A look at the extent of presidential power.
The answer seems to be a qualified yes.
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The president cannot invoke the Insurrection Act secretly or ambiguously. Before doing so, he is required to make a public proclamation directing “the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time,” thereby providing anyone involved in the civil unrest an opportunity to retreat. Perhaps more importantly, this requirement ensures that the president publicly acknowledges and discloses his decision to invoke the Insurrection Act, allowing Congress and the public to respond accordingly.
Substantively, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to deploy the military domestically in four sets of circumstances:
Where the president receives a request for assistance from the legislature of a state that is experiencing “an insurrection ... against its government[,]” or that state’s governor if its legislature cannot be convened, under 10 U.S.C. § 251.
Where the president “considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings,” under 10 U.S.C. § 252.
Where “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” either “so hinders the execution of the laws of [a] State, and of the United States within th[at] State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by Law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection,” under 10 U.S.C. § 253(1)—in which cases, the statute notes, that state “shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”
Where “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy ... opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws,” under 10 U.S.C. § 253(2).
