Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House, congresswoman from the Bay Area in California, just said that she was going to warn federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that if, in the opinion of state authorities, they acted in the way the state felt was improper, then she would order their arrest.
Mayor Brandon Johnson said that he was going to actively oppose the enforcement of federal law within his jurisdiction in Chicago. ICE, as we remember, two weeks ago, were blockaded, under siege. And local Chicago area law enforcement—which was requested by ICE to help them get out from being surrounded by these Antifa-like protesters—refused to come to their aid.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other Los Angeles city and county authorities have proudly announced that they are going to work on electronic apps and mechanisms by which anybody who is here illegally would have prior notice of the location of ICE officers, where they were headed, and therefore, could evade federal apprehension.
JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, on numerous occasions, has characterized these federal officers as Gestapo, Nazis. And they are acting, in his view, illegally and will be held to account by his state authorities.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani says that if he were to be elected, he is going to sever the relationship between the city of New York and federal jurisdiction and authority. I don’t think he meant on the beneficiary or receiving end of billions of dollars of federal monies. But rather, cease all cooperation with federal authorities, at his picking and choosing.
This is all very dangerous. I suggest that all of these entities, authorities, mayors, governors, police chiefs read Article VI of the Constitution, especially the paragraph known as the supremacy clause. In it, it details that local state authorities are subject to treaties and the laws that the federal government makes. And therefore, pursuant to those laws, they are subordinate and they must, having taken an oath to the Constitution, follow it. And they usually have done that.
One time in our history, maybe in our 19th-century history, they didn’t. The federal government had jurisdiction over Fort Sumter. They had jurisdiction over armories in Southern states. In 1861, the state of South Carolina tried to appropriate Fort Sumter and fired on it. And we know what happened next. Next: 700,000 deaths for the next four years.
We know in 1961-1963, we had another attempt to nullify the supremacy clause. Southern governors in Mississippi and Arkansas and Alabama said, “Federal law does not apply here. The Supreme Court ruling does not apply here. In our opinion, we can run our schools the way local people want. And we’re gonna resist you.” And the Eisenhower, and then later the Kennedy administration, said, “No, you’re not. We have the federal government’s military, and we can federalize and hold you in contempt and arrest you because of the supremacy clause.”
So, I would give warning to all of us that we’re headed into 1861 or 1961-1963 territory.
Can you envision that if Mayor Johnson of Chicago says he’s going to stop ICE from carrying out their duties, or if a local sheriff or a city policeman is ordered by authorities in San Francisco, according to the prompt of Congressman Nancy Pelosi, to arrest an ICE officer because, in their opinion, they feel that they are deporting someone who doesn’t have a criminal record—of course, it’s a crime to enter the United States. So, of course, anybody here who is residing without permission from the federal government has committed a crime, both in crossing the border without authorization and secondly, residing here without authorization. But if Nancy Pelosi was going to say, “We don’t like the way you arrested him. We’re going to arrest you.”
So, envision a local officer with a gun or a shotgun, body armor, coming up to a federal officer with a gun and body armor and a shotgun and said, “We’re arresting you because you have broken San Francisco statutes.”
And then the officer working for the federal government, that is the ICE officer—the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer—said, “No, no, no, no. You don’t know the Constitution. You didn’t read the supremacy clause in Article VI. You have no jurisdiction in a federal law that’s being enforced by a federal officer coming out of a federal property in your state. And therefore, if you impede me, you are breaking a federal law.”
So then, the local official says, “Well, you’re violating our notion of how people should be arrested in San Francisco.”
So, we’re gonna have what? Two armed officers—one from California, one from the federal government—what? Shooting it out?
This seems crazy, fantastic. Victor, it’s paranoid. But when a congresswoman, who was at one time the third most powerful person in the United States, in Jefferson Davis-style says that they’re gonna arrest ICE agents in their belief, their opinion that they’re doing something wrong, and that’s contrary to the Constitution, what is ICE supposed to do? Let them be arrested? That won’t happen.
So, we better back off, all of us, because we’re headed to an 1861 scenario. And we all know where that leads.
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