Is the United States headed toward civil war? Or has the new Civil War already begun?

These questions refer to recent events in Minnesota, which have already reached the stage of insurrection. With increasing calls for violence against federal law enforcement officers, the line between insurrection and civil war may already have been crossed. 

Importantly, the danger of civil war is not confined to Minnesota. One must also consider events in California, Oregon, Washington, and Pennsylvania. The trends are highly disturbing at best.

To understand whether the U.S. is in a civil war, there is no better teacher than the first Civil War, which the U.S. endured from 1861 to 1865. It is generally regarded that the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when the first shots were fired by the Confederate States on the Union troops at Fort Sumter.

Less well known is the fact that seven states had already seceded from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America before Fort Sumter. These were South Carolina on December 20, 1860; Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana on various dates in January 1861; and Texas on February 1, 1861. 

The Confederate States of America was formed as a government at a meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861. Ultimately, eleven states plus the Arizona Territory joined the Confederacy. Put differently, the Civil War was underway politically, if not militarily, well before Fort Sumter was attacked.

Something Similar Is Happening Today

No states have yet left the United States, but the behavior of certain states closely mirrors the behavior of the Confederate states in the year before Fort Sumter. The basic dynamic is state power versus federal power.

There is always some tension in that dynamic, but the U.S. Constitution is fairly clear on the subject. The Constitution provides a list of specific powers of the federal government. These include the rights to regulate commerce, coin money, establish post offices, declare war, provide for a Navy, and many others.

Then the Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution … are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” That’s the basic outline. Certain powers belong to the federal government. Powers not included on the list belong to the states. In this sense, states are sovereign and have certain powers reserved to them.

Enter The Supremacy Clause

Of course, conflicting interpretations are bound to arise. The drafters of the Constitution contemplated such conflicts. In Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution, they provided, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States … shall be the supreme Law of the Land … any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” This provision is called the Supremacy Clause.

In brief, the federal government has certain powers, state governments have certain powers, and in the event of any conflict, federal law is supreme.

Yet, the Confederate States did not accept the Supremacy Clause. They relied on a doctrine called nullification. This doctrine said that federal laws that conflicted with state laws would be nullified and ignored because of the sovereign powers of the state. 

Abraham Lincoln led the military response to the Fort Sumter attack to preserve the Union and to blunt the idea of nullification. Morally, the Civil War was about slavery. But, legally, it was about nullification, leaving the Union and the supremacy of federal law.

The New Sanctuary Confederacy

What’s happening today in Minnesota and 12 other states, plus the District of Columbia, that have declared themselves sanctuary states, is eerily similar to the nullification debates in the early Confederacy. 

It’s interesting that there were 11 states and one territory in the Confederacy, and today there are 13 states and one district in the new Sanctuary Confederacy. This Sanctuary Confederacy consists of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, and DC.

The Sanctuary Confederacy rejects the application of federal immigration law to its citizens. They refuse to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in terms of identifying and detaining illegal aliens who have committed horrendous crimes, including rape, torture, child molestation, and murder. They refuse to hand over convicted illegals who are already in state prisons. They refuse to notify ICE when illegals with outstanding arrest warrants come into their custody. Since ICE is operating under established federal law, what the Sanctuary Confederacy is doing amounts to nullification.

The resistance to federal law enforcement goes beyond non-cooperation by local and state police and state government officials. Activists have organized large parts of the citizenry of these rebellious states to resist federal law enforcement.

They pass out whistles that activists can use to alert locals when ICE is in the vicinity. They have obtained lists of license plate numbers of ICE vehicles (probably from the Deep State resistance) that are used to identify and harass ICE officers. Citizens are setting up homemade blockades at key intersections to serve as checkpoints. Those encountering a checkpoint who are on the ICE vehicle list or cannot offer an adequate explanation for their presence are surrounded and threatened.

Sometimes these confrontations between Sanctuary activists and ICE officials turn violent. Bricks and frozen bottles are thrown. High-powered fireworks are detonated. Tires are slashed. Two activists – Alex Pretti and Renée Nicole Good – were killed after attacks on ICE officials. Many of the anti-ICE activists are armed, although this is legal under the Second Amendment.

Minnesota Is Ground Zero 

In the past week, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and U.S. border czar Tom Homan agreed to de-escalate the violence in Minnesota. The state agreed to allow ICE to detain any illegal alien prisoners in the Minnesota system. Those detainees will likely be deported soon since they have already been convicted of crimes.

 In exchange, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agreed to remove 700 ICE agents from Minnesota. This is less of a concession than it may appear because 2,000 ICE agents remain in the state as part of Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. Over 4,000 criminal illegal aliens have already been arrested in Minnesota, and more arrests are expected.

The response of the anti-ICE activists to this compromise was not to stand down. Instead, they surrounded Governor Walz’s house and blasted it all night with loud music and shouts in protest against his seeming cave-in to federal pressure. In any case, further violence against ICE officers and federal property can be expected in Minnesota. This violence will spread as the ICE enforcement efforts move to Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, and other Democrat-controlled hotbeds of nullification and resistance.

The violent confrontations will also continue throughout the year and escalate as the mid-term elections approach. There are some calls for ICE agents to surround polling places where the most cheating occurs (Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix, Las Vegas) and check IDs for illegal aliens trying to vote.

Those illegals caught trying to cheat would likely be arrested and deported. At the same time, well-financed and highly trained activists would swarm the same polling places to confront ICE. Violence to the point of shootings seems likely.

A Civil War Is Brewing 

Many Americans are indifferent to the Sanctuary Confederacy and the nullification push. Their attitude is that activists can destroy their states by allowing illegal rapists and murderers to live among them. Who cares if they are crime-ridden? Who cares if they destroy a federal courthouse? Let them live in their own chaos and enjoy the destructive consequences. These citizens are happy to live in law-abiding states and don’t care if the nullification states fall into chaos and collapse.

Other citizens do care. They care about the rule of law. They reject the nullification argument (as they should). They don’t want to see the destruction of federal buildings even if it’s happening far from where they live. They sense (correctly) that the chaos will spread and eventually reach their own cities and states. The result will be the destruction of the United States itself. That’s exactly what Lincoln feared. That’s exactly what the anti-ICE activists are aiming to achieve.

Trump will have to decide. He can let the Sanctuary Confederate states collapse into chaos. They won’t vote for Republicans in any case, so nothing is lost politically. They can be allowed to wallow in their own dysfunctional policies until they come to their senses and elect new leaders.

Or Trump can follow the example of Lincoln and stand up for the Union and move firmly against nullification and the Sanctuary Confederacy. This would not be a short-term political calculation. It might not even be that popular among all Republican voters. But it would be the right thing to do for the country.

Trump has many tools at his disposal, including the use of the National Guard and Federal troops. He can cut off federal funding to the new confederacy. Trump has the law on his side, including the Supremacy Clause and the Insurrection Act of 1807. Fighting the insurrection might require Trump to go as far as arresting governors and other high officials of the Sanctuary Confederacy states. So be it. The alternative to fighting the Sanctuary states is the gradual breakup of the United States.

The end result of this new Civil War is uncertain. The one certainty is that time is short for Trump to take action or risk losing the country.