Donald Trump could use emergency legislation to send soldiers to Chicago. A clue comes from one of the chief justices.
December 25, 2025, 07:28December 25, 2025, 07:28
Thomas Wanhoff / t-online
US President Donald Trump is not allowed to send the National Guard to Chicago after a Supreme Court decision. But one of the judges gave the Republican a hint as to how he could still use soldiers.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily blocked the deployment of the National Guard to Chicago. The mostly conservative judges said that the government had not clearly stated the legal basis for sending the soldiers.
In a statement, however, Judge Brett Kavanaugh stated that Trump could create a different basis. “In my reading, the Court’s ruling does not address the president’s powers under the Insurrection Act,” conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a footnote.
“An obvious consequence of the Court’s ruling could be that the President could use the U.S. military rather than the National Guard to protect federal personnel and property in the United States.”
The Insurrection Act is a US federal law that allows the president to use the military domestically to enforce law and order. The law originally dates from 1807 and is one of the president’s most far-reaching emergency powers. It can be used when civil authorities are no longer able to prevent serious unrest or lawbreaking. He was last deployed in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict. At that time, four white police officers who were said to have beaten black citizen Rodney King were acquitted.
Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump in 2018.Image: keystone
Trump himself had already commented in October whether he wanted to apply the law. «I would do it if it were necessary. “So far it hasn’t been necessary,” said Trump.
“But we have an insurrection law for a reason.”
Eisenhower already sent soldiers to a US city
But Trump could also take former President Dwight D. Eisenhower as an example. In 1957, he deployed soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division to protect black students in the US state of Arkansas and to enforce the ban on racial segregation.
William Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University, sees this possibility. “Instead of part-time National Guard personnel, the president could send the 82nd Airborne Division with heavy armor and equipment and create some impressive images of military strength,” he told the station CNN. Trump could argue that federal facilities are at risk.
“President Trump may have to do this first to protect these federal buildings and ICE officers, and if that doesn’t work, he can then call in the National Guard,” said lawyer John Yoo, who long worked for conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “The unintended consequence could be that the president has to call in the 82nd Airborne Division, the Marines or the 101st Airborne Division to help, as President Eisenhower did,” Yoo said.
The Supreme Court’s order is not a final decision. But it could have implications for other lawsuits challenging Trump’s attempts to deploy the National Guard in other Democratic-led cities.
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