Press asks Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Hear what he said
by Guy Page
At a White House ‘press gaggle’ with Stephen Miller Friday afternoon August 29, a reporter asked what many Americans are wondering (some with hope, others with fear): will President Trump’s concern about violence in Chicago and other large cities lead him to invoke the Insurrection Act?
Miller called it a ‘great question’ and then made an impassioned case for more law and order in American cities. But he stopped short of endorsing presidential invocation of the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use the National Guard on U.S. soil to quell violence. It has been invoked for this purpose at least twice since 1957.
Here’s the recording by pool reporter Brittany Gibson (Signal, What’s Ap), and distributed at 3:20 PM today to media by the White House press office. The exchange takes place near the end of the conversation, at the 17 minute, eight second mark.
Reporter: What are your plans from Chicago for this administration? And have you had a direct conversation with the president about invoking the Insurrection Act for Chicago or any Americans?
Stephen Miller: Great question. No updates on Chicago, so as soon as I have some, I’ll be glad to give them to you.
The President has been clearing his public statements on that, but I will just take the privilege of the question as an opportunity to reiterate, once again, this administration is committed to the eradication of organized street violence in the United States of America as one of our top public safety objectives, there is no place for organized street violence in America, whether it be from homegrown crews of street trucks or whether it be from foreign criminal cartels operating on our soil, every American city should be safe and free from this organized, horrific, bloody street violence we have tolerated for too long.
The Democrat Party as an institution at every level, its judges, its lawyers, its community activists and its politicians exist to serve these criminal thugs. We see it here in DC. We talk to the cops, they say we’re not allowed to arrest anybody, and then when we do arrest somebody, then they’re immediately bailed out. They’re immediately released. They’re immediately set free. We arrest them again. They’re back on the street again. And what do they do? They kill, they attack, they rob, they rape.
Why would we put up with this? Right? These are society destroyers. It’s a simple choice, you either side with civilization or you side with anarchy and violence, to be using federal law enforcement and our National Guard to make this city safe and peaceful for Americans. And he stands ready to help and assist any community that wishes to be liberated from these criminal elements that are such a dire threat to the freedom and tranquility of the American people.
Reporter: That include the Insurrection Act?
Miller: Thank you.
According to the Constitution Center (republished verbatim), the Insurrection Act of 1807 is one of a series of laws that Congress has passed to allow the president to deploy the National Guard or federal armed forces to deal with “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States.”
President Trump asked for the cabinet-level recommendations in an executive order issued on Jan. 20, 2025, to determine which actions “may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807.”
While the Insurrection Acts and related laws allow the president to use military forces in a limited fashion in domestic circumstances, another law passed by Congress serves as a counterbalance: the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Passed after Reconstruction, the act prevents the federal military from acting as a police force unless there is a clear grant of power from Congress, or such actions are “expressly authorized by the Constitution.”
The last use of the Insurrection Act was in May 1992, when President George H.W. Bush directed the use of 3,500 federal troops after California’s governor requested help when the National Guard could not contain riots related to the Rodney King case. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal soldiers under another statute to enforce the desegregation at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. On other occasions, the president has directed the use of federal forces to contain an outright rebellion, labor disputes, race riots, and public protests.