Rather than stand firm, crush the blatant insurrection against federal authority in Minnesota, and emulate his hero Andrew Jackson, President Donald Trump blinked.
Trump announced Monday that he had a “very good call” with Democrat Gov. Tim Walz and that the governor had requested they “work together with respect to Minnesota.”
That same day, Democrat Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey revealed he had also spoken with Trump and that they both “agreed the present situation can’t continue.”
That in itself doesn’t seem like a defeat for the president, but Frey revealed details that turn the entire situation on its head.
“Some federal agents will begin leaving the area tomorrow, and I will continue pushing for the rest involved in this operation to go,” Frey said. “Minneapolis will continue to cooperate with state and federal law enforcement on real criminal investigations — but we will not participate in unconstitutional arrests of our neighbors or enforce federal immigration law.”
Federal agents will begin to leave Minneapolis (according to Frey), and Minnesota authorities still refuse to cooperate with federal agents to uphold the constitutionally valid immigration laws of this country. It seems that, in the aftermath of Alex Pretti’s death, Trump lost his spine and decided to cave to the unfolding chaos in Minneapolis as well as the Democrats who engineered it.
He has signaled that Democrats can defy federal law any time they want and foment violent opposition in the streets to its enforcement by federal agents, and for their trouble, they’ll get a deal from the president.
In a briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt noted that Trump had three requests for Walz to help smooth tensions, which included requiring state leaders to “turn over all criminal illegal aliens currently incarcerated” to federal authorities, requiring state and local police to “turn over all illegal aliens” they arrest, and requiring local police to aid ICE “in apprehending and detaining illegal aliens who are wanted for crimes, especially violent crimes.”
White House border czar Tom Homan reportedly met with Walz on Tuesday, and in the meeting Walz demanded “impartial investigations into the Minneapolis shootings involving federal agents, a swift, significant reduction in the number of federal forces in Minnesota, and an end to the campaign of retribution against Minnesota,” Walz’s office said in a statement.
“The Governor and Homan agreed on the need for an ongoing dialogue and will continue working toward those goals, which the President also agreed to yesterday. The Governor tasked the Minnesota Department of Public Safety as the primary liaison to Homan to ensure these goals are met,” the statement continued.
Some reports indicate that the withdrawal of federal officers is imminent, without any concrete evidence that Walz, Frey, or other Democrat leaders have or intend to follow through on Trump’s requests. And those are requests, not orders, and there’s no reason to believe that Walz or anyone else in his orbit will acquiesce to them. Handing over all initiative to Walz and his ilk to hand over illegals is asking for disappointment, if not outright disaster. They have every incentive to pay lip service to Trump’s requests to get federal agents out of Minnesota and then go back to business as usual.
Trump’s apparent capitulation stands in stark contrast to Andrew Jackson’s stern resoluteness during the Nullification Crisis of 1832, in which a single state defiantly flouted federal law until it was cowed by shrewd politicking and the threat of federal force.
After Congress lawfully raised tariffs in two bills in 1828 and 1832, South Carolina objected. The state adopted nullification theory — the idea that a state can nullify a federal law if the state believes that law to be unconstitutional. South Carolina even began to raise a militia to resist any attempts to collect federal tariff revenue.
The tariff laws were within the purview of the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution, and the constitutionality of the laws was not really in question. The real question was whether a state could unilaterally opt out of federal laws that it didn’t like.
Jackson and most other Americans recognized that an acceptance of nullification theory would mean the effective end of the country. You can’t have a federalist union if every state gets to pick and choose which federal laws it has to follow. In response to South Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification, Jackson issued his own rebuke of nullification theory, in which he declared, “Disunion by armed force is treason,” and ordered his secretary of war to begin mobilizing troops to enforce federal law. The Nullification Crisis came to an end after Congress passed a bill that reduced tariff rates, but Jackson had demonstrated that the federal government would not retreat from a challenge to its legitimate authority.
Minnesota tested a modern version of nullification theory by refusing to uphold federal immigration law, and, instead of standing firm like Jackson, Trump backed down.
All evidence suggests that federal agents will leave Minnesota without achieving their primary aim, and that represents a massive PR victory for the Democrats. They openly defied federal law, incited radical activists to assault federal law enforcement, and fired up their base for the coming midterms. And they now know that Trump will concede after a few weeks of bad coverage from the propaganda press.
Other sanctuary cities and states have no doubt been watching the Minneapolis crisis with great interest, eager to see if the Trump administration’s mettle would hold. They now have their answer. They can win a war of attrition with federal authorities, and there’s no doubt that these other states will take that lesson to heart. If Minnesota can stare down Trump, how will California, New York, and Illinois react?
In fact, Virginia’s new Democrat-dominated government is already moving to implement anti-ICE policies. New Gov. Abigail Spanberger rescinded former Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order instructing state and local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE. Meanwhile, Virginia state Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim, a Bangladeshi immigrant, has introduced three bills to impede ICE operations in the state.
The unfolding deal between Trump and Minnesota’s Democrat masters may quiet the situation in the North Star State for now, but in the long run it will only cause more chaos, a further erosion of the federal government’s legitimacy, and more deaths on America’s streets.
Trump’s indecision and retreat have opened the floodgates on lawlessness in America’s cities — a lawlessness the American people do not want. We now stand at an inflection point for the country as dangerous as the secession crisis of 1860. Then, President James Buchanan’s indecisiveness led the country into a catastrophic civil war. Now, we’ll see where Trump’s choices lead.
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