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Editor’s note: This essay is part of a series on the limitations, drawbacks, and dangers of domestic deployments, from Lawfare and Protect Democracy.
The U.S. Constitution gives the president broad power both to direct the world’s largest military and to protect national security more generally. But, although executive power over national security has expanded in recent decades—under both Democratic and Republican administrations—U.S. law generally forbids the president from deploying military forces within the United States, outside the context of invasion or rebellion.
The Insurrection Act is an important exception. Although little-known and (fortunately) used sparingly, the act gives the president potentially broad authority to use the military to protect the country from threats inside the United States. While such a power can be crucial in times of genuine crisis, it also poses a serious risk of abuse. For example, former President Trump has suggested that, if elected, he would invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military to quell protests around the country, provide security at the southern border, and aid in deporting noncitizens. Democratic presidents too might be tempted to use the Insurrection Act against perceived domestic threats.
Unfortunately, the language of the act is vague and overbroad, and many experts from across the political spectrum have rightly called on Congress to revise the text. In an article forthcoming in the Harvard National Security Journal, I survey these proposed legislative reforms and argue in favor of many of them (along with reforms to other areas of the U.S. national security legal framework).