If the founders feared the standing army, it was because they understood its symbolic power: the quiet terror of men with weapons standing where debate once sufficed.
By Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
Brewminate
Introduction
When Donald Trump and his advisers invoke the word “insurrection,” they do not use it loosely. They use it as a signal. Once a term of legal gravity reserved for extraordinary threats to the republic, it has become a tool of rhetorical inversion, applied not to mobs that storm the Capitol, but to the protests, dissent, and perceived disorder that challenge the president’s authority. In the past months, that language has sharpened alongside discussions inside the administration about deploying the military in American cities, even in ways that would test or violate the limits imposed by the Posse Comitatus Act. The word itself, insurrection, has become the justification for its opposite: the use of armed force to suppress civil life.
The drift is not new. Trump’s first term flirted with domestic troop deployments in response to protests in 2020, when he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act against largely peaceful demonstrators. But in his return to power, that flirtation has matured into a doctrine. The renewed emphasis on “law and order,” coupled with public talk of using the National Guard in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, has revealed a strategic effort to normalize the military’s role in domestic policing. It is not simply about quelling unrest; it is about expanding the definition of unrest until any opposition can be folded into it.
This is the essence of authoritarian adaptation: the redefinition of legal vocabulary until it sanctifies what it once forbade. By turning “insurrection” into a pretext for force, the administration lays the groundwork for governing through emergency, where the president is not constrained by law, but rather claims to embody it. The stakes are enormous. At issue is not only whether the military can be used to enforce civilian law, but whether a constitutional republic can survive the weaponization of its own safeguards.
What follows examines this new rhetoric and the policies that shadow it. It traces the widening use of the term “insurrection” across Trump’s speeches and directives, the legal framework of the Insurrection Act and the Posse Comitatus Act, and the historical boundary between military power and domestic life. It draws on current reports that reveal the administration’s growing comfort with testing those limits. And it confronts the deeper question now before the country: whether the line between military and civilian authority, so long a measure of American freedom, will hold against the will of a single man who sees defiance as revolt and obedience as peace.
The Rising Rhetoric of “Insurrection”
Overview
Language, in the hands of power, is never neutral. When Trump and his advisers began reviving the term insurrection this year, they were not describing a concrete event; they were reframing a national mood. The term carries historical gravity: it conjures rebellion, internal enemies, and the moral license of suppression. To label something an insurrection is to declare that ordinary politics has failed and that only force can restore order. Trump’s usage is neither accidental nor merely theatrical. It is a deliberate linguistic conditioning, preparing the ground for extraordinary measures under the pretense of legality.
The Political Utility of a Loaded Word
The resurgence of insurrection serves a dual function. On one level, it reclaims the language that once condemned Trump himself after the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, a symbolic act of inversion, transforming accusation into authority. On another, it blurs the line between protest and rebellion. By describing urban crime, immigration protests, or local resistance to federal directives as potential “insurrections,” the administration transforms civil dissent into a battlefield. Such framing primes the public to accept what would once have been unthinkable: the deployment of troops against civilians under the banner of national security.
This pattern mirrors the rhetorical evolution of other authoritarian leaders who turned crisis vocabulary into governing doctrine. When power is maintained by perpetual emergency, insurrection becomes not an event to be prevented, but a condition to be declared whenever expedient.
Trump’s frequent pairing of the term with “law and order” in speeches and social media posts underscores the point. The invocation is not about defining a crime; it is about claiming a mandate.
A Shift in Administrative Discourse
Officials within the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have discussed scenarios for deploying the National Guard in cities like Chicago under expanded interpretations of the Insurrection Act. These discussions, which include references to “restoring order” and “protecting federal interests,” echo Trump’s public assertions that local authorities are “unable or unwilling” to control crime. The phrase “unable or unwilling” is critical; it is precisely the statutory language that could allow a president to act without a governor’s consent under 10 U.S.C. § 253.
This bureaucratic language marks a departure from traditional caution. Previous administrations, regardless of party, treated the Insurrection Act as a nuclear option, a last resort after consultation with Congress and state officials. In contrast, Trump’s advisers appear to be institutionalizing its readiness, positioning it as a standard tool of executive power. When such readiness becomes routine, the line between preparation and intention disappears.
The Feedback Loop of Fear
The administration’s rhetoric does not operate in isolation. It is amplified through allied media ecosystems that depict American cities as war zones and dissent as subversion. Right-wing commentators speak of “domestic enemies” and “internal insurgents” while emphasizing the president’s “constitutional duty” to act. This feedback loop generates both fear and permission, fear among citizens, and permission for the executive to wield the military as a symbol of restored control.
The effect is cumulative. Each repetition of “insurrection” dulls its historical sting and replaces it with a new, authoritarian familiarity. Over time, the American ear grows accustomed to hearing the term not as a national trauma, but as a justification for order imposed from above. In this way, language becomes policy before a single order is signed.
Legal Foundations and Constraints
Overview
If the rhetoric of “insurrection” provides the justification, the law provides the instrument. The Trump administration’s recent statements and exploratory actions hinge on two pillars of American legal architecture: the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and the Insurrection Act, first enacted in 1792 and revised in the Reconstruction era. Together, these laws define, and limit, the circumstances under which the president can use military force within the United States. Their very tension reveals the fragile boundary between civil governance and martial rule.
The Posse Comitatus Act: A Barrier by Design
The Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) was born out of post–Civil War Reconstruction, a time when the federal government’s use of troops in Southern states had provoked outrage among white conservatives who saw occupation where freedmen saw protection. The law forbids the use of the Army or Air Force to enforce domestic law “except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” Over time, it has been extended by policy to the Navy and Marine Corps, and by principle to all branches of the armed forces.
Its intent is simple: the military defends the nation, not police its people. The act enshrines a core tenet of American democracy, that civilian law enforcement must remain distinct from the machinery of war. Yet the statute is riddled with exceptions and ambiguities. The law’s prohibitions do not apply when troops operate under state authority (Title 32) or when the president invokes specific authorizations such as the Insurrection Act. It is this legal seam that Trump’s team appears eager to exploit.
The Insurrection Act: Exception or Loophole?
The Insurrection Act, codified in 10 U.S.C. § 251–253, grants the president power to deploy the military domestically to suppress “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combinations, or conspiracies” that obstruct the execution of federal or state law. On its face, the language is sweeping, allowing a president to ignore gubernatorial authority and state sovereignty.
Historically, presidents have invoked this authority sparingly. Dwight D. Eisenhower used it in 1957 to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson relied on it during the civil rights crises of the early 1960s. George H. W. Bush last used it in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots, at the request of California’s governor. Each of those deployments followed intense deliberation and clear, localized breakdowns of civil order. What distinguishes Trump’s posture is not the invocation of the law itself but his willingness to apply it preemptively, to treat potential disorder as justification enough.
The Elasticity of Emergency
Legal scholars warn that the Insurrection Act’s language, written for an age of muskets and telegraphs, offers no modern standards of evidence or proportionality. It contains no requirement for congressional approval, judicial review, or time limits on military engagement. Once invoked, its operation depends almost entirely on presidential discretion. The result is a statute that is both constitutional and combustible, a dormant power that becomes dangerous when paired with an executive prone to viewing opposition as insubordination.
In practice, the administration’s legal advisers have argued that deployments under the act do not violate Posse Comitatus because the statute itself constitutes an express exception. This interpretation places nearly unchecked authority in the president’s hands. The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel has historically supported broad readings of executive power during emergencies, and Trump’s legal team appears prepared to stretch that tradition further, asserting that federal troops could, if necessary, perform “supportive law enforcement functions” alongside civilian agencies.
That phrase, supportive functions, is the hinge on which democratic norms may turn. It redefines enforcement as assistance, blurring the constitutional firewall meant to separate the soldier from the sheriff. And it opens a path by which a president could claim to uphold the law while eroding its most fundamental protection: the idea that the law is not an instrument of personal power.
Trump’s Deployments and Threats
Overview
The rhetoric surrounding “insurrection” would be troubling enough if confined to speeches. But under President Trump’s current administration, it has been coupled with concrete attempts to use, or threaten to use, the military within the nation’s borders. Each episode reveals an escalating willingness to normalize force as governance, and to treat dissent or disorder not as a civic challenge but as a military problem.
Los Angeles: A Federal Muscle Test
When unrest broke out in Los Angeles earlier this year following ICE raids, Trump seized the moment. He ordered the deployment of National Guard units to the city. Reports detailed that troops established perimeters and even assisted ICE agents with arrests, roles that typically fall far outside federal jurisdiction.
California’s governor challenged the deployment in federal court, arguing that it violated both the Posse Comitatus Act and the principle of state sovereignty. A federal judge ultimately ruled that while limited Guard support for protecting federal property was lawful, direct participation in law enforcement operations was not. The ruling forced a partial withdrawal and underscored the legal chaos that results when presidential ambition meets statutory ambiguity.
The episode set a dangerous precedent: the Insurrection Act had become, in effect, an instrument of domestic crowd control rather than a response to rebellion. For many legal scholars, this was the first clear breach of the post-Reconstruction consensus that federal troops should never act as national police.
Chicago: Testing the Boundaries of Federal Authority
Trump then turned his attention to Chicago. Claiming that local officials were “losing control” of the city, he threatened to “restore order by any means necessary.” Behind the scenes, senior officials discussed using the National Guard to conduct “joint operations” with federal agents against organized crime and immigration-related protests.
When Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker refused to authorize the Guard’s deployment, Trump asserted that the state was “unable or unwilling” to maintain public safety. The administration’s claim was that the president’s constitutional duty to “ensure the laws be faithfully executed” superseded a governor’s objection.
The move triggered an immediate lawsuit by Illinois and the city of Chicago, arguing that Trump’s action represented “an unprecedented assertion of federal police power.” A federal appellate court later issued a temporary injunction halting troop deployments beyond the protection of federal buildings, calling the broader mission “a clear overreach.” Yet the episode revealed how swiftly the legal line could blur and how easily the executive branch could exploit the act’s vague language to justify unilateral action.
Washington, D.C.: The Laboratory of Executive Power
The capital presents a unique constitutional vulnerability: its National Guard is under direct presidential control. That reality gave Trump a freer hand when he signed Executive Order 14333, declaring a “Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia.” The order authorized the deployment of active-duty troops to “assist in law enforcement coordination” across multiple neighborhoods.
The deployment’s scope quickly expanded beyond the protection of federal property. Soldiers were seen manning checkpoints, accompanying police patrols, and participating in raids. Local officials condemned the presence as a “de facto military occupation,” and the D.C. government filed suit seeking injunctive relief. The administration’s response was telling: the president, aides said, was “personally monitoring” the operation and viewed it as “a model for future interventions.”
From Threat to Template
Each of these episodes (Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington) illustrates a progression from rhetoric to practice. The legal justifications evolved with each case, growing more expansive as the courts struggled to keep pace. What began as extraordinary deployments to “protect federal assets” became broader campaigns to impose federal control over local governance.
This evolution reveals the real danger: not a single coup or declaration of martial law, but a slow normalization of military presence in civic life. By framing unrest, protest, and even crime as “insurrection,” the administration transforms the domestic sphere into a perpetual state of emergency. In this climate, the threshold for military intervention drops from necessity to convenience, and the constitutional barrier between citizen and soldier erodes one deployment at a time.
Constitutional, Institutional, and Democratic Risks
Overview
The power to deploy troops inside the United States sits at the heart of America’s constitutional tension between liberty and security. The framers of the Constitution understood the dangers of domestic militarization (they had seen British redcoats enforcing colonial law) and they designed a system where civilian institutions, not armies, preserved order. When the executive begins to view soldiers as tools of domestic governance, that design falters. What we are witnessing under President Trump’s renewed interpretation of “insurrection” is not only a legal drift but an existential one: a reimagining of the relationship between the government and the governed.
The Erosion of Federalism
In both California and Illinois, governors pushed back against troop deployments ordered without their consent. Those clashes strike at the heart of American federalism. States are not mere administrative districts of the federal government; they are sovereign entities within the union, empowered to control their own law enforcement. The president’s invocation of the Insurrection Act without state approval represents a direct challenge to that autonomy.
The Founders intended such divisions of power to prevent tyranny. By assuming the authority to send federal troops wherever he deems necessary, Trump undermines the delicate balance that sustains the republic. The precedent could haunt even future administrations: if one president can impose “federal order” over a state’s objections, then the principle of local self-governance, the essence of the Tenth Amendment, becomes conditional, subject to presidential whim.
The Normalization of Military Presence
Perhaps more insidious than overt defiance of law is the creeping normalization of soldiers in civilian spaces. Each new deployment framed as “temporary” or “supportive” makes the next easier to justify. History offers warnings. The Reconstruction-era South, where troops once guaranteed the rights of freed slaves, eventually became a region where their withdrawal enabled oppression to return.
The problem is not the presence of the military itself; it is its politicization. When the public begins to see uniformed troops patrolling streets, the line between democracy and dominion dissolves.
The very appearance of military force in domestic policing corrodes the constitutional presumption of civilian control. The sight of soldiers enforcing executive will fosters a psychological shift: citizens become subjects, not participants. And once that transformation takes hold, restoring the old norm of separation becomes extraordinarily difficult.
Checks and Balances Under Strain
The courts remain one of the few institutions capable of restraining executive overreach, yet their tools are blunt and reactive. Lawsuits and injunctions take time – time during which troops remain deployed and precedents are cemented. Congress, meanwhile, has been largely silent. It retains authority to amend or clarify the Insurrection Act but has repeatedly failed to do so, leaving vague statutes in place that can be stretched to fit nearly any situation.
In the absence of robust legislative or judicial guardrails, much depends on the integrity of the military itself. During Trump’s first term, senior officers, including former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair Mark Milley, explicitly resisted orders to use active-duty troops against protestors. Whether today’s leadership would show similar restraint remains uncertain. Civilian control of the military works only when both sides agree on its meaning.
Civil Liberties and the Threat to Dissent
The domestic use of the military risks chilling fundamental freedoms. Protesters, journalists, and community organizers become potential “insurrectionists” in the government’s narrative. The mere presence of soldiers with federal sanction shifts the burden of legitimacy: citizens must now prove their right to assemble rather than assume it. The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that such tactics turn the military into “an instrument for suppressing political expression.”
If dissent is treated as rebellion, the marketplace of ideas collapses into a theater of control. The right to protest is not only a constitutional guarantee; it is the heartbeat of democracy. When the government wields force to silence its critics, the rule of law becomes an aesthetic veneer covering authoritarian substance.
The Military’s Dilemma
For service members, the moral hazard is acute. They are sworn to uphold the Constitution, not any single leader. Yet they operate within a chain of command that demands obedience. Being ordered to police fellow citizens places them in a position the founders sought to avoid: agents of domestic control. This tension corrodes morale and risks politicizing the armed forces themselves.
In interviews following the Los Angeles and Chicago deployments, several Guard members told reporters that they felt “uneasy” or “conflicted” about their roles. Their discomfort signals a truth often overlooked in debates about executive power: the military’s legitimacy depends on its apolitical nature. Once the perception of neutrality is lost, so too is public trust, a loss far more damaging than any short-term victory in the name of “law and order.”
The Republic at a Crossroads
What Trump has done is to reframe the concept of internal threat. By casting domestic dissent as insurrection, he transforms the machinery of national defense into a weapon of internal discipline. The consequence is profound: the Constitution’s safeguards depend not only on text but on the restraint of those who wield it. When a president abandons that restraint, the law’s ambiguity becomes an accomplice.
The United States now stands at a threshold where legality and authoritarianism coexist uneasily, one providing the pretext for the other. Whether the system can hold depends on whether institutions, governors, soldiers, and citizens recognize that what is at stake is more than jurisdiction or politics. It is the principle that separates a republic from a regime: the idea that the sword must never become the gavel.
Paths Forward and Reform Options
Overview
If Trump’s renewed embrace of the word insurrection represents a regression toward authoritarian governance, then the path forward must begin with legal, institutional, and cultural repair. The danger is not confined to one administration. Every precedent set today becomes a tool available to the next president, friend or foe of democracy alike. The United States has reached a point where restoring the boundaries between military and civil authority requires more than trust; it demands reform, vigilance, and civic will.
Clarifying the Law
The Insurrection Act is among the oldest continuously active federal statutes, and its language reflects another era. It was written for a young nation struggling to maintain internal stability, not a mature republic with vast federal policing powers. Congress must modernize it. Clear definitions of “insurrection,” “domestic violence,” and “unlawful combinations” should replace the vague 18th-century phrasing that invites abuse. Legislators could require congressional notification and approval within a fixed time period after any domestic deployment, similar to the War Powers Resolution governing foreign interventions.
Statutory reform should also address the Posse Comitatus Act, closing loopholes that allow the executive to claim “support” or “advisory” roles for troops in civilian law enforcement. As legal analysts have noted, ambiguity is the mother of misuse. A modernized framework must restore precision, limiting presidential discretion while preserving legitimate emergency authority.
Institutional Checks and Oversight
Reform must extend beyond statutes to the machinery that enforces them. Congress could create a Joint Civil-Military Oversight Commission, composed of lawmakers, retired officers, and constitutional scholars, to review any domestic military action in real time. The Department of Defense should codify internal protocols requiring legal review and senior approval for any request to deploy troops in law enforcement roles.
At the same time, the DOJ must reassert its independence. The Office of Legal Counsel, the body responsible for interpreting executive power, should be required to publish its opinions on domestic deployment authority rather than shielding them as privileged. Transparency, not secrecy, is the antidote to abuse.
Protecting Civil Liberties
Beyond legal mechanics lies the human dimension. Americans have long understood that freedom is not self-sustaining; it requires active defense by those willing to dissent. Civil society organizations, journalists, and watchdog groups must continue to challenge unlawful uses of force and document abuses in real time. Congress should expand protections for whistleblowers in the military and federal law enforcement who expose unconstitutional orders or actions.
Local governments also play a vital role. Cities and states can pass anti-militarization ordinances limiting cooperation with federal troops in civilian operations unless constitutionally mandated. Such policies not only protect local autonomy but remind the federal government that authority is shared, not surrendered.
Cultural Resistance: Rebuilding Civic Muscle
The most profound defense against authoritarian drift is cultural rather than legal. Americans have grown accustomed to equating “security” with visible force (soldiers, barricades, armored vehicles). That reflex must change. True security lies in legitimacy, not intimidation.
Civic education, public debate, and media literacy are not luxuries but bulwarks against manipulation. When citizens understand the difference between protest and rebellion, between dissent and disorder, the power of words like insurrection diminishes.
The military itself must also reaffirm its civic ethos. Training at every level should emphasize the constitutional limits of command and the primacy of civilian authority. Military leaders who speak publicly about these boundaries, following the example of figures like General Milley and Secretary Esper in 2020, do more than uphold tradition; they fortify democracy.
Reasserting Civilian Power
Finally, the presidency must be reimagined not as a personal mandate but as a constrained office bound by law. Presidents of both parties have expanded emergency powers for decades, but Trump has pushed that expansion into open defiance. The solution is not merely to resist one man’s overreach, but to redefine executive power itself. Emergency authority should expire automatically unless renewed by Congress. Declarations of “domestic crisis” should be subject to judicial review.
In a republic, constraint is not weakness; it is strength. The president’s oath is not to command the nation but to preserve the Constitution. When those words are treated as ceremonial, the republic falters. When they are lived, the republic endures.
The Choice Ahead
The task now is not only legal reform but moral clarity. Americans must decide whether they will continue to tolerate a government that invokes “insurrection” to suppress its citizens, or whether they will reclaim the language of liberty from those who have perverted it. The Founders’ distrust of standing armies was not naïveté; it was memory. They knew that tyranny often comes not from invasion, but from the turning inward of the sword.
To prevent that, the nation must reaffirm the line that history drew in blood and law: the soldier defends the state, but the state must never be defended from its people. That is the essence of a free republic and the promise still worth keeping.
Conclusion
The battle over the word insurrection is not simply about semantics; it is about sovereignty. In Trump’s second presidency, the term has become a linguistic weapon aimed inward, transforming citizens into suspects and dissent into sedition. The danger is not that he has invented new powers, but that he has resurrected old ones (emergency statutes written for crises long past) and imbued them with modern political purpose. What was once an exceptional measure has been recast as a governing tool.
The cumulative effect of this shift is profound. It signals a movement away from the republican principle that the military must remain subordinate to civil authority, toward a model in which the executive commands both law and force without meaningful restraint. When the president alone decides what constitutes an “insurrection,” he effectively defines the limits of lawful opposition. That is the essence of authoritarianism: when legality itself becomes the servant of power.
Yet history also offers reason for guarded optimism. American democracy, fragile though it may be, has endured recurrent flirtations with martial control. From Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus to Roosevelt’s wartime internments, the republic has often stumbled under the weight of fear. But it has also shown a capacity for correction, a return to balance after moments of overreach. That capacity now depends on whether institutions and citizens alike are willing to resist normalization.
The task is not abstract. It begins with Congress rewriting the vague statutes that have outlived their wisdom. It continues with governors asserting their constitutional autonomy, courts enforcing limits on executive authority, journalists exposing the machinery of manipulation, and ordinary Americans refusing to accept soldiers as the arbiters of civic peace. The health of the republic rests on a simple but radical act: saying no.
To call this moment an “insurrection” of language is not hyperbole; it is diagnosis. Words shape permission, and permission shapes power. Trump’s America is testing whether the vocabulary of democracy can be hollowed out and refilled with authoritarian meaning. Whether that test succeeds depends on how the nation responds, not with violence, but with vigilance.
If the founders feared the standing army, it was because they understood its symbolic power: the quiet terror of men with weapons standing where debate once sufficed. To prevent that image from becoming permanent, the United States must remember what separates the republic from the regime, the conviction that the military defends the people, but never rules them.
That conviction, once broken, is not easily restored. The word insurrection once described the storming of the Capitol; now it risks describing the undoing of the constitutional order itself. The choice before Americans is stark: to live under a government that treats fear as license, or to reclaim the principles that made the republic worth defending. The first leads to submission. The second, to the difficult, necessary work of freedom.
Originally published by Brewminate, 10.15.2025, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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