The rise of the new confederacy
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun,” King Solomon famously observed in the Koheleth (Book of Ecclesiastes). Truer words have never been written. Look no further than the present anarchic tumult in Minnesota.
On Jan. 12, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison initiated a lawsuit on behalf of the North Star State, along with municipal co-plaintiffs Minneapolis and St. Paul, against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons and the rest of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement apparatus. In his press conference announcing the suit, Ellison emphasized the same basic arguments as his formal complaint: Namely, that ICE’s enforcement “surge” in Minnesota amounts to a “violation of the Tenth Amendment and the sovereign laws and powers granted to states.”
In essence, Ellison and his Minnesota’s Democratic Party leadership confreres argue that the constitutional federalism articulated in the Tenth Amendment and its corollary of “states’ rights” can shield the Land of 10,000 Lakes from the long enforcement arm of federal immigration law. Ellison and Minnesota Democrats claim that by declaring their state and cities to be illegal alien “sanctuaries,” they can “nullify” federal immigration law. Stop me if you’ve heard that one before.
Democrats in America have a long and inglorious history of invoking “states’ rights” and shirking federal law. It has never ended well.
In 1798 and 1799, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison – members of the Democratic-Republican Party, the partisan predecessor to today’s Democratic Party – penned the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. The Resolutions, a direct response to the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts championed by President John Adams, argued that when Congress passes an unconstitutional statute, the states are permitted to declare the law null and void within their own jurisdictions. According to this argument, if a state’s constitutional officers deem a federal law to be unconstitutional, the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution – which normally establishes federal law as “the supreme law of the land” over state law – simply does not apply.
This sentiment was taken to its logical conclusion during the antebellum period. During the nullification crisis of 1832-33, South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 to be unconstitutional and unenforceable in the Palmetto State. South Carolina even took initial steps to organize the militia, in anticipation of attempted federal mobilization. In ensuing decades, South Carolinian John C. Calhoun emerged as the most passionate advocate for state nullification. Calhoun argued not only for a state’s “right” to nullify federal law but also to secede from the Union, if necessary, to secure its sovereignty. The result was the 1861 attack on Fort Sumter and the 600,000-plus slain in the Civil War.
For nearly a century after the Civil War, Calhoun’s ghost lingered. As the civil rights movement gained steam, segregationists invoked nullification and “states’ rights” as justifications for defying federally mandated civil rights. The Southern Manifesto, signed by dozens of U.S. senators and congressmen in 1956, took the position that the Tenth Amendment permitted states to defy the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision of 1954. In the Little Rock Crisis of 1957, Gov. Orval Faubus relied on the same principles when he ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block Black students from attending Little Rock Central High School. Faubus lost his showdown when President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to forcibly desegregate Little Rock.
In echoing the discredited theories of yesteryear, Ellison, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and the rest of the state’s top Democratic brass have emerged as modern reincarnations of Jefferson Davis and George Wallace. They wouldn’t see it that way, naturally. Nor would Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recognize that her own “race-infused worldview” and belief in “racial determinism,” as Justice Clarence Thomas accused her of harboring in his Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) concurrence, is an updated version of Calhoun’s vile life outlook. But that’s precisely what it is.
On Thursday, Trump border czar Tom Homan announced that the administration is prepared to draw down federal personnel in Minnesota if the state cooperates. We’ll see if that transpires, but I have my suspicions. Historically, Democratic Party subversives and insurrectionists have not been known for their cooperation with the feds. The good news for President Donald Trump is that he has a clear legal precedent for how to respond, if the neo-Confederate uprising in Minnesota continues apace. On April 15, 1861, in response to the attack on Fort Sumter three days prior, President Abraham Lincoln invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807. Trump has recently been musing about doing the same.
Will Trump pull the trigger? Maybe. After all, there’s nothing new under the sun.