President Donald Trump, who has periodically threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act before reconsidering, performed that familiar two-step again last week. "I don't think I need it right now," Trump told reporters the day after he said he might deploy active-duty military personnel against "professional agitators and insurrectionists" in Minnesota.
The Pentagon nevertheless told 1,500 soldiers stationed in Alaska to be ready for that assignment, just in case the president changed his mind again. It therefore seems like a good time to recall why critics of the Insurrection Act, which on its face gives the president alarmingly broad authority to send in the troops, say it desperately needs reform.
