Vice President JD Vance said Sunday that President Donald Trump is “looking at all of his options” to deploy the National Guard in major cities—including invoking the Insurrection Act.
In an interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker, Vance stressed that Trump “has not felt he needed to” invoke the law “right now,” but he made it clear that the president isn’t taking it off the table.
The Insurrection Act gives a president sweeping authority to deploy U.S. military forces for domestic law enforcement, bypassing the usual need for congressional approval. Trump has been openly floating the idea for weeks, describing it as “a way to get around” court rulings that have blocked his attempts to use the National Guard to crack down on crime and suppress protests over his draconian immigration policies.
Texas National Guard members arrive in Illinois on Oct 7.
“We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump said. “If I had to enact it, I’d do that. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I’d do that.”
Inside the West Wing, those aren’t just idle musings. Senior officials have been holding increasingly serious discussions about whether to invoke the law—a move that would be unprecedented since George H. W. Bush used it during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Doing so would also sharply escalate Trump’s standoff with Democrat-led cities and his broader effort to federalize National Guard troops.
Echoing Trump’s talking points, Vance claimed on NBC that crime is out of control in major cities, citing violent incidents targeting immigration officers.
“Crime has gotten out of control in our cities, because ICE agents, the people enforcing our immigration laws, have faced a 1,000% increase in violent attacks against them,” he said. “We have people right now who are going out there, who are doing the job the president asked them to do, who are enforcing our immigration laws—they’re being assaulted, they’re being beaten, they’re being shot at.”
The White House has zeroed in on cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, and Washington—which Trump has long painted as lawless—as testing grounds for deploying federalized troops. For the most part, those plans have been tied up in court, but they remain central to Trump’s justification for potentially triggering the Insurrection Act.
But that narrative doesn’t match the facts.
Crime in Chicago, Portland, and Washington has actually fallen. Yet when pressed on whether the situation rose to the level of “rebellion” that might justify invoking the Insurrection Act, Vance accused local officials of not “keeping the statistics properly”—without offering any evidence.
He then pivoted to attacking Trump’s critics.
A cartoon by Pedro Molina.
“The problem here is not the Insurrection Act or whether we actually invoke it or not,” he said. “The problem is the fact that the entire media in this country, cheered on by a few far-left lunatics, have made it okay to tee off on American law enforcement. We cannot accept that in the United States of America.”
Legal pushback has been swift. On Saturday, a federal appeals court blocked Trump from deploying the National Guard to Illinois, allowing them to remain federalized but not deployed. The National Guard units had already arrived in Chicago before the ruling.
Meanwhile, a separate judge issued a similar injunction in Portland, barring the White House from sending troops from any state while the case proceeds. The Ninth Circuit is now weighing that decision.
Initially, the Trump administration tried to deploy the Oregon National Guard. When that was blocked, it attempted to bring in California troops, which a judge also blocked. One appeals judge indicated that the court would try to move quickly, though no timeline is clear.
For now, Trump and Vance are keeping the threat of the Insurrection Act alive—a not-so-subtle reminder that this administration is willing to abuse its executive power to get its way.
