American Revolution semiquincentennial and the rule of law

This year is the official 250th anniversary (semiquincentennial, i.e., half of 500) of the beginning of the American Revolution, which is understood to have formally begun with the signing of the Declaration of Independence by leading colonial figures in 1776.

We can expect plenty of attempts by Trump and his cult to make public commemorations of the event tributes to Donald Trump, the greatest national leader in all of world history. I will not be surprised if he literally describes himself that way. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it!”

To warm up for it, it’s worth remembering that facts matter. So when Trump gives us new versions of his 2019 classic celebration of the Revolution, that’s worth keep in mind, i.e.:

Trump praised the Americans’ military efforts in the war against Great Britain. “Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory,” he said. (1)

It was 1903 when the Wright brothers successfully tested the first engine-powered aircraft.

Also, for what it’s worth, the phrase “the rockets’ red glare” phrase that everyone knows from the national anthem The Star-Spangled Banner was referring to the experience of the War of 1812 against Great Britain.

I dread my inevitable first encounter this year with the old segregationist trope that the Founders were setting up a republic, which they saw as something totally different from democracy which they allegedly saw as evil and awful. This is an old segregationist trope used to argue against human and civil rights and equal citizenship for African-Americans. As a historical claim, it can technically be describes as horse-poop.

But for people who want to think about more than ditsy fairy tales from an orange wanna-be dictator, there are some substantive matters worth reflecting on that go back to the founding ideals of the Republic.

Trump’s current deployment of the ICE Gestapo to terrorize various cities, currently notably including Minneapolis, has raised a new round of consideration of the meaning of rule of law and the functioning of federalism in the US Constitutional structure.

This is a good, brief Breaking Points report on what happens when the federal government sends out a bunch of masked thugs to terrorize cities. Ryan Grim says in it, “Watching ICE going around brutalizing people on an hourly basis, has done more, I think, to lift the public opinion of local police forces than anything in decades.” (2)

At some point, if this keeps up, local cops will have to start enforcing the laws against kidnapping, battery, illegal entry and even murder against ICE agents acting outside the law. Since most of the ICE goons seem to have very limited training, they will likely find it tough going when well-trained actual police come to arrest them.

In American history, it has often been the case that the federal government had to intervene when states and localities fail to enforce the law, both the Executive branch through the Justice Department and through the courts.

At the moment, we have the situation of professional urban police forces watching masked goons with no badges, with no clear identification as any kind of law enforcement, heavily armed, often driving around in vehicles with illegally concealed license tags, who are beating, gassing, kidnapping, and even killing people with impunity.

Law enforcement agencies are required to obey the law themselves and to enforce the law – including against government agencies breaking it. For all the practical complications involved, municipal police forces need to actively enforce the law against ICE Gestapo criminals.

There’s some real irony in the idea of the Minneapolis police needing to step up to enforce the law against violent and murderous federal agency lawbreakers. George Floyd was murdered in 2020 by a Minneapolis police office, choked to death by one officer while three others helped hold Floyd down during the murder. Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter, and the three accomplices were convicted of violating the victim’s civil rights.

It would be a good way for the Minneapolis PD to further restore their reputation by taking the lead in restraining the ICE criminals. It would also be defending the rule of law. The general strike in the city this past week posting ICE was a great development!

Keith Ellison

Minnesota’s state attorney general since 2019, Keith Ellison has been working on rule-of-law for the police, including acting as the lead prosector against George Floyd. His page at the website of the National Association of Attorneys General states:

Attorney General Ellison was the lead prosecutor of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. He led the team that successfully convicted four former police officers of second-degree murder or second-degree manslaughter, demonstrating that no one is above the law, and no one is beneath it. He is a national thought leader in the effort to advance constitutional policing that builds community trust and helps bring about true public safety for all people and communities. [my emphasis] (3)

Notes:

(1) Haynes, Suyin (2019): President Trump Said Revolutionary War Troops ‘Took Over the Airports’ in His Fourth of July Speech. Time 07/05/2019. <https://time.com/5620936/donald-trump-revolutionary-war-airports/> (Accessed: 2026-24-01).

(2) MN Cops REVOLT As ICE Harasses Officers. Breaking Points YouTube channel 01/21/2026. <https://youtu.be/b8iXtb28wCI?si=S0QraegB6LphHQR_> (Accessed: 2026-23-01).

(3) Keith Ellison-Minnesota Attorney General. National Association of Attorneys General n/d. <https://www.naag.org/attorney-general/keith-ellison/> (Accessed: 2026-24-01).

Policing the ICE Gestapo paramilitary goons

The state and local governments in Minnesota are dealing with the serious misconduct of the ICE paramilitary that the Trump regime has sent there. (1)

The ugly and murderous conduct of the ICE Gestapo in Minneapolis has got me thinking more specifically about the authority that states and local governments may have for restraining criminal conduct on ICE’s part.

Despite the title having to do with Greenland, the first part of the following interview has former senior general Mark Hertling talking about the terror tactics being used by ICE. And he rightly says that their obvious goal is to provoke a violent reaction that they can then use as an excuse to declare martial law or something like it. (2) (Trump seems to think invoking the Insurrection Act would be the same as setting up martial law, but it isn’t.)

But he also notes that, no matter how much goodwill and peaceful civic dedication most people have, if the current violent and even murderous tactics of ICE continue the way they are going, it’s inevitable that someone somewhere will react violently. He also has some interesting memories of how the post-2003 Iraqi security forces stopped wearing masks and why.

And anyone who thinks they are not trying to recruit provocateurs should read up on COINTELPRO from the 60s and the feds’ tactics during the post-9/11 period. And those were pre-Trump times!

There has been speculation over the last year is what it might look like in the US if actual civil war conditions were reached. What would that look like? What it will not look like is some kind of Democratic Party armed militia rising up against the ICE Gestapo, because no such partisan militia exists. Nor anything like that in the form of some National Antifa Underground Army or such like.

Robert Reich’s recent weekly podcast noted the fact that the Trump regime has sent three thousand ICE goons to Minneapolis, a city which has a police force of around 600. (3)

The most hopeful approach is the one municipal police and county sheriffs are now starting to use and even openly announce, which is that when ICE goons break the law, as they do regularly now, the local forces will arrest them and charge them. And since it’s now clear that ICE has been heavily recruiting Proud Boy-like “patriot militia” types like the cop-killing thugs who stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, there’s a good chance they will be doing more cop-killing. That is even more reason for local and state officials sooner rather than later to enforce the law against the militia goons who are breaking it.

Cops are there to enforce the law, not to break it (even though too many cops do). These ICE thugs are obviously operating on directives to terrorize local citizens, almost certainly as preparation for doing so on a wide scale on election days this year. On this matter, it really is “Support Your Local Police” time - and demand they do their jobs.

It’s important to remember that especially the recent hires among the ICE Gestapo are poorly trained in basic police conduct. It’s one thing for them to shoot an unarmed woman like Renee Good in the face with no warning. Dealing with armed and well-trained police is a whole different matter. And since ICE is reportedly planning to hire hundreds more goons in coming months, the average level of their professionalism will decline even further.

ProPublica just published a report on the use of deadly and banned chokeholds on people they attack. (4) If this goes on, there will be more people killed from this kind of abusive ICE practices:

An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard that his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; she then appeared to pass out. An agent in Massachusetts jabbed his finger and thumb into the neck and arteries of a young father who refused to be separated from his wife and 1-year-old daughter. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing. ...

ProPublica found more than 40 cases over the past year of immigration agents using these life-threatening maneuvers on immigrants, citizens and protesters. The agents are usually masked, their identities secret. The government won’t say if any of them have been punished.

In nearly 20 cases, agents appeared to use chokeholds and other neck restraints that the Department of Homeland Security prohibits “unless deadly force is authorized.”

If the ICE Gestapo violently resist legitimate local and state law enforcement, then we could see some civil-war-type scenes. It won’t be states seceding from the federal Union 1860-61 style and forming a secessionist army.

But Trump might also be willing to declare martial law, in which case opposition to it would have to take some combination of states and localities enforcing the actual law, federal institutions like the Army refusing to obey illegal orders, and civic society actively protesting. Even something vaguely resembling the Wobblies’ dream of a nationwide general strike is not impossible to imagine.

But we shouldn’t let the Cabinet and Congress off the hook on their responsibilities. The Cabinet can invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office. The Congress can also impeach and remove the President, which would of course require Republican votes. The Democrats also have a responsibility to actively pursue such remedies.

Arresting people at random on the street with no legal cause or arrest warrant, shooting drivers in the face because an ICE thug just feels like it, sending armed masked goons into schools with no actual legal purpose - this stuff is seriously illegal, and the local and state police do have a duty to enforce the law.

That has bit of a "states rights" ring. But it's actually about the basic rule of law. Wearing a black mask and combat-style camouflage does not give anyone the right to illegally beat, tear-gas, assault or murder people. And their black masks certainly do not give ICE criminals the "absolute immunity" Vice President JD Vance says they have.

Reducing the ICE recruits' training from six months to 47 days because Trump is the 47th President pretty much tells us all we need to know about ICE professionalism.

Notes:

(1) Masters, Clay (2026): With limited political power, Minnesota Democrats navigate resistance to Trump. NPR 01/16/2026.<https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5678565/immigration-minnesota-democrats-navigate-resistance-to-trump> (Accessed: 2026-16-01).

(2) Taking Greenland Would Trigger a NATO Crisis (w/ Mark Hertling). The Bulwark YouTube channel 01/14/2026. <https://youtu.be/1-6wDWfrJHI?si=QX87aooeICKyoUGE> (Accessed: 2026-15-01).

(3) ICE: The American Gestapo. Robert Reich YouTube channel 01/17/2026. <https://youtu.be/ZVGTmdKoTME?si=Fu2cqe1qOcH2QpUR> (Accessed: 2026-17-01).

(4) Foy, Nicole and Funk, McKenzie (2026): We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing. ProPublica 01/13/2026. <https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigration-agents-using-chokeholds-citizens> (Accessed: 2026-15-01).