When Federal Power Meets Local Resistance: Minneapolis as America's Federalism Test

The scenes from Minneapolis look like something from a different country. Federal immigration agents deploy with military-style tactics. Local officials are shut out of investigations. State prosecutors fight for access to evidence about deaths in their own jurisdiction. To many Americans, this resembles the slide toward authoritarianism they've long feared.

But what if we're witnessing something else entirely? What if this chaos isn't institutional collapse, but the American system doing exactly what it was designed to do—even when it gets ugly?

When Multiple Governments Collide

The confrontation in Minneapolis reveals federalism's core mechanics in action. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations have created a perfect storm of jurisdictional overlap, where federal agents, state law enforcement, city officials, and county prosecutors all claim authority over the same streets and residents—and disagree sharply about how that authority should be exercised.

This isn't an accident. America's founders created a system where no single level of government could monopolize power. State and local officials across the country aren't simply deferring to federal enforcement. Instead, governors, mayors, and attorneys general have turned to courts, demanded access to evidence, and challenged efforts to exclude them from investigations.

The result looks messy because it is messy. Federal authority must contend with communities that have their own civic identities and moral expectations. In Minneapolis, it has collided with a political community that doesn't experience federal immigration enforcement as ordinary law enforcement.

The Chaos Is the Point

Federalism wasn't designed to keep things calm—it was designed to keep power unsettled. As scholar Daniel Elazar noted, "A little chaos is a good thing!" By dividing responsibility and encouraging overlap, the system ensures that authority has to push, explain, and defend itself at every step.

This stands in stark contrast to how federal power operated during the civil rights era, when Presidents Eisenhower and others deployed troops to enforce school integration. Those interventions were forceful but operated through recognizable constitutional channels—courts, statutes, and clear chains of command. Federal power remained "legible, bounded and institutionally accountable."

The key difference? Those civil rights interventions eventually gained broad public acceptance because they aligned with expanding moral consensus. Today's immigration enforcement operates without that broad agreement, making federalism's friction more visible and politically costly.

The Double-Edged Sword of Divided Power

Federalism has enabled both democratic progress and democratic backsliding. The same Electoral College system that can override popular will also ensures that presidential power must be exercised across diverse political communities with different values and expectations.

The current administration has systematically weakened norms that once constrained executive power, often turning federalism itself into "a weapon of national administrative power." Yet the very structure that enables this concentration of power also creates multiple points of resistance.

When state prosecutors demand access to evidence, when governors refuse to deploy National Guard troops, when local officials contest federal operations—this isn't obstruction. It's the system forcing power to remain contestable rather than settling quietly into authoritarian control.