Proof the USA is hurtling towards an unthinkable endgame

Minnesota is on the verge of martial law.

It’s a move that many fear can trigger civil war.

“Local and state police have been ordered to stand down and surrender,” proclaimed Trump Administration Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

“Only federal officers are upholding the law.”

But the US Constitution does not allow the federal government to order state law enforcement officials to “surrender”.

Unless they are openly fighting federal forces. That scenario appears increasingly likely.

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are roaming Minneapolis and Saint Paul’s streets, masked, heavily armed and in unmarked cars.

Protesters are hounding them, recording their every move to document often violent ID checks, detentions, and arrests.

Demonstrators for and against are marching and clashing.

Shots have been fired. People have died.

Now, the Trump Administration has ordered the mobilisation of 1,500 Arctic warfare specialist paratroopers in Alaska as preparation for deployment.

Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz has activated his state’s National Guard units to stand alongside his state’s police.

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It’s a disturbingly familiar scenario.

US pro and anti slavery activists began their protests in 1854. Animosity soared. As did the violence. The US Supreme Court’s erratic decisions didn’t help.

It soon devolved to state versus state, then Union versus Confederacy.

Then, shortly before dawn on April 12, 1861, the first shots of the US Civil War were fired.

Secessionist South Carolina militia unleashed an assault on Union troops based at Fort Sumter.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Protestors clash with federal agents outside the Bishop Henry Whippl