Donald Trump has never taken advantage of the Insurrection Act, though the president has talked about it quite a bit throughout his political career. A year ago this month, during a Fox News interview, the Republican went so far as to say, “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act … and that’s unquestioned power.”
Earlier this year, he also said of the Insurrection Act, “It does make life a lot easier. You don’t go through the court system.”
So when Time magazine spoke with the president for a lengthy, newly published interview, it included a question about that unsettling possibility: “Would you rule out declaring a state of emergency in the lead up to the midterms unless there’s widespread violence in the streets?”
“I don’t rule anything out or in,” Trump replied. “We’ll see. You mean the Insurrection Act?”
When Time clarified that it was, in fact, referring to the Insurrection Act, the president added, “No, I’ve never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes.”
At that point, Trump changed the subject, talked about crime rates and lied about how many undocumented immigrants entered the United States during Joe Biden’s presidency.
The exchange came roughly a month after Trump spoke to a far-right conspiracy theorist who pitched the president on the idea of unilaterally declaring a national security emergency for the midterm elections — even in the absence of an actual national security emergency — at which point Trump could theoretically impose wildly unnecessary voting restrictions on Americans by fiat and without congressional approval.
“Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK?” Trump said in response to the suggestion at the time. “I’ll leave it at that.”
To be sure, Trump didn’t explicitly say he would invoke the Insurrection Act — a federal law that grants the president emergency powers to deploy military troops on U.S. soil, who would act at his command — but when asked whether he would rule out declaring a state of emergency in the run-up to the midterms, the correct answer should have been, “Of course I’d rule that out.”
I can appreciate why these concerns might seem far-fetched, but there’s a pattern to consider. Earlier this year, the president mused publicly about canceling the midterm elections. A few months earlier, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — whose country cannot hold elections during Russia’s deadly war — Trump said, “Say, three and a half years from now, so you mean, if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections.”
There’s also the unavoidable fact that, after he lost his re-election bid six years ago, Trump launched a radical and ultimately violent effort to overturn the results he didn’t like, as part of a bid to remain in office despite the will of American voters.
So when Trump hedges after being asked about possibly declaring a state of emergency in the lead-up to the 2026 midterms, I find it difficult to shrug and laugh it off as meaningless nonsense.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
