Entoraliten
Jan 19, 2026

It is fitting that, on Martin Luther King Day, we all still recall his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. His words are seared in every thinking American’s hearts.

Many of us thinkers out there would say his eloquence is equally founded in the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. It’s audible thunder, validating the message – a message both prophetic for the future and tragically portentous for that now.

It is fitting, too that Dr. King’s statue has him seemingly carving himself out of stone, towering before us, actively hewn forward out of granite like a force of nature.

Fitting, too, because that’s what he did with language.

This line is, I think, as famous for the beauty of its promise as for the malevolence of evil it describes—

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

And, for most non-constitutional scholars, it brought us face to face for the first time with the term Interposition.

Interposition. Knowing what happened to the Little Rock Nine and to James Meredith, the term – interposition - bristling as it does with such state power, once in the hands of Dr. King - who added poetry and the tenor of his voice - it was easy to understand:

The federal government had rules we all agree to abide by. The transcendencies of the constitution.

Some states sought to interpose themselves between these and the people.

In Little Rock and for James Meredith, the federal government protected the people and made sure the rules were enforced.

We who lived in the shadow of WWII seemed to think it would be ever thus: virtuous governments seeking to add their state populations onto the roles of the future.

Crushing interposition left and right.

But, today, we must come to grips with a different understanding - that interposition can be a positive force, when it is Washington that brings injustice.

And, it all comes together, as you knew it would in…the Insurrection Act.

The Insurrection Act. The problem is with the word itself. Insurrection. Since it brings to mind civilians against the government.

“To-the-barricades!” Fists in the air.

Any state would be within its rights, right? Governments crush insurrection. Civilians so arrayed are simply shot in the streets. One and done.

Civilians arrayed in the streets? Fists in the air? Well, says Washington, “Today, that’s Minnesota.”

It MUST be an insurrection!

Let it brew. Let it brew. All the headlines will be mine.

(As an aside - that’s the Trump ideology: what can I say today to get the newspapers to write, “Trump said this: ‘Outrage inducing comment based on denial.’” “John McCain! He’s not a war HERO.” “Chuck Schumer! He’s not a JEW.” “George Clooney! He’s not an ACTOR.” “Greenland! It’s not a COUNTRY! “Ohhhh… this is SO easy. Watch the papers SCREAM! Here come the headlines. J.D. – learn how I do this, OK?!”)

But, you know, it’s funny about Insurrections, and the Insurrection Act. We’ve got it all wrong.

It’s not ABOUT what the PEOPLE are doing, you see? In the streets, or anywhere so arrayed.

It’s about what the states do. When STATES ignore federal orders…THAT’S insurrection.

Back to Little Rock, 1957 to get the example down pat:

Federal courts, applying the Equal Protection Clause as decided in Brown v. Board of Education, ordered the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School because racial segregation denied Black people equal constitutional status.

Governor Orval Faubus sought to interpose his authority over public order, the state education system, and the Arkansas National Guard and ordered armed Arkansas National Guardsmen to block the parents of nine Black students from enrolling their children, claiming gubernatorial power to preserve segregation against the Constitution’s command.

The federal government dissolved that interposition by federalizing the Guard and deploying U.S. Army troops so equal protection would reach those families in fact, not merely in principle.

And so, the roles are clear for Interposition’s most infamous 20th-century appearance:

• A good federal government asserts the validity of a national right.

• A state interposes its own evil, overriding federal authority.

• The federal government declares an insurrection is underway.

• Troops arrive. The interposition is defeated, and rights flow.

Easy, right? The federal government declares a right. A state interposes its own opposite decisions. An Insurrection is declared, and the Army arrives to defeat state recalcitrance.

Put another way,

A positive federal action; state interposition rejects; insurrection; army resolution.

And, ever we thought it to be thus.

But, there’s a trap door here. In sum, you see, this formulation relies on one thing - good faith. And, the trap door opens:

• Bad actors in the federal government.

This is where we are today, with the Minneapolis Call 911 gamble.

You see, today, the roles are reversed. Step one is still the same with the federal government.

A federal action. But, the formula is quite different.

• ·A negative federal action…

See? Bad actors in the federal government. Seeking to deny guaranteed rights. Arresting, deporting and even killing people for not resembling a specific racial stereotype closely enough; for free speech, for assembly; for immigration violations – for anything.

Again. Bad actors in the federal government. Literally reversing the situation in Little Rock. Where we had:

A positive federal action; a state interposition rejects; insurrection; army resolution. vs.

A negative federal action; a state interposition rejects;

And this brings us to the heart of what Minneapolis is now doing, through its police leadership. It is preparing for the second half of that formulation:

insurrection; army resolution.

When the city, speaking through Police Chief Brian O’Hara, tells residents to call 911 whenever unidentified armed or masked people are detaining someone, it is not urging a confrontation, but it is knowingly accepting one. A police chief does not imagine a quiet verification; he anticipates shouting, pleading, federal agents asserting authority, and the moment becoming public. That is a cauldron.

Chief Brian O’Hara told 60 Minutes that Minneapolis’s 911 system has been overwhelmed by calls related to federal immigration enforcement and that he fears “a moment where it all explodes,” underscoring how deeply tense and combustible the situation has become.

The local police show up. Citizens will be howling (rightfully so). The person in ICE custody will stand in cuffs, breathless from running. Or, cuffed and gasping on the ground, surrounded by family, half of whom are citizens. The imprisoned person may be, too. And, all of them will be screaming and pleading with the uniformed local cops.

Local cops who will need to go face-to-face with ICE or DHS agents.

Who blinks?

Remember:

A positive federal action; a state interposition rejects; insurrection; army resolution. vs.

A negative federal action; a state interposition rejects;

So rejected by local police, if ICE / DHS stands down, and is forced into retreat, as soon as they do, they just pick up the phone, call Washington and say, “The local cops here just stopped (interposed) one of our immigration actions.” Interposition.

Insurrection.

Why the City?

It seems that this is the direction of the Minnesota case: from federal action, to state interposition. In this case, on the side of the angels. Yes, in fact, that’s what Washington is counting on.

No state can watch its residents publicly degraded, seized in the street by masked men, pressed to the pavement while families scream, and still pretend that order remains intact. That is not Minnesota escalating a conflict; that is Washington provoking one. And it is deliberate. Federal actors are waiting for interposition. They are waiting for the moment a city or a state finally says enough, so that the word “insurrection” can be spoken without hesitation. The danger is not that the label fails to fit; the danger is that it fits by design.

This is the unsettling truth: the statutory form of insurrection can be satisfied even when the substance is moral resistance. The law does not ask whether the federal action was just. It asks whether a state has interfered. That is the leverage of bad faith. In Little Rock, federal power was exercised to vindicate constitutional equality. In Minnesota, federal power is exercised to deny it. The choreography is the same; the moral direction is reversed. Interposition occurs. “Insurrection” is declared. Troops are summoned. The difference is not legal architecture. The difference is intent.

The words “call 911” came from the police chief and city guidance, not from the governor and not in the mayor’s own voice. This is not a lack of coordination; it is structured deniability. Minneapolis is not acting apart from Minnesota; it is acting as Minnesota’s largest city, closest to the provocation, where encounters are most visible, where cameras already are, where courts and witnesses are within reach. The governor stands one step back not because he is absent, but because clarity is punished faster than complicity in moments like this.

When the city says “call 911,” with the police chief as its instrument, what follows is understood. Local police arrive. Federal agents are confronted in public. Families surround the scene. Voices rise. Phones record. The question becomes unavoidable: who governs here, and under what law? If ICE retreats, interposition is declared. If ICE presses on, indecency is documented. Either way, a record is made.

However, here is the quiet counterweight to the thunder of the Insurrection Act. A sort of silver lining, if only for a moment. Troops sent under the Insurrection Act do not bring martial law. They do not dissolve courts. They do not suspend the Constitution. They do not cancel civilian authority. They become domestic law enforcement—bound by warrants, probable cause, civilian courts, and civilian judgment. Whatever fury attends the declaration, the law reasserts itself at ground level. That, it appears, is the number Minneapolis is betting on, with the governor one step back and the city taking first contact.

And, it is something certainly Trump does not know. It’s sure that no one has told Trump about this. He’s just got himself all wrapped around the axel of the phrase. It sounds so James Bronson, right? In his mind, he’s going to send Sgt. Skullcrusher to Minnesota on remote control.

On Elections

But there is a deeper danger, and it is not confined to Minnesota.

Confusion itself can be the objective. Not victory in one state, but precedent. Not enforcement, but disorientation. With insurrection, six months to a year of blurred authority—federal or state, lawful order or executive fiat—creates the opening. From there the argument writes itself: these states are “in rebellion” – this is sure to be among their phrases; conditions are “unsafe”; elections cannot proceed; extraordinary measures are required. Governors appoint. Or the Executive appoints. Or, no one does. Democracy is not overturned in a single stroke; it is paused, “temporarily.”

That is why this moment matters. Dr. King warned, not in hope but in indictment, that “law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” What is at issue here is not disorder in the streets, but order weaponized against the people it claims to govern. Delay, confusion, and procedural fog are not neutral conditions; they are instruments. Abuse does not need to prevail forever—it needs only to persist long enough to be normalized, litigated into exhaustion, and folded into routine.

And here lies a concealed threat just as grave as what we see in the streets: the integrity of elections. Not Minnesota’s compliance, not Minnesota’s resistance, but precedent. A template. Two or three states branded “rebellious,” authority blurred long enough to argue that conditions are unsafe, governance suspended in the name of stability. History shows that democratic erosion rarely announces itself with tanks; it arrives by memo, by emergency order, by postponement justified as temporary and prudent. The danger is not that Minnesota is lost, but that confusion is made productive—productive enough to test whether consent can be deferred, representation reassigned, or democratic processes quietly placed “on hold.”

And so the question is not whether Minnesota is right. It is whether being right is enough. Refusing to provoke a declaration may require something far harder than defiance: patience under injustice, restraint under humiliation, and a willingness to deny bad-faith actors the clash they seek. Dr. King named this burden without euphemism in Letter from Birmingham Jail, warning that “justice too long delayed is justice denied,” and that order prized over justice becomes an instrument of oppression. The hardest choice may be whether to endure delay—knowing the cost is borne by real people, lived in wounds rather than abstractions—or to act now and risk turning conscience into pretext. That is the question this moment presents.