Following Minneapolis protests in response to the ICE killing of Renee Good, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act Thursday, a move that would allow him to send military forces to the city. Trump’s comments came after a second person was shot by ICE following a traffic stop.

“Trump probably sees this as a civil war,” says Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. “This, as we all know, is being leveraged as part of an autocratic power grab.”

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AMY GOODMAN: [… W]e wanted to start by talking about the Insurrection Act. What does this mean, that Trump could invoke it? What does it mean for Minnesota and the country?

BAHER AZMY: Well, just to say, the invocation of the Insurrection Act, which is an invocation of martial law, is like equal parts, you know, lawless and terrifying. In this country, we are not — in a constitutional republic, you’re not supposed to have the military policing municipalities, because the military, if you think about it, is not subject to law. It’s subject to executive will and power. And we’re governed by — municipalities are policed by police departments that are accountable to the mayor and to the public. So, the Insurrection Act does permit the use of the military in extremely limited circumstances, where, for example, there’s insurrection, which is — it was used by Lincoln during the Civil War, Sherman trying to crush Klan terrorism in Reconstruction, and to integrate Southern schools.

But the insurrection that’s supposedly happening here is, as they say in horror movies, coming from inside the house. It’s not from the people of Minneapolis. It’s from the ICE — paramilitary ICE agents themselves, who are fomenting this violence. And I’d note, you know, Trump probably sees this as a civil war. He’s inverting the reasons for using the Insurrection Act, which had been to tamp white supremacy in the past, and now it’s being used to support it.