Trump Has A Real Insurrection On His Hands In Minnesota

The American people are once again witnessing Minneapolis descend into chaos, as left-wing militants hold the city hostage to obstruct law enforcement primarily on behalf of illegal aliens and criminal scammers who have culturally decimated the city.

Amid the rioting and destruction of vehicles and property of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other law enforcement, a suspected Latin Kings gang member allegedly stole an M16A1 rifle and a suppressor from a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) vehicle after federal agents were forced to abandon the scene due to “ensuing civil unrest,” according to the Department of Justice.

“There is a clear, bright line between peaceful protest and lawless destruction,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Jarrad Smith of FBI Minneapolis. “Stealing, damaging, and destroying federal property endangers the community and jeopardizes the safe and peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights. The FBI will never tolerate interference in law enforcement activities. Together with ATF, DEA, and the invaluable partnership of all our federal, state, and local law enforcement allies, FBI Minneapolis will ensure public safety and that those engaging in violent and destructive behavior will be identified and will face justice.”

All the evidence indicates that an insurrection is taking place in Minneapolis. Not like the fake one on Jan. 6, 2021; this one has real violence, real obstruction of official proceedings, real consequences, and actual intent.

This one has actual institutional support from members of Congress, governors, mayors, and possibly state and local police officers — though it is unclear if those officers are simply being held hostage by their political leadership, as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested Thursday.

Minneapolis and other major American cities have been overrun before, and it’s hard to trust that the tools currently at the disposal of law enforcement are enough to reestablish order and punish the militants using violence to obstruct federal law enforcement operations.

If law enforcement does have the tools necessary, the question then is, what is taking so long? As my colleague Shawn Fleetwood queried, “How much worse does Minneapolis have to get before Trump shuts down leftist lawlessness?”

President Donald Trump himself has considered using the Insurrection Act, initially seeming to target the institutional support for the agitators, stating, “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law & stop the professional agitators & insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”

On Friday, Trump seemed to add the rioters themselves to the group of insurrectionists, posting to social media, “In Minnesota, the Troublemakers, Agitators, and Insurrectionists are, in many cases, highly paid professionals. The Governor and Mayor don’t know what to do, they have totally lost control, and [are] currently being rendered, USELESS! If, and when, I am forced to act, it will be solved, QUICKLY and EFFECTIVELY!”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska likened the situation in Minneapolis to the George Floyd riots, suggesting the similarities mean Trump should not invoke the Insurrection Act.

The reality is precisely the opposite: If the Insurrection Act had been invoked in 2020, the American people would not have to weather waves of city-destroying riots every couple of years. One would think the federal government might have already learned that lesson.

The question now seems to be what more Trump needs to see before cracking down on the anti-law-and-order militants.

The word “insurrection” has been thrown around far too much in the past five years for it to retain its actual meaning, but if ever there was an opportunity to display the difference between the Jan. 6 riot and an actual insurrection, Minneapolis is providing it.

On Jan. 6, the protests did not turn nearly as violent or destructive as the “direct actions” in Minneapolis. Demonstrators’ interactions with law enforcement were not characterized by violence and antagonism. To the extent there was “violence,” there was vandalism, which is certainly unacceptable and wrong.

But contrary to the popular narrative from the left, the evidence does not suggest that protesters or rioters were trying to prevent former President Joe Biden’s certification as president or topple the government.

It was a protest that, in limited cases, went awry and snowballed into chaos. But that did not stop the Biden administration’s jackbooted thugs from swiftly and forcefully rounding up those protesters and throwing them in prison for years, usually on exaggerated charges, and often for more time than most of the charges (like vandalism) would ever warrant.

The relative child’s play of Jan. 6 resulted in mass arrests and excessive charges, while the American people are now forced to wait for justice in response to an actual insurrection.

If Americans are wondering why Minneapolis always seems to be the powder keg pushing the brink of civil war, it’s because, as Trump suggests, the left-wing protests, riots, and militant violence at work there are not organic, and cities like Minneapolis give political and legal cover to their henchmen-acolytes.

Many on the left will say that Trump’s ICE is more violent than former President Barack Obama’s ICE, pointing out that there were very few protests, riots, or dust-ups with local police. And to many Americans’ memories, the latter contentions ring true. But that is because far-left cities that house the most illegal aliens actually worked with the Obama administration to help ICE’s deportation goals, whereas now, those same cities are doing everything they can to thwart them.

Trump’s ICE isn’t more violent; it’s fighting a two-front war that Obama’s ICE didn’t have to: illegal aliens and militant leftists.

The perception of Obama as the “deporter-in-chief” can be debated, especially in light of mass amnesty, but what cannot be debated is that the cities where the Obama ICE was successful in deporting illegal aliens are some of the very same ones putting up a massive resistance now.

Flash back to October 2010, when then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and then-ICE Director John Morton announced “record-breaking immigration enforcement statistics achieved under the Obama administration — including unprecedented numbers of convicted criminal alien removals and overall alien removals in fiscal year 2010.”

Standing alongside Napolitano and Morton were the sheriffs of the following localities: Los Angeles County, California, Harris County, Texas (home to Houston), and Fairfax County, Virginia.

DHS also announced the expansion of the Secure Communities initiative, “which uses biometric information [like fingerprints] and services to identify and remove criminal aliens in state prisons and local jails,” ballooning from 14 jurisdictions in 2008 to 660 at the time of the announcement in 2010.

Obama’s ICE also had the 287(g) Program, which allows ICE to partner with state and local law enforcement and delegate certain enforcement powers to local officers under the supervision of ICE.

Left-wing media treated Obama’s ICE operations as heroic, going “undercover in a ‘sanctuary city,’” as CNN said when it embedded a reporter with ICE in 2016.

Now that Obama is gone, immigration enforcement is no longer acceptable to the legacy media and leftists more broadly. As my colleague Mark Hemingway wrote, “Anti-ICE activists’ goal isn’t stopping violence — it’s ending all immigration enforcement,” noting “ICE enforcement is democracy in action.”

Investigating and punishing insurrections, too, is democracy in action — but more than that, it is the sacred duty of any government to its people. The other option is mob rule, and that kind of government dereliction of duty would warrant a revolution to restore just governance.

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.