There’s a point I want to make about this issue of state power as a bulwark against corrupt efforts to overthrow the constitutional order. It’s a small point and it’s perhaps implicit in the discussion to this point. But it’s important so I want to draw it out a bit.

As separate though subordinate sovereignties, the states have a vast pool of sovereign authority, much more than a lot of state officers themselves appear to realize. A lot of that is affirmative authority and authority so deeply embedded in explicit constitutional mandates that it is difficult for even a corrupt judiciary to take from them. But it’s not only affirmative power. It’s also the power to resist and not be pinned down. That well of sovereign power creates a lot of ability to bob and weave, evade and parry against a corrupt assault from a renegade executive.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) went on CNN this morning and among other things said, “I think ICE needs to be totally torn down… People want immigration enforcement that goes after criminals, not the goon squad that has come from Stephen Miller and Trump.” This is where every Democrat should be. Shut down ICE and replace it with a new immigration enforcement agency built on the rule of law and actually enforcing the country’s immigration laws in a humane and lawful way, as opposed to ICE, which has turned into a presidential paramilitary focused on cleansing violence and treating Blue cities like conquered territories.

But these comments are more important as a signal. Gallego came out of the progressive wing of the House Democratic caucus and a pretty blue urban House district in Pheonix. But he made some significant shifts to run and win statewide. Among those was running significantly if not dramatically to the right of most Democrats on immigration issues. The fact that he’s now saying ICE should be “totally torn down” speaks volumes. He sees where the public is on ICE. He certainly knows where Arizonans are on ICE.

We have late word this evening that the Department of Justice has launched a “criminal investigation” of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota Mayor Jacob Frey over a purported “criminal conspiracy” to impeded ICE’s work in the state. Let’s start with the obvious and important fact that the bar that has to be cleared to launch such an investigation is essentially nil. All you need is a couple toadyish and corrupt DOJ appointees and they are currently in oversupply. Getting a criminal indictment let alone a conviction is in a different universe of possibility. The main point of this is simply to generate the headlines you’re seeing this evening (“criminal investigation!”) and perhaps load state and local government with subpoenas or perhaps raids.

There’s a fascinating and kind of hilarious item in Axios today. The headline is: Trump’s immigration erosion worries his team. Reading the piece, it all appears to be a reaction to the fairly obvious point that the highly visible and increasingly brutal ICE raids are not popular. And the American public is beginning to see these “surges” into Blue cities, rightly, not as aggressive immigration enforcement but as something more like punitive expeditions into what Trump views as enemy cities or something like occupied territory.

What I’ve noticed is how top administration leaders and especially the ICE agents on the ground are increasingly leaning into the visions of these “surges” and raids as a kind of cleansing violence, even much more than they were in the early period of this effort back in the summer. They increasingly look less like efforts to rack up deportation numbers ( that may be happening in a more piecemeal fashion across the country ) and more like hyper-violent expeditions targeting all the people who — in the MAGA vision — are getting in the way of Making America Great Again.