Minnesota’s SALUTE Insurgency Exposed!

We previously reported on a news story that should have been the lead on every major television network as well as the front page of every major newspaper. It wasn’t there because it didn’t fit their narrative. The story, independent journalist Cam Higby found a Signal messaging board set up to organize and share information with anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis that seemingly included top Democrat politicians from Minnesota.

“BOMBSHELL: Minnesota Politicians Conspired with ICE Protesters!” – The Thinking Conservative  

Today we take that story a step further. This anti-ICE campaign is now seen as a military style insurgency against our government.

Eric Schwalm @Schwalm5132 offers an expert military analysis, giving his take on the information from the infiltration of “Signalgate”. Schwalm is a retired Green Beret (CW4). “Skeptical patriot questioning narratives, governance, and security. Intel background; focused on truth beyond the mainstream.”

YouTube podcaster and content provider Matt Morse did a good job of covering Eric Schwalm’s post.

This is what Schwalm had to say:

“As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops—both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations—I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly.

What’s unfolding in Minneapolis isn’t ‘protest.’ It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.

Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction—or worse.

This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace ‘ICE agents’ with “occupying coalition forces” and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.

The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country where they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response networks against federal officers—complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal—you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.

I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night. Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war. We either recognize what we’re actually looking at—or we pretend it’s still just “activism” until the structures harden and spread. Your call, America. But from where I sit, this isn’t January 2026 politics anymore. It’s phase one of something we’ve spent decades trying to keep off our own soil.”

In Schwalm’s X post he received an unbelievable amount of views. As of 6:00 yesterday evening that count stood at an incredible 21 million in 12 hours. As of 6:00 this morning he had 32 million! That tells us two things:

1. Real Americans have a hunger to know what is really happening without the mainstream narrative’s gaslighting.

2. Real American patriots want to know what they can do to help save this nation and they are not thinking about blowing whistles or blocking traffic with cars.

To be blunt, Antifa is now openly calling for arming up and killing people. My prediction is that they will be outnumbered 1,000 to 1 and those 1,000 American patriots will not back down. 

CONCLUSION:

I share Matt Morse’s concern for America and I too question the narrative we are being fed by the mainstream media and their puppet masters. As an example, I watched the shooting of Alex Pretti. I think his shooting was justified as he should not have come to a protest armed and without an I.D. and then fail to comply with law enforcement officers orders.

Having said that, I also think his shooting was accidental as one former military content provider offered in a video seldom seen. What it clearly showed was Pretti, at one point, had 5 ICE agents on top of him as he resisted orders and then an agent took his gun off of him after “GUN! GUN!” was yelled. That agent begins to walk away from Pretti and doing so, Pretti’s gun suddenly discharges into the pavement and all 5 agents respond to the shot, some firing on Pretti. They thought he was shooting at them. So, while it was his gun that fired that first shot, Pretti did not fire his gun.

Once again, just like the death of George Floyd 5 years ago in Minneapolis, this seems to have been an accident by law enforcement. The Pretti gun was (apparently) unlocked and loaded and had a hairpin trigger with lowered trigger pull weight. Normal is about 5 pounds. You can see how surprised the ICE agent was when the gun accidentally discharged and shot very close to his right foot on the street!

Eric Schwalm sums himself up as a “Skeptical patriot questioning narratives, governance, and security. Intel background; focused on truth beyond the mainstream.,” I am with him.

I find it ironic that the January 6, 2021 armed insurrection the Democrats accused MAGA Republicans of is actually what they themselves are guilty of, and not just on January 24, 2026.

It is time for the Trump Administration to lower the boom on Democrats in Minnesota!

And for those who don’t know, thanks to the Democrats of Minneapolis and the George Floyd sham trial of officer Derek Chauvin and his associates, Minneapolis is down to only 256 police officers from 731 they had previously. No officers are present to assist ICE both because of decreased numbers and orders from the Minneapolis mayor and governor of Minnesota.

© 2026 by Mark S. Schwendau

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Thinking Conservative.