Minnesota wants to win a war of attrition

As masked and armed men in combat armor gathered throughout the Twin Cities, Governor Tim Walz went on primetime television to ask Minnesotans to film ICE. The video, he said, “will create a database of atrocities against Minnesotans – not only to set a record for future generations, but also to bank evidence for future prosecution.”

While the federal government surrounded hospitals and school bus stops and targets, Walz envisioned a future similar to the Nuremberg trials. His speech emphasized the legal system and the ballot box, a promise of peaceful regime change, and a process of accountability. And it was as much an emotional consolation to his voters as it was a demonstration to the courts. Minnesota is not in rebellion, Minnesota is not in rebellion, Minnesota will obey the law – So, will the law protect Minnesota now?

The state of Minnesota, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, are asking a federal judge to put a stop to what the Trump administration is calling “Operation Metro Surge,” a descent of 2,000 masked and armed ICE agents on the Twin Cities. Sue tries several different routes to get there. This is an uncontrolled shotgun blast of legal reasoning in a time of crisis. But a common thread ties them all together: states’ rights. Minnesota should have a say in what happens on Minnesota’s field; By closing down local authorities and dealing with them harshly, unions have violated the original agreement of the Bill of Rights.

It is primarily liberal states that Donald Trump has targeted, and liberal cities with sanctuary policies have been hit the hardest. complaint in minnesota vs noem Particularly striking was this, going even further and pointing to the time Trump complained about losing Minnesota in each of his presidential contests. Cities that Trump has already targeted — such as Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago — are led by Democratic mayors. There the resistance has been fierce both on the ground and in the court. Just days before Christmas, the Supreme Court issued a shadow docket decision in the National Guard cases, a rare instance in which it ruled against Trump. The President then announced his “withdrawal” from those cities (he was prevented from deploying the Guard to Chicago and Portland); Within a few days his attention turned to Minnesota.

“The Tenth Amendment gives the State of Minnesota and its subdivisions, including the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, an unalienable sovereign right to protect the health and well-being of all who live, work, or travel within their borders,” the lawsuit says.

In the lawsuit’s argument, the feds have weakened local officials by unleashing terror on Minnesotans: “They are entitled to go to work, take their children to school, and move about in public and private spaces without fear of violence by the federal government against themselves or their loved ones. They are entitled to access city services and use city facilities without being harassed by federal agents in parking lots.”

At the heart of the conflict between Trump and his victims is the desire for self-determination. Sanctuary cities are cities that have democratically chosen, to some degree or another, not to assist federal immigration enforcement. In this sense, this fight is undoubtedly about states’ rights. This will be absolutely clear.

But in another sense, the whole matter is tinged with extreme irony. “States’ rights” has been a conservative talking point since the Civil War, long after the Civil Rights Movement and beyond turned into a pro-segregation dog whistle. As right-wing extremism grew in America, “states’ rights” merged with the militia movement in strange and inconsistent ways.

The 11-day anti-government standoff in 1992, now known as Ruby Ridge, along with the Waco standoff the following year, created a very distinct flavor of anti-government subculture. The bare facts of the Ruby Ridge standoff read like a series of hashtags from Tradewife TikTok: homestead, homeschool, delivery shed. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh was partly inspired by Ruby Ridge and Waco. Obama-era militia movements – such as the militias that occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016 – regard Ruby Ridge and Waco as the “primary symbolism” of federal overreach.

Finally, the state of Idaho charged an FBI sniper with shooting and killing a woman at Ruby Ridge. And under the same logic, argues law professor Carolyn Shapiro, Minnesota officials could prosecute the ICE agent who murdered Renee Good. Furthermore, a conviction under state law will not be pardonable by the President.

The parallels between the ICE agent who shot Renee Good in her car and the FBI sniper who shot Vicki Weaver seem obvious. If anything, Weaver’s firing — which came in a shootout that also left a U.S. Marshal dead — seems fairly minor. A mountain settlement full of guns is not the same as a car moving slowly.

But either way, a mother is now dead, and the militia has not risen in Renee Good’s name. If they’re in Minneapolis now, it’s probably the other way around. Even before Trump begins his second term, militia groups have offered their support in carrying out mass deportations; We don’t know if militia members are hiding behind ICE’s gaiters, but we do know that ICE recruiters screen their applicants so poorly that a journalist named to the right-wing watch list for “Antifa” was able to get a job offer. If the militias do not have members at ICE, it is either because they lack follow-through or because they are the only people who have been rejected for the job. The thin veil of opposition to power has been broken. The real resistance to federal tyranny is being fought not with guns in homes, but with smartphones and whistles on city streets. And the only chance for justice for Renee Good comes from a hypothetical state prosecution, should Minnesota fully exercise its states’ rights.

Of course, the Fed has no intention of letting it go that far. Not only are they refusing to allow Minnesota authorities access to evidence, but on Friday, the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation of Gov. Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Earlier in the week, the DOJ had tried to pressure the U.S. attorney’s office to bring charges against Renee Good’s wife. At least six federal prosecutors resigned in response. It also involves a career prosecutor — a native-born Minnesotan — who had been handling a series of fraud cases around state safety net programs since 2022. These anecdotal cases were recently turned into weak and viral allegations of fraud against Somali-run daycare centers by a conservative influencer in Utah.

Nick Shirley’s YouTube video garnered millions of views, but most importantly, the attention of the President himself, who repeatedly repeated the word “fraud” in the name of Operation Metro Surge. The content mill left a mother dead and bleeding in her car.

The materials brought ICE to their doorstep; Now, for better or worse, Minnesota is fighting ICE with the stuff. The Minneapolis City Council President is posting videos every day, including one in which an ICE agent shoves him. He posted, “If this is how they treat the president of the Minneapolis City Council, who is legally overseeing, just imagine what they’re doing to everyone else in our city.” The governor is on television telling people to “carry your phone with you at all times, and if you see ICE in your neighborhood, take that phone out and press record.”

Videos are uploaded to social media networks one after the other. In these clips, Minnesotans gather near the arrestees and gather around them, holding up their smartphones as the faceless thugs wrestle their victims to the ground.

Walz’s promise that the video will be used for accountability is not entirely unfounded. minnesota vs noem References to videos of arrests of American citizens are already scattered everywhere. The footnotes to the complaint are an eyesore, filled with links to YouTube, X, and Truth Social. The administration’s exaggerated, massive posts are presented as evidence of irrational hostility and malice toward the state of Minnesota; The clip of the ICE arrests is objective evidence of how that hostility has manifested into a reign of terror that has nothing to do with immigration enforcement.

But what happens at the end of the day if a judge doesn’t grant an injunction? What if there was no Nuremberg? What happens if the regime never changes? What if the law doesn’t free Minneapolis from federal overreach?

A slightly less deranged government would have withdrawn ICE from Minneapolis the day after Renee Good’s murder. Instead, the feds are trying to put his wife, the mayor, and the governor in jail. Trump is behaving as if he wants a civil war – or perhaps more accurately, as if we’re already in one. The film anticipates Walz’s call for ICE to be ousted by either the courts or the electoral process that will hit Trump hard. Surveillance is the last weapon of states’ rights before it turns ugly in a uniquely American way. When the rights of the states are exercised peacefully, that is simply the operation of the Constitution. Once they get beyond those limits, we are headed for the civil war that Trump is so desperate for.

Meanwhile, the steady stream of video from Minneapolis has become a narrative in itself — in a strange reversal of the xenophobic hysteria that carried Trump into office, ICE has been cast in the role of outsiders rampaging across the country. Like the players who come to Ruby Ridge, they are unwanted and unwelcome interlopers, harassed by whistles and Honda Fits. The aggressor must be expelled. Minnesota should be for Minnesotans.