June 10, 2025

Most significantly, the President would be using the Insurrection Act not to restore order in a collapsed state, but to override political resistance in a functioning, law-abiding one.

This is not Little Rock, where federal troops escorted children into school after Governor Orval Faubus defied the Supreme Court. It is California—a sovereign state whose disagreements with federal immigration policy have been debated in courts, not on battlefields. The precedent is telling. Then, as now, a state deployed its National Guard in defiance of federal authority—Faubus to block school desegregation ordered by the Supreme Court, Trump now to impose federal immigration enforcement over local resistance. But the roles have been reversed: President Eisenhower used the Insurrection Act to uphold constitutional rights and enforce the judicial mandate to desegregate Arkansas public schools. Trump now flirts with using it to suppress political dissent and override judicially recognized state discretion. In both cases, the stakes concern more than law enforcement—they test whether the military serves the Constitution or the will of a single executive.

The Insurrection Act grants the President broad power—but that power depends on facts that justify its use. When those facts are weak, manipulated, or manufactured, the result is not emergency governance but authoritarian performance.

The administration may counter that ICE officers are unable to execute lawful warrants in cities where resistance is both physical and coordinated. They may argue that when protesters form human chains to block detentions, and local police stand down, the rule of law is undermined. These facts would need to be documented in detail—especially if challenged in a motion for emergency injunctive relief.

That challenge would come quickly. Within hours of a formal invocation, expect California to file for a temporary restraining order in federal district court. The complaint would argue that the President’s action is ultra vires, lacks factual basis, and violates constitutional principles of federalism, due process, and freedom of speech and association. Declarations from ICE personnel, federal marshals, and state officials would be critical in assessing whether the claimed “impracticability” is real or rhetorical.

Whatever a district court decides, the outcome would likely be appealed and quickly reach the Supreme Court. The stakes are enormous. The Insurrection Act grants the President broad power—but that power depends on facts that justify its use. When those facts are weak, manipulated, or manufactured, the result is not emergency governance but authoritarian performance.

Philosopher Alexander Douglas’s deeply interesting book diagnoses our malaise, ecumenically, as a universal enslavement to identity. An alt-right rabble rouser who denounces identity politics is just as wedded to his identity as a leftwing “activist” is wedded to theirs. And this, Douglas argues persuasively, explains the polarised viciousness of much present argument. People respond to criticisms of their views as though their very identity is being attacked. The response is visceral and emotional. That’s why factchecking conspiracy theories doesn’t work. And it’s not just a social media problem; it’s far worse than that. “If you define yourself by your ethnicity or your taste in music,” Douglas argues, “then you ipso facto demarcate yourself against others who do not share in that identity. Here we have the basis for division and intergroup conflict.”