With Blood on His Hands, Trump Is Eager To Invoke Insurrection Act
A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.
Programming note
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Another federal shooting in Minneapolis
I was preparing a Morning Memo arguing that Minneapolis is shaping up to be the catalytic moment President Trump has been looking for to justify what he has wanted to do since his first term: invoke the Insurrection Act… when he posted exactly that on Truth Social:
For months, Trump has tried to provoke civil unrest that would serve as a pretext for a US military crackdown against protesters by provoking clashes with federal agents first in Los Angeles, then in Portland and finally in Chicago. I wonder why he was able to succeed in Minneapolis when he failed elsewhere, but I don’t think it has much to do with Minnesotans or blue state Democratic elected officials, but rather with the increasing use of violence that culminated in the shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good which, critically, was filmed from multiple angles.
This eruption of violence, although spontaneous, was the entirely predictable result of a policy of mass deportation based on provocation, retaliation against blue states, a rotten police culture, inadequate training of new officers, machismo and blustering belligerence operating under color of law.
The warmongering of thousands of masked armed officers swarming the streets of Minneapolis was amplified, echoed and reinforced by the nation’s highest officials, including President Trump, rather than suppressed.
Last night, in a surprisingly provocative social media post after another federal officer-involved shooting, Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche called the protests there an “insurrection,” baselessly accused Minnesota’s elected Democratic leaders of “terrorism” for “encouraging violence against law enforcement,” and threatened to “take any means necessary” to stop them. Not just any legal means, nor any constitutional means, nor any prosecutorial means, but a simple “whatever means”. Whatever that means.
Blanche’s Rambo rhetoric came on the same evening that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz delivered a brief, six-minute televised address to the state. “This has long ceased to be about immigration control. Instead, it is a campaign of brutality organized against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government,” Walz said.
In a remarkably harsh assessment of the clash between a blue state and the Trump administration, Walz warned the people of Minnesota: “Donald Trump wants this chaos. He wants confusion. And, yes, he wants more violence in our streets. We cannot give him what he wants. We can, we must protest loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. … We cannot and will not let violence prevail.”
The latest rhetorical shock came one evening when a federal agent in Minneapolis shot an undocumented Venezuelan man in the leg. Both men were hospitalized after the incident. According to the official account from the Department of Homeland Security – which has proven notoriously unreliable throughout the nationwide mass deportation operation – the agent was pursuing the man after he fled a traffic stop and crashed into his vehicle:
The law enforcement officer caught up with the subject on foot and attempted to apprehend him when the subject began to resist and violently assault him. While the subject and law enforcement were fighting on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.
As the officer was ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the initial subject broke away and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom handle.
Fearing for his life and safety while being ambushed by three individuals, the police officer fired a defensive shot in defense of his life. The first subject was hit in the leg.
Like Blanche, the DHS statement also accused Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey of “actively encouraging organized resistance against ICE and federal law enforcement agents.”
Protests erupted after the latest shooting and demonstrators clashed with state and federal law enforcement. “For several hours Wednesday evening, law enforcement and about 200 protesters clashed in the street, with chemical irritants and flash bangs deployed and some protesters vandalizing vehicles late in the night,” the Star Tribune reported.
We are about to cross that fateful line when the military is called upon to quell civil unrest that was not only provoked but sought after by a president eager to use retributive violence against his political enemies while DHS releases snuff videos that, as Greg Sargent puts it, “self-consciously portray ICE’s unleashing on a mean, urban, cosmopolitan, non-MAGA America as a sustained act of cleansing and restorative violence.”
Chart of the day
The latest news on the set of Renee Good
- Mary Moriarty, Minneapolis’ top prosecutor, said the lack of access to the federal investigation was “not a complete bar” to prosecuting the ICE agent on state charges in the Renee Good shooting.
- The six federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota who resigned rather than investigate Good’s widow’s political activities were deemed “fired” by Attorney General Pam Bondi, the New York Times reports: “The move stripped away salaries and benefits they otherwise would have received for weeks after their resignations.” »
Monitoring mass deportations
- Minnesota Public Radio: Minnesotans describe encounters with ICE and detention: ‘I was flooded with fear’
- NYT: How the ICE crackdown sparked resistance in American cities
- WaPo: ICE and activists clash over doxing and privacy, in court and on the streets
- TPM’s Kate Riga: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson attacks ‘Kavanaugh rulings’ in unrelated dissent
- AP: The United States apologizes for its mistake in expelling Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 19-year-old Babson College freshman, but defends her expulsion.
Quote of the day
“For those who were there, imagine the flooding in New Orleans, but instead of federal neglect, it’s federal violence. Over and over again. And wracked with rage and sadness, people show up for each other, over and over again.” –Minnesota author Michael Tisserand, who wrote a book about Hurricane Katrina’s displacement of New Orleans, about the federal occupation of his home state.
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