'Essential': WaPo editorial board urges major overhaul of insurrection law before election

The Insurrection Act gives presidents sweeping authority to suppress uprisings, domestic violence and conspiracies — but the rarely used law specifies few limits to those powers.

That must change, argued the Washington Post's editorial board, to reign in a future president who lacks the respect for democratic values and constitutional norms demonstrated by Donald Trump – the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee who encouraged a mob of supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol and has pondered invoking the 1792 law on his first day in office if re-elected.

"Mr. Trump’s associates have reportedly drafted plans to invoke the law on his first day in office, to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations," the board wrote.

"A partnership of right-wing think tanks, dubbed Project 2025, has drawn up executive orders to do so. Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who is one of the unnamed co-conspirators in Mr. Trump’s indictment in the federal election interference case, is leading this work.

"Mr. Trump has openly expressed regret for not using the Insurrection Act during the rioting that followed Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, bowing to governors who asked him not to send federal troops. 'The next time, I’m not waiting,' he said at a November rally."

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A bipartisan group of former government lawyers has drafted a set of reforms to the act that would clarify that a president cannot deploy the military unless violence overwhelms the capacity of federal, state, and local authorities to respond and would limit troop deployments to 30 days without additional authorization by Congress.

"The Republican-controlled House is unlikely to take up a reform bill before the end of the year, but perhaps there’s an opening for bipartisanship," the editors wrote.

"The best vehicle would be an amendment to the must-pass national defense reauthorization bill, as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CR) and Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-MD) have discussed. It would be wise to modernize this law even if there were no chance of Mr. Trump’s election.

"Since there is a chance, it seems essential."