President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minneapolis to stop protesters with military force. "The Daily Report" explores what this would allow the president to do, and CBS News' Jessica Levinson has more legal analysis.

Minneapolis

CBS News explored the Insurrection Act following President Trump's threat to use it in Minneapolis to deploy military force against protesters. The report clarifies that the Insurrection Act is a series of laws, not a single statute, passed between 1792 and 1871, and is one of the few exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits the use of the U.S. military in domestic law enforcement.

Legal experts explained that the president has significant discretion to invoke the act, requiring only a formal proclamation. Historically, the act has been used 32 times, often with state cooperation, and has not been successfully challenged in court. The law's broad language is intended to allow decisive federal action during major breakdowns in law and order when state authorities cannot or will not intervene.

What is the Insurrection Act that Trump could use in Minneapolis?

President Trump threatened in a Truth Social post today to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minneapolis to stop protesters with military force. We wanted to look at what invoking the Insurrection Act would allow President Trump to do. First, the Insurrection Act isn't actually an individual law, but a series passed between 1792 and 1871. The U.S. military is banned from engaging in domestic law enforcement, like traffic stops and making arrests, by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. The Insurrection Act is one of the only exceptions to that 1878 law. It lays out the circumstances under which a president can deploy military forces inside the U.S. as law enforcement. They are, if the state's legislature or governor asks the president for help stopping a rebellion, to counter obstructions that get in the way of enforcing U.S. laws through normal judicial proceedings, to suppress a conspiracy to deny a state's residents other constitutional rights and not enforce federal law when the state itself refuses to intervene, or to combat an insurrection in a state that interferes with the execution of the laws of the United States. Analysts at the Brennan Center have noted that the law's broadness gives the president a lot of latitude in how they can use the act. The only requirement is that a president must sign a proclamation invoking the act and ordering insurgents to disperse. Most recently, George H.W. Bush did that in 1992 after California's governor requested help responding to the Rodney King protests. The Insurrection Act has been used by presidents 32 times throughout American history. Presidents have enacted it in multiple scenarios, including to combat white supremacists after the Civil War, to end union strikes, and protect the civil rights of black residents in southern states. CBS News legal contributor Jessica Levinson joins me now. So Jessica, if President Trump does invoke the Insurrection Act, can it be challenged in the courts? So that's the big question. The Trump administration will make an argument, I suspect, just like the argument they made when the president sought to federalize members of the National Guard, which is this is a decision only for the president. It is a political question and judges don't get to second-guess. When it came to federalizing the National Guard, which is a smaller step than invoking the Insurrection Act, so far what judges have said is we get to take a look. We get to determine whether or not that invocation was proper in these circumstances, but not a particularly searching one. Basically, we understand we have to give you deference. Now the question, because as far as I know, we don't have a case that squarely indicates, at least in the last 200 years, where we are on this. Now the question would be if the president invokes the Insurrection Act and there was a challenge, then would a court similarly say, you know, we actually do get to be a small check, but we have to understand that this is largely a decision for anybody who is in the Oval Office, for any elected chief executive. Has there been any precedent for someone challenging a president's invocation of the Insurrection Act? So not successfully, formally, as far as I can see. What we typically see in this situation, and as you just laid out, is there's actually cooperation. So at least for the last 50 plus years, when we've seen the Insurrection Act be used, it's because a governor has said we need some help. I remember those riots in Los Angeles when I was very young, and the governor said we need some help. Please send in the military. It was only back to the civil rights era where you saw that the president, over the objections of a governor, said we're going to send in the military, we're going to use the Insurrection Act, and no successful challenges in those cases. Do we know why the language here is so broad, what the spirit of that is? Yes, I will say I think we're all acknowledging that the language is very broad, and there has been some push to actually have legislation that essentially tries to narrow that. The language is broad, my understanding is, because what it describes is a significant breakdown. I mean, you just laid this out very clearly, where there's something akin to you can't, through normal judicial proceedings, enforce federal law, or people's constitutional rights are being infringed upon and the state won't help. In those kind of, frankly, catastrophic situations, what the legislation does is it gives a president a lot of power and authority. And now we're looking at that language and seeing it's a really broad grant, and it gives a president, frankly, a lot of discretion. And so I think the idea is something terrible happens, we want the president to be able to act. Jessica Levinson, love it when you take us to school. Thank you.

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