This is Amicus, Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, and the Supreme Court.

I'm Mark Joseph Stern, in for Dahlia, who is off this week. Don't worry, she's totally fine,

and we'll be back next week. What a year it has been.

By the time you're listening to this episode, I imagine you're perhaps brewing the first coffee of this Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.

Or maybe heading to a protest somewhere or just walking your dog.

By the time you're listening to this episode, President Donald Trump may have invoked

the Insurrection Act.

The federal government has deployed 3,000 immigration officers to Minnesota, outnumbering members

of the Minneapolis Police Department by about 5 to 1, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

The ACLU is suing the administration

for racially profiling Minnesotans of color, while reports grow of U.S. citizens being

picked up, roughed up, and dumped in retaliation for following or filming immigration agents.

The situation is escalating, and the accelerant is not the protesters or the immigrants

they're trying to protect, but the federal government. The question now is what happens if the

military is thrown into this volatile mix. In a moment, I'll be speaking with Steve Loddick, a professor

at Georgetown University Law Center, and great friend of the show about the

Insurrection Act and what we might expect if Trump invokes it.

The Insurrection Act is really about circumstances where the states themselves are either

unwilling or unable to enforce their laws, not federal law, or where they're the ones who are

specifically thwarting federal law enforcement. Later on're the ones who are specifically thwarting federal

law enforcement.

Later on in the show, we're going to stay with events in Minnesota, zooming in on the murder

...