President Trump said in an interview published Thursday that he has not ruled out invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring a national emergency around the November midterm elections.
Asked by Time about the limits of his presidential power, Trump kept his options open.
“I’m not committing to anything,” the president said. “We’re going to see how it plays out in court.”
According to the outlet, White House advisers have already considered how the administration would respond if Democrats take back the House, the Senate or both chambers.
One official said the administration would “be forced to think more bipartisan.”
“I would hope that if we win, we can still do that, because for two years we’ve run a completely partisan play,” the official told Time. “When you’re looking back on your time, I don’t think that’s what you should be proud of, even if it was successful.”
Trump, however, has warned that Democrats will try to impeach him for a third time if they win control of either chamber.
The president also brushed aside polls showing weak numbers for him and other Republicans, calling them fake.
Trump has a track record of threatening to deploy troops under the Insurrection Act of 1807.
In January, he threatened to send troops to Minneapolis after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good. He later said there was no reason to invoke the law.
In June 2025, Trump said he would “certainly” invoke the act in response to anti-ICE demonstrations in the streets of Los Angeles. He made a similar statement in October about protests in Portland, Oregon. The president compared both situations to “insurrections.”
Trump has also said that late in his first term, he considered sending troops to Minneapolis after protests broke out following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police.
The Insurrection Act has deep roots in American history. According to the National Constitution Center, President Thomas Jefferson sought to confront former Vice President Aaron Burr’s organized effort to establish a new country in the Louisiana Territory in 1807.
The act became law after Burr was arrested in Alabama and charged with treason.
Under the law, the president may deploy members of the military or federalize a state’s National Guard “in all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States, or of any individual state or territory.”
Those forces may be used “for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed.”
So far, Trump has relied on Title 10 to send federal troops into U.S. cities. Title 10 is a federal code that gives the president authority to deploy the National Guard to assist local law enforcement in a supporting role.
The Insurrection Act was last invoked by President George H.W. Bush in May 1992 in response to the Los Angeles riots. The unrest followed the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, a flash point in the city’s history.
In total, 15 U.S. presidents have invoked the law.
Trump’s comments to Time signal that the president is keeping every option on the table as the nation heads toward the November midterms.
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