POLITICS: Yes, We Have a Leftist Insurrection – USSA News

President Trump Should invoke the Insurrection Act before it gets worse.

The far left, emboldened by Democrat leaders and the media, and funded by leftist dark money groups, is engaging in an organized campaign to obstruct, subvert and physically attack federal law enforcement officers and facilities in cities across the nation.

Democrat-led jurisdictions are aiding this violent campaign by preventing local law enforcement from assisting American federal officers, deliberately leaving these officers vulnerable to attack. Other Democrats are actively obstructing federal law enforcement and encouraging others to do the same.

They are actively challenging lawful federal authority.

This is clearly an organized, and often armed, Democrat-led, multi-state and multi-city insurrection against U.S. federal authority.

President Trump understands this. He should call it what it is and invoke the Insurrection Act.

The Insurrection Act is the ultimate exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which bans presidents from deploying the military domestically for law enforcement. The Insurrection Act authorizes the deployment of troops to suppress an insurrection, rebellion, domestic violence, or similar events that obstruct federal law or state law.

What Is Considered Insurrection? While the term “insurrection” is not explicitly defined by federal law, courts and legal scholars generally interpret it as a violent uprising or organized resistance against the government or its regulations.

While Democrats, and their compliant allies in the media, wildly screamed Trump/MAGA/GOP ‘insurrection’ for years after a violent but short-lived afternoon riot at the Capitol in January 2021 — where the only person killed was a protester by Capitol Police — they refuse to call the current ongoing months-long violent uprisings against federal law enforcement, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, anything but peaceful protests.

This, even as federal officers are being attacked, ambushed and shot at with increasing frequency and Democrat politicians continue calling ICE agents ‘fascists,’ ‘Nazis’ and ‘secret police,’ inciting even more violence against federal agents.

Trump recently said in the Oval Office: “We have an Insurrection Act for a reason.” He added: “If I had to enact it, I’d do it. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”

Referring to the Act, Trump recently said: “Well, it’s been invoked before,” and he is right.

While the Democrat affiliated media constantly asserts that it is a rarely used law, invoking it isn’t as extreme an action as the left wants you to believe.

The law has been used 30 times in American history. Most recently, President George HW Bush invoked the Act in 1992 to quell violent race riots in Los Angeles, sending in federalized National Guard troops.

In fact, the last 29 years is actually the longest period the United States has ever gone without an invocation of the Insurrection Act.

Meanwhile, though intense, deadly and destructive, those 1992 LA riots were a spontaneous, localized threat, but what is happening now is nation-wide and orchestrated. And it is being aided and abetted by Democrat politicians at the local and national level.

It is also increasingly violent.

ICE says law enforcement officials within the agency have faced a 1,000% increase in assaults against them since the beginning of the Trump administration.

In July, nearly two dozen armed leftists connected to various Texas-based Antifa-related groups ambushed and shot at an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI have issued a joint intelligence bulletin that warns of more attacks on ICE personnel and facilities, including by “domestic violent extremists” claiming to respond to immigration enforcement activities.

I would call them insurrectionists.

CBS News reported:

The memo — circulated to state and local law enforcement nationwide on Wednesday — assesses that since June, extremists in at least three states have conducted targeted, pre-planned violent attacks against ICE personnel and facilities. It says the attacks represent “an evolution in tactics and an escalation in violence compared to [domestic violent extremists’] past attacks, which primarily resulted in property damage.”

The intelligence memo also notes the recent attack where a 29-year-old leftist gunman fired from the roof of a building into three ICE transport vehicles and windows of a Dallas ICE facility. The terrorist killed two immigrant detainees, and himself.

As CBS added, the FBI and DHS acknowledge that “as immigration enforcement operations continue, DHS and the FBI remain concerned there is an increased risk of [domestic violent extremists] and criminal actors conducting targeted attacks on ICE personnel, facilities, or operations, or law enforcement officials supporting immigration enforcement operations.”

Most recently, in Chicago, DHS was forced to deploy Special Operations forces after multiple violent attacks on federal law enforcement. According to a DHS bulletin:

The scene became increasingly violent as more domestic terrorists gathered and began throwing smoke, gas, rocks, and bottles at DHS law enforcement. Another domestic terrorist was arrested for assaulting CBP at the scene. Following [Illinois governor] JB Prtizker’s refusal to allow local police to help secure the scene, Secretary Noem has deployed special operations teams to restore law and order.

As our ICE law enforcement was responding to the shooting, a domestic terrorist followed them and rammed their vehicle in an attempt to run them off the road. This individual has also been arrested and is in HSI custody.

An ICE vehicle …was subsequently mobbed by domestic terrorists, forcing law enforcement to abandon the vehicle for their own safety. The vehicle was significantly damaged.

This isn’t peaceful protest or free speech. This is violent insurrection. So, how could Trump invoke the Insurrection Act to deal with this growing insurrection against federal authority?

Well, Sections 252 and 253 of the Act allow the president to deploy troops without a request from the affected state, and even against the state’s wishes.

Section 252 permits deployment of Guard troops to “enforce the laws” of the United States or to “suppress rebellion” whenever “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion” make it “impracticable” to enforce federal law in that state by the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

Violently attacking and preventing federal law enforcement from performing their lawful immigration enforcement duties, or allowing radicals to do so, clearly falls under Section 252 of the Act.

Section 253 has two parts. The first allows the president to use the military in a state to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that “so hinders the execution of the laws” that any portion of the state’s inhabitants are deprived of a constitutional right and state authorities are unable or unwilling to protect that right.

Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy relied on this provision to deploy troops to desegregate schools in the South after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

The second part of Section 253 permits the president to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

After invoking and before exercising the powers authorized under the Insurrection Act, Title 10 U.S.C. § 254 requires the publication of a presidential proclamation whereby the U.S. President formally orders the dispersion of the peoples committing civil unrest or armed rebellion.

It is time to call this a left-wing insurrection and invoke the insurrection Act to quell it.

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Democrat Leaders Complicit in Insurrection against Federal Authority

They are aiding and abetting this insurrection. Invoking the Act would give President Trump wide authority to send National Guard or other troops to quell riots and restore lawful federal authority in blue cities and states.

But what about the many Democrat officials and elected leaders who are inciting this insurrection with their extremist rhetoric against ICE and Trump, and even openly supporting these insurrectionists?

Can these leaders be prosecuted for their actions which include blocking federal law enforcement efforts and preventing local police from protecting federal officers from criminal violence? The answer is, yes, they can.

The U.S. criminal insurrection statute (18 U.S.C. § 2383) makes it a crime to incite, assist, or engage in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States. It carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

That applies to local, state and even federal lawmakers and officials.

ICE and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials rightly blame these local, state and even federal leaders for enabling violence and endangering federal officers.

While Trump has yet to call this national, violent, criminal conspiracy against federal authority an ‘insurrection,’ he has called Democrats ‘insurrectionists’ in general. Trump has also called for the arrest and imprisonment of several Democrat leaders for their insurrectionist words and deeds.

Most recently, Trump has focused on the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, and the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson.

Trump posted on Truth Social: “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE Officers! Governor Pritzker also!”

While the recently launched federal law enforcement ‘Operation Midway’ has already led to 900 immigration-related arrests in the Chicago area, the mayor and governor are doing all they can to thwart the ongoing federal law enforcement effort.

Mayor Johnson signed an “ICE Free Zone” order banning ICE operations on city property, a meaningless and unenforceable gesture that only gives violent insurrectionists the cover for attacking ICE and other federal agents. The White House called Johnson’s order “a disgusting betrayal” of law enforcement.

Meanwhile, around 200 Texas National Guard members were at the Army Reserve Center 55 miles southwest of Chicago last week. And since local and state leaders are actively blocking or obstructing lawful federal law enforcement efforts, and endangering officers, Trump wants to deploy them at ICE facilities and protest sites across the city.

Reinforcing his new-found insurrectionist role, Pritzker responded to Trump’s calls for his arrest with overblown rhetoric, falsehoods, and comic exaggeration, and a vow to continue opposing federal authority:

I will not back down. Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism? His masked agents already are grabbing people off the street. Separating children from their parents. Creating fear. Taking people for ‘how they look.’ Making people feel they need to carry citizenship papers. Invading our state with military troops. Sending in war helicopters in the middle of the night. Arresting elected officials asking questions. We must all stand up and speak out.

Well, Mr. Pritzker, you can stand up and speak out all you want, this is America, after all. What you can’t do though, is actively oppose the lawful authority of the federal government and assist in an insurrection against it.

Democrats gleefully trotted out all manner of insurrection laws and statutes to use against anyone associated with the January 6, 2021, MAGA riot at the Capitol. They even accused Trump of leading it.

Joe Biden then focused the full attention and force of the Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI for years to go after anyone even remotely associated with, or groups involved with, that one afternoon riot. They arrested and prosecuted over 1,000 Americans. Thankfully, Trump pardoned them.

Sadly, for these Democrats, karma is a female dog, and these statutes, and the DOJ and FBI can now also be used against them and their fellow state and local insurrectionist confederates, even those in Congress.

Trump has the legal tools to end this Democrat-led, leftist insurrection. It is time to use them.

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Paul Crespo is the President of the Center for American Defense Studies, Managing Editor of American Liberty Defense News, and Managing Partner of SPECTRE Global Risk. As a Marine Corps officer, he led Marines, served aboard ships in the Pacific and jumped from helicopters and airplanes.

He was also a military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at U.S. embassies worldwide.

He later ran for congress, taught political science, wrote for a major newspaper and co-hosted his own radio show. A graduate of Georgetown, London and Cambridge universities, he brings decades of experience and insight to the issues that most threaten America – at home and abroad.