Trump Can Use Federal Authority in Minneapolis as Eisenhower Once Did in Little Rock

Star Parker on Jan 28, 2026

Sorting through what exactly Alex Pretti did or did not do to provoke his death in Minneapolis at the hands of ICE agents is not enough to understand this tragedy.

Pretti had a permit for his concealed weapon. But does the Second Amendment cover carrying it at an incendiary anti-ICE demonstration with motivation to do something?

All this will be investigated and sorted out. But we need a bigger picture to put this tragedy in context.

We must understand that our nation is now deeply splintered, with a divide where we no longer have shared common values.

Consider that six years ago, in the same city, Minneapolis, a local policeman killed George Floyd.

In the end, justice was done, and the officer was convicted on two counts of murder and sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison.

But for progressives, this wasn't enough. They indicted and convicted the entire country.

Protests and disruptions erupted nationwide, provoked by progressive groups such as Black Lives Matter, showcasing George Floyd as proof of the inherent racism and white supremacy of America.

It triggered a wave of DEI activism.

We need to distinguish between justice and ideology.

Justice is about drawing conclusions from facts. Ideology is about claiming facts from already drawn conclusions.

What George Floyd did or did not do was irrelevant to Black Lives Matter. They already concluded that the country is racist and guilty.

The election of Donald Trump was backlash to this craziness.

Immigration was part of it all. Our borders were porous during the Biden years, with an estimated 9 million people entering illegally, bringing the total illegals in country to some 14 million plus.

Gov. Tim Walz's Minnesota provided a user-friendly environment for illegals. It offered them driver's licenses, potentially free college tuition and government health care programs.

So, ICE was already unwanted in Minnesota before one ICE boot arrived on the ground there.

Sleeping with dogs means waking up with fleas, and now Walz has announced his withdrawal from running for reelection with the revelation that under his watch there has been up to $9 billion in fraud in federal government welfare programs. As I recently discussed, some billion dollars in fraud in COIVD-19 programs was discovered, mostly attributed to Somali immigrants.

Pretti showed up at the anti-ICE demonstration shortly after Walz spoke to his state urging activism against ICE, calling their work, among other accusations, "a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota."

Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has represented a major portion of Minneapolis since 2019, herself a Somali immigrant, has been an aggressive anti-American voice since her entry to Congress.

She recently barely survived a House censure vote after calling the late Charlie Kirk -- whose life's work was dedicated to conveying to young men the importance of personal responsibility, family, and marriage -- a "reprehensible human being... filled with bigotry, hatred, and white supremacy."

The federal government can send federal troops into a state under authority of the Insurrection Act of 1807, when the state government fails to enforce federal law or protect constitutional rights.

President Dwight Eisenhower used this authority in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, when Gov. Orval Faubus refused to follow federal law outlawing discrimination in schools. When the NAACP registered nine Black students to attend Little Rock Central High School, Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from entering. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas guard and used federal authority to protect these Black children so they could enter and attend school.

The leadership in Minnesota is clearly inimical to our national interest and security.

As Eisenhower once acted in Little Rock, so Trump can act in Minnesota.

Star Parker is founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Her recent book, "What Is the CURE for America?" is available now. To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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