President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy U.S. military forces to Minneapolis, where protests have grown since a federal officer shot and killed Renee Good. Constitutional law experts said the threatened move would be without historical precedent because the federal agents Trump himself sent to the city initiated the violence he now seeks to suppress.
“This would be a flagrant abuse of the Insurrection Act in a way that we’ve never seen,” said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. “None of the criteria have been met.”
The Insurrection Act has been invoked more than two dozen times since 1792, most recently during the 1992 Los Angeles riots — but never in circumstances where the federal government’s own forces were documented as initiating the violence. Experts say the Minneapolis situation falls outside every established category for the law’s use.
Between 2,000 and 3,000 federal authorities from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection are in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, according to the Associated Press, compared to fewer than 600 officers in the Minneapolis Police Department. Video from protesters and bystanders has shown violence initiated by federal officers, the AP reported, with confrontations growing more frequent since Good was shot three times and killed.
William Banks, a professor emeritus at Syracuse University who has written extensively on the domestic use of the military, called the situation “a historical outlier” because the violence Trump wants to end “is being created by the federal civilian officers” he sent there. Banks cautioned, however, that Minnesota officials would have “a tough argument to win” in court, because “the courts are typically going to defer to the president” on his military decisions.
Courts have already blocked some of Trump’s efforts to deploy the National Guard, though an Insurrection Act invocation would allow him to act without a state’s permission.
Origins and standard uses of the law
George Washington signed the first version of the law in 1792, authorizing mobilization of state militias when “laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed.” He and John Adams used it to quash citizen uprisings against taxes. Congress expanded the law in 1807, restating presidential authority to counter “insurrection or obstruction” of federal laws.
Nunn said the early statutes reflected a foundational “Anglo-American tradition against military intervention in civilian affairs” except “as a tool of last resort.” Early statutes also defined the standard for the law’s use as unrest “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course” of law enforcement.
Federal troops historically have been deployed in three categories: when local authorities were overwhelmed and sought help, to protect individuals whose rights local governments refused to enforce, or to suppress an outright insurrection such as the Confederacy during the Civil War. Experts said none of those categories describes the situation in Minneapolis in January 2026.
Banks stressed that the law then and now presumes federal resources are needed only when state and local authorities are overwhelmed — and Minnesota leaders have said their cities would be stable if Trump’s federal officers left.
Civil War, Reconstruction and labor disputes
President Abraham Lincoln persuaded Congress in 1861 to authorize U.S. troops in Confederate states without a state’s request, using the act as a legal foundation for the Civil War. After the war, President Ulysses S. Grant deployed troops to counter the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who defied the 14th and 15th Amendments and federal civil rights statutes.
During industrialization, violence erupted around labor strikes and immigration, and governors sought federal assistance. President Rutherford B. Hayes responded to a state request during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, after striking workers, state forces and local police clashed and dozens of deaths resulted. President Grover Cleveland responded to a Washington territory governor’s request to protect Chinese citizens being attacked by white rioters. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Colorado in 1914 amid a coal strike after workers were killed. Federal troops helped resolve each situation.
Civil rights era uses
Franklin D. Roosevelt dispatched 6,000 troops to Detroit — more than double the federal forces currently in Minneapolis — after race riots that started with whites attacking Black residents. State officials requested Roosevelt’s aid after riots escalated, in part because white local law enforcement joined in violence against Black residents. Federal troops calmed the city after dozens of deaths, including 17 Black residents killed by local police, Nunn said.
Once the Civil Rights Movement began, presidents sent federal forces to Southern states without requests or permission, because local authorities defied federal civil rights law and fomented violence themselves. President Dwight Eisenhower enforced school integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. President John F. Kennedy sent troops to the University of Mississippi after riots over James Meredith’s admission, and pre-emptively to prevent violence when George Wallace staged his “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” to protest the University of Alabama’s integration. President Lyndon Johnson protected the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery after Wallace’s troopers attacked marchers on their first peaceful attempt. Johnson also sent troops to multiple U.S. cities in 1967 and 1968 after clashes between residents and police escalated.
1992: the last invocation
Riots erupted in Los Angeles in 1992 after a jury failed to convict four white police officers of excessive use of force, despite video showing them beating Rodney King, a Black man. California Gov. Pete Wilson requested federal assistance. President George H.W. Bush authorized about 4,000 troops — but after he had publicly expressed displeasure over the trial verdict. Bush also directed the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation; two of the officers were later convicted in federal court. That deployment remains the last use of the Insurrection Act.
Why Minneapolis differs from every prior use
Nunn said the federal presence in Minneapolis has produced a self-reinforcing problem that prior uses of the act were designed to resolve, not create. “ICE has the legal authority to enforce federal immigration laws,” he said. “But what they’re doing is a sort of lawless, violent behavior” that goes beyond their legal function and “foments the situation” Trump wants to suppress.
“They can’t intentionally create a crisis, then turn around to do a crackdown,” Nunn said. He added that the Constitutional requirement for a president to “faithfully execute the laws” means Trump must wield his powers “in good faith.”
Trump has argued that Minnesota officials and citizens are impeding U.S. law by protesting his agenda and the presence of federal officers. Early statutes, however, defined the circumstances for the law’s use as unrest “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course” of law enforcement — a threshold experts said has not been met when the federal government itself is a documented source of the disorder.