WASHINGTON (AP) — Opera tenor Christopher Macchio will sing the national anthem at the President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration before a much smaller crowd than he was expecting, a letdown with a silver lining.
The ceremony Monday has been moved indoors because temperatures are set to plummet and make it the coldest Inauguration Day in 40 years. The Capitol Rotunda holds only 600 people, while more than 250,000 guests were ticketed to view the inauguration from around the Capitol grounds.
“I was looking forward to seeing 100,000 people spread across the National Mall,” Macchio, 46, said Saturday in an Associated Press interview. “Unfortunately I won’t be getting that visual while I perform, but it’s still going to be such a tremendous honor.”
In fact, he said, “from a musical and vocal perspective, it’s actually a good thing” and that the performance will remain largely the same. Extreme weather conditions are unhealthy and uncomfortable for vocalists.
Macchio first entered Trump's orbit about nine years ago when he was asked to fill in last minute for a New Year’s Eve celebration. He was such a hit that night that Rod Stewart, who was at the gala, asked Macchio to perform at his 70th birthday party. Macchio also sang at the White House memorial service in 2020 for Trump's brother Robert, and that's where their friendship took hold.
Macchio performed at the Republican National Convention in July, at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in October a few months after an assassination attempt at that site, and during his Madison Square Garden rally close to the election. It was after the Butler rally that Trump said to Macchio: “I’ll be seeing you at the inauguration.”
“He didn’t really specify what that meant,” Macchio told the AP. But a few weeks later, Macchio got the call from a Trump staffer saying that the tenor was the “first and only choice” to perform the national anthem.
Lady Gaga sang the anthem at Joe Biden’s inauguration. Beyoncé performed at Barack Obama’s second swearing-in. “America’s Got Talent” star Jackie Evancho sang it at Trump’s first inauguration.
Macchio knows that some people have negative opinions on his long association with and support of Trump. But he hopes that even those who disagree with Trump politically can appreciate the music.
“For those folks who might not have voted for President Trump, I hope that they’ll give me that kind of opportunity to just listen and just really connect with the music,” he said. “I’ll be doing the national anthem and it is meant to do honor to our great country.”
Macchio hopes to be an advocate for classical music education and is in discussion with the administration how he might help in a more official capacity.
But for now, he’s focused on Monday and planned to meet this weekend with his fellow performers Carrie Underwood and Lee Greenwood and rehearse in the Capitol Rotunda.
“I’m a traditionalist,” he said. “I will be delivering essentially a straightforward rendition. And the only license that I take is when it comes to the high notes. I do tend to indulge a little bit and stretch those high notes.”
This story has been corrected to reflect that Macchio sang at Rod Stewart’s 70th birthday party, not Trump’s.
FILE - Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, center, and former first lady Melania Trump, right, listen to opera singer Christopher Macchio at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump would not be the first president to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened, so that he can send U.S. military forces to Minnesota.
But he'd be the only commander in chief to use the 19th-century law to send troops to quell protests that started because of federal officers the president already has sent to the area — one of whom shot and killed a U.S. citizen.
The law, which allows presidents to use the military domestically, has been invoked on more than two dozen occasions — but rarely since the 20th Century's Civil Rights Movement.
Federal forces typically are called to quell widespread violence that has broken out on the local level — before Washington's involvement and when local authorities ask for help. When presidents acted without local requests, it was usually to enforce the rights of individuals who were being threatened or not protected by state and local governments. A third scenario is an outright insurrection — like the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Experts in constitutional and military law say none of that clearly applies in Minneapolis.
“This would be a flagrant abuse of the Insurrection Act in a way that we've never seen,” said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program. “None of the criteria have been met.”
William Banks, a Syracuse University professor emeritus who has written extensively on the domestic use of the military, said the situation is “a historical outlier” because the violence Trump wants to end “is being created by the federal civilian officers” he sent there.
But he also cautioned Minnesota officials would have “a tough argument to win” in court, because the judiciary is hesitant to challenge “because the courts are typically going to defer to the president” on his military decisions.
Here is a look at the law, how it's been used and comparisons to Minneapolis.
George Washington signed the first version in 1792, authorizing him to mobilize state militias — National Guard forerunners — when “laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed.”
He and John Adams used it to quash citizen uprisings against taxes, including liquor levies and property taxes that were deemed essential to the young republic's survival.
Congress expanded the law in 1807, restating presidential authority to counter “insurrection or obstruction” of laws. Nunn said the early statutes recognized a fundamental “Anglo-American tradition against military intervention in civilian affairs” except “as a tool of last resort.”
The president argues Minnesota officials and citizens are impeding U.S. law by protesting his agenda and the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Customs and Border Protection officers. Yet early statutes also defined circumstances for the law as unrest “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course” of law enforcement.
There are between 2,000 and 3,000 federal authorities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, compared to Minneapolis, which has fewer than 600 police officers. Protesters' and bystanders' video, meanwhile, has shown violence initiated by federal officers, with the interactions growing more frequent since Renee Good was shot three times and killed.
“ICE has the legal authority to enforce federal immigration laws,” Nunn said. “But what they're doing is a sort of lawless, violent behavior” that goes beyond their legal function and “foments the situation” Trump wants to suppress.
“They can't intentionally create a crisis, then turn around to do a crackdown,” he said, adding that the Constitutional requirement for a president to “faithfully execute the laws” means Trump must wield his power, on immigration and the Insurrection Act, “in good faith.”
Courts have blocked some of Trump's efforts to deploy the National Guard, but he'd argue with the Insurrection Act that he does not need a state's permission to send troops.
That traces to President Abraham Lincoln, who held in 1861 that Southern states could not legitimately secede. So, he convinced Congress to give him express power to deploy U.S. troops, without asking, into Confederate states he contended were still in the Union. Quite literally, Lincoln used the act as a legal basis to fight the Civil War.
Nunn said situations beyond such a clear insurrection as the Confederacy still require a local request or another trigger that Congress added after the Civil War: protecting individual rights. Ulysses S. Grant used that provision to send troops to counter the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who ignored the 14th and 15th amendments and civil rights statutes.
During post-war industrialization, violence erupted around strikes and expanding immigration — and governors sought help.
President Rutherford B. Hayes granted state requests during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 after striking workers, state forces and local police clashed, leading to dozens of deaths. Grover Cleveland granted a Washington state governor's request — at that time it was a U.S. territory — to help protect Chinese citizens who were being attacked by white rioters. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Colorado in 1914 amid a coal strike after workers were killed.
Federal troops helped diffuse each situation.
Banks stressed that the law then and now presumes that federal resources are needed only when state and local authorities are overwhelmed — and Minnesota leaders say their cities would be stable and safe if Trump's feds left.
As Grant had done, mid-20th century presidents used the act to counter white supremacists.
Franklin Roosevelt dispatched 6,000 troops to Detroit — more than double the U.S. forces in Minneapolis — after race riots that started with whites attacking Black residents. State officials asked for FDR's aid after riots escalated, in part, Nunn said, because white local law enforcement joined in violence against Black residents. Federal troops calmed the city after dozens of deaths, including 17 Black residents killed by local police.
Once the Civil Rights Movement began, presidents sent authorities to Southern states without requests or permission, because local authorities defied U.S. civil rights law and fomented violence themselves.
Dwight Eisenhower enforced integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; John F. Kennedy sent troops to the University of Mississippi after riots over James Meredith's admission and then pre-emptively to ensure no violence upon George Wallace's “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” to protest the University of Alabama's integration.
“There could have been significant loss of life from the rioters” in Mississippi, Nunn said.
Lyndon Johnson protected the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery after Wallace's troopers attacked marchers' on their first peaceful attempt.
Johnson also sent troops to multiple U.S. cities in 1967 and 1968 after clashes between residents and police escalated. The same thing happened in Los Angeles in 1992, the last time the Insurrection Act was invoked.
Riots erupted after a jury failed to convict four white police officers of excessive use of force despite video showing them beating a Rodney King, a Black man. California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush for support.
Bush authorized about 4,000 troops — but after he had publicly expressed displeasure over the trial verdict. He promised to “restore order” yet directed the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation, and two of the L.A. officers were later convicted in federal court.
President Donald Trump answers questions after signing a bill that returns whole milk to school cafeterias across the country, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
