Minnesota is the latest flashpoint in a federal crackdown involving ICE, border patrol, and other agencies.

But it's far from the only place being targeted.

Aggressive tactics have played out in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and now Maine.

The protests, the clashes, and the violence have raised urgent questions about where this all leads.

And a recent piece for The Guardian, Claire Finkelstein warns that what's unfolding in Minneapolis closely mirrors a U.S. Civil War simulation she oversaw in 2024.

Claire Finkelstein is the director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University

of Pennsylvania, and she joins us now. Thank you for being with us. Thanks for having me.

And we should say these simulations you helped run weren't designed to predict a second civil war,

but were instead meant to stress test the system. What motivated those exercises and what were you most worried about

then?

There were really two things that motivated us. And let's remember this was conducted in September

of 2024. So it was before the presidential election. But we were worried. We were worried

about what had happened on January 6th, 2021.

We were also worried in the wake of the immunity decision.

And what was that going to mean for potentially a more unfettered Trump's second term and

whether or not the rule of law would prevail and about the tensions,

potential tensions between the federal government and state and local governments and what that

could mean for the rule of law. When you look at what's unfolding now in Minneapolis, what

feels uncomfortably familiar from those simulations?

Well, one of the things that happened was we saw a spinning out of control, and I hope that's

not what's happening in Minneapolis, but a lot of what's been happening is going in that direction.

We saw a spinning out of control of the federal government.

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