They Didn’t Get Their Insurrection. That’s the Story.

A disciplined city refused to hand over the excuse—and now ICE is reportedly drawing down.

They Didn’t Get Their Insurrection. That’s the Story.

A disciplined city refused to hand over the excuse—and now ICE is reportedly drawing down.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #773: Friday, February 13th, 2026.
This is an Update to Newsletter #750: Click Here to Review It

I linked to the original piece at the top of this post.

Read it if you haven’t.

Because what just happened in Minneapolis matters.

Reports are circulating that the Trump administration is drawing down ICE presence in the city after weeks of tension following the fatal shooting in January.

And if that reporting holds…

Then we need to say something clearly—and humbly:

The primary reason they didn’t escalate further….is because the people of Minneapolis refused to give them the image they were hunting for.

No riots.
No armed cosplay militias.
No viral clips of mobs storming federal lines.

There was grief.
There was anger.
There were protests.

But…there was discipline.

And discipline…denied them their pretext.

What They Needed

After the shooting, the emotional temperature was volcanic.

That wasn’t an accident. That’s the point of shock events. Shock destabilizes judgment. Shock makes populations reactive. Shock creates footage.

And footage…if it’s the right kind…creates “emergencies.”

The Insurrection Act doesn’t require widespread chaos.

It requires a narrative of breakdown.

They didn’t need the city to burn.

They needed a handful of violent clips they could loop on cable for 72 hours.

They needed a headline.

They needed to say: Local authorities have lost control.

Instead, what they got were organized marches. Clergy standing between protesters and federal lines. Community leaders telling people to go home when tensions rose. Parents bringing water and food instead of fireworks.

That’s not weakness.

That’s strategic maturity.

Fear Without Frenzy

Let’s not sanitize this.

People were furious. People were scared. Communities felt targeted.

The nervous system doesn’t distinguish between “federal enforcement operation” and “threat to survival.” It floods. It demands action.

The difference is what you do with that flood.

Minneapolis did something rare in modern political life:

They metabolized it.

They protested.
They documented.
They demanded answers.
They did not torch their own leverage.

And…because of that, the administration never got the single frame it could point to and say:

“See? Insurrection.”

That matters more than people realize.

The Insurrection Act Was the Shadow

You don’t float federal enforcement surges into cities without…

…modeling worst-case scenarios.

You don’t deploy aggressively without contingency planning.

You don’t stage assets without knowing what you’d do if “civil unrest” crossed a threshold.

The Insurrection Act has been publicly discussed for years. It lives in the background of modern federal-state tension like a loaded tool sitting on a shelf.

But tools require justification.

If the justification never materializes…escalation becomes politically expensive.

And political cost is oxygen.

Minneapolis didn’t provide the oxygen.

What Changed?

Look at the sequence.

Shock event.
National outrage.
Calls online for retaliation.
Speculation about crackdowns.

Then…

Calm crowds.
Chants instead of chaos.
Permits instead of ambushes.
Documentation instead of Molotov cocktails.

When federal planners ran their nightly risk assessments, what did they see?

Not collapse.

Control.

Not “local authorities overwhelmed.”

Local authorities cooperating with community leaders to prevent violence.

That changes the equation.

Because once you invoke something like the Insurrection Act without clear…sustained disorder…you don’t look strong.

You look authoritarian.

And that’s a risk calculation.

This Is Not Victory Dancing

Let me be careful here.

A man is still dead.

Families are still grieving.

Investigations are ongoing.

Nobody “won.”

But restraint…prevented something worse.

And that deserves acknowledgment.

The loudest voices online predicted fire.

Instead, what we saw was focus.

The difference between those two outcomes…is the difference between escalation and de-escalation.

History turns on those margins.

The Myth of “Righteous Violence”

There’s a seductive fantasy that explosive retaliation forces power to retreat.

Sometimes it does the opposite.

Violence narrows coalitions.
It justifies budgets.
It activates federal authorities who would otherwise hesitate.

Peaceful discipline does something more dangerous to centralized power:

It exposes overreach.

If ICE remained in Minneapolis indefinitely…without widespread unrest…the question would shift from “Why are protesters violent?” to “Why are federal agents still here?”

That’s a losing narrative for them.

So the pressure reversed.

When you don’t supply chaos…the spotlight moves.

Receipts Still Matter

None of this means people should relax.

Documentation still matters.
Oversight still matters.
Use-of-force transparency still matters.

Calm without accountability is surrender.

Calm paired with relentless documentation is leverage.

That was the argument I made on January 24th, 2026.

It’s still the argument now.

And the drawdown…if confirmed…suggests that leverage…works better than adrenaline.

The Hardest Thing in Politics

The hardest thing to do in a volatile moment is nothing theatrical.

It’s easy to light a match.

It’s harder to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and say:

“No. We’re not giving you that.”

That refusal is invisible. It doesn’t trend. It doesn’t feel cinematic.

But…it changes strategic outcomes.

Minneapolis didn’t become a cautionary tale of urban breakdown.

It became an example of controlled pressure.

That distinction may have prevented federal troops from rolling in under emergency authority.

Discipline Is Contagious

Here’s the quiet lesson.

When one city demonstrates that mass protest does not equal mass chaos…it raises the bar for federal escalation everywhere else.

It creates precedent.

It signals to other communities:

You can be loud without being reckless.
You can be furious without being foolish.
You can resist without self-sabotage.

That’s power.

Humble, But Clear

I wrote in January: don’t be the useful idiot they’re praying for.

That wasn’t a moral sermon.

It was a strategic warning.

Looking at what unfolded, it appears people heard it…not just from me…but from pastors, organizers, elders, and neighbors who understood the stakes.

The administration may have come looking for insurrection.

What they got was coordination.

And coordination is harder to crush.

Before You Go

If you’re reading this in the Substack app, pause and comment one word:

DISCIPLINE.

Not as a slogan.

As recognition.

Because history rarely announces the disasters that didn’t happen.

Sometimes the headline isn’t what exploded.

It’s what never did.

And…if ICE is pulling back without invoking extraordinary federal authority…that isn’t coincidence.

It’s what happens when people feel everything…
and still refuse to be baited.

Stay steady.

The work isn’t rage.

The work is leverage.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack
Jack Hopkins

P.S. There’s a reason I don’t traffic in adrenaline here.

Adrenaline feels powerful. It spikes clicks. It makes you feel like something is happening.

Discipline changes what actually happens.

If you were in Minneapolis…if you marched…if you kept your cool when your nervous system was screaming to explode…understand this:

You may have prevented an escalation most people will never even know was on the table.

That’s how real power works. It doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like restraint.

And…if you want more analysis like this…calm, strategic, consequence-focused…make sure you’re reading in the app and turn on notifications. The next time pressure builds somewhere else, we’re going to need clear heads again.