Thursday, October 9

In response to court blocks and legal challenges to his National Guard deployments around the country, President Donald Trump, his senior advisers and Justice Department officials are claiming near limitless authority to deploy the military domestically.

And alongside his latest military expansions into Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, Illinois, Trump is also threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, one of the president's most powerful emergency authorities.

As always, thank you for reading. Let me know your thoughts and concerns at knutson@democracydocket.com. I will respond as soon as possible.

Jacob Knutson, reporter

Trump’s domestic military campaign is metastasizing

Just days after suggesting U.S. streets be training grounds for the military and alluding to a “war from within,” Trump intensified his effort to take over Democratic-led cities by force in ordering troops into Chicago.
Trump’s recent Portland deployment was swiftly blocked again this week by a federal judge he himself appointed. However, Illinois and Texas National Guard troops began arriving in the Chicago area yesterday after a judge did not immediately grant Illinois’ request for a halt to Trump’s military intervention in the Prairie State.
In deploying Texas Guard soldiers to Illinois, Trump did what no other president has done in modern U.S. history: wielded one state’s organized militia against a nonconsenting state. He did so with enthusiastic support from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R).
Later today, a judge will hear oral arguments in Illinois and Chicago’s lawsuit against Trump’s latest deployment, so a potential court-ordered block in that case could come tonight or Friday. A Ninth Circuit panel is also hearing the Trump administration’s appeal of the court order freezing the Portland deployment.
Amid Trump’s military buildup in the Chicago area, he called for Illinois Democrats Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to be jailed for allegedly failing to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Pritzker yesterday warned Trump is attempting to normalize the presence of soldiers on American streets in preparation for taking control of future elections.
“I believe he's gonna post people outside of ballot boxes and polling places,” the governor said. “And if he needs to in order to control those elections, he'll assume control of the ballot boxes and count the votes himself."

Democracy Docket is tracking the 76 most important Trump accountability lawsuits fighting the administration’s power grabs. Click here to find out which ones have succeeded so far.

Trump’s Insurrection Act threats

In response to the legal and political pushback to his attempts to federalize state Guard troops, Trump and senior White House officials have raised the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act.
The rarely used law allows the president to deploy military forces within the U.S. to suppress rebellion, domestic violence or lawless behavior. It’s a significant exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits the use of troops for domestic law enforcement duties. Legal experts have long warned the act is ripe for abuse.
In addition to referring to anti-ICE protests in Portland and Chicago as acts of “insurrection” against the federal government, Trump in the Oval Office Monday said he may invoke the act to sidestep court rulings blocking the dispatch of Guard troops.
“It's been invoked before," Trump said. “We have an Insurrection Act for a reason.”
In a post early yesterday morning, Trump uploaded a picture of a 1963 Department of Justice (DOJ) memo regarding former President John F. Kennedy’s use of the act to enforce school desegregation in Alabama.
Though he sent the letter without context, Trump’s post was clearly an attempt to justify his deployment of the National Guard, a potential invocation of the act, or both.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, this week said Trump has “plenary authority” to use the military domestically. In other words, he implied the power is absolute — an exception to the rule of law that cannot be checked by the other branches of government.

Comey pleads not guilty to Trump-pressured charges

Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty to two felony charges brought by Lindsey Halligan, one of Trump’s former personal lawyers turned acting U.S. attorney of the Eastern District of Virginia. The presiding judge set a sooner-than-expected Jan. 5, 2026, trial date.
During the arraignment hearing, Comey’s defense said it will ask for the charges to be dismissed based on selective and vindictive prosecution. It also said it will challenge the legality of Halligan’s appointment as acting U.S. attorney.
Trump installed Halligan after forcing the former U.S. attorney of that district out of his post for raising concerns about cases against Comey and other perceived enemies of the president.
In a highly unusual move, Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience, personally presented the indictment against Comey before a grand jury. If convicted, the former FBI chief could face a maximum of five years in prison.

Read more ➪

Judge says DOJ may be vindictively punishing Abrego Garcia

A federal judge in Nashville found that lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man the Trump administration wrongly removed to El Salvador earlier this year, showed there’s a “realistic likelihood” that the DOJ is vindictively prosecuting him for asserting his legal rights.
Judge Waverly Crenshaw said several comments and actions from senior DOJ officials suggested that the department brought charges against Abrego Garcia because he challenged his removal in a civil lawsuit.
The most telling statement, Crenshaw said, came from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blache, who said on Fox News in June that the government only started investigating Abrego Garcia after a judge ruled that the Trump administration did not have the authority to remove him from the U.S.

Read more ➪

Dive Deeper … ‘Stakes are high:’ big law alerts clients on Trump’s domestic terrorism order

Some of the largest law firms in the U.S. are telling clients to prepare for possible politically motivated governmental probes stemming from Trump’s new national security directive on domestic terrorism.

Trump’s directive, formally named National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), ordered law enforcement and regulatory agencies to “investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations” that, according to the president, are responsible for encouraging acts of political violence.
Several firms warned that though the Trump administration claims NSPM-7 is meant to curb political violence, the DOJ and other federal agencies may wield it against left-leaning nonprofit organizations who hold ideological beliefs and fund progressive political activity the president and his allies oppose.
“The Presidential Memorandum makes clear that DOJ intends to target tax-exempt organizations and their funders for investigation and potential criminal prosecution, including based on activities that have historically been viewed as protected by the First Amendment,” the global megafirm Arnold & Porter recently said in a memo to clients.

To do list

With Trump's return, public corruption is once again marring U.S. politics. Join a Brennan Center for Justice panel discussion Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 3 p.m. ET on this new era of corruption and ways to uproot it. RSVP here.
The next No Kings mass protest is just nine days away. Millions around the world — from Nice, France, to North Platte, Nebraska, to Ajijic, Mexico — are set to protest Trump’s wrecking ball presidency. Find an Oct. 18 event near you with this map.

Odds and ends

Federal agents taunted Chicago woman before shooting her, lawyers allege: Border Patrol agents shot a woman five times in Chicago over the weekend. Attorneys representing the woman said in court that body-camera footage contradicted the Trump administration’s account of the incident and showed that one agent said, “Do something, b****,” before opening fire, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Bessent spawns new IRS “CEO” role: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Frank Bisignano, the Social Security commissioner, will also head the Internal Revenue Service as “chief executive officer” of the tax agency, a role that does not exist under federal law. Experts said the move skirts the Senate confirmation process and poses a risk to sensitive data held by SSA and IRS.
‘Little Trump’ bypassed IG with criminal referrals: Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and one of Trump’s favored political attack dogs, bypassed his agency’s inspector general in making criminal referrals against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, Reuters found.

Quote of the week

This week’s quote comes from Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck's latest New York Times column laying out exactly what’s before judges overseeing lawsuits against Trump’s troop deployments. The central issue, Vladeck writes, comes down to who decides the facts when it comes to domestic use of the military:

“The federal government is trying to use dubious factual claims about what’s true on the ground in these cities to justify federalizing National Guard troops both from within those states and from outside of them.”

“That is what we, and more important the courts, face: a factual dispute more than a legal one.”