Name: What is the Insurrection Act? Inside Trump's threat
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T16:53:05.000Z
Duration: 10 min 5 s
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Adverbs of degree

President Trump is now making a new and serious threat after protests in Minneapolis grew even more chaotic overnight.

And there was another shooting involving a federal agent.

Adverbs of manner

This agent allegedly ambushed the president.

Posting this will put it up for you, saying that if Minnesota's politicians don't obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the patriots of ice, I will institute the Insurrection Act.

So that could lead to him deploying U.S. troops on you, on U.S. oil in that state.

This, I mean, this has now been taken to a whole new level by the president with this threat.

And I should know that this is something we've heard President Trump, of course, threaten in the past.

He did so during his first term, particularly around the Joy Floyd protests that had erupted in 2020.

But he also recently did it as well when talking about, you know, wanting to crack down on, you know, different types of protests, but

even more specifically, maybe having the military help with law enforcement and trying to crack down on crime and deportations in cities like Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago.

But part of the reason this is such a big deal.

Let me just break down what the Insurrection act actually is.

It's normally considered a last resort resort for presidents, but

it gives presidents the authority to call on active duty militaries.

You could see potentially people like the Marines or soldiers, National Guard included in that, going into the streets of U.S.

And it's normally used only in certain specific cases.

It can be used at the objection of local leaders.

Now, in my conversations with Trump officials, this was true during the first term, but

even more so now, I should argue, in the president's second term.

They have essentially told me that this is something they do not want, that they've been very hesitant to essentially go there despite the president threatening this.

Some of that is because of the legal complications, but even more so because of the political ones.

And, you know, having this type of law enforcement military in the streets, of course, would potentially escalate things so much further.

And so this has all been a calculation behind the scenes.

Of course, our goal today is to figure out how serious the president is actually about this and whether they're actually making plans potentially to do something to invoke this act.

Joining U.S. now, Andrew McCabe, CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former deputy director of the FBI.

Andrew, thanks so Much for joining us last night.

As you know, Minneapolis saw yet a new wave of very disturbing protests and clashes with police.

One week ago was the ICE shooting death of Renee Good.

And now the President is threatening to invoke what's called the Insurrection Insurrection Act.

Five years ago, Minneapolis was rocked by violent protests after the police murder of George Floyd.

Andy, is Minneapolis sitting on a powder keg right now?

Absolutely they are, Wolf, and I think you saw that very clearly last night.

I think the chaos, the escalation in violence, the overly tactical way that law enforcement responded to that assemblage of protesters, they're all very obviously related to the fact that the law enforcement team on the ground having to deal with this situation is not one that is trained for or equipped for or experienced in dealing with large crowd control.

These are federal agents, they're not police officers.

There's not as many of them as you would need to handle a large crowd.

Think about the way that we've seen effective law enforcement responses to large crowds, large protests, whether they be over the George Floyd death or whatever.

You typically see a massive number of police officers in riot gear, not carrying shoulder fired weapons, but

rather carrying shields and sometimes batons less than lethal weapons.

And they basically move together in a very systemic, systematic way to regain territory and disperse the protesters.

Right now you have a much smaller force totally focused on a tactical response.

Half of them are carrying M4s and other very heavy shoulder fired weapons, rifles.

And last night you saw it just about go off.

And now you have the President threatening this morning to invoke what's called the Insurrection Act.

He said, quote, if the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don't obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the patriots of ICE who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the Insurrection Act.

Let's remind everyone of what the Insurrection act is.

It allows the President to deploy the US military domestically and use that force against citizens.

It can only be employed if there is an insurrection or, or interference with state or federal law.

So, Andy, as a former Deputy Director of the FBI and acting Director, do you see any ground to legitimize the use of the Insurrection act here?

I think there's a lot of indicators on the ground that point towards the need for a much better and very different law enforcement response.

This is, you know, we have had, unfortunately violent protests in this country for a number of different reasons, different issues over the last couple of years, and

in not one of them has any other president declared to bring in the United States military to take over a city under the Insurrection Act.

What you have here is a, you know, the government, unlike the response to George Floyd, this is an issue in which the government could very quickly de escalate the tension and the violence on the ground simply by conducting their business differently.

By pulling back some of these ICE officers, by bringing a less aggressive, tactical approach to this entire issue of finding people who are illegally here in this country.

That's why there's violence and unrest on the street.

Now, I'm not saying that violence by protesters is ever necessary or justifiable under any circumstances.

But it is the government that's ratcheting up the tension and the violence here, and

they could easily turn that off by simply conducting themselves differently.

Just really quickly to follow up, I mean, you had the situation with the shooting overnight, and

DHS says that a Venezuelan national tried to flee and attacked the ICE officer trying to arrest him.

I mean, in that situation, do you think a shooting was justified in that case?

He was shot in the leg, that Venezuelan national?

Well, it's very hard to say, Pamela, because we know almost nothing about this.

And the reason is that the government's response, their comments in the media following the Renee Goode shooting 1 week ago have proven to us all that we cannot take their statements for granted.

We cannot accept what the government is telling us whole cloth.

They have no credibility in terms of the way that they are talking about and characterizing the people involved in these events.

They absolutely mischaracterize, deliberately mischaracterized Ms. Good and her partner as terrorists.

They haven't been alleged to have committed a crime with an indictment or anything like that.

So we know that we can't trust what the government is saying about what's happening on the ground.

So now you think about what happened last night, and we essentially know nothing at this point.

We're waiting to hear from the Minnesota officials to get some more details, because right now we only have the DHS side of things.

All right, Andrew McCabe, as usual, thank you very, very much.

Joining me now is Robin Wansley, a Democrat on the Minneapolis City Council.

The president has just amped things up, saying he is threatening to use the Insurrection act if things do not calm down there in Minneapolis, in Minnesota what is your response to that?

Yeah, so just first want to offer clarification that I am the city's first black democratic socialist city council member, minority leader.

In terms of Trump threatening to use the Insurrection Act, I don't think any of us on the ground here are surprised.

Essentially, what Trump has been inching to do since he first deployed ICE agents to Minneapolis about six weeks ago was really to build to this place where he can normalize, using his administrative powers to go to war with with local cities who do not fall in alignment with his administration's political goals, which is to divide people, terrorize people, keep people in poverty, deprive working class people of their basic needs and also their civil liberties.

And Minneapolis is a testing ground in which he's trying to normalize, legalize these very terroristic actions that's coming from our own administration here in the US that we often see happen abroad, actions that we wage against communities abroad.

He's doing that right here in his own homelands, his own country that he took oath to serve and protect.

And it's because of these dynamics that it's even more imperative that elected officials like myself needs to be doing everything we can to get ICE out of Minneapolis, ICE out of Minnesota.