Libertarian Cato Institute Condemns Trump’s Insurrection Act In MN Threat

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — A prominent libertarian, right-leaning think tank sharply criticized President Donald Trump on Thursday after he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to unrest tied to federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota.

In a social media post earlier Thursday, Trump warned state and local leaders that he would deploy even more federal authority if protests continued.

His federal enforcement surge has already brought roughly 3,000 ICE agents into the state, according to the administration.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT,” Trump wrote.

The threat followed a second shooting involving a federal officer in Minneapolis in just over a week and came amid protests sparked by the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer.

In response, Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute, issued a statement calling Trump’s threat “extraordinary and hazardous” and urging it be “swiftly and forcefully disavowed.”

“The Insurrection Act permits the president to deploy the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement purposes in narrow, historically exceptional circumstances,” Neily said. “Treating it as a routine response to civil unrest would dangerously lower the bar for military involvement in civilian affairs.”

Neily said the volatility in Minneapolis has been driven in part by the federal government’s own actions, including the deployment of thousands of ICE agents using aggressive enforcement tactics.

“Against that backdrop, threatening to introduce military troops who are not trained for civilian policing and whose presence would inevitably provoke additional confrontations risks turning what is now a slow burn into a conflagration,” he said.

Trump claimed that invoking the Insurrection Act would “quickly put an end to the travesty” unfolding in Minnesota.

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