Minneapolis: How Is This Not an Insurrection?

Good Morning! Today is a chilly Sunday, Jan 25, 2026. Alexa says that today is World Leprosy Day.
 
Today in History:

1777: Americans drag a cannon up a hill on Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx, New York, to fight the British, giving added significance to the area’s historic name, Gunn Hill. The name of the road was changed to Gun Hill Road in 1875.

1819: University of Virginia chartered by the Commonwealth of Virginia, with Thomas Jefferson as one of its founders.

1825: First U.S. engineering college opens: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.

1840: American naval expedition under Charles Wilkes is first to identify Antarctica as a new continent. It remains the only continent with no countries.

1881: Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.

1915: Transcontinental telephone service officially inaugurated as Alexander Graham Bell in NYC calls Thomas Watson in San Francisco, California, during the Panama–Pacific International Exposition.

1918: Russia declares a republic of Soviets.

1919: Founding of the League of Nations; first meeting occurs one year later.

1945: Grand Rapids, Michigan, becomes the first U.S. city to fluoridate its water.

1956: 96.5 cm (38.0") of rainfall in a day at Kilauea Plantation, Hawaii (state record until 2018).

1961: Walt Disney's animated film 101 Dalmatians, based on the novel by Dodie Smith and directed by Clyde Geronimi and Hamilton Luske, is released in the U.S.

1970: The film MASH* is released.

1993: Sears announces it is closing its catalog sales department after 97 years.

Birthdays today include: Poet Robert Burns, author Virginia Woolf, Philippine President Corazon Aquino, singer Etta James, NASCAR driver Buddy Baker, Tōru Iwatani (inventor of Pac-Man), and Volodymyr Zelensky.

* * *

Here’s the preface question: For all the complaints we’ve been subjected to over the years about how Jan. 6 was an insurrection (for the record, it wasn’t), how is what we are now seeing in Minneapolis not an insurrection?

At the center of this mess right now, you have someone who showed up to the “protest” with a gun and a couple of clips, clearly intending to use that gun against federal law enforcement. True, he had been granted a carry permit, but he was not carrying either his ID or his carry permit as required by law. I’m seeing reports that the man shot by ICE, Alex Pretti, was part of a Signal group targeting ICE.

This is not about the Second Amendment as many of the supporters of those anti-ICE rioters claim. (Yes, I said rioter. It's not a protest when you are actively attacking federal officers.) 

Even absent any Second Amendment discussion, rule number one here seems a purely logical point. It's one that seems to be getting ignored by many: You simply do not pull a loaded gun on a federal officer doing his duty enforcing the law and expect to survive. 

Somewhat less reported was an incident mentioned by PJ Media’s Catherine Salgado.

McLaughlin explained, “In Minneapolis, these rioters attacked our law enforcement officer and one of them bit off our HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] officer’s finger. He will lose his finger.” What a proud victory for Walz and co.! They managed to ruin a brave officer’s life.

Just ponder how deranged and bestial you have to be to seek out a federal law enforcement officer for the express purpose of assaulting him, and then deliberately bite off his finger. I can't help but think of Gollum biting off Frodo's finger at the climax of The Lord of the Rings to obtain the Ring; and the fiction has a parallel to the reality. As Tolkien meant the Ring to represent sin and evil, and as Gollum is destroyed and driven mad by it, so leftist domestic terrorists seem drunk on and driven mad by their lust for violence and revenge.

And she correctly notes:

 It seems long past time for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. In the chaos and violence following the death of an armed Minneapolis would-be terrorist shot while fighting Border Patrol, another protester has bitten off the finger of a federal officer.

Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson notes:

Fifth District Rep. Ilhan Omar sits in Congress and comes to town occasionally to rouse the rabble. Former Nation of Islam hustler Keith Ellison burrows from the inside as Minnesota Attorney General. Tim Walz mouths the obligatory platitudes and shibboleths as nominal leader of the state. Amy Klobuchar — the most popular Democrat in the state — has gone along for the ride.

Every single one of these people Scott mentions swore to uphold the Constitution. That’s a promise they are clearly breaking.That alone required an enforcement response. 

Matt Margolis, also here at PJ Media, calls it correctly: 

 This was an inevitable result of Democrat-enabled chaos and relentless demonization of federal immigration enforcement. The suspect wasn’t merely armed with a loaded handgun, but had extra magazines, clearly willing to take action against federal officials.

President Donald Trump has now reacted to the incident with a Truth Social post that framed the shooting as proof of broader lawlessness, failed leadership, and massive corruption in Minnesota, and possibly hinted that he may invoke the Insurrection Act as a result.

Unquestionably, that would be an entirely appropriate action because what we’re seeing and hearing sounds pretty insurrection-y to me. 

Just think: If Kamala Harris had done her job as Border Czar during the Biden Administration, none of this would be happening.

(Okay, stop laughing.)

Trump remarked in an interview a couple of weeks ago that he didn’t think the threshold for using the Insurrection Act had been met. (A couple of weeks… Good God, has it really been that long?) I suggest that whatever threshold he was measuring by back then has certainly been met now.

Consider: we have people, including state officials, openly and violently defying the enforcement of federal laws, including violent attacks on federal officers, and have for weeks now. Even now, they’re trying to leverage that shooting against ICE. All this is the very definition of insurrection.

I'm with Catherine on this one.

Mr. President, it's time to act. Invoke the Insurrection Act. Federalize the state militias. Restore order, and do it now, before this gets further out of hand. 

Maybe I'm reacting in anger, but things have reached the point where some anger is appropriate. So, I suggest that a nice touch would be treating the Minneapolis rioters in the same way the Democrats treated the J6’ers. Remember, up top I said J6 was not an insurrection? I point out that if it were, it would be the first insurrection in history where the supposed insurrectionists were unarmed. That line has now been crossed in Minneapolis. It's now time to act.

Thought of the day: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” — commonly attributed to Mark Twain

Stay warm, my friends, but before you start feeling particularly abused by the cold where you are, consider our Canadian neighbors. Ottawa went down to -20F last night.  Cold even for them. 

I'll see you tomorrow.

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