Inside the Insurgency Against ICE & America

I’ve spent the past 48 hours doing mostly two things: shoveling far more snow than I’d planned to, and tracking the steady stream of new information coming out of Minneapolis.

I remember the Black Lives Matter riots. There were moments when the unrest reached Washington, and images showed streets on fire and President Trump going into the White House bunker. It was an unnerving moment. I think it felt especially unnerving because what we want from the government is simple: peace and predictability, upheld through law and order — rules we agree to as a society, enforced consistently, until we decide together that it’s time to change them.

What happened during the BLM summer of 2020 — and what’s happening now in Minnesota — is a violent insurgency against the democratically chosen direction this country has taken. It is violent, coordinated, and engineered to produce the outcomes we’re now seeing: deaths among “protesters,” the ensuing demonization of the Trump administration and its supporters, and — ultimately — a halt to the enforcement of federal law, particularly immigration law.

As in 2020, much of the media now appears determined to side with a coordinated and well-funded insurgency.

The average American — particularly those left of center — may find themselves sympathizing with these protesters, rioters, or insurgents, whatever term one prefers. This is not because they share the same end goals or vision of governance. These actors are committed progressives, often rooted in anarchic and Marxist ideology. The broader public supports them largely because the media obscures their tactics, their objectives, and their motives — details that, in my view, most Americans would find deeply troubling if fully understood.

The last time the country reached a moment like this, in 2020, President Trump failed to restore order through law enforcement. The unrest eventually subsided not because it was resolved, but because the federal government effectively abdicated its responsibility to address it. And since the start of Trump’s second term, it is difficult to argue that he has fully reasserted control over these same elements.

For that reason, how the administration chooses to proceed now will determine not only its ability to implement domestic policy over the next two years, but also how emboldened and confident these insurgent forces will feel in their campaign to violently disrupt policies and administrations that the majority of Americans vote for.

The following piece is written to assemble all of the moving parts and events of the past week, and to be shared with those tuned into media sources who may not be fully seeing or hearing what is unfolding across the country.