Donald Trump has made mention of The Insurrection Act several times in the past few weeks, and the term is being used more and more in right-wing social media and just about everywhere in corporate media.
It’s going to happen. The only remaining unknown is when.
What is the Insurrection Act?
The Insurrection Act authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations.
Has it ever been used before?
Several times, but it has not been used in decades. The last president to use it was George Bush in 1992, when he did so during the LA riots at the request of California Governor Pete Wilson. As most remember, the riots began when cops severely beat Rodney King, did so on camera, only to be acquitted at trial when all were clearly guilty.
When will he use it?
This is where the whole thing gets a little murky, and where my readers will have to join me in a bit of intelligent speculation. While Trump is using the word “insurrection” at every opportunity and inserting it over and over again into situations that do not in any way call for it, I for one do not believe his goals are as immediate as his talk. For example, I do not believe using the Insurrection Act a single time is the plan. I believe what I have always believed – that the goal is to control the result of the next election, or to keep it from happening at all.
Now, the fact that I believe what I believe about the next election does not mean I think Trump will wait to use The Insurrection Act until closer to the election itself. Actually, I believe the opposite. I believe he will keep sending troops into cities and putting opposing sides in close proximity to each other until he gets the violence he desperately wants, or until he can create that violence, and then he’ll use The Insurrection Act, declare victory regardless of the outcome, and then rinse and repeat this process until we get accustomed to its use. It’s possible that we may see its use several times between now and Election Day.
I come to my theories on the use of The Insurrection Act not by evaluating Trump’s goals, which are mostly based on a childish kind of revenge, but rather by looking at the things that threaten his power. And right now, with Congress in one pocket, the billionaire class in another, and the Supreme Court on a leash behind him, the only real threat to Trump is us. Our votes are powerful, and they can deliver an opposition Congress that could at least start the process of actual accountability. This is the most immediate danger to the Trump regime, and I believe everything happening in the present is setting the table for whatever action he plans to take to subvert the results of the 2026 midterms.
If Trump and his minions ever leave the White House, and if they are ever held to account for their criminality, we’ll need to build more prisons to hold them all. They know this, and that tells us one very important thing – they will never leave. Never. We also know that according to every poll, Trump is massively unpopular and on his way to a huge election loss in 2026. He can’t win fairly, so it won’t be fair. In fact, it might not happen at all. How he’s going to stop it is unknown, but whatever he has planned, we’re being prepped for it right now. This is what I believe the “invasions” of American cities are really all about.
Trump is playing the long game, I think, and his real goal is to make sure that the last free American election is already behind us.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.