Why Save Minneapolis From Itself?

The president does not have a single ally in the Twin Cities including a federal judge he appointed who once clerked for Antonin Scalia. Why continue to take all the risk with little reward?

A lunch on Tuesday afternoon in a courthouse in Minneapolis represents yet another skirmish in the war between the Trump administration and Minneapolis officials, who appear hell bent on sabotaging the president’s efforts to bring law and order to the Twin Cities.

Patrick Schlitz, the chief judge of the district of Minnesota, plans to consult with his colleagues over a midday meal about how to proceed in what he calls an unprecedented matter before the court: the Department of Justice’s request for Schlitz to sign five arrest warrants related to the January 18 storming of the Cities Church in St. Paul.

The request stems from Magistrate Judge Doug Micko’s refusal to sign those warrants, including one for disgraced former CNN host Don Lemon, last week. While Micko signed three other warrants on January 20--authorizing only one of two charges sought by the Trump DOJ, by the way--he claimed no probable cause existed to justify the remaining five complaints. (Micko is a former public defender and the husband of a top aide to Democrat Attorney General Keith Ellison.)

Attorney General Pam Bondi filed an emergency petition for a writ of mandamus on January 22 after Schlitz footdragged on deciding whether he had the authority to overrule Micko’s decision. Bondi asked the Minnesota appellate court to “[direct] the District of Minnesota to sign the criminal complaint and issue arrest warrants for the remaining five individuals to allow the Government sufficient time to arrest the remaining Defendants before they can disrupt services again this Sunday.” (A three-judge panel of the appellate court denied the petition, but one judge nonetheless determined “the Complaint and Affidavit clearly establish probable cause for all five arrest warrants.”)

Yet what appears on the surface to be a routine disagreement between the executive and the judiciary on a rather mundane question is anything but. Schlitz, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and a George W. Bush appointee, has unloaded on the DOJ, further revealing the lengths to which even once reasonable decision makers on all political sides will go to undermine the president’s immigration enforcement agenda in Minnesota and risk the safety and rights of their own constituents in the process.

Calling Bondi’s petition for mandamus relief “frivolous,” Schlitz argued there is no precedent in the 8th Circuit where a district court judge reversed a magistrate judge’s decision to deny an arrest warrant. (That may be the case but it is clearly allowed under the law.) Schlitz sneered at the DOJ’s “emergency” basis of the request and then stunningly downplayed the criminal conduct of the thugs who stormed the church. “The five people whom the government seeks to arrest are accused of entering a church, and the worst behavior alleged about any of them is yelling horrible things at the members of the church,” Schlitz wrote in a Jan. 23 letter. “None committed any acts of violence.”

Not only is this a brazen misrepresentation of the incident, one wonders exactly what Schlitz considers “violence.”

Scalia weeps.

Not a Friend to be Found in Mill City

Schlitz plans to announce his decision following the luncheon. But one can safely assume Schlitz is prepared to deny the request along with offering more harsh words for the Trump administration, much to the delight of the president’s foes.

Which raises the question: How much more time, money, and political capital should the president spend trying to save Minnesota from itself? After all, if a Scalia disciple would rather take the side of yes, the violent storming of a Christian church in an attempt to hunt down a suspected ICE officer than side with law and order because of the man sitting in the White House--what is left to defend?

And in addition to the DOJ losing every legal battle in the Minnesota federal courts, the weekend shooting of Alex Pretti, a Veteran Administration’s nurse, by a U.S. Border Patrol agent represents a tipping point in Operation Metro Surge.

Republican senators including the usual suspects such as Lisa Murkowski and Thom Tillis are lamenting the death of Pretti—despite video evidence showing his unlawful attempt to obstruct the arrest of another illegal alien, assault a woman apparently involved in the obstruction attempt, and struggle with police officers while possessing a loaded gun in his waistband—and calling for a de-escalation of illegal immigration operations in Minneapolis.

Editorial boards are calling for the same. And while the editorials disingenuously described the circumstances of the shooting—the Wall Street Journal board omitted how Pretti directed SUVs to form a barricade before the incident occurred and erroneously claimed he was “[assisting] a woman who had been pepper-sprayed”—they have a powerful effect on yellow-bellied Republicans in Washington.

But political and media pressure are the least of the president’s concerns. The insanity-level rhetoric from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who over the weekend compared immigration enforcement the Holocaust, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and others Democratic office holders is creating a death wish environment that undoubtedly will result in the attempted execution of a federal officer and/or assassination of a Trump administration official.

The president does not have a single ally there. Consider, for example, the atrocious behavior of Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who has been making the media rounds since the shooting of Renee Good on January 7. Just listen to a few of his recent gems:

Immigration Successes Buried Amid the Minneapolis Noise

So, what exactly does winning look like given that sort of cravenness and prostrating by the city’s top law enforcement official? It is only degrees of losing at this point, and at great human and political risk to the president. There will be no grand jury indictments against the perpetrators of the violence; no convictions in the rare instance a case gets to trial; and slaps on the wrist from judges in the even rarer instance a perpetrator is found guilty.

And far from representing a retreat, a decision to leave Minneapolis to its own lawless devices would allow the president to redirect resources to more amenable locations. As Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche accurately noted in a recent interview, illegal immigration raids are happening all over the country and mostly without incident; Minneapolis is the outlier, not the norm.

Cauterizing the Minneapolis bleeding, both literally and figuratively, allows the president to redirect his messaging and tout the historical successes of his deportation/closed border policies. Unfortunately, those achievements have been drowned out by the noise and drama--which of course is one huge part of the anti-ICE operation. (So, too, is the memory-holing of the multi-billion dollar fraud scandal on Walz’s watch, as the president has repeatedly noted.) The president and his team must pivot back to promoting the wins on one of the top reasons why he was elected.

A bit of détente broke out this afternoon as I was writing this piece; in a Truth Social post, the president disclosed he had “a very good call” with Walz today and they “seemed to be on a similar wavelength.”

Color me very skeptical. While the president may be operating in good faith, Walz and his cabal are not. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt explained the president’s terms during a briefing this afternoon:

It is impossible to see a scenario where Walz, Frey, Ellison, and others agree to start producing criminal illegals and cooperating with federal authorities. It would be political suicide. But perhaps a brief reprieve in the tensions permits some clear-headed consideration in the White house about what comes next. And those deliberations should include an exit strategy out of that lawless, chaotic, ungrateful, and increasingly dangerous city—regardless of empty promises by bloodthirsty state leaders—as soon as possible.