Daniel O. Jamison is a retired attorney.
A Rebellion looms. Too many Americans have the attitude that if they cannot accomplish their aims lawfully and peaceably, they will resort to violence. This attitude apparently traces to Reconstruction when the organizers of the defunct Confederacy determined to regain the political power of their states, using lawful and peaceful means if they worked, but unlawful and violent means if necessary. With savage violence, they “redeemed” the South, ousting integrated state governments and denying equal rights to Blacks.
How can rebellion in the future be stopped?
A remedy for a lawfully elected rogue president who disregards the Constitution is impeachment and conviction in Congress, but only if enough responsible legislators are elected who would vote for both. If convicted, this president could refuse to step down. If supporters block civil authorities from removing this president, the military, under its oath to the Constitution, would presumably seek the removal. Given its long history as the ultimate protector of that Constitution, the military would likely overcome any dissent in its ranks.
The ousted president’s chosen vice-president might also “suspend” the Constitution, necessitating another impeachment and potentially the elevation of the Speaker of the House to the presidency.
Another remedy is the 25th Amendment but this is seemingly impractical. The president can deny a disability and start a process that would require two thirds of each house of Congress promptly to find against the president. If impeachment fails for lack of votes to convict, this will too.
If the rebellious president defeats impeachment and the 25th Amendment, military leaders may nevertheless feel bound to protect the Constitution.
What happens if the rebellious presidential candidate loses? Certain state legislatures could reject their citizens’ votes for the other candidate and throw their state’s electors to their candidate. They and their governors could defy state and federal court orders to reinstate the popular vote, calling out their national guards to prevent interference with what they have done. Their supporters in Congress would insist on counting these votes to deny the election to the other candidate.
Alternatively, or simultaneously, armed groups around the nation, reminiscent of the 1868 Ku Klux Klan’s reported 550,000 members spread across the South, could mobilize to prevent civil authorities from enforcing the law. A 1957 precedent shows how to subdue a rebellious state. At that time the governor of Arkansas defied a court order to integrate Little Rock High School and ordered Arkansas’s national guard to prevent it. President Eisenhower federalized Arkansas’ guard and sent in 1,000 troops from the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the court’s order. Eisenhower’s remarkable order stated: “the Secretary of Defense is authorized to use such of the armed forces of the United States as he may deem necessary.”
Historical precedent also suggests how to subdue rebellious armed groups. The Constitution gives Congress power to call forth the “Militia” to enforce the law, suppress insurrection, and suspend habeas corpus when rebellion and the public safety may require it. Habeas corpus requires an arrested person to be brought before a civilian court for release or a statement of charges.
In 1871, Congress temporarily suspended habeas corpus and authorized use of military force to put down rampant Klan violence. President Ulysses Grant promptly used the military to suppress the Klan. For about three years, the Attorney General brought thousands of criminal prosecutions for violations of civil rights. To obtain witness testimony, the suspension of habeas corpus allowed indefinite detention of persons threatening witnesses. Despite the difficulty of securing convictions in the South, a sufficient number of convictions and use of the military quelled Klan violence.
But once this pressure was removed, the evil resurfaced. Ron Chernow, author of Grant, notes a rueful Grant wrote in 1876 that violence in South Carolina, “is only a repetition of the course that has been pursued in other Southern states…Mississippi is governed today by officials chosen through fraud and violence, such as would scarcely be accredited to savages…How long these things are to continue, or what is to be the final remedy, the Great Ruler of the Universe only knows….”
America is similarly threatened today. While the 1871 precedents were a temporary solution, they may be instructive today.
We the people can avert the potential scenarios cited above if we overwhelmingly vote for responsible candidates willing to confront rebellion.
The Constitution is in our hands.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.