It could have been worse—Trump wanted to use active duty military to clear the streets of D.C.
The Insurrection Act, allowing the president to deploy military forces within the United States, was signed into law in 1807. Of the course of that 214 history, the law has been used for vastly different purposes. In 1871, Ulysses Grant used it to position federal forces against the Klu Klux Klan after Klansmen conducted waves of lynchings killing thousands, including hundreds of Black politicians, across the South.