On Wednesday, January 28, 2026, Alex Pretti, 37, who was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents days earlier at Nicollet Avenue and 26th Street, was left with three bullet holes in the glass and upper paneling. The authors argue that there is ample evidence that ICE’s crackdown is not an aberration but part of a broader style of governance defined by arbitrariness, which is exactly what Republican administrations are designed to guard against. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
In addition to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol operations in Minnesota, President Donald Trump is now calling for the “nationalization” of the election. Minnesota again ranks among thick stuffin Trump’s words, aimed at “taking over” voting rights in several states. For a Republican Party that once prided itself on small government, this federal intrusion initially seemed counterintuitive.
So how does a government justify its massive government intrusion? At the heart of government rhetoric is the language of the Constitution “Invasion.” The language appears in Article 4 Section 4which requires the federal government to protect states from “invasion.”
But when looked at more closely, the same provision could provide Minnesota officials with the political vocabulary to reframe the question of federal versus state power. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has inverted the language of invasionindicating that the federal government was invading. As he said after the Alex Pretty shooting, “A great American city is being invaded by its own federal government.”
However, the warranty terms also include another item, and often overlookedphrase: The United States must “guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.”
If “republican form of government” means anything, it means protecting citizens and the state from arbitrary centralization of power, not delegating more power, as we’ve seen in Minnesota, Maine, and elsewhere.
Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and a broader range of elected representatives should clearly spell out what is at stake. This is not just a partisan dispute over immigration, due process, or individual rights, although that is all of those. There is also a constitutional conflict over whether states should retain the form of autonomous republics or give up their independence – The core of republican freedom – For dependence and subordination.
Guarantee clauses have long been considered dormantbut historically it was understood as a safeguard against retaliatory retaliation by any foreign or domestic power. As James Madison wrote in “ Federalist Papers No. 43the purpose of this clause is “To ensure that every state is protected not only from foreign hostility, but also from ambitious or vindictive enterprise…” The surge in law enforcement in Minnesota and Maine has all the hallmarks of a vindictive retaliation, in this case against the governor. Waltz and Janet Mills.
This clause required the federal government not only to defend the states against external attack but also to preserve republican autonomy within the states. long tradition of republicanismmeans freedom from arbitrary power; rule by law rather than intimidation; and governance that tracks the interests of the people (citizens and non-citizens). When federal authorities rely on fear and powera threat not only to individual rights but to republican self-government itself.
There is now ample evidence that ICE’s crackdown is not an aberration but part of a broader style of governance defined by arbitrariness, which is exactly what Republican administrations are supposed to guard against. It replaces the government of law with the government of discretion. The Founding Fathers viewed this arbitrariness as a major danger to self-government, and national leaders should invoke this constitutional tradition directly.
Governors, attorneys general, and the public are not powerless in the face of this shift, but their most important tool is not necessarily litigation. This is the constitutional narrative. By explicitly invoking the Guarantee Clause, national leaders could reframe these confrontations as conflicts over republican autonomy. Naming federal action as incompatible with a republican form of government shifted the field of debate to broad and high-stakes questions of political authority and constitutional legitimacy.
This approach is in keeping with a long American tradition. popular constitutionalism, When formal legal remedies lag behind developments, political officials and the public argue for constitutional limits. It gives the governor and anyone who considers himself a “minor” Republican a vocabulary to demand transparency and limit coercion, and unite the Legislature, mayors and the public around shared constitutional principles.
A republic links law and liberty. Despotism, by contrast, is exactly what the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence sought to avoid. National leaders have good reason to start citing this assurance.
