Can Dems rescue their party from its radical left rebels before the chaos spirals out of control?

By Gary Abernathy

Like Lincoln, Trump faces the challenge of preserving the union against forces openly antagonistic to federal rule

At first blush, Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln would seem to have little in common. We think of Lincoln as a man of moral clarity and a paragon of virtue. We think of his steady leadership in a crisis, a visionary figure dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality.

We think of Trump as, well … not Lincoln. Even Trump’s supporters would not assign the same characteristics to Trump that we typically admire in our 16th president. But Trump is facing a challenge much like the one that confronted Lincoln.

States are ordering local law enforcement to turn a blind eye to federal law as it relates to illegal immigration. The governor of Minnesota is invoking the specter of Fort Sumter, where, 165 years ago, Confederate forces fired on a federal outpost in an act of open rebellion. The president of the United States is suggesting he might invoke the Insurrection Act, which was utilized by Lincoln as the kickoff to his efforts to counter the secession of rebellious southern states.

The chaos in Minneapolis threatens to inspire similar anarchy elsewhere, and more and more people are speculating aloud about a possibility that not long ago was considered unthinkable.

At least nine states, all run by Democrats, “have already either prohibited or set restrictions against local police and sheriff’s offices entering into what are known as 287(g) partnerships, which enable those agencies to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement take into custody people they say are in the country illegally,” as reported by the Washington Post.

Additionally, “New Mexico, New York, Hawaii and Virginia are considering similar bans during their 2026 state legislative sessions.”

As we have witnessed, it is a recipe for disaster when federal forces arrive to enforce the law, local police refuse assistance, and radical left agitators take to the streets. Violence and chaos ensue. It is a dangerous pattern, but one openly encouraged by a growing number of reckless elected officials currying favor with their far-left base.

Defying federal law by declaring some cities are “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants is an astounding revival of the old “states’ rights” argument — a throwback to the reasoning that defended slavery in the 19^th century and Jim Crow laws in the 20^th. It has led to heated encounters that have been chaotic and even deadly, but risks even more violent confrontations.

The radical left is driving the chaos

The radical left and the growing socialist wing of the Democratic Party are driving the chaos. It is obvious that neither the Trump administration nor the Republican majority in Congress has the ability to influence the extreme left and quell the rebellion without calling upon the kind of overwhelming force no one wants.

Rhetorical alternatives to the use of force can only come effectively from Democrats who have not succumbed to political insanity. We can hope that the non-anarchists still represent the majority of the Democratic Party, but that’s not a certainty.

So far, those whom we might expect to offer voices of reason — high-ranking Democrats and revered party elder statesmen — have either been mostly silent or have even sprinkled fuel on the fire.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, have sided with Democrats threatening ICE funding. Most Democrats in Congress have dutifully lined up behind them. Some have insisted on conditions such as prohibiting ICE agents from wearing masks, despite knowing that the masks only came on after agents began to be “doxed” – their identifies revealed, home addresses shared, and families endangered.

Will a Democrat stand up to lead?

It is cause for deep concern when people assumed to be wise enough to know better kowtow to the increasingly violent leftwing of their party. The only realistic possibility of reversing this growing tide of far-left rebellion and anarchy through peaceful means is for the party in which it has taken root to regain control and douse the hot spots rather than fan the flames.

This goes not only for national party officials, but for grassroots activists and leaders in the states and local towns and counties across the nation. The moment calls for them to do more than shake their heads and wring their hands; they must coalesce around a course of action to keep their party from disintegrating into complete madness.

The duty to act responsibly extends to the far-left (formerly mainstream) media, which has largely been co-opted by the radical left but whose ownership must retake control of the asylum from the inmates.

As we witness efforts by the adults to reassert control at the Washington Post and CBS, the internal rebellions threaten to lead to the demise of these institutions. But their passing would be more beneficial to the nation than their continued usurpation by extremists and their abuse as bullhorns amplifying calls to anarchy — couched in platitudes of “preserving democracy” while contributing to the opposite result.

Is the party too far gone?

In 2015 and ‘16, as Donald Trump ascended to the top of the GOP pack, voices both inside and outside the party demanded that old-school Republicans step up to restore order and inspire grassroots voters to reject Trump on the grounds that he was not a conservative and was unfit to be the party’s standard bearer.

But it was too late. The MAGA movement had already become, as it remains, the party’s dominant force. Still, the MAGA GOP — which made the party more populist — remains the conservative party.

It is not prone to taking over cities for days, weeks or months to agitate for its cause, or to refuse — en masse and through weeks of violence and protests in the streets — to acknowledge federal authority. It does not see its elected state and local leaders pass resolutions or announce policies refusing cooperation with federal law enforcement.

The radical left and the socialist wing of the Democratic Party are doing exactly that. Have they already become too pervasive for more traditional party leaders to oppose them from within? Do those rebellious forces now constitute the party’s majority?

Based on their public pronouncements so far, most party leaders cannot be expected to do anything but play to the naked passions of their radical base. Of all the possibilities, Barack and Michelle Obama would seem the leaders most likely to embody both wisdom and maturity — coupled with influence, power and, most importantly, independence — to make a difference.

So far, the former president — even in his typically measured way and despite his own past aggressiveness in deporting illegal immigrants (without media or far-left backlash, since it was Obama and not Trump) — seems reluctant to call for order.

The far-left abandons tolerance

Back in 2023, as lawfare geared up and indictments against him mounted, Trump said to his voters, “They’re coming after you. I’m just standing in their way.” While that was a self-serving summation, there may well have been truth to it.

When I wrote recently that the hate emanating from the radical left toward ICE and anyone defending Trump is in fact directed at Trump himself, a friend suggested the opposite is true. They actually hate us, he said, referring to conservatives, evangelical Christians and other traditionalists.

The radical left hates fundamental or evangelical Christianity because its belief in biblical authority, especially the New Testament, naturally results in opposing abortion and rejecting the extremes of the LGBTQ movement, including nonsensical pronoun misuse, drag shows for kids, men playing in women’s sports, trans surgeries for minors (“gender-affirming healthcare” is the Orwellian description), inappropriate sexual content in grade school books, and so on.

While recognizing our own and everyone else’s imperfections and sin (and hence our need for reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ), evangelicals and other people of faith defend traditional notions of morality, stand against pornography and obscenity in media, believe in ideas like sin and (thankfully) redemption, and encourage faith and religion as concepts superior to technocratic humanism.

By contrast, Minneapolis protesters have taken to throwing dildos at law enforcement, along with rocks, ice and fireworks, and their signage and verbal obscenities are by necessity routinely blurred and bleeped by media on the left and right. These people are not normal, but they are being normalized and too often portrayed in far-left media as serious and even patriotic.

Ideally, under the broad practice of acceptance which has philosophically defined the United States, these differences between left and right — despite how outrageous the right considers the left, and how oppressive the left considers the right — are historically tolerated and expected to coexist.

But such tolerance no longer exists on the radical left; they want those with a different worldview vanquished, silenced, declared “hateful” and rendered unable to express their views in polite society or, particularly, in the media, which too often complies.

Sanctuary claims are unsustainable

Let’s be clear that there is no comparison between the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol and the protests happening over ICE and illegal immigration, despite attempts to argue such an equivalence.

Trump lost the 2020 election. The events of Jan. 6, 2021, did indeed represent a rebellion or insurrection. It was destructive and shameful.

Fortunately, the Jan. 6 riot was very limited. It was a one-off event, precipitated by a relatively small number of not-too-bright people, with hundreds of others participating in something that, to their surprise, went far beyond what they expected.

It ended within hours, mainly because participants got tired and bored and went home. It was not repeated the next day, or the day after, or for weeks on end. Trump, for his part, ended up quietly leaving town, and Joe Biden assumed the presidency on schedule.

Trump was right to pardon most of those who had been overzealously charged and handed extreme sentences for their actions on Jan. 6. He was wrong to pardon those who planned actual insurrection and those who engaged in violence. Unfortunately, Trump is often wrong in his methods, even when his overall agenda is right.

However, the Jan. 6 Committee was a waste of time, a “We Hate Trump” club full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Trump’s insistence that he won in 2020 continues to be irresponsible and harmful, but it’s not criminal. Bringing court challenges and seeking changes through legislative processes — even far-flung and partisan ones —are far different than rioting in the streets or refusing to acknowledge legal federal authority.

What’s happening in Minneapolis and possibly on the verge of erupting elsewhere is a sustained, ongoing rebellion against federal law and authority. It is being generously funded and openly planned, encouraged even by state and city leaders. We are at a moment when the president of the United States must consider just how great is the threat by some state leaders to ignore federal law — not just for a day or two, but indefinitely.

Trump faces a Lincoln moment

The media is focusing on polls showing the public saying “ICE has gone too far,” and, as should occur, full investigations are underway into the deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.

What is less publicized is polling showing that most Americans continue to support Trump’s overall deportation efforts, as in this recent Harvard Harris poll, which also shows that 67 percent of Americans think local officials should cooperate with federal immigration authorities, and 57 percent oppose elected officials encouraging resistance to ICE officers.

As noted earlier, today Abraham Lincoln is widely and rightfully regarded as perhaps our greatest president. This was hardly foreseeable at the time of his 1860 election, which he won with less than 40 percent of the vote.

Most Americans in 1860, dividing their votes among the other three candidates (Stephen Douglas, John Breckinridge, John Bell), considered the anti-slavery candidate (and his new anti-slavery party) too divisive. He and his party had promised to leave slavery alone where it already existed but oppose its expansion. Still, even before Lincoln was inaugurated, seven southern states declared they were seceding from the United States, with four more to follow after the events at Fort Sumter.

Gov. Tim Walz, Minnesota’s architect of anarchy, has wondered aloud, “Is this a Fort Sumter?” Trump responded by asking whether Walz knew what that meant, and it’s a fair question. Some say Walz was referring to the actions of the Trump administration, but it sounded as though Walz could have been threatening a blatant act of rebellion similar to the spark that ignited the Civil War.

Keep in mind that Walz also threatened to call in the National Guard, saying, "We have soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed if necessary. I remind you, a warning order is a heads-up for folks. Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight."

This was the dilemma Lincoln confronted. In the closing pages of his book about the Kennedy-Nixon campaign, “The Making of the President 1960,” author Theodore H. White pondered the issues that can face a president. He noted that sometimes presidents are faced with circumstances that no law specifically anticipates.

For instance, “No law or passage of the Constitution defined what a president must do in the spring of 1861 when citizens of individual states, declaring themselves independent of the Constitution, seized those few post offices and forts in the Southern states that made concrete the authority of the then-primitive federal government. Yet Lincoln perceived that this was an act of war, accepted it as war, and made war.”

It is difficult to imagine that Trump, due to his divisive nature, will ever be favorably compared to Lincoln. But the challenge of keeping the country united comes on his watch. In Lincoln’s day, there were many Democrats, including fierce critics, who ultimately sided with Lincoln in the cause of preserving the union.

Are there Democrats today who will put aside their personal distaste for Trump in the cause of national unity? Are there Democrats who will say the following to the radical protesters of their party: Don’t protect illegal immigrants from the legal consequences of their own decisions. Don’t throw things at law enforcement officers. Don’t push police barricades out of the way. Don’t drive your vehicles into traffic and block the road. Don’t get into the faces of federal agents and dare them to assault you.

Trump has shown remarkable patience for someone so typically impulsive. But his patience cannot, and should not, be without end as state after state (and city after city), increasingly led by radicalized leftists, declare themselves sanctuaries for illegal immigrants while standing in opposition to federal agents carrying out enforcement of laws — laws legally passed by the normal order of Congress, which is comprised of duly elected representatives from each of the states.

As Lincoln quoted Scripture, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Assuming the party as it has historically been comprised is not already beyond being reconstituted, some respected Democrat of courage and reason, or some collection of Democrats, must lead their party back from the abyss. But time is growing short.

Gary Abernathy is an award-winning journalist and opinion columnist with a long career in the news media and politics, including as a contributing columnist for the Washington Post and a frequent analyst on PBS NewsHour. He is the author of MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal And Other Shocking Notions. Never miss an update from Abernathy Road, where Gary offers opinion and analysis about the latest political developments.