Trump Says No Reason ‘Right Now’ to Use Insurrection Act in Minnesota

The president said if he needed it, he would use it to send the military to Minneapolis.

President Donald Trump departs for Florida from the White House on Jan. 16, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters that he doesn’t have a reason right now to use the Insurrection Act to quell protests and violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minneapolis.

On Thursday, Trump warned in a post on Truth Social that he could use the Insurrection Act—a law that dates back to the founding of the United States and has been invoked by presidents at least 30 times over its history—to handle unrest in Minnesota.

But in comments to reporters on Friday, Trump said there’s no need to invoke the law yet.

“I don’t think there’s any reason right now to use it, but if I needed it, I’d use it,” Trump told reporters at the White House before he departed for Palm Beach, Florida. “It’s very powerful,” he added.

The Insurrection Act, he noted, “has been used by 48 percent of presidents.”

His warning on social media Thursday came after a federal officer shot and injured an illegal immigrant in Minneapolis after the Venezuelan ambushed the officer with a shovel, sparking more protests and unrest in the Twin Cities area. The FBI also announced that it is offering a $100,000 reward for anyone who provides information about a break-in that targeted government vehicles.

“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 social media.

The Insurrection Act allows a president to deploy U.S. military troops to an area to deal with civil unrest. The last time it was invoked was by former President George H.W. Bush to quell riots, widespread violence, and arson incidents in Los Angeles in 1992.

In normal circumstances, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids the military from taking part in civilian law enforcement other than for national disaster relief and in some drug enforcement cases.

The Insurrection Act has been invoked 30 times in U.S. history, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. The Supreme Court has ruled that the president alone can determine if the act’s conditions have been met.

The law has been used by presidents for disparate reasons. For instance, President Abraham Lincoln invoked the law in 1861 as multiple southern states seceded from the United States at the start of the Civil War. A century later, presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson used the law to enforce desegregation measures during the Civil Rights era.

It’s not the first time Trump has warned he could use the law. In October, Trump suggested he could invoke the act if courts denied orders to send in the National Guard to multiple U.S. cities. In his first term, Trump suggested he would use the law to send troops to quell rioting during Black Lives Matter protests directed at police across the United States in 2020.

This month, the Trump administration sent more than 2,000 federal officers and agents to the Minneapolis area to arrest illegal immigrants in the city as well as investigate allegations of rampant fraud of federal entitlement benefits.

Both the administration and Minnesota Democrats have blamed each other for stoking anger and violence there.

After Trump’s Truth Social post, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he was “making a direct appeal to the President,” saying he wanted calm in his state.

“Let’s turn the temperature down. Stop this campaign of retribution. This is not who we are,” the Democratic governor, who ran for vice president in 2024, said in a post on X.

“And an appeal to Minnesotans: I know this is scary. We can—we must—speak out loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. We cannot fan the flames of chaos. That’s what he wants.”