President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Riot Act to ship within the U.S. navy as tensions intensify in Minneapolis following a second capturing in every week involving a federal officer amid Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations within the metropolis.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota do not obey the legislation and cease the skilled agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who’re solely making an attempt to do their job, I’ll institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have carried out earlier than me, and rapidly put an finish to the travesty that’s going down in that after nice State,” Trump wrote in a social media put up.
President Donald Trump speaks throughout an interview with Reuters within the Oval Workplace within the White Home in Washington, January 14, 2026.
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
On Wednesday evening, Deputy Lawyer Normal Todd Blanche stated Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, each Democrats, wanted to be stopped from “terrorism.”
“Minnesota rebellion is a direct results of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence in opposition to legislation enforcement. It is disgusting,” Blanche posted on X. “Walz and Frey — I am centered on stopping YOU out of your terrorism by no matter means crucial. This isn’t a menace. It is a promise.”
ABC Information has reached out to Walz and Frey’s workplaces for touch upon Blanche’s assertion.
Deputy Lawyer Normal Todd Blanche attends a information convention, November 19, 2025 in Washington.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Photographs
The deputy lawyer common’s blunt put up got here after Walz earlier on Wednesday night had issued a pointy rebuke of the federal authorities’s legislation enforcement presence after a federal officer shot an individual who they stated had fled a site visitors cease after which, together with two different individuals, started attacking the officer.
The capturing got here one week after Renee Good, a 37-year-old mom, was fatally shot by an ICE agent. The Division of Homeland Safety has stated that Good was allegedly making an attempt to run over legislation enforcement officers, a declare disputed by native officers.
“It’s a marketing campaign of organized brutality in opposition to the individuals of Minnesota by our personal federal authorities,” Walz stated in an deal with on Wednesday. He urged residents to “protest loudly, urgently, but in addition peacefully.”
Frey, who has referred to as on ICE to “get the f— out” of Minneapolis, stated on Wednesday “the state of affairs we’re seeing in our metropolis isn’t sustainable.”
Minneapolis and Minnesota State police guard a fringe following a capturing incident with federal brokers, January 14, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Scott Olson/Getty Photographs
Trump previously threatened to invoke the 1807 Riot Act final summer time when protests have been unfolding in Los Angeles over the administration’s immigration crackdown and deployment of the Nationwide Guard.
The legislation, which authorizes the usage of the navy on U.S. soil for sure functions, hasn’t been enacted for many years. It was final applied was in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush throughout the Los Angeles riots on the request of the governor. It hasn’t been used with out coordination with a governor for the reason that Nineteen Sixties.
Total, the Riot Act has been utilized in response to 30 crises over its historical past, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, together with by Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy to desegregate faculties after the Supreme Courtroom’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Training.
The Riot Act states, partly: “Each time there may be an rebellion in any State in opposition to its authorities, the President might, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature can’t be convened, name into Federal service such of the militia of the opposite States, within the quantity requested by that State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers essential to suppress the rebellion.”
