In Reply to: He's really acting like he doesn't think he has much time left posted by blindness on January 15, 2026 at 08:42:09
Primer by Constitutional Lawyer Steve Vladeck:
One of the most important—but least understood—points about the Insurrection Act is that it includes no substantive authority. It doesn’t create special powers to arrest or detain people (like the Alien Enemy Act). It doesn’t authorize the military to use force (like declarations of war or the post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force). Rather, the Insurrection Act is merely an authorization to use federal armed forces to execute the (existing) laws of the Union in circumstances in which no one disputes that those same laws may be enforced by local, state, and even civilian federal authorities. Even when the Insurrection Act has been validly invoked (e.g., Los Angeles in 1992), servicemembers have no powers beyond what ordinary local, state, and federal law enforcement officers have. They can arrest and detain—but only if their civilian counterparts could do so in the same circumstances. The same criminal (and immigration) laws apply; and the same constitutional rights attach, as well. Invoking the Insurrection Act thus isn’t an end-run around legal and constitutional rights; it merely changes against whom those rights can be invoked.
Trump thinks the insurrection act gives him extraordinary powers - to block elections, for example. He thinks is it martial law, and he can shoot protestors. But that isn't what the law says. Trump may try to use forces deployed in illegal and violent ways, the same way he uses his masked ICE thugs, but the test will be when and if professional trained soldiers with legal advisors are deployted.