“The president’s authority is the Insurrection Act and his ability to declare martial law,” he told host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Trump ally and convicted political operative Roger Stone brought it up on Infowars as a way for Trump to combat anything from coups to protests to election fraud. Trump himself leaned into the idea, suggesting to a rally audience that he would use the act to put down “leftist thugs” protesting that summer.įrom there, the Insurrection Act became a quick fix to everything among the more extreme MAGA figures. Tom Cotton brought the idea of the Insurrection Act into the national dialogue with a New York Times op-ed that called on Trump to invoke the law in response to rioting that was occurring amid largely peaceful protests over racial justice. In May, a Q-drop - the name for the mysterious missives allegedly from a person at the center of the QAnon movement - floated the Insurrection Act for the first time as a way to solve “growing unrest” after George Floyd was killed by Minnesota police. The idea has also become intertwined with the QAnon movement, the far-reaching and baseless conspiracy that Trump is secretly working to disrupt a cabal of pedophiliac, sex trafficking Democrats and global elite.
And when it has been used over that period, it was always at the request of a state governor.īut over the past several years, it has gained popularity among the far-right fringes, mainly as a way for Trump to solve all their problems, from expelling undocumented migrants, to arresting generals and other “deep state” actors for allegedly plotting coups against Trump. The Insurrection Act has been rarely invoked since the civil unrest of the 1960s - the last time was to quell violence during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. “The central theme here is that there supposedly exists a network of nefarious actors trying to undermine Trump and destroy the United States, and that this is a tool that Trump could use to save the day,” said Jared Holt, a research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, who focuses on far-right extremism. It also displays the exalted level to which Trump has been elevated among his most zealous fans as his departure looms. While scattered theories about a “deep state” arrayed against Trump have long circulated in MAGA circles, calls for troops to stop a democratically elected president from taking office have taken those ideas to a more conspiratorial and militaristic level. The conviction shows how hard-edged MAGA ideology has become in the wake of Trump’s election loss.
Their evidence-deficient reasoning: Democrats illegally rigged the election and are attempting a coup, and Trump must send in the troops to undo this conspiracy. Nonetheless, in the minds of some authoritarian-leaning and conspiracy-minded Trump supporters, the Insurrection Act has become a needed step to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from assuming the presidency. Only once, however, has it been used in the wake of an election - and that was to stop a literal militia from seizing the Louisiana government on behalf of John McEnery, a former Confederate officer who had lost the 1872 governor’s race. Historically, it has been used in moments of extreme national strife - the Civil War, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, violent labor disputes, desegregation battles, rioting following Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. At its core, the Insurrection Act gives the president authority to send military and National Guard troops to quell local rebellions and violence, offering an exemption to prohibitions against using military personnel to enforce domestic laws.
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