Radley Balko has a great piece today discussing the stunning similarities between the Boston Massacre and Minneapolis which a number of people have noted. That this is happening on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence makes it all the more pointed. He discusses the right’s wing paeans to the founding, originalism etc and notes:
The Republicans’ veneration of the Founders is particularly rich at the moment because, of all the abuses England heaped on the colonies, nothing angered them more than the Crown’s deployment of soldiers on city streets — and the streets of Boston in particular. Anger, resentment, and violence simmered in Boston for years before the Boston Massacre in 1770. The Declaration of Independence Trump hangs in his office came six years later, followed by the American Revolution, then the birth of the United States.
The rage from those pre-revolution clashes in Boston continued to linger for years into the Constitutional Convention, and then the debate over the Bill of Rights. The Founders were also students of history, and saw how the domestic use of the military led to the fall of the Roman Republic. This, in large part, is why we have the Second, Third, and Fourth Amendments, and why the Constitution splits control of the military between the president and Congress. You really can’t overstate how much the Founders worried about . . . exactly what we’re seeing in Minneapolis.
When I was researching my first book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, I found a remarkable archive of colonial-era newspaper articles published as a collection in 1936 by a historian named Oliver Morton Dickerson. The articles are from A Journal of the Times, a pro-patriot, anti-monarchy paper published in colonial Boston. Dickerson’s published archive, which runs from 1767 to 1769, documents the rising tension as English troops patrolled the streets of Boston.
The accounts are clearly biased in favor of the angry colonists, but they’re also consistent with other contemporaneous accounts of the occupation. They read like a social media feed — if social media had existed at the time. They also depict scenes remarkably similar to what we’re seeing in Minneapolis.
We’re now at two dead in Minneapolis, and at least four people killed by immigration officers overall. We’re at 41 dead since Trump was inaugurated last year if you count the soaring number of deaths in ICE custody, many of which appear to be from either neglect or abuse.
Even as I was working on this post, there were two alarming new developments: First, the A.P. reported that the administration has been keeping a secret memo authorizing immigration to enter homes without a warrant to arrest people who have final removal orders (the memo itself suggests even a final removal order may not be necessary). This is remarkably similar to the general warrants or “writs of assistance” the British crown issued permitting soldiers to forcibly enter any home they suspected of harboring untaxed imports.
I’ll just state the obvious: If the Fourth Amendment permits the government to tear down your door with nothing more than an administrative warrant, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t exist. (The argument that this only affects undocumented immigrants is both legally dubious and utter garbage — they’ve already used this policy to terrorize an American citizen.)
The second alarming new incident was the murder of Alex Pretti. And within hours of Pretti’s death, the administration promptly did what they’ve done after the previous shootings: they slandered the victim, brazenly lied about what happened, and prevented local law enforcement from conducting their own investigation. They’ve also refused to release the names of the officers who killed Pretti, publicly praised those officers, and then quickly announced that those officers have been returned to the field.
He goes on to show some of the obvious parallels between the two events, 260 years apart. It’s pretty amazing. Click over to the link. It’s free.
We are going to see a revolting display of phony patriotism this summer as Trump cheapens the anniversary with UFC fights on the White House lawn and cheesy ceremonies designed more to celebrate him than the founding ideals of the country, of which he has zero understanding. But what he is actually doing would have the founding generation rolling over in their graves.
He spent decades bringing the religious right to power. Now he's marching to undo it.
Rev. Rob Schenck spent decades helping build America's Religious Right—commingling church and state to advance conservative causes like the anti-abortion movement.
“Being here, in solidarity, is part of the repair work in my own soul,” said Rev. Rob Schenck, an Evangelical minister who spent decades commingling church and state to advance conservative causes like the anti-abortion movement. One example: Schenck’s organization, Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, created “Operation Higher Court,” which trained wealthy couples as “stealth missionaries” to befriend Supreme Court justices to preserve, in his words, a Christian nation.
Now, he says he must confront the damage he helped cause, including what he believes was his role in delivering “the entities that are now inflicting all of this suffering on so many people”—extending to the rise of President Donald Trump. “We made this terrible deal with Donald Trump because we were already demoralized,” he told Mother Jones in 2018. “He didn’t demoralize us—he is the evidence of our demoralization.”
So, here, braving subzero temperatures, Schenck told me, “I have to do the work of repair.” The video above was taken on Friday, during the city’s “Day of Truth and Freedom”—a citywide strike and march in which clergy played a prominent role. “These folks are showing more grace in accepting me than I would have ever extended to them,” he said, flanked by organizers shouting, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
The next day, after learning of federal agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti, Schenck extended his stay in the city. I’ve been following Rob on his journey over the last few days and the clergy’s fight against ICE, which we will feature more of in the coming days.
“This is redemption,” he told me. “This is redemption.”
Homan is no better. But he is open to a bribe, we know that, so maybe some Minnesotans should grab a Cava bag and start a GoFundMe to get ICE out of their state.
You have to love the fact that Trump just spent the last 2 years publicly trashing Tim Walz like a psychopath and now tries to act like a normal president. I guess he knows that the country is in an uproar and feels uncomfortable. I’d like to think we’ve hit an inflection point after the last week of outrageous behavior here and abroad but then I remember that he was put back in the White House after January 6th and I’m not sure it’s even possible.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
Thus, conservatives are by-God fundamentalist about the Second Amendment so long as it protects them and not liberals. The CBP killing of Alex Pretti is generating ulcers on the right (NBC News):
A war of words over deeply held beliefs erupted on the political right in the hours after a federal agent shot and killed Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street Saturday, pitting top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration against Second Amendment defenders in his electoral base.
Trump administration officials in their accustomed fact-free manner blamed Pretti for his own killing because he was legally carrying a concealed weapon for which he had a permit. He never drew the SIG 9mm from its holster. As agents pinned Pretti to the pavement, one agent discovered and removed Pretti’s weapon a moment before fellow agents opened fire on him where he lay.
The National Rifle Association and the Trump administration have for years championed gun rights now have the issue coming between them.
An instructive exchange played out on X. Bill Essayli, a federal prosecutor in California appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, infuriated gun-rights activists with a series of posts expressing similar sentiments to Noem’s — “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you” — and accusing critics of being members of antifa.
None of that sat well with defenders of the Second Amendment, who are accustomed to having their right to bear arms challenged by Democrats, not Republicans.
“Oh I’m Antifa now?” Aidan Johnston, the director of federal affairs for the Gun Owners of America, wrote on X in response to Essayli. “I guess @TheJusticeDept is back to targeting gun owners as domestic terrorists. You can want illegals & criminals off the streets and not want to see CCW [concealed carry weapons] permit holders get executed for ‘approaching’ law enforcement.”
The National Rifle Association attacked Essayli for “demonizing law-abiding citizens.”
Naturally, the NRA refrained from directly criticizing the Trump administration.
Daily Breast reports, “Donald Trump has refused to back Kristi Noem’s claim that the shooting of nurse Alex Pretti was justified, as DHS officials reportedly turn on the Homeland Security secretary.”
Pop some popcorn.
Raw America podcaster British Chris sees a White House spiraling out of control. Events in Minneapolis have Trump 2.0 in damage-control mode. Sunday talking heads programs featured a string of Trump 2.0 officials none of which could tell a consistent story on Pretti’s killing. They faced pushback from hosts armed not with sidearms but with with video clips refuting the goverment’s narrative on the slaying.
“It’s the communication strategy of an administration that’s lost the plot,” Chris explains. And from an administration more interested in clicks than competence:
Behind the scenes, the picture is even worse. According to CNN’s reporting, Trump has been expressing frustration that his immigration messaging is “getting lost”—as if the problem is branding rather than the fact that federal agents killed a nurse on camera. Sources describe him as “exasperated,” which is a polite way of saying the president is watching his signature issue spiral out of control and doesn’t know how to stop it.
[…]
Top White House officials have been “plotting how to move the narrative away from the unrest in Minneapolis,” according to sources familiar with internal discussions. Think about that phrasing. Not “addressing the concerns,” not “ensuring accountability,” but moving the narrative. They’re trying to change the channel while the house is burning down.
British Chris adds this takedown:
The White House built its coalition on Second Amendment absolutism and law-and-order rhetoric. Now those principles are in direct conflict, and there’s no talking point that resolves the contradiction. Either you defend gun rights for all lawful carriers, or you defend federal agents killing someone who never drew their weapon. You can’t do both, and watching administration officials try is revealing the intellectual bankruptcy at the core of their governance.
This is what happens when an administration governs by narrative rather than principle, by spectacle rather than competence. Eventually, reality intrudes in ways you can’t spin. A 37-year-old nurse lies dead on a Minneapolis street, killed by federal agents while exercising constitutional rights this president claims to protect. Multiple videos contradict the implicit justification for lethal force. Your own appointees can’t get their stories straight. Your allies are demanding independent investigations.
“It’s a perilous moment,” tweets Garry Kasparov in a long thread. The exiled Russian dissident “lived through a similar, nationwide version of this in Trump’s model, Putin’s Russia, it’s not easy to fight against. And Trump and many of his gang have passed the point at which they feel they can afford to lose power, even in Congress.”
The normal person‘s aversion to conflict is not something autocrats have, and they exploit that. Trump is building ICE in his image & it is primarily a political weapon. There will be violence, likely fatalities, with local law enforcement to try to force everyone to pick a side.
What’s happening in Minneapolis will play out in more well-chosen districts and swing states. More violence, more shootings, banning rallies, criminalizing opposition. Even if the overall public sentiment toward ICE is negative, the sense of chaos often benefits the strongman.
Intimidation of regular citizens is another core component of suppression campaigns. The autocrat needs relatively apolitical moderates to stay quiet. To say it’s only radicals involved, not their business, to believe they won’t be affected. This is always false. Speak up!
What’s happening in Minneapolis will play out in more well-chosen districts and swing states. More violence, more shootings, banning rallies, criminalizing opposition. Even if the overall public sentiment toward ICE is negative, the sense of chaos often benefits the strongman.
What the Party of Trump can neither abide nor contemplate is an America not dominated by dominators.
This woman speaks for the majority of Americans. 🙌🙏🫶👇
The Party of Trump is as predictable as it is unprincipled. Any display of weakness is an invitation to attack, like an injured caribou lagging behind the herd inviting attack by wolves. Except the right are the wolves. They eat their own. Thus their reflexive double down in response to failure/criticism/atrocities. We’ve all waited for the American right to double down one too many times. And we’ve been disappointed time and again.
They’re doing it again. In the wake of public outrage over a Customs and Border Patrol agent (per AP) shooting and killing Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, government agents are sticking to their guns. Literally. Matt Cameron/Bluesky reacted to a press appearance by U.S. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino Sunday afternoon:
CBP chief Bovino has confirmed that the officers who executed Alex Pretti in the street yesterday are not only *not on administrative leave,* they have all been reassigned to other jurisdictions and are all on the street today. This is totally unheard of for any officer-involved shooting
I watched the entire DHS press conference which Bovino just held a few minutes ago. They are tripling down on the fascism. Bovino could not have not been more clear that there is nothing that can’t be justified in the name of immigration enforcement, and that there will never be consequences for ICE
In none of his appearances today did Bovino acknowledge that this was in any way regrettable or could have been prevented. Because he doesn’t regret it, and he wants it to happen again. Terrorizing anyone who is trying to hold them accountable is their only play rn
An important point here: admin leave is a necessary and expected minimum response after someone has been fatally shot, even in cases in which there is no real question that it was justified. You just took a life.
To be clear, I am referring here to Bovino’s press conference of a few minutes ago. He told CNN earlier today that the officers would likely be assigned to “administrative duties” in other places, which is both different from what he said later and still not admin leave
It was obvious from how Bovino answered this question that his only concern in this situation was that the public not learn the killers’ names. He is at best absolutely indifferent to people under his command wantonly executing people in the street, and more likely privately celebrating it
After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home. One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo.”
An Afghan warlord
Politico on Saturday discussed the message sent by Bovino’s “olive wool, double-breasted overcoat with epaulettes, brass buttons and pointed applied cuffs.” Its classic military styling is meant to send a message about the increasing militarization of immigration enforcement:
Uniforms perform three important roles: They reveal what an institution believes itself to be; they shape how the public sees service members; and they affect how service members see themselves.
It’s clear how Bovino sees himself. An Afghan War veteran in Minneapolis told MS Now’s Jacob Soboroff three days before Pretti’s killing that Bovino was driving around town “like an Afghan warlord.” Politico again:
By dressing immigration enforcement officials in battle-ready attire, the agency encourages agents to understand themselves not as civil servants carrying out administrative law, but as frontline combatants operating in hostile terrain. That shift in self-conception may help partially explain the aggressive tactics ICE officers have deployed in Minneapolis, where they have used chemical irritants against peaceful demonstrators, thrown gas canisters into crowds and, most notably, fatally shot 37-year-old Renée Good. Over time, this produces a self-reinforcing cycle: militarized dress fosters aggressive posture; aggressive posture fuels public fear; and that fear is then cited as justification for even greater militarization.
When a domestic agency dresses for war, it risks acting as if it is at war, even with the public. Clothing alone does not determine conduct, but it can help shape a worldview in which violent confrontation is more likely.
If this rumor from before Saturday’s shooting is true, the next city on Bovino’s target list is Philadelphia. An X user likened it to “Hitler sending you to Stalingrad.”
A Bluesky user responded, “Imgaine [sic] getting sent packing with your ass in your own two hands by some of the nicest people in the world and then showing up in a city that is famous for booing santa claus.”
All in all, I’d rather Bovino and his tin soldiers slink away. But I expect them to double (or triple) down on fascism. Was Saturday one too many times? Or do we see more?
We knew that a number of top prosecutors in the Minneapolis field office resigned rather than follow the order to investigate Renee Good’s family, but we didn’t have these details:
Aides to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche directed the U.S. Attorney’s office and FBI agents based in Minnesota to shut down a civil rights investigation into an officer’s fatal shooting of Renee Good and instead alter it to probe Good for possible criminal liability, according to three people briefed on the discussions.
After Good was killed on Jan. 7, FBI agents drafted a search warrant to obtain her car to reconstruct the path of bullets that an ICE officer shot into the vehicle. But they were instructed to redraft their warrant and change the subject of the investigation from a civil rights probe to an investigation into a suspected assault on an officer, the people said.
A federal magistrate judge rejected that warrant, noting that Good was already dead and could not be considered a suspect for a warrant.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Last Friday, yet another FBI supervisor resigned:
Meanwhile, Tracee Mergen, an FBI supervisor in the Minneapolis field office who oversees fraud and public corruption cases, resigned in frustration over the handling by Justice Department leadership of the Good shooting investigation and the pivot of the original search warrant subject, according to two of the sources. Mergen is said to be frustrated as well with the Trump administration’s decision to treat protesters in Minnesota as possible domestic terrorists and conduct mass arrests of people peaceably protesting, according to two people familiar with her decision. The New York Times reported her departure earlier Friday evening.
After the Pretti murder yesterday, the government reportedly started scouring social media to see if they can smear him the same way they smeared Good. No word if they want to investigate him too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried it again. Nothing seems to stop them.
The poor boo boos. These super high IQ ICE agents don’t like loud noises. Whistles should definitely be banned as a WMD.
They’re also very emotionally sensitive:
That’s not doxxing but whatever. They were not in mortal danger. They were inconvenienced. But not as inconvenienced as the citizens and legal residents being dragged from their cars, thrown to the ground and assaulted by ICE officers for no reason then detained for hours or days and sometimes driven around in their cars enduring insults and painful constraints only to be let out miles from home. Or how about the hard working immigrants who have been here for years being dragged from their homes and separated from their families only to be sent to countries they don’t remember and where they don’t speak the language? How about the dead people?
I’m sorry, these ICE agents get NO sympathy. They were locked inside a restaurant (probably one which had immigrant labor preparing their food)? Boo fucking hoo.
wow — Maria Bartiromo seems to be legit upset about the killing of Alex Pretti. It's very rare for her to be offsides with the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/IeTvymNR2N
There is no greater Trump fluffer than Maria Bartiromo. I’ve never seen her challenge the administration’s lies like this before:
BARTIROMO: There is outrage across the country that there is another killing. Someone is dead at the hands of Border Patrol. What can you tell us?
KASH PATEL: You do not get to attack law enforcement officials in this country without any repercussions. We not messing around. pic.twitter.com/bBTFWRtmdT
Maria Bartiromo to Kash Patel: "You've gotta get together with the president's detractors, whether it is on the Democrat side or not, to ensure that we don't have mistakes like we've been seeing." pic.twitter.com/3rYMcbSsxH
Kash Patel: "You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple. You don't have a right to break the law." (Pretti was carrying a gun legally.) pic.twitter.com/EzGENVT26q
That’s highly unusual. I don’t know if it will last or is just a weird Sunday morning anomaly. But the Wall St.Journal had this today:
Here are the big employers in Minnesota issuing a statement arguing for de-escalation. It’s not great — the don’t mention ICE and it’s pretty mealy-mouthed. But at least they’re banding together to say something.
Does it mean anything? Probably not. I’m still waiting for any Republican other than the usual suspects to step up and haven’t seen anything yet. The Senate Democrats are now vowing to hold up the DHS funding and shut down the government over this which is absolutely essential so that’s something.
This from one of the most Republican leaning pollsters is interesting:
Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree on its definition. Italy’s original version differed from Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from Japan’s.
I accepted President Biden’s characterization of the MAGA movement as “semi-fascist” because some parallels were glaringly apparent. Trump was definitely an authoritarian, and unquestionably a patrimonialist. Beyond that, though, the best description seemed to be a psychological one propounded by John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser: “He listens to Putin, he listens to Xi, he listens to how they talk about governing unburdened by uncooperative legislatures, unconcerned with what the judiciary may do, and he thinks to himself, Why can’t I do that? This doesn’t amount to being a fascist, in my view, [or] having a theory of how you want to govern. It’s just Why can’t I have the same fun they have?”
Writing a year ago, I argued that Trump’s governing regime is a version of patrimonialism, in which the state is treated as the personal property and family business of the leader. That is still true. But, as I also noted then, patrimonialism is a style of governing, not a formal ideology or system. It can be layered atop all kinds of organizational structures, including not just national governments but also urban political machines such as Tammany Hall, criminal gangs such as the Mafia, and even religious cults. Because its only firm principle is personal loyalty to the boss, it has no specific agenda. Fascism, in contrast, is ideological, aggressive, and, at least in its early stages, revolutionary. It seeks to dominate politics, to crush resistance, and to rewrite the social contract.
Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism.
When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.
