Democrats are using the shooting death of a progressive street protester to magnify their 2026 campaign theme: That President Donald Trump is imposing “chaos” on stable American communities.
When “you watch the videos on there, [you see] total chaos,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said at a press conference where he called on progressives nationwide to mobilize against ICE enforcement
“The presence of federal immigration enforcement agents is causing chaos in our city,” said a message from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who recently won reelection by dividing the usually unified bloc of clannish Somali migrant voters.
“This is not about solving crime, this is not about preventing fraud: This is about sowing chaos on the streets of Minneapolis, and that’s what they are intent on doing,” Frey later told CNN.
Democrats around the country amplified the chaos theme. “We should not have ICE agents patrolling our streets … they create chaos, and they even create deaths,” Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told Wednesday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “The Briefing.
Democrats woo voters by pairing the chaos theme with reassuring promises of peace under their pro-migration, pro-diversity policies.
“My primary responsibility as governor is the protection of the people of Minnesota,” Walz said as he promised to prepare the state’s National Guard to resist Trump’s popular deportation of his state’s many illegal migrants:
You can be assured [that state police and the state National Guard are] there to protect Minnesotans from whatever it is [whether] it’s an act of nature, if it’s a global pandemic, or in this case, if it is a rogue federal agent.
“We’re demanding ICE to leave the city immediately,” said Frey, adding his opposition to Trump’s deportation of chaos-creating illegal migrants. “We stand rock solid with our immigrant and refugee communities,” said Frey, amid massive evidence of Democrat-aided, large-scale theft by his Somali supporters.
The Democrats’ 2026 chaos strategy echoes their campaign in 2014. Then, President Barack Obama and his media allies amplified the untrue “Hands up, don’t shoot” claim — and spurred much resulting violence — after the August 2014 police shooting of an African-American thief who was assaulting a cop.
Democrats played the chaos strategy in 2020 after Minneapolis drug addict George Floyd died during a police arrest. At least 40 people were killed in subsequent pre-election riots, and thousands more died in the next few years as police avoided confrontations with criminals. A 2021 report in USA Today concluded:
We found that across the 10 major cities we studied, deadly violence rose as engaged policing fell … From Los Angeles and Houston to New Orleans and Minneapolis, the political response to the [Floyd] unrest lead to de-policing and the resulting record violence.
The chaos theme is useful for Democrats because they have many progressive activists and allies who will raise or reduce street conflicts as Democrats prefer. The theme also enables Democrats to minimize media coverage and public debate over their planned policies.
In contrast to Democratic claims of rising chaos, Trump’s policies and deputies are quickly reducing the chaos imposed by President Joe Biden’s reckless policy of importing roughly 14 million legal and illegal migrants.
Biden’s massive inflow of diverse migrants pushed up rents and housing prices, pushed many Americans out of jobs, cut families’ wages, imposed chaotic diversity on communities — such as Springfield, Ohio — and spiked coast-to-coast crime ranging from murder to auto thefts.
Yet under Trump, the Democrats’ civic and economic chaos is settling down despite constant media uproar.
House prices are stable, rents are declining, wages are going up, and crime is dropping, partly because Trump is deporting many migrants from Minnesota and elsewhere. “The homicide rate has plummeted nationwide, according to provisional data by analyst Jeff Asher,” said a January 2 report in the far-left Minneapolis Reformer news site:
While the final numbers are subject to slight change, murders declined by about 16% relative to 2023, falling at the fastest rate on record, according to Asher’s analysis. All told, the numbers suggest that the homicide rate has finally fallen back to pre-pandemic levels, representing a return to normalcy after years of social disorder.
“Minneapolis remains a notable exception, however,” the news site added: “There were 76 homicides in the city in 2024, up from 72 the prior year …. [and] well above the 48 homicides recorded in 2019.”
The Department of Homeland Security is broadcasting its reversal of Democratic chaos by showcasing arrests of dangerous illegal migrants located in many states, including Minnesota.
Amid the Democrats’ massive resistance, Trump’s deputies are promising to expose more Democratic-enabled fraud in Minnesota and other states:
The Democrats and their donors and allies have been pushing the “chaos” theme since shortly after Trump’s reelection in November 2024.
“I think a lot on that question of chaos,” a top pro-migration lobbyist for West Coast investors and donors told his supporters at a November 19, 2024, event in Washington, DC. “I think it’s really important to pin this on Donald Trump,” said Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us.
“We need more common sense in Washington, DC, less conflict and less chaos,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said on February 4.
“What we’re seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said at a June 9 press conference. Trump is “hoping for chaos,” California Governor Gavin Newsom claimed on June 9.
This week, 30 Democratic Senators signed a letter claiming that security and crime risks are being raised by Trump’s decision to divert federal agents from many agencies to the task of immigration enforcement:
We write to express profound alarm at your administration’s decision to strip federal law enforcement agencies of thousands of personnel that keep Americans safe … [The redeployment] represent a systematic dismantling of the very institutions that protect Americans in their homes, online, and in their communities.