Lawmakers Consider Changes to Insurrection Act

“In the days before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, some of President Donald Trump’s most extreme allies and members of right-wing militia groups urged him to use his power as commander in chief to unleash the military to help keep him in office,” the New York Times reports.

“Now, as the House committee investigating last year’s riot uncovers new evidence about the lengths to which Mr. Trump was willing to go to cling to power, some lawmakers on the panel have quietly begun discussions about rewriting the Insurrection Act, the 1807 law that gives presidents wide authority to deploy the military within the United States to respond to a rebellion.”

“The discussions are preliminary, and debate over the act has been fraught in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s presidency. Proponents envision a doomsday scenario in which a rogue future president might try to use the military to stoke — rather than put down — an insurrection, or to abuse protesters. But skeptics worry about depriving a president of the power to quickly deploy armed troops in the event of an uprising, as presidents did during the Civil War and the civil rights era.”