In a Time interview published Thursday, the president declined to take the option off the table as the country heads into the midterm elections. He tied the question to the outer limits of presidential power and to what happens if Democrats reclaim the House, the Senate, or both.
Trump made clear he would not lock himself into a fixed plan now.
“I’m not committing to anything,” he said. “We’re going to see how it plays out in court.”
That answer leaves two tools available: the Insurrection Act of 1807 and a national emergency declaration. Both sit at the center of how a president can restore order when local officials cannot, or will not, keep the peace.
Trump also warned that Democrats would try to impeach him a third time if they take back either chamber. White House advisers have already mapped responses to a split or hostile Congress.
One White House official said the administration would “be forced to think more bipartisan” if Republicans lose ground. The same official went further on the record of the past two years.
“I would hope that if we win, we can still do that, because for two years we’ve run a completely partisan play,” the official said. “When you’re looking back on your time, I don’t think that’s what you should be proud of, even if it was successful.”
Trump dismissed unfavorable polling for himself and other Republicans as fake. The political stakes are plain: control of Congress, the risk of another impeachment drive, and the president’s willingness to use federal force if streets or federal law become ungovernable.
The Insurrection Act became law in 1807 after former Vice President Aaron Burr was arrested in Alabama and charged with treason. President Thomas Jefferson sought authority to confront Burr’s effort to carve out a new country in the Louisiana Territory.
As described in the statute’s operative language, the president may act “in all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States, or of any individual state or territory,” and may deploy the military or federalize a state’s National Guard “for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed.”
Fifteen U.S. presidents have used the Act. The most recent was George H.W. Bush in May 1992, after four Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King and riots tore through the city.
Trump has also relied on Title 10 authority to send federal troops into U.S. cities in a supporting role for local law enforcement. The Insurrection Act is the stronger step: it lets the president put troops into a direct suppression and enforcement role when the laws are blocked.
This is not the first time Trump has raised the Act in his current term. After an ICE officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in January, he threatened to send troops to Minneapolis, then said there was no reason to invoke the law.
In June 2025, as anti-ICE demonstrations hit Los Angeles, he said he would “certainly” invoke the Act. He said the same about similar protests in Portland, Ore., in October. He likened both situations to “insurrections.”
Late in his first term, he also considered sending troops to Minneapolis after the 2020 protests that followed the death of George Floyd. The pattern is consistent: when federal officers and federal law become the target of street action, Trump treats troop deployment as a live option rather than a rhetorical prop.
November’s midterms will decide whether Republicans keep the levers they need to govern without constant procedural war. Trump’s Time interview framed the Insurrection Act and emergency power as tools he will not surrender in advance.
He did not announce a deployment. He did not name a city. He refused to box himself in. The message to courts, to Congress, and to local leaders who tolerate obstruction is that the federal government still has the older, harder statutes available if the laws are not executed.
Bush used the Act when Los Angeles burned. Jefferson sought it when a former vice president tried to fracture the country. Trump is saying the same authority remains on the table if midterm-season disorder or open defiance of federal law returns.
Voters who want secure borders, enforceable statutes, and cities that answer to the law should want a president who will not pre-commit to weakness when the streets test the state.
