Trump is spoiling for a fight.

Trump threatened on Thursday to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces in Minnesota after days of angry protests over a surge in immigration agents on the streets of Minneapolis.

Confrontations between residents and federal officers have become increasingly tense after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a U.S. citizen, Renee Good, in a car eight days ago in Minneapolis, and the protests have spread to other cities. Trump’s latest threat came a few hours after an immigration officer shot a Venezuelan man the government said was fleeing after agents tried to stop his vehicle in Minneapolis.

Rumor has it that immigration officers aren’t empowered to shoot people who are fleeing. They’re not cops.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT,” Trump wrote on social media. Trump, a Republican, has for weeks derided the state’s Democratic leaders and called the Somali community in the area “garbage” who should be “thrown out” of the country.

That’s interesting, because lots of people think that a guy who calls groups of people “garbage” is himself quite garbage-like.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a law allowing the president to deploy the military or federalize soldiers in a state’s National Guard to quell rebellion, an exception to laws that prohibit soldiers being used in civil or criminal law enforcement.

Well this isn’t that. Rebellion is what the Southern states tried to do; this is not that.

If Trump sends soldiers to Minnesota, he would almost certainly face legal challenges by the state. The Minnesota attorney general’s office has already sued the Trump administration this week, saying the ICE surge was violating Minnesotans’ rights, and on Wednesday asked U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez to issue a temporary order restraining it.

Brian Carter, a lawyer for Minnesota, told the judge that Trump’s agents were engaged in a “pattern of unlawful, violent conduct,” including racial profiling and forced entry into residents’ homes without warrants. “They are foisting this crisis onto us,” Carter said.

In a social media post on Thursday morning, Trump said incorrectly that the judge had “declined to block” the ICE surge. In the hearing, Judge Menendez ordered the Trump administration to respond by Monday to Minnesota’s complaints, saying she would rule after that, calling the issues raised by Minnesota’s lawsuit “enormously important.”

Telling the truth is for lesser mortals.