In 1956, segregationist Democratic Senator Harry F. Byrd pushed for “massive resistance” to federal civil rights law enforcement. Today, Democrats Tim Walz, Larry Krasner, Jacob Frey, etc. are hailed for doing the same thing against federal immigration law enforcement.

For two weeks now, the mainstream media’s narrative has been that the anti-ICE protesters in the streets of Minneapolis are simply and legally exercising their First Amendment constitutional rights to free speech and assembly. But neither the First Amendment nor any other provision of the Constitution approves of individuals or massive groups of individuals engaging in organized, purposeful active harassment, impeding and blocking ICE agents and vehicles performing their enforcement duties.

Such actions are not protests, they are of the same false logic as the anti-civil rights law enforcement segregationist movement Byrd encouraged when he authored the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” aka the “Southern Manifesto” in 1956. Calling the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision “a clear abuse of judicial power” (substitute ICE for the High Court and you’ve got a key talking point of the present demonstrators), Byrd encouraged active resistance by citizens and officials across the states of the old Confederacy.

That resistance notably included Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus’s opposition to integration of his state’s public schools in 1957, prompted Sheriff Bull Connor to unleash dogs and fire hoses against civil rights marchers in May 1963, and culminated in Alabama Governor George Wallace defiantly standing in the University of Alabama’s “schoolhouse door” the following month, among much else.

Consider Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, who in response to President Donald Trump’s conciliatory comments following the death of Alex Pretti in a confrontation with ICE agents, declared that his city “does not and will not” enforce federal immigration law. In fact, Frey has it exactly backwards, since nobody expects any local elected official to enforce federal immigration law because that is the job of the federal government.

What every local and state official — looking at you, Governor Walz and you, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner — is required to do is cooperate with federal law enforcement if called upon to do so, not to refuse said cooperation and encourage what is clearly a professionally organized, managed, and funded rebellion in the streets.

If you doubt that is the case, read my assessment of the key facts that the mainstream media refuses to report on these issues. And if you doubt there are foreign elements actively involved, check out this detailed, comprehensive accounting by Insurrection Barbie, another of the growing legion of independent journalists posting on X. The Signal system is the heart of the rebellion’s command and control of the resistance.

Speaking of Krasner, he’s organizing the Soros-backed radical Democratic local prosecutors’ box on the nationwide anti-ICE insurrection organization chart. Calling ICE agents “wannabe Nazis,” Krasner vowed, “If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities. We will find you. We will achieve justice.”

For those who don’t recall, Krasner was one of George Soros’s first wins in the Hungarian billionaire’s lavishly funded campaign to elect radically leftist local prosecutors who would restrain police, push no-bail release policies, and refuse to prosecute even the most serious criminal cases. The Soros-funded Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC spent at least $1.45 million in independent expenditures encouraging voters to support Krasner.

Joining Krasner’s anti-ICE campaign are prosecutors from Dallas and Austin, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; Fairfax and Arlington Counties, Fairfax City, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, Virginia.

As smart and well-funded as today’s massive resisters are, they are almost certainly doomed to fail because they suffer the same fundamental weakness that ultimately brought down the Confederacy. The North had more people, more military capabilities, and far bigger manufacturing and agricultural resources than did the Confederacy.

Today’s rebels suffer the same deficiency but to a far deeper degree. As Kevin Bass calculates it, there are nine counties in the U.S. where the anti-ICE movement can reasonably expect to find fertile ground for its rebellion. All nine are sanctuaries for illegals and connected to deep-blue cities with mayors of the same ilk as Frey.

That leaves 3,134 counties that are far more likely to deal harshly with rioters if they are then known, as they are now, to bring with them property destruction, subversion of law and order, and growing political chaos. Large majorities of Americans endorsed Presidential-candidate Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants, beginning with those with criminal records. So not only are the anti-ICErs advocating massive resistance, they are also seeking to repeal democracy.