With Blood on His Hands, Trump Is Eager To Invoke Insurrection Act

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Programming Note We’re hosting our first Morning Memo Live event on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C. Find details and tickets here - and TPM members should look out for a special discount code in your inboxes today. Another Federal Shooting in Minneapolis I was in the midst of preparing a Morning Memo arguing that Minneapolis is shaping up to be the catalyzing moment that President Trump was looking for to justify doing what he has wanted to do since his first term: invoke the Insurrection Act ... when he posted exactly that to Truth Social : For months, Trump has been trying to instigate civil unrest that would provide the pretext for a U.S. military crackdown on protestors by provoking clashes with federal agents first in Los Angeles, then in Portland, and finally in Chicago. I’ve been puzzling over why he may succeed in Minneapolis when he failed elsewhere, but I don’t think it has much to do with Minnesotans or the elected Democrats in the blue state, but rather with the escalating use of violence that culminated with the shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good which, critically, was captured on video from multiple angles. That eruption of violence, while spontaneous, was an entirely foreseeable result of a mass deportation policy built on provocation, retribution against blue states, a rotten policing culture, inadequate training, machismo, and swaggering belligerence operating under the color of law. The bellicosity of thousands of masked armed agents swarming the streets of Minneapolis has been amplified, echoed, and reinforced by the highest officials in the land, including President Trump, rather than tamped down. Last night, in a startlingly provocative social media post after another shooting involving a federal agent, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called the protests there an “insurrection,” baselessly accused Minnesota elected Democratic leaders of “terrorism” for “encouraging violence against law enforcement,” and threatened to “take whatever means necessary” to stop them. Not whatever legal means or whatever constitutional means or whatever prosecutorial means but a bare “whatever means.” Whatever that means. Blanche’s Rambo rhetoric came the same evening that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz gave a brief six-minute televised address to the state. “This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government,” Walz said. In a remarkably stark 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 on 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 clash came on an evening when a federal agent in Minneapolis shot an undocumented Venezuelan man in the leg. Both men were hospitalized after the incident. According to...

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