(The Center Square) – Responding to concerns that President Donald Trump could use the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically, Congressman Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., introduced a bill to limit presidential power on Tuesday.
The bill entitled the Insurrection Act of 2025 would update the original 1807 legislation to clarify and narrow the circumstances in which it could be used.
Updates would state explicitly that it’s a measure of last resort. Invoking the act would require prior consultation with Congress and limit its use to a seven-day period. It would “clarify that the law cannot be used to suspend habeas corpus, impose martial law, or deputize private militias to act as soldiers,” and provide for a judicial review in the event of its abuse.
“No President should have such wide-ranging power to deploy American troops against the American people,” said Deluzio. “This President has threatened to use the United States military to crush dissent among the American people, and Congress should act to reform and update the law that governs deployment of our troops for law enforcement in the United States.”
While Trump has brought up the possibility of using the act on multiple occasions with reports dating back to his first administration, it hasn’t happened. Other executive powers were wielded in deploying the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles last month.
At that time, he told ABC News that whether he would use it “depends on whether there’s an insurrection.”
That the president has signaled a willingness to use the rarely invoked power is enough to concern many of his opponents.
“The troubling scenes unfolding in Los Angeles give us a glimpse of what could happen nationwide if President Trump tries to invoke the Insurrection Act and turn U.S. troops on civilians,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs, CA-51, who co-sponsored the bill. “We’ve already seen him twist the law for political gain, so Congress must leave zero ambiguity about when—and for how long—any president can deploy the military for domestic law-enforcement purposes.
A companion bill was introduced in the Senate last month.
The act as written gives broad leeway for presidential discernment, stating “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”
The majority of instances in which the Insurrection Act was used in the past involved unrest directly related to the country’s struggles with racial violence and civil rights. It was last invoked in 1992 during riots that broke out in Los Angeles after four officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted of the crime.
