Trump Blurts Out Real Reason for Insurrection Act Threat—and It’s Dark

Do President Trump’s advisers actively want him to act like a dictator? At the very least, there’s plainly a deep split inside Trumpworld on this question. As deranged as it seems, one faction clearly believes Trump absolutely should project unconstrained tyrannical power, to frighten ordinary voters and institutions into compliance, while another faction thinks acting like a Mad King risks a huge electoral rebuke and, by extension, that normal political patterns still apply.

You can see this tension in Trump’s ugly new comments about invoking the Insurrection Act, which would empower him to use the military for domestic law enforcement. Lately he’s suggested that he might not invoke it after all. And in an interview flagged by Aaron Rupar, Trump said this again.

But this time, Trump added an asterisk:

Trump on the Insurrection Act: "It does make life a lot easier. You don't through the court system. It's just a much easier thing to do." pic.twitter.com/HkLoyNIvlw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 21, 2026

Asked if he sees the act as “necessary,” Trump said: “I don’t think it is yet. It might be at some point.” Trump added that other presidents have invoked it, and said: “It does make life a lot easier. You don’t go through the court system. It’s just a much easier thing to do.”

Emphasis added. Trump seems to think invoking the Insurrection Act means he’s no longer constrained by the courts. That’s nonsense. Yes, the act would allow him to deploy the military to carry out things that “law enforcement” (a grotesque misnomer for ICE) is doing in places like Minneapolis amid his immigration crackdown. And given that Trump has already sanctioned extraordinary abuses of power—detentions of U.S. citizens, warrantless arrests, excessive violence against protesters, including the occasional killing—empowering the military to do all this is an unsettling prospect.

But it emphatically does not mean Trump can evade the courts. Anything Trump orders the military to do will also be subject to legal limits. As Georgetown law professor Stephen Vladeck emails me: “The same laws and the specter of judicial review that [constrain] what civilian law enforcement agencies can do will also constrain anything the military can do.”

Indeed, it’s likely that the second Trump invoked the act, he’d be hit by lawsuits from, say, the state of Minnesota, presuming he deploys the military there, and from civil society groups representing victims of the crackdown. This would be intensely litigated, with lower courts scrutinizing the invocation’s rationale, fact sets related to the deployment, military conduct on the ground, and so on.

It’s possible that Trump is referring to an 1827 Supreme Court decision suggesting that presidential invocations of the act are not subject to judicial review. But much court precedent and law since then casts doubt on whether that ruling is good law, says Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center, and even if the administration claims it applies, the courts would hear litigation over that.

“There will be lawsuits—this will be heard in court,” Nunn told me. And no matter what, everything the military actually does on the ground would itself “be subject to judicial review,” Nunn added, because “they still have to follow the law.”

What’s striking here is that Trump believes the act provides him license to circumvent the judiciary. As Vladeck noted: “Trump seems to be under the misimpression that invoking the Insurrection Act is tantamount to imposing military rule.” So this is really a window into Trump’s fantasies about presiding over martial law, or over a military dictatorship.

Trump’s advisers are clearly divided over all this. Recall that Suzie Wiles recently declared it “categorically false” that Trump will use the military to suppress voting in the midterms. She wants to create the impression that Trump isn’t capable of massive abuses of power with the military, probably because it’s political poison in the elections, which she apparently thinks will happen on schedule. You see the influence of this in Trump’s recent softening of his Insurrection Act threats.

Stephen Miller, by contrast, is acting very much like he wants Trump to invoke the act. Last year, Miller refused to say whether he’s discussed this with Trump. He constantly uses public language that’s plainly designed to push Trump in that direction. He regularly describes protesters as insurrectionists and relentlessly lies that court rulings limiting Trump’s crackdowns are illegitimate, even calling the judges themselves insurrectionists. Miller is likely whispering in Trump’s ear that invoking the act means no more pesky judicial interference.

What’s really at stake here runs deeper still. After the killing of Renee Good, administration officials conspicuously did not reassure the public that institutional steps are being taken to avoid future horrors. They didn’t promise an impartial examination to build confidence by involving stakeholders on all sides. Instead, they offered an account that anyone could see with their own eyes was nonsense. As writer Radley Balko notes:

The lies this administration is telling about Ms. Good aren’t those you deploy as part of a cover-up. They’re those you use when you want to show you can get away with anything.

I’d take that further. Miller, JD Vance, and the other ethnonationalists around Trump operate from a worldview dictating that modern levels of immigration profoundly threaten national social cohesion. They think this view is widely shared by a “silent majority.”

But the surprise of the moment has been the extraordinary solidarity that ordinary Americans have shown with immigrants and against Trump-Miller-Vance’s parade of ethnonationalist horrors. Miller is using state-sponsored violence and terror to try to break up that alliance. A big reason Trumpworld is unapologetic about Good—Vance responded by exaggerating the immunity of ICE officers, and Miller kept describing protesters as insurrectionists, meaning it’s open season on them—is to warn Americans showing solidarity with immigrants that they do so at their personal peril.

The fascists around Trump want us to think Trump will circumvent the courts. They want to create the impression that he’s fully capable of presiding over a military dictatorship. They think that will cow Americans and institutions into compliance. But if recent events tell us one thing, it’s this: That absolutely, emphatically is not going to happen.