Trump Threatens to Deploy Military Forces to Minnesota

President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to send the military to Minnesota, where residents have continued to protest after a deadly shooting involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last week, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen the administration alleges was trying to use her vehicle as a weapon. On Wednesday, a Venezuelan migrant was shot in the leg by an ICE agent in North Minneapolis, triggering more protests in the state. In the meantime, the state’s Democratic leaders have unsuccessfully called on Trump to leave Minneapolis. Trump has instead leaned in.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The White House referred NOTUS to Trump’s post in response to an inquiry.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters outside the White House on Thursday that she had spoken with Trump about the matter that morning. She said she had not specifically recommended invoking the Insurrection Act but that it was a possibility.

“We just discussed it, that it was one of the options that he had constitutionally,” she said. “And we talked about the fact that we’re going to continue our operations in Minneapolis and have the resources that we need to get the job done.”

The Insurrection Act of 1807 is vague and rarely used. It authorizes the president to deploy the military to assist law enforcement in the case of a rebellion or to enforce laws that civilian authorities are failing to enforce. But the scope of what is considered an insurrection is broad.

This is not the first time Trump has said he would use the Insurrection Act. The president made a similar threat during protests about immigration enforcement in Los Angeles last year when he sought to deploy the National Guard to California and other states. He also threatened to use the Insurrection Act in response to protests over the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

The act was used at the start of the Civil War and to desegregate schools. The last president to invoke the Insurrection Act was President George H.W. Bush during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992, when the Black man’s brutal beating by police was caught on camera.

On the third day of protests, Bush sent troops to the state, with the support of the governor at the time, under the terms in the act that allow deployment if “such domestic violence and disorder are also obstructing the execution of the laws of the United States.”

This article has been updated with comments from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.