You, along with millions of other American citizens, may be wondering where those tense confrontations in Minneapolis came from. What brought those 3,000 ICE agents to the Twin Cities and the angry citizens into the streets?
Many different streams of action and policy flowed together to create the great river of violence and fear that is flowing through our nation today. Here is just one of those streams. Let me connect the dots as I see them.
Richard Conville
Dot 1. The 1978 Ethics in Government Act was passed during the Carter administration. The act protected the independence of presidential appointees within the executive branch of government.
A decade later, the statute was tested in Morrison v. Olson. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Ethics in Government Act by a 7-1 majority. However, in a now famous dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia invoked the theory of the unitary executive: “This is the view that the president has authority over the entire executive branch of government, including the ability to fire heads of agencies and any such government employees.”
Proponents of the theory claim a particular interpretation of Article II of the US Constitution: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.”
In his 1988 dissent, Justice Scalia asserted that “this does not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power.”
In the brief span of only four decades, the court’s stance on the unitary executive theory has been turned on its head. For example, in Trump v. United States (2024), where the court granted the president broad immunity from criminal liability (by a 6-3 majority), Chief Justice John Roberts stated in his majority opinion that the president “occupies a unique position in the constitutional scheme,” as “the only person who alone composes a branch of government.”
“In the brief span of only four decades, the court’s stance on the unitary executive theory has been turned on its head.”
Scalia’s dissent was a Trojan Horse. The executive branch of government is no longer a co-equal branch with the legislative and the judicial branches. Those traditional “guardrails” on presidential power are gone.
Dot 2. With the guardrails down, the president has wielded that power with abandon. He declared the U.S. to be “at war” with South American narco-terrorists.
As commander-in-chief (no need for congressional consultation), he unleashed missiles on small speedboats in the Caribbean (killing 100 crew members and with no idea who they were or what their cargoes were). He seized the Venezuelan oil refineries. Plus he seized and arrested Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and jailed him in a Brooklyn, N.Y., prison.
Dot 3. Greenland, the unitary executive president has declared, is so vital to American national security that the U.S. must now own it: buy it, take it by force, whatever!
His rhetorical flourish that the Russian and Chinese navies are currently threatening Greenland is patently false. Not one of our NATO allies confirms his claim of such an international emergency. Since 1951, the U.S. has had a base in Greenland, and the Danes have said they are ready to work with their NATO allies including the U.S. to secure the Arctic from Russian and Chinese hegemony.
An armed conflict with Denmark over Greenland would mark the end of NATO (Vladimir Putin’s fondest dream for decades).
Dot 4. The president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” gave ICE a budget that is three times larger than the entire Marine Corps budget, more than $170 billion. ICE is now acting as the unitary executive president’s own national police force. Think Gestapo.
“Comparisons to the Third Riech are now appropriate, thanks to the president’s own actions.”
Comparisons to the Third Riech are now appropriate, thanks to the president’s own actions. He is now a danger to us all. Not just immigrants.
Dot 5. Fascism. Beginning in 1943, the U.S. Army published a series of pamphlets for soldiers fighting in the European Theater. The idea was the better educated soldiers were, the better soldiers they would be. The subject of the March 24,1945, pamphlet was Fascism.
“Fascism,” the pamphlet read, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social and cultural life of the state.”
One of the fascist state’s tools for “seizure and control” is the abolition of rules. As the pamphlet put it, fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose. … They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”
Dot 6. Minneapolis. Where are the rules? Probable cause — suspended. Due process — suspended. Training in de-escalation tactics — gone.
ICE is not providing security. It is provoking fear and anger. Providing security is a false promise: Immigrants have not invaded Minnesota; immigrants have not over-run Minneapolis. As for glorifying war: you’ve heard the unitary executive president bragging about the capture of Maduro, the sinking of the alleged drug boats and killing their crews and threatening to take Greenland by force.
Dot 7. Minneapolis under siege by ICE, the unitary executive president’s national police force. I connected Dots 1-6 above in a column for The Pine Belt News, Hattiesburg, Miss., that was published Jan. 22. Two days later, Jan. 24, Alex Pretti was murdered by a group of nine ICE officers.
The next day, Attorney General Pam Bondi let us all know what exactly was going on in Minneapolis. She stated the conditions for ICE’s removal from the city: (1) Share with the federal government the state’s records on SNAP and Medicaid and Food and Nutrition Service programs; (2) Give the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division access to the state’s voter registration rolls; and (3) Repeal the city’s sanctuary city policies.
“The president is running a mafia-style protection racket.”
So, the president is running a mafia-style protection racket: I’ll withdraw my masked, anonymous, heavily armed tough guys if you give me what I want.
But of course, Trump never has been known for going through channels — channels like Congress or legislation or like the Constitution, where states are given authority over federal elections, as in, you know, states’ rights and all that.
Nor has he been known for his compassion and empathy. Rather, in the face of the outright murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, he has only doubled down, his marquee modus operandi. When in doubt, escalate!
The president is the very embodiment of the definition of fascism found in that 1943 U.S. Army pamphlet: Fascists maintain power “by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The(ir) propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”
He has no heart.
All these dots I’ve connected have a common source in the theory of the unitary executive — delivered to us by Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Roberts. What violence and fear the theory has caused in the hands of the unitary executive president whose desire for power is bottomless.
Richard Conville is professor emeritus of communication studies and service-learning at the University of Southern Mississippi and a long-time resident of Hattiesburg where he is a member of University Baptist Church.