In between dealing with his numerous scandals, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson recently found time for historical musings. “The extreme Right in this country refuse to accept the results of the Civil War,” he stated, and “[t]hey have repeatedly called for a rematch.”
These inflammatory words are both alarming and predictable, coming from a discredited radical with a six percent approval rating. (Mayor Johnson seems to have found a novel cure for our nation’s polarization; opposition to him.) But what fascinates me about his statement is his completely backwards understanding of the current political situation. For Mayor Johnson’s sake, I will put it as clearly as I can: the Trump administration is on the side of the law, the precedent, and the Constitution, whereas leaders like Mayor Johnson are flirting with the side previously filled by past Democrat insurrectionists.
Since the subject interests Mayor Johnson so much, let’s take a look at the history.
In 1861, as southern Democrat leaders agitated for war against the Union, President Lincoln sent supplies to the federal Fort Sumter. South Carolinians, roused by Democrat leaders who called for violent resistance against this legitimate federal action, attacked the fort and started the Civil War. Later in the war, the prominent “Copperhead” faction of northern Democrats accused Lincoln of being a power-mad dictator (sound familiar?) and organized violent resistance to the raising of troops. The Democrats who attacked Fort Sumter in 1861, the Democrats who stoked the New York Draft Riots in 1863, and the Democrats who are besieging federal law enforcement facilities in 2025 all have the same underlying belief: the powers delegated to the federal government by the Constitution can be ignored to suit their political purposes.
Confederate soldiers stand beneath the Confederate flag flying over Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 15, 1861, the day after the rebels captured the fort. (Corbis via Getty Images)
An artist’s rendering of the New York draft riots that took place in New York City on July 13-16, 1863. (Bettmann/Getty Images)
Protesters march through downtown Chicago, chanting and waving signs opposing ICE on September 30, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. (Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
State Police clashes with demonstrators at an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, on October 10, 2025. (Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
We see these parallels again a century later, when southern Democrats resisted federal desegregation efforts. Take 1957, when Arkansas’s Democrat Governor Orval Faubus refused to follow a federal order requiring the admission of black students to Little Rock’s Central High School. President Eisenhower responded by federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and sending an additional 1,000 troops to Little Rock, who maintained order in the city and protected the students as they attended Central High. Or look at 1963, when Alabama’s Democrat Governor George Wallace infamously “stood in the schoolhouse door” to prevent two black students from enrolling in the University of Alabama. President Kennedy responded by federalizing the National Guard and sending additional federal troops to Alabama, overcoming Wallace’s illegal resistance to federal law. In both cases, southern Democrat politicians cried foul, accusing Eisenhower and Kennedy of trampling on state and local rights. And in both cases, Eisenhower and Kennedy were legally and morally in the right.
That brings us to the present day. President Donald Trump, like Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Kennedy before him, is in the moral and legal right when it comes to federal authority. Radical far-left mobs have forced the president to defend federal property and federal law enforcement through appropriate legal means, like deploying the National Guard. Some of these mobs have been inspired by the rhetoric of Democrat politicians like Mayor Johnson and Governors J.B. Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, or Kathy Hochul, who call for resistance against legitimate federal authority in the same manner as the Confederates and segregationists before them.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks onstage as people protest as part of the No Kings Rallies on October 18, 2025, on in Chicago, Illinois. (Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images)
Mayor Johnson should know better. He can see the rising threat to law enforcement without leaving his backyard. Juan Espinoza Martinez, an illegal alien and alleged member of the Latin Kings gang, was recently arrested for soliciting the murder of United States Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino. He allegedly offered to pay $10,000 for anyone who would “take [Bovino] down.” He was arrested in Chicago, where both Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker have been demonizing federal immigration officers and helping illegal aliens evade ICE for months.
Democrat officials wish to portray ICE agents as rogue invaders, just as Governor Faubus assailed the “police state” “military occupation” of Little Rock. It was false when Governor Faubus said it then, and it is patently false when Democrats say it now. Federal law enforcement agencies have long maintained offices in America’s major cities, and agents have been frequently moved to help with major initiatives. Attempts by Democrat governors and mayors to create “ICE-free zones” in their states and cities have no basis in law, just like Governor Wallace’s attempts to block desegregation at the University of Alabama. ICE has the authority to execute federal law in the entire country, with no approval from state or local authorities needed. The Supreme Court made this clear as far back as 1890, with the case In re Neagle:
We hold it to be an incontrovertible principle that the government of the United States may, by means of physical force, exercised through its official agents, execute on every foot of American soil the powers and functions that belong to it. This necessarily involves the power to command obedience to its laws, and hence the power to keep the peace.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that the Constitution gives the federal government exclusive authority over immigration law. Democrats, too, recognized this fact when it was politically convenient to do so. In 2012, the Obama administration sued Arizona, which was attempting to do its own enforcement of immigration laws. The Supreme Court struck down some provisions of the contested Arizona law as unconstitutionally encroaching on federal authority over immigration.
Democrats have also decried the supposed “militarization” of ICE. But ICE agents are only dressing in tactical gear, wearing masks, and using fortified vehicles because of the dangers they face enforcing our nation’s laws. ICE already deals with some of the world’s most dangerous criminals, many of whom entered the country under President Biden’s disastrous open border, and violent mobs inspired by Democrat officials have added a new type of threat. Maybe if states and cities didn’t have their illegal sanctuary policies, and maybe if they didn’t actively interfere with ICE operations, ICE agents could execute their lawful arrests without tactical enhancement. But that is not our current situation.
Finally, Democrat officials have defended their resistance to federal authority by claiming that the criminal aliens being deported by ICE are “our neighbors.” These statements are a gross whitewashing of the harm caused by criminal illegal aliens, leaps of logic as dizzying as those made the southern Democrats of the 1860s and 1960s. This also seemingly ignores the fact that that law-abiding Americans are far more likely to have a law enforcement officer, not a criminal illegal alien, as their neighbor. With rare exceptions, the courageous men and women of law enforcement represent everything that is good about our nation. Democrat politicians who demonize these officers and encourage mobs to harm them should be ashamed.
I served as a federal prosecutor, so I know the proud history of cooperation between federal, state, and local law enforcement. I prosecuted many federal cases against drug traffickers and gang members that would have failed without the critical assistance of state and local officers. To advance their radical open-border agenda, Democrats like Mayor Johnson are endangering that crucial partnership.
Rep. Brad Knott (R-NC) poses outside the U.S. Capitol Building on November 15, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
As Victor Davis Hanson writes: “America for almost 200 years has already decided, in formal law and court rulings, that no local or state entity can disrupt the enforcement of federal laws or usurp Washington’s powers. To do so with impunity would unravel the American nation in short order. […] It is hard to know which is worse—the Antifa thug who nightly tries to injure a federal officer, or the sanctimonious neo-Confederate official who empowers him to keep trying.”
Our nation rightfully looks back with disgust at the Democrat radicals of the 1860s and 1960s, who agitated against legitimate and constitutional federal actions. Since there is nothing new under the sun, one can only imagine how future generations will look back on the current Democrat radicals agitating against legitimate and constitutional federal actions. I am sure history’s judgment will be especially ugly for Mayor Johnson; even a six percent approval rating has room to fall.
Brad Knott represents North Carolina’s 13th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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