Legal experts worry about presidential abuse of the Insurrection Act. Here's why

A bipartisan group of legal experts is sounding an alarm about presidential power this election season.

They're pushing Congress to update a cluster of laws known as the Insurrection Act and limit how the White House can deploy troops on American soil, in case a future president takes advantage of that sweeping power.

"It's really up to the president to decide when to use the armed forces as a domestic police force," said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "And that is tremendous cause for concern, because an army turned inward can very quickly become an instrument of tyranny."

The Insurrection Act, which predates the development of modern state and local police departments, gives the president the power to call on the military during an emergency to curb unrest or rebellion here at home.

The last time a president invoked the law was in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush used it to tamp down violence in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted police officers in the beating of motorist Rodney King.

But Goitein said most people remember the law for another moment in civil rights history, when President Dwight Eisenhower called up federal troops to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Ark.

More recently, it's been on the table after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and before the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, helped investigate the violence at the Capitol, and he says a central figure in the effort to help former President Donald Trump cling to power recognized the force of the Insurrection Act.

"Stewart Rhodes, who's been convicted of seditious conspiracy, which means