If the rule of law is to mean anything it must be enforced everywhere.

The United States of America is once again facing a constitutional and civil crisis, not on distant battlefields, but in the streets of Minnesota where violence has escalated and civil order has frayed. What began as protests tied to federal immigration enforcement has metastasized into sustained unrest, exposing a deeper national question. Who enforces the law when local and state officials refuse to do so?

The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that President Donald J. Trump has publicly warned that he may invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to restore order if Minnesota officials continue to abdicate their responsibility to protect life, property, and federal authority.

This warning did not arise in a vacuum. Violent demonstrations, vandalism, assaults on law enforcement, and the open obstruction of federal officers have become routine. Political leaders in Minnesota have responded not by restoring order, but by filing lawsuits condemning federal enforcement and effectively encouraging defiance. When governors and mayors place ideology above public safety the federal government is left with a solemn constitutional duty. That duty is embodied in The Insurrection Act of 1807, and is one of the most powerful yet misunderstood statutes in American law. Enacted during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, it authorizes the President of the United States to deploy federal military forces, including active duty troops and federalized National Guard units within the United States when ordinary law enforcement mechanisms have failed.

The Act permits presidential action when insurrection, domestic violence, or unlawful conspiracies make it impossible to enforce federal law, or when states are unwilling or unable to protect the constitutional rights of their citizens. In short, it exists to preserve the Republic when civil authority collapses.

Normally the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of the military for civilian law enforcement. The Insurrection Act serves as a narrow but explicit exception. It recognizes that there are moments when the enforcement of law and the preservation of constitutional order require extraordinary measures.

Critics claim that invoking the Insurrection Act is authoritarian. History proves the opposite. The Insurrection Act has been used sparingly and almost always in moments of grave national consequence.

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked it to send the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock Arkansas after the governor refused to comply with a federal court order to desegregate Central High School. State officials openly defied the Constitution. Federal troops enforced the law and protected American children exercising their civil rights.

During the 1960s, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson used the Act to quell violent resistance to civil rights enforcement across the South. These interventions were not acts of tyranny. They were acts of constitutional necessity.

After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, riots erupted in major American cities. President Johnson again invoked the Insurrection Act to restore order when local governments were overwhelmed.

In 1992, President George H. W. Bush used the Act to deploy federal troops to Los Angeles after riots exploded following the Rodney King verdict. Entire neighborhoods burned while local authorities lost control. Federal intervention stabilized the city and saved lives.

Each of these episodes shares a common thread. State and local governments failed. The federal government stepped in to preserve order and uphold the law.

Minnesota today bears an unsettling resemblance to those moments.

Instead of enforcing the law, state leaders have chosen performative resistance. They have vilified federal officers, encouraged mass protest and allowed professional agitators to hijack public spaces. When federal agents are attacked and the enforcement of immigration law is obstructed, what exactly is the federal government supposed to do?

If a state refuses to protect federal officers, refuses to enforce the law, tolerates violence and lawlessness in the name of ideology, has it not already surrendered its claim to exclusive authority?

The Insurrection Act is not a tool of oppression. It is a constitutional backstop. It exists for moments precisely like this when elected officials abandon their oath and citizens are left unprotected.

The question Americans must ask is not whether invoking the Insurrection Act is extreme, but why Minnesota’s leaders have allowed matters to deteriorate so badly that such an invocation is even being discussed.

Law without enforcement is fiction. Rights without order are illusions. A republic that cannot defend its laws cannot survive.

History teaches us that presidents who invoke the Insurrection Act do so reluctantly but decisively when the alternative is chaos. Minnesota now stands at that crossroads.

If the rule of law is to mean anything it must be enforced everywhere, even in states whose leaders believe themselves immune from constitutional accountability.

A fake news smear published last week in Bloomberg is claiming that Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard was deliberately kept out of the loop during the plotting of Nicolas Maduro’s ouster as Venezuelan President, with administration officials joking that DNI stood for “Do Not Invite,” implying she is not trustworthy due to her steadfast opposition to the “forever war” policies of previous administrations.

This claim was vehemently denied by the Trump administration, and Gabbard released an X post showing that she was 100 percent behind President Trump’s successful removal of Maduro. “President Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers. Kudos to our servicemen and women and intelligence operators for their flawless execution of President Trump’s order to deliver on his promise thru Operation Absolute Resolve,” Gabbard wrote on her official DNI account on Jan. 6.

This is not the first time that the fake news and other malignant actors have attempted to undermine Gabbard’s influence within the Trump administration on behalf of the military-industrial complex. In Sept. 2025, Gabbard was blamed by the New York Times and Axios for no criminal charges being filed against CIA Director John Brennan because Gabbard wisely removed security clearances for disgraced deep state hacks – an absurd notion that is laughable on its face. RINO U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is also leading a disgraceful effort to strip the DNI of its authority, giving unrestrained power to CIA and NSA bureaucrats free of Gabbard’s oversight.

Gabbard’s influence within the Trump administration is particularly crucial because no appointee has been more dedicated to bringing justice to deep state criminals than she. In July 2025, Gabbard ordered the release of a damning tranche of documents showing how the Russia-gate coup against President Trump was ordered from the highest echelons of the Obama regime.

The documents declassified by the DNI’s office showed that the faulty intelligence community (IC) assessment framing President Trump as a Russian asset was ordered during a Dec. 2016 meeting of the National Security Council at the direct request of President Obama. The effort was waged despite the IC’s determination that Russia was “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means” and after post-election talking points were developed for DNI James Clapper stating that “foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome.”

Gabbard’s disclosures were among the most consequential of any that have been released during President Trump’s second term, but they have yet to amount to serious consequences for those who were implicated. No Obama or Clinton associates have been charged for any Russiagate-related offenses at the present moment despite the abundance of overwhelming evidence. Neoconservatives are hoping MAGA’s focus on deep state criminality subsides as they circle like sharks hoping to use President Trump’s success in Venezuela as an excuse to retreat back to a Bush-era foreign policy of nation-building and excessive militarism abroad.  

‘Former’ Never Trumper Ben Shapiro said during his recent podcast that the Venezuelan operation has helped America recover from “Iraq syndrome,” meaning that it has erased the failures of Iraq from the public consciousness, and attempted to redefine President Trump’s foreign policy agenda from simply putting America first to the more convoluted and expansionist rationale of ensuring that “America’s interests are paramount” which “includes a lot of things—from freedom of the seas to the strength of American allies in contentious regions.” Gabbard is the administration official who has been the most eloquent and outspoken advocate for a sane, rational foreign policy that puts America first. She has the credibility and the vision to effectuate the Donroe Doctrine in a manner that ensures peace through strength while avoiding the interventionist pitfalls of prior administrations. It is crucial that her opponents in the fake news, neocon right and military-industrial complex are unsuccessful in their devious efforts to neutralize her. Gabbard is a fundamental component to guarantee that the MAGA agenda is a success that lasts for generations to come.

A persistent rumor that has been circulating on social media in recent weeks is that former South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy will be taking over for Attorney General Pam Bondi. Many Trump supporters are understandably frustrated at the lack of progress made by the Department of Justice to indict deep state spooks for the crimes committed in Russia-gate, the Jan. 6 fed-surrection, the 2020 stolen election and other treasonous acts that have occurred.

I have maintained my support for Bondi wholeheartedly. I have known her for decades and understand her to be a diligent patriot. I, too, am frustrated by the DOJ’s inactivity regarding crucial prosecutions. There is a tremendous amount of institutional rot that is keeping these well-protected men and women from being brought to justice. That is being churned out under Bondi, and it must be done faster. But one thing is clear: Trey Gowdy is NOT the man for this crucial job.

Gowdy is most well-known for giving strongly worded speeches while leading an investigative committee for the Benghazi scandal as a Congressman. In hearing after hearing, Gowdy pounded the podium and threw red meat at the angry Tea Party base. He amassed quite the following as a result of his theatrics, but then no accountability ever occurred. No prosecutions or real answers came as a result of the Benghazi hearings. Gowdy refused to assign blame to Clinton or any other Obama official in the aftermath of the lengthy, expensive public investigation. It was classic GOP establishment theatre – with political hacks playing beat the clock until the issue could be swept under the rug.

When President Trump came down the golden escalator and changed the face of politics forever, Gowdy’s tough-guy facade cracked almost immediately. He joined the chorus of the anti-Trumpers hoping to keep President Trump on the outs. When their gatekeeping attempts failed, they attempted to subvert him while he was in office. In 2018, then-Congressman Gowdy, along with former House Speaker Paul Ryan, were the loudest defenders of Russia-gate spying on President Trump, arguing that the FBI was correct to use informants to infiltrate President Trump’s inner circle as part of their expansive fishing expedition based on faulty intelligence.

“I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do,” Gowdy said in a Fox News interview regarding Russia-gate. “It has nothing to do with Donald Trump.”

Gowdy incredulously stated that the FBI was actually working to clear President Trump’s name during their Russia-gate farce – a laughable notion at the time that has been proven abjectly false as more documents have come out exposing the depths of the conspiracy.

“It was President Trump himself who said, No. 1, ‘I didn’t collude with Russia, but if anyone connected with my campaign did, I want the FBI to find that out,’” Gowdy said. “It looks to me like the FBI was doing what President Trump said I want you to do — find it out.”

This, alone, is disqualifying as it shows how Gowdy is imbecilic and naive at best, but more likely was running cover for the deep state the whole time – as indicated by his desire to suppress the Mueller Report that cleared President Trump of any Russian collusion claims. Gowdy’s comments about CIA Director John Brennan years later further expose his true colors, calling Brennan a liar but stating that he should be “shamed” rather than locked up for his capitol offenses shows how Gowdy uses weasel tactics to protect federal crooks.

“Handcuffs are not the only way we meed out accountability. There’s shame, there’s history. It’s not just prison. There is other ways we meed out accountability. And the fact that somebody’s not wearing handcuffs does not, to me, think that what they did is okay because it wasn’t,” Gowdy said during a FOX News panel.

After bailing from Congress amidst an exodus of RINOs in 2019, Gowdy took a nice well-paying job on Fox News, reinventing himself as a moderate pundit and adopting a similar look and style to Rachel Maddow. Gowdy’s “transition” did not serve him well in terms of rebuilding his waning credibility, to put it mildly. When Gowdy was hocking his book, Doesn’t Hurt to Ask, he did an anti-Trump media tour, even appearing on the show of reviled Trump hater and vaxx pusher Stephen Colbert to trash President Trump’s impact on the Republican Party.

“it’s not the Republican Party I grew up with… Conservatism tells people what they ought to hear. Populism tells people what they want to hear… I’m a conservative, and you know, sometimes it gets difficult to see what the party platform is,” Gowdy said during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in Aug. 2020.

In that same interview with Colbert, Gowdy also criticized President Trump for not forcing face diapers onto the faces of Americans when COVID hysteria reached a fever pitch. 

“I do wear a mask… I would have liked for [President Trump] to have embraced the goodness, the propriety of wearing masks sooner,” Gowdy told Colbert.

Just last year, Gowdy came out forcefully against the 2nd Amendment, claiming that jettisoning fundamental rights was necessary for “protecting children” following a mass shooting of kids by a transgender maniac in a Catholic church in Minnesota. 

“The only way to stop it is to identify the shooter ahead of time or keep the weapons out of their hands,” he said. “And so we’re going to have to have a conversation of freedom versus protecting children. I mean how many school shootings does it take before we’re going to have a conversation about keeping firearms out,” Gowdy said, adding that “it’s always a young, white male” to add some revolting wokeness to his anti-constitutional rant. 

The rumor mill pushing Gowdy as an AG candidate is likely an op to reroute the DOJ and erase the good work that is currently being done behind the scenes to enact serious structural reform. The notion of Gowdy as AG is inspiring intense rage by MAGA partisans on the X platform right now, and for good reason. Gowdy is a Paul Ryan Republican who was rightfully swept out of the Party in the age of Trump to the betterment of mankind. He must stay relegated to his FOX News echo chamber, far away from any role in the Trump administration or within Republican politics.