The Trump administration is considering ways to invoke emergency powers, including utilising the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow president Donald Trump to deploy troops on US soil in the event of major unrest.
Despite legal pushback, vice-president JD Vance has confirmed the White is seriously considering the idea. “The president’s looking at all of his options,” he told NBC’s News’s Meet the Press on Sunday, adding that “we are talking about this because crime has gotten out of control in our cities”.
The acknowledgment came as president Trump boarded a plane for Jerusalem, where he is scheduled to speak at the Knesset and meet families of hostages set to be released from Gaza on Monday after helping to broker a major peace deal.
The war, he proclaimed, “was over”, adding that relations in the Middle East would “normalize”.
Here are the key stories:
Trump ‘looking at all options’ amid threats to invoke Insurrection Act, Vance says
The White House is talking about invoking the Insurrection Act that would allow the deployment of military troops on US soil to quell domestic unrest amid legal challenges over the moves, JD Vance confirmed on Sunday.
Vance was asked on NBC News’s Meet the Press whether Donald Trump was seriously considering invoking the emergency power to deploy national guard forces and even the US military in domestic settings.
Trump says ‘war is over’ in Gaza as Israel awaits release of hostages
The war in Gaza has ended and the Middle East is going to “normalize”, Donald Trump said on Sunday as he flew to Israel, which was waiting for Hamas to release Israeli hostages as world leaders were gathering to discuss the next steps toward peace.
“The war is over, you understand that,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One as he began a flight from Washington DC to Israel.
China warns US of retaliation over Trump’s 100% tariffs threat
Beijing has told the US it will retaliate if Donald Trump fails to back down on his threat to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports as investors brace for another bout of trade war turmoil.
China’s commerce ministry blamed Washington for raising trade tensions between the two countries after Trump announced on Friday that he would impose the additional tariffs on China’s exports to the US, along with new controls on critical software, by 1 November.
Trump officials reportedly consider selling student loan debt to private investors
Officials in the Trump administration are reportedly weighing the possibility of selling portions of the federal government’s $1.6tn student loan portfolio to private investors, which experts say could carry risks for both taxpayers and borrowers – potentially reshaping the student loan landscape in unpredictable ways.
Maga figures back Bukele’s call for Trump to crack down on US judges
Donald Trump is not known for taking advice, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to flatter and compliment the US president, writes the Guardian’s Jason Wilson in this feature on the El Salvadorian leader’s thoughts on the US judiciary.
El Salvador’s authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a different tack, he writes, by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching “corrupt judges”.
What else happened today:
‘Cavalier and aggressive’: why are border agents flooding into US cities? The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh has this piece on how border agents have become a key force in Trump’s migrant crackdown.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 11 October, 2025.
