What Is the Insurrection Act That Trump Says He’s Considering? 6OKT25

 THE simple and honest answer to this question is it is the law that NOT MY pres drumpf / trump refused to invoke against the insurrectionist he himself sent to the US Capital on 6 JAN 21 to stop congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election that he lost. His was a blatant act of treason against our democratic Republic. Now he is perverting this same law to justify his attempts to overthrow our democracy and install the fascist heritage foundation's project 2025 authoritarian theocratic oligarchy. More and more Americans are joining the opposition to defend the United States, the number of NO KINGS protest and the number of participants across the country on 18 October 2025 will show the drumpf / trump administration, the gop / greed over people, the supreme court and the heritage foundation that WE THE PEOPLE will not loose our country, our freedom without a fight and this is a fight we have no intention of loosing. From the  New York Times.....

What Trump's national emergencies could mean for American democracy

One of the Supreme Court’s sharpest critics sits on it 5JUL25

What Is the Insurrection Act That Trump Says He’s Considering?

The president said he would invoke emergency powers to deploy the National Guard if “people were being killed, and courts were holding us up.”

By Chris Cameron

Reporting from Washington

Oct. 6, 2025

President Trump said on Monday he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act — an 1807 law that grants the president emergency powers to deploy troops on U.S. soil — as a way to “get around” recent court rulings that have blocked his efforts to deploy the National Guard in major American cities.

In an appearance on the right-wing cable network Newsmax Monday evening, Mr. Trump said that he saw the Insurrection Act as “a way to get around” the opposition to the deployments, but did not commit to invoking the law. “If we don’t have to use it,” he said, “I wouldn’t use it.”

In an appearance in the Oval Office in the afternoon, Mr. Trump was asked under what circumstances he would exercise those emergency powers. Mr. Trump replied that “we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” and “I’d do it if it were necessary, but so far it hasn’t been necessary.” He laid out a set of conditions that he said could justify invoking the act, including “if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or mayors or governors were holding us up.”

In Mr. Trump’s worldview, at least some of those conditions have already been met. Mr. Trump has described Portland, Ore., one of the cities he has targeted for National Guard deployments, as “on fire for years,” adding “I think that’s all insurrection, really criminal insurrection.”

Democratic officials have resisted the National Guard deployments, most prominently Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois. On Monday, Mr. Pritzker accused the president of causing chaos and confusion to create a “pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send the military to our city.”

Mr. Trump’s remarks came after two court rulings over the weekend blocked the Trump administration from deploying hundreds of out-of-state National Guard troops to Oregon. Judge Karin Immergut, an appointee of Mr. Trump’s, initially blocked his deployment of military forces on Saturday and then broadened her restraining order on Sunday after Mr. Trump tried to sidestep it, telling Justice Department lawyers that the president had been “in direct contravention” of her order.

Generally, the Insurrection Act gives the president the power to send military forces to states to quell widespread public unrest and to support civilian law enforcement agencies. Before invoking it, the president must first call for the “insurgents” to disperse, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in 2006. If stability is not restored, the president may then issue an executive order to deploy troops

Mr. Trump has raised the idea of deploying the military for domestic law enforcement since his first term. The Insurrection Act has not been invoked for more than 30 years, and Mr. Trump’s use of the emergency powers for routine law enforcement would carry profound implications for civil liberties and for the traditional constraints on federal power.

The law typically forbids the use of the military as a domestic police force.

But the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to use the military to suppress an insurrection if a state government requests it. And there is some leeway in the president’s discretion, such as whether the commander in chief considers that the unrest is obstructing laws of the United States. Both Mr. Trump and Stephen Miller, a senior aide to the president, have invoked the term “insurrection” in remarks justifying the National Guard deployments.

The last time that the act was used was in 1992, when riots in Los Angeles broke out after four white police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist. Armed forces have also been used to quell civil disturbances after natural disasters, as with widespread looting in St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, after Hurricane Hugo in 1989, according to the Congressional Research Service report.

But the current situation in Chicago, Portland and other cities is a far cry from the general lawlessness that precipitated those emergencies. Even as Mr. Trump describes Chicago in near-apocalyptic language, the murder rate in the city has fallen significantly so far in 2025, with 319 homicides recorded for the year through the end of September — down by nearly half compared with the height of the pandemic. Even so, Mr. Trump asserted on Monday that it’s “probably worse than almost any city in the world” and that even Taliban-ruled Afghanistan would “marvel at how much crime we have.”

Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 8, 2025, Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Weighs Using Insurrection Act to Deploy Military to American Cities. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Video shows federal agent shoot Chicago pastor in head with pepper ball during Broadview ICE protest 8OKT25

ALL the violence and lawlessness in Chicago is by Sec of Homeland Cruelty fascist fotze kkkristi noem's ice, hsi and cbp gestapo, not the true patriots, the people of Chicago rallying to defend the American democratic Republic from the neo-nazi drumpf / trump-vance administration's and the gop / greed over people-republican party's attempt to impose the fascist heritage foundation's project 2025 authoritarian theocratic oligarchy on us. Watch this video of kkkristi's gestapo shooting a pastor in the head with a pepper ball in Chicago today. I think kkkristi really hates Chicago because she pissed her pants there the other day, watch the 2nd video. The article is from FOX32 Chicago....

Video shows federal agent shoot Chicago pastor in head with pepper ball during Broadview ICE protest

By Nic Flosi

Published  October 8, 2025 2:01pm CDT

The Brief

• • Video shows a federal agent firing pepper balls at protesters outside the Broadview ICE facility in September.
  • According to Storyful, one pepper ball struck Chicago Pastor David Black, a Presbyterian minister, in the head.
  • The ACLU says Black is part of a lawsuit alleging the government suppressed First Amendment rights.

CHICAGO - A video shows a federal agent firing pepper balls at protesters outside the ICE processing center in the Chicago suburb of Broadview last month, striking a Chicago pastor in the head.

What we know:

The footage, captured by Kelly Hayes via Storyful, shows protesters standing outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility shouting toward three agents stationed on the roof.

One of the agents begins firing pepper balls and one of them hits Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Black then falls to the ground as others come to his aid.

Hayes told Storyful she had been at the protest only minutes when she saw Black get hit. In a post on Bluesky, she said Black was OK.

Big picture view:

The incident comes amid heightened federal immigration enforcement in the Chicago area under President Donald Trump, which has led to daily and sometimes tense demonstrations outside the Broadview facility.

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement on Monday that Black and others are seeking an emergency court order to halt what they describe as "illegal and brutal suppression" of their free speech rights.

Storyful said it reached out to Black for comment but had not heard back.

The Source: The information in this story came from Storyful, Kelly Hayes, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

UPDATE: Trump Administration Live Updates: Defiant Bondi Testifies in Combative Senate Hearing 7OKT25 RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES & CLIENT LIST!

 

AG fascist fotze pam bondi has to be the most corrupt attorney general in the modern history. She is a rude, ignorant, dishonest hündin, a disgrace to the nation, and a defender of pedophiles and sexual predators. It will be ironic if someday her decisions to defend criminal AND immoral activity will come back on her, her family and friends. And FYI Sen fascist fotze josh"I shit my pants on 6JAN21"hawley r-MO my family's phone was tapped after the fbi started a file on me when I was in the 9th grade during the nixon regime. It was annoying and insulting and illegal but we didn't have anything to hide cause I / we didn't do anything wrong. What are you afraid of being discovered? This from the New York Times.....

Trump Administration Live Updates: Defiant Bondi Testifies in Combative Senate Hearing

Oct. 7, 2025, 10:46 a.m. ET

Glenn Thrush

Reports on the Justice Department

Oct. 7, 2025, 12:45 p.m. ET

Devlin Barrett

Reports on the Justice Department

Where Things Stand

• Bondi testimony: During a combative Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi flatly refused to answer questions from Democrats about the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the decision to drop an investigation into President Trump’s border czar and the legal rationale for deadly strikes on boats the administration has said were carrying drugs from Venezuela. Ms. Bondi accused the Biden administration of having weaponized the Justice Department, even as the Trump administration has eroded the department’s traditional independence.

• Chuck Grassley, the Trump-aligned chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, opens an oversight hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi with a rambling attack on “indefensible” Democratic actions, including the investigation into President Trump. Bondi is expected to face withering questioning on a range of topics, including the strong-arm removal of a respected career prosecutor in Virginia last week.

• Senator Grassley, in his opening remarks of a hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi, tells the committee that his staff is working closely with the Justice Department’s weaponization task force, run by Ed Martin, the former U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia. The group was formed purportedly to root out “abuses of the criminal justice process” by local and federal law enforcement officers, but Martin has said he plans to use his authority to expose and discredit those he believes to be guilty, even if he cannot find sufficient evidence to prosecute them. Critics say that would be weaponizing an institution he has been hired to de-weaponize.

• Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted Attorney General Pam Bondi for overseeing a “systematically weaponized agency to protect President Trump and his allies” and “attack his opponents.” Durbin, who represents Illinois, accused Trump and Bondi of targeting Chicago for punitive immigration enforcement and using “the full force” of the federal government to intimidate his opponents and score political points.

• Attorney General Pam Bondi, adopting the attack-is-the-best-defense playbook she has used in previous appearances before the committee, angrily dismissed suggestions that she has weaponized the Justice Department to attack President Trump’s political foes. “They wanted to take President Trump off the playing field,” she said of Biden-era officials who indicted Mr. Trump twice. “This is the kind of conduct that shatters the American people’s faith in our law enforcement system.”

• Bondi just lauded the work of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Under her watch, the agency responsible for enforcing the nation’s gun laws has been essentially leaderless, after F.B.I. director Kash Patel — who was originally given leadership of the bureau — quit. He was replaced by another off-site official with a demanding day job, Daniel P. Driscoll, the secretary of the Army.

• Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois asked Attorney General Pam Bondi if the White House consulted her on the deployment of federal troops in Chicago. She responded with a high-volume personal attack. “I wish you’d love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. And currently the National Guard is on the way to Chicago — if you’re not going to protect your citizens.”

• Bondi, like the F.B.I. director Kash Patel, is attempting to turn Democrats’ questioning on the committee into high-volume political theater. The attorney general has shouted herself hoarse after only a few minutes of questioning. She has refused to answer any questions about her decision-making on the Epstein investigation and other matters.

• Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat of Rhode Island, asked Bondi about the Justice Department’s decision to drop the investigation into Tom Homan, who was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation. “What became of the $50,000?” he asked. Bondi refused to answer the questions, then attacked Whitehouse by demanding to know why he once took campaign donations from a donor that Republicans have linked to Jeffrey Epstein.

• Bondi’s calculated bombast on Tuesday, punctuated by her partisan and personal attacks on Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, reflects a coordinated effort across the Trump administration to flip potentially damaging moments of public accountability into opportunities to savage political opponents. Oversight hearings have always had elements of political theater. But the approach taken by Bondi, and previously by F.B.I director Kash Patel, has been different than that taken by any of their predecessors, characterized by a contemptuous refusal to cursorily address inconvenient questions and the use of prepared attacks against Democrats to change the subject and drown out criticism.

• UPDATE 1 BELOW:

• More than three hours into the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Pam Bondi has repeatedly refused to answer questions about her involvement in and knowledge of the forced resignation of Erik Siebert, the former U.S. attorney in eastern Virginia.

  Siebert was replaced after refusing to prosecute the former F.B.I. director James Comey. Bondi did not deny reports that she opposed his firing and did not directly rebut the accounts of administration officials who have told The Times that she cast doubt on the viability of the case.

• Bondi expressed little interest in the claims of Commerce Secretary Commerce Howard Lutnick that the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was “the greatest blackmailer ever.” Bondi has been under fire for months since she decided to stop the release of F.B.I. files about Epstein and declared that no evidence had been found of him blackmailing others. Pressed by Senator John Neely Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, she said no official had asked to talk to Lutnick, a former neighbor of Epstein’s.

  Kennedy seemed perplexed by that answer. “If Howard Lutnick wants to speak to the F.B.I.,” and if F.B.I. Director Kash Patel wants him interviewed, that would “absolutely” happen, Bondi said.

• Bondi also dodged queries about reports that the Justice Department signed off on the legality of military strikes against boats in international waters that are believed to be involved in drug trafficking. “I’m not going to discuss any legal advice that my department may or may not have given or issued,” she said.

• Republican senators denounce Jack Smith over Jan. 6 scrutiny of their phone records.

• At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Republican lawmakers repeatedly denounced Jack Smith, the former special counsel, and the Biden administration for taking the phone records of more than a half-dozen G.O.P. senators to determine who they spoke to just before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

  The attacks formed a core part of Republicans’ response as Democrats on the panel grilled Attorney General Pam Bondi over President Trump’s increasing pressure on the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies. Republicans used the phone records to argue instead that the Biden administration had politicized the department, though much remains unknown about the records’ role in the investigation, and there has been no evidence that the Biden White House influenced the inquiry.

  Republicans pressed Ms. Bondi to investigate and punish anyone associated with the investigative step, such as the F.B.I. agents who examined the phone data of nine Republican lawmakers to determine who they called, who called them, and when and where the calls were made.

  The analysis of phone toll records is a common investigative tactic, though there are occasional policy and political debates about when and how such data should be taken. Such toll record information does not include the contents of conversations, which would require a court-approved wiretap.

  On Monday, Republicans revealed an internal F.B.I. document showing that the toll records were collected in September 2023, shortly after Mr. Smith indicted Mr. Trump for conspiracy and other crimes related to Jan. 6.

  The committee’s chairman, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called the move politically motivated “spying,” and said there was no factual predicate to justify examining the lawmakers’ phone records around the time of the riot by supporters of Mr. Trump.

  One of the senators whose phone records were taken with a grand jury subpoena, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, erupted at the hearing over the issue.

  “Can you tell me why my phone records,” taken at a time when he was the chairman of the committee, “were sought by the Jack Smith agents?” Mr. Graham asked. “Why did they ask to know who I called and what I was doing from January 4th to the 7th?”

  He then asked Ms. Bondi if she thought that was an “abuse of power.”

  The attorney general declined to answer, but said Mr. Smith “wasted $50 million” in an effort
  to “put President Trump in jail.”

  Another Republican lawmaker whose phone records were examined over that four-day period was Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who falsely claimed that the F.B.I. document showed agents had engaged in wiretapping.

  “The F.B.I. tapped my phone,” Mr. Hawley said angrily.

  Mr. Grassley and other lawmakers have hedged when asked if they plan to call Mr. Smith as a witness to discuss his investigation, saying they plan to let the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, conduct his own inquiry. At the hearing, Ms. Bondi said she “cannot discuss whether there is an ongoing investigation” into the matter.

• Through the course of this Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi has sought to deflect a pointed informational request with an attack line. One example: She accused Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, of “storming” Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem during a news conference in June. In fact, the senator was physically removed from the event and shoved into a hallway as he approached the lectern to ask the secretary a question.