Minnesota and the New Nullification Crisis
The antics of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have been much in the news of late, but the corporate media has studiously ignored the legal and historical context of his refusal to comply with federal immigration law. Minnesota is just one of 16 Democrat-controlled states that have enacted measures that violate the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2), which provides that federal law takes precedence over conflicting laws passed by states. These Democrats are reenacting the nullification crisis that historians regard as a precursor to the Civil War.
The larger issue is the remarkable consistency with which Democrat-controlled states have rejected the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.
These “sanctuary states” include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. How precisely are they violating the Supremacy Clause? Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution gives Congress plenary authority over immigration. Congress has passed a variety of laws designed to control which immigrants may legally enter and reside in the U.S. Yet when ICE officials try to enforce these laws, these states interfere, falsely claiming their own immigration statutes somehow take precedence.
Some of these states, including Minnesota, have simply declared themselves sanctuary jurisdictions without bothering to pass a law. The Gopher State did so based on nothing more than an advisory opinion issued by its far left attorney general Keith Ellison: “Minnesota law prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from holding someone based on an immigration detainer if the person would otherwise be released from custody.” Thus, local authorities release illegal aliens knowing that ICE officers are on their way to arrest them. As Michael R. Davis, President of the Article III Project, writes at Fox News:
Sanctuary states and cities cripple federal law enforcement. Leftist leaders refuse to assist the federal government in enforcing immigration law, including the outrageous refusal to honor federal detainers for illegal immigrants arrested for other crimes. When state jails release illegal immigrants, officials fail to notify ICE. Agents must track fugitives on the streets instead of making safe arrests inside jails, exposing themselves and the public to unnecessary danger. Sanctuary policies shield murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers, and armed robbers from deportation.
In many ways, this is worse than mere nullification. Earlier attempts by states to nullify federal laws have been based on the theory that Congress or federal courts had overstepped their constitutional authority. Indeed, that has been the basis for such challenges going back to the first nullification crisis prior to the Civil War. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina argued that the national government was merely a compact of the states. He believed the states were superior to the federal government and could unilaterally decide whether any particular federal law exceeded the authority that had been delegated to the national government.
Calhoun’s argument eventually grew into the secession movement and metastasized beyond South Carolina to the ten additional states that formed the confederacy in 1861. After that debacle got well over 600,000 people killed, nullification went out of fashion until the civil rights era, when Democrat governors used it as a pretext to fight school integration. Indeed, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called up the state’s National Guard to block nine black students from entering a high school in Little Rock. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has also mobilized his state’s National Guard to “protect Minnesotans” from the diabolical depredations of ICE:
On January 7, 2026, federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in south Minneapolis. This shooting immediately follows the federal government’s surge of masked immigration officials in Minnesota. These agents have indiscriminately arrested people off the street, intimidated our friends and neighbors, and have now caused the loss of life. Minnesotans are feeling scared, angry, and disillusioned … The National Guard can support local law enforcement efforts to protect life and property, ensure public safety, and protect freedom of speech.
Democrat Gov. Orval Faubus called up the Arkansas National Guard to protect public schools from black students and Walz has called up Minnesota’s National Guard to protect violent anti-ICE activists from law enforcement officers. How is it that the Democrats are always on the wrong side of these and so many other issues? Think about it. All of the segregationists were Democrats. All of the anti-ICE activists are Democrats. What do these people have in common? Both reject the proposition that Congress or the federal courts have any legitimate authority to govern their actions. Both believe they have a right to nullify laws they dislike.
And, while the antics of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are both absurd and amusing, he is just attempting to deflect attention from his obvious complicity in the massive welfare fraud that has been uncovered in the Gopher State. The larger issue is the remarkable consistency with which Democrat-controlled states have rejected the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. All 16 have adopted the same position on immigration and deportation. It is as if they think enforcement of existing immigration laws is an existential threat to their party.
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