In an article for conservative outlet The Dispatch, author Kevin D. Williamson warns that President Donald Trump’s failures are strengthening what he characterized as the most embarrassing arguments from "lefty kooks."
One example he referenced was Trump administration border advisor Tom Homan’s recent nnouncement that he was pulling Department of Homeland Security personnel out of Minnesota only because “Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals.” Rather, Williamson observed that Homan’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents made themselves targets of rage with killings of innocent U.S. citizens.
“Trump’s imbecilic decision to respond to a Medicaid fraud case in Minnesota with the Border Patrol and ICE will be that Minnesota and Minneapolis are left with a deepened commitment to their sanctuary policies,” said Williamson, adding that they are now convinced — as many other states and cities surely will be — “that the price of active cooperation with the black-masked goon squads, thugs, bullies, incompetents, and Wehrmacht Generalfeldmarschall Rommel cosplay dorks entrusted with enforcing our immigration law is just too high.”
The agents involved in the shootings are “possibly headed to prison … [and] all have stories to tell,” said Williamson. “One suspects that none of those stories will fortify public trust in federal authority or in Donald Trump and his grotesque little junta.”
But Trump’s invasion has already done damage to the president across the nation.
“In Virginia — a state in which the 11-member House delegation is split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats, a state that was happy to elect Glenn Youngkin but that has rejected Donald Trump three times in a row — lawmakers are considering new rules that would restrict federal immigration enforcement there, limiting where arrests can be made, for example, and putting restrictions on the wearing of masks,” said Williamson.
But now New York, New Jersey, Maryland and New Mexico are all looking at enacting new restrictions on cooperation with federal immigration enforcers. And even Texas, where sanctuary policies could soon be forbidden by state law, cities such as San Antonio “have made it clear” that they will offer only the minimum level of cooperation required under law.
“The Trump administration not only has made sanctuary policies more popular — the administration has, through its abuse of power, made those policies better policies,” said Williamson.
The nation had been moving away from the “George Floyd riots and suffocating political environment that came out of that upheaval,” said Williamson. “The perennial-protest left was on its back foot. No more: Trump has saved the left-wing piqueteros from their own worst tendencies, emboldened and empowered them, and — critically — handed them a political victory.”
But now the nation can “expect to see the Minneapolis model adopted in cities across the country as this panicky and incompetent clutch of fools lurches from crisis to crisis to midterms to 2028,” said Williamson. “Minneapolis has shown the left what works, seeing off Trump & Co. with very little more than a bunch of whistles, some worn-out protest chants, and just enough political discipline to keep downtown businesses from having to put plywood on their windows.”
“Not since Trump saved Mark Carney and the Canadian Liberals from all but certain electoral defeat have we seen such an own goal from the retired game show host and quondam pornographer who serves, incredibly enough, as president of these United States of America,” Williamson said.