Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Mark Carney this morning: "To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos…It was a broader set of issues, and Canada was the first country to understand the change in U.S. trade policy that he initiated, and we're responding to that." https://t.co/GCmXlVJ9Wv

— Brian Platt (@btaplatt) January 27, 2026

This guy is rapidly becoming one of the worst members of the administration. He’s taking a public lead on trade and foreign policy and in the process has become a Trump clone, lying and trolling instead of being the serious steward of the economy.

Politico surveyed “political analysts, diplomats and scholars who specialize in a host of countries, from Canada and Ukraine to India, Turkey and more for their solutions.” Here’s just one.

If you’re interested in this topic, I recommend you read the whole thing. They come from many different perspectives and offer some warnings about how difficult this new organizing principle around the “middle powers” might be.

This is just one.

While it may not go down in history on a par with Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946, Mark Carney’s address at Davos did something similar. It marked an end to illusions and signaled the beginning of a new era of global politics. The world order we once knew is now dead, and the Trump administration is both its assassin and its undertaker. Even longstanding allies are coming to terms with the reality that the United States has become a predatory hegemon: It no longer invests in the world order but is intent on upending it, exploiting coercive power to its own benefit and others’ detriment.

For individual middle powers — a catch-all category that could include most members of the G20 other than the United States and China — America’s imperialistic turn creates a dilemma, but also an opportunity. Individual middle powers cannot hope to confront the United States on their own, but they also have no desire to replace American with Chinese hegemony. Their only realistic strategic option, as Carney suggests, is to band together in defending international law, safeguarding national sovereignty and spearheading international cooperation. They must do so not only in major international bodies like the United Nations but in flexible, ad hoc coalitions, groupings of “variable geometry” designed for specific purposes, such as trade liberalization, climate action and energy security.

Forging middle power multilateralism will not be easy — middle powers are a diverse lot, often at odds on matters like climate financing, the reform of international financial institutions, alliance structures or even democratic commitments.

Middle powers are not starting from scratch, however. Following Donald Trump’s first election in November 2016, countries in both the North and South began hedging their bets. Much like investors in the market, they began to diversify their diplomatic portfolios, making side wagers and engaging in self-insurance to reduce their exposure to volatility and risk. As Trump begins the second year of his second term, those efforts are moving into overdrive.

They will take time to reach fruition, however. Trump has generated a geopolitical earthquake, but the most powerful tremors may be yet to come. As longstanding institutions are shaken to their foundations, middle powers will have to agree on how much of the old order they wish to preserve, and where it is better to clear the rubble and start anew.

Back in 2019, during Trump’s first term, the French and German governments announced the creation of an “Alliance for Multilateralism,” open to all other nations. It was conceived as a reaffirmation of the UN Charter, as well as a flexible platform for issue-specific policy coordination. It never went anywhere because it was conceived as a “Northern” project and because potential members worried about antagonizing the United States. One could imagine something similar today, but more encompassing. Call it a Partnership for Multilateralism, comprising middle powers of the Global North and South who remain dedicated to international law and amenable to practical cooperation on shared global interests.

Carney just made public a conversation that’s been happening for a while. The U.S. has become totally unreliable for the past decade (even the Biden interregnum featured the looming shadow of Trump) so they had to.

I think this is happening and we don’t know how long it will take to reorganize or what sand might be thrown into the gears from any number of directions, but change is coming for better or worse. There’s no going back.

The liars in the White House are making it worse for America every single day but more voters decided they wanted the freak show and here we are.

ICE agents shot and killed a U.S. citizen who was observing their activities in Minneapolis this week. He was legally filming them with his phone, an act which we know from many videos taken there and in cities around the country, inflames the groups of masked, armed federal agents who are roaming the streets randomly rousting anyone who looks at them sideways. Americans are legally entitled to record what is happening in the community at the hands of law enforcement and many of them bravely go out and do it so there will be a record of the savagery that’s been unleashed on our country. They are also legally entitled to carry a concealed weapon in many states, which the Trump administration now says in itself signals an intent to kill government agents, entitling those agents to shoot first and ask questions later.

The nation is still reeling from the events of last weekend but we should have been prepared for it to happen. After all, we had evidence long before the 2024 election that President Donald Trump wants law enforcement to brutalize citizens. All the way back in 1989 when he took out a full page ad entitled “Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back the Police” he was agitating for the police to be “unshackled” from the “constant chant of police brutality.” More recently, in his first term the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper testified that he had angrily demanded that the military be deployed on the streets during the George Floyd protests and orders be given to shoot the protesters. Wall St. Journal reporter Michael Bender wrote in his book titled “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” that Trump’s language became increasingly violent as he would show videos of violent confrontations and demand more of it. “That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump would say, “Crack their skulls!” After federal agents ambushed an Antifa activist in 2020 (without ever seeing a gun) Trump called it “retribution.”

In the first term, he had people around him who would talk him down and explain that it wasn’t legal or politically wise. Today, he has his top domestic adviser Stephen Miller, his Justice department, Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon all on the same page with him. In the wake of both the murders, the top officials in the administration all jumped before cameras and took to social media to condemn the victims and defend the agents before the bodies were even cold. ( In fact, U.S. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino claimed the true victims of the shooting were the federal agents.)

They essentially say the real victims had it coming and use it as a warning for others to stop exercising their first amendment rights. Interestingly, they also came out of the gate condemning Alex Pretti for exercising his 2nd amendment rights which is generally understood to be sacred on the American right.

Pretti was legally carrying a firearm in a holster in his back waistband. The numerous videos of the event show unequivocally that he never showed it to the CBP officers who approached him on the street as he was filming, nor did he ever even touch it during the encounter. In fact, they didn’t know he had it until they had already sprayed him the face with pepper spray and had him on the ground on his hands and knees as which point one of the agents removed it from the holster and another one then immediately shot him in the back.

After all these years of right wing, gun proliferation activists bringing firearms to protests one would have thought this would be the last thing for which Trump officials would condemn Pretti. They brought guns into state houses to protest COVID restrictions and there were more than a few guns found among the January 6th protesters who President Trump pardoned. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17 year old who was too young to legally own the AR-15 he used to shoot three people at a protest in Kenosha Wisconsin in 2020 is a MAGA celebrity, extolled as a great young man who loved his country.

But DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said of Alex Pretti, “I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” claiming with no evidence that his intention was clearly to kill law enforcement. FBI director Kash Patel told Fox News, “no one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “I’m sorry he’s dead but he did bring a semi-automatic weapon to what was supposed to be a peaceful protest.” Trump himself told the Wall St. Journal “I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it. But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.” (For the record, gun enthusiasts say that there is nothing unusual about having the two extra magazines. Holsters like Pretti’s commonly have a slot in which to put them.)

There were others repeating the same talking points, insisting that bringing a gun, legally or not, to a protest (or, apparently, just to the streets to film an ICE raid) meant he should have expected to get shot by federal officers. This flies so hard in the face of the gun rights movement that it should have bounced back and hit them again.

After the years and years of aggressive proselytism around the fundamental right to bear arms explicitly in order to defend against tyrannical government encroachment on our freedom — even carrying signs quoting Thomas Jefferson that say “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” — here we are with a GOP government saying that a man who was legally carrying a weapon deserved to be shot and killed by government agents simply because he was armed.

In fairness there is some push back from some Trump followers. Despite a mealy mouthed response from the NRA and some fatuous throat clearing about “both sides” there aren’t really all that many staunch gun rights advocates showing much opposition to the administration’s embrace of government tyranny. There’s little reason to believe that most of the MAGA faithful are all that upset that the Trump administration is saying that liberal protesters don’t have the same right to bear arms that they do. That’s just common sense in their minds.

The right wing second amendment fetish has always been about who gets to carry guns more than anything else. As historian Rick Perlstein memorably chronicled, Ronald Reagan was happy to sign a gun control law as California Governor after the Black Panthers showed up at the state House for a protest armed to the teeth. A government in the hands of one of their own will always be given the prerogative to use the power of their armed police and military against their common enemies. It is, as Perlstein points out, a simple truth known as Wilhoit’s Law, which says, “conservatism consists of the lone proposition that there must be in-groups the law protects but does not bind and out-groups the law binds but does not protect.”

Update: Houston, he’s got a problem…

Trump: "With that being said, you can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns. You just can't. You can't walk in with guns. You can't do that. But it's just a very unfortunate incident."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-27T17:42:45.566Z

As if you needed convincing

This witness video of the Customs and Border Protection shooting of Alex Pretti on Saturday escaped my (and others’) attention because it does not show the shooting itself. But it captures something else. CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) aren’t targeting “the worst of the worst” criminals, it’s hiring them. There is a culture of violence among CBP/ICE agents that won’t be reformed by replacing top leaders. It’s ingrained and passed along. It’s baked into the funding, the structure, the lack of proper training, and signing and arrest bonuses.

A new examination of witness videos by The New York Times is “A frame-by-frame assessment of actions by Alex Pretti and the two officers who fired 10 times shows how lethal force came to be used against a target who didn’t pose a threat.”

Again, the NYT video does not capture the sequence above. The callousness on display is not an aberration, as we noted in October in scenes from Chicago:

Videos confirm why Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker advised his citizens to know their rights, have their cell phones ready, and document everything done by “[DHS secretary Kristi] Noem’s thugs.” Calling them law enforcement is unjustified. Actual law enforcement professionals must be horrified. Citizens of Chicago filed suit (Axios):

A coalition of Chicago journalists, organizations and protesters sued President Trump and top administration officials over federal agents’ “pattern of extreme brutality” at a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

“Never in modern times has the federal government undermined bedrock constitutional protections on this scale,” their filing argues. “The individual acts of brutality by federal officers are too numerous to catalogue.”

The videos tell the tale. Watch this one carefully as this “law enforcement professional” chokeslams a protester.

In Chicago this weekend.Trump's thugs beat the hell out of this young guy who was just standing there.He is now in the hospital. The thug who beat him was doxxed by the female activist who Border Patrol shot on Saturday.He went from the scene of the shooting to this.@democrats.senate.gov

— Denise Wheeler (@denisedwheeler.bsky.social) 2025-10-06T19:10:07.485Z

President Trump said ICE would go after the "worst of the worst." Apparently unable to find them, it is instead rounding up refugees with legal status, flying them in shackles to Texas and in some cases then releasing them and making them pay their own way back.…

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) January 26, 2026

The Times report Kristof links (gift link):

Selamawit Mehari, an Eritrean single mother of three, was starting her day when federal agents showed up at her apartment in St. Paul, Minn., on a recent morning. As her 13-year-old son wailed and her older daughter produced paperwork proving her mother was in the United States lawfully, the agents shackled Ms. Mehari and took her away.

“They didn’t explain anything,” recalled her daughter, Yosan, 21, who described the encounter to The New York Times. “We didn’t understand. We had done everything right.”

The next day, chained at the wrists, waist and ankles, Ms. Mehari, 38, was shuffling up the steps of a plane bound for Texas, tears streaming down her face in the frigid wind.

More than 100 refugees with no criminal record from about a dozen countries have been arrested in Minnesota by immigration agents in recent weeks and flown to detention centers in Texas for interviews, according to lawyers, family members and faith leaders. At least some, including Ms. Mehari, were eventually released in Texas, leaving them to find their own way home.

Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s immigration enforcement is not about crime. It is about ethnic cleansing. Greg Sargent of The New Republic put it bluntly on Monday:

We need to get it broadly understood that Stephen Miller’s ethnic reengineering project will result in a permanent metastasized immigrant carceral state and paramilitary warfare on US streets that goes on *for years.*

That’s his real agenda.

They will lie, cheat, and murder to make the quotas DHS and Republican allies in Congress have incentivized.

When you think about ICE conducting home invasions, this case in Texas is an incredible read. How they will deceive courts and even each other to make unlawful arrests, all while putting themselves in dangerous situations and then inventing an "assault". https://t.co/vExMwh4nrN pic.twitter.com/mZMVnirVKo

— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) January 26, 2026

This has to stop. We have to stop it. Minneapolis showed us how.

DHS came, Minneapolis saw, they conquored

I want to follow up on Digby’s Monday comments on Radley Balko’s post noting “the stunning similarities between the Boston Massacre and Minneapolis.” For all the faux reverence Trumpish and Trump-leaning conservatives pay toward America’s founders, they look today like the royal puppets American colonists fought a revolution send back to England. They’ve grown “downright farcical,” Balko writes, in their attempts to justify oppressive policies directly contrary to the Constitution. Balko is too kind. They barely even try:

This gaping chasm between what they claim to believe and how they govern is best exemplified by the copy of the Declaration of Independence Donald Trump has put on display in the same Oval Office gilded with gold flourishes and garish gifts from foreign leaders and business titans seeking favors.

Given the way Trump has been governing like a mad king, it’s almost as if he displayed the document not in tribute to the founding, but to treat the famous list of colonial grievances as his to-do list. (This would require him to have actually read it.)

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.

Balko observes, “You really can’t overstate how much the Founders worried about . . . exactly what we’re seeing in Minneapolis.” The abuses listed in the Declaration are exactly what the Trump’ administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is perpetrating in American cities. Those abuses are largely “why we have the Second, Third, and Fourth Amendments, and why the Constitution splits control of the military between the president and Congress.”

JV Last on Monday saw another historical parallel to events in Minneapolis in American history, except some four score and seven years after the signing of the Declaration: Gettysburg. The battle was not supposed to happen. It wasn’t planned. It began with a skirmish.

Two brigades of Confederates pushed into Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. They unexpectedly encountered Union cavalry from Gen. George Meade’s Union army. Unknown to the Confederates, Last begins, Meade had been shadowing Gen. Robert E. Lee’s troops at a distance. What happened over the next days unfolded with a momentum of its own. Last writes, noting:

It’s important to understand that no one understood the stakes at Gettysburg.

• Neither army intended to have a major showdown at that time or in that place.
• Once begun, the conflict escalated by its own logic until neither side had any choice but to go all-in.
• Even after the battle was finished, neither side understood that it had just fought the defining engagement of the war.

It is unclear exactly why Trump dispatched a brigade of DHS dragoons to Minnesota. Was it his hatred of 2024 vice presidential opponent Gov. Tim Walz? His hatred of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee? His hatred of Minnesota, a blue state that voted against him three times? His hatred of the state’s large Somali immigrant community? It’s certainly not the career fraud’s hatred of welfare fraud allegedly committed by some of them; that was pretext. But the operative word here is hatred.

But when the regime’s forces occupied the city they were surprised by the resistance they encountered. Not from Democratic politicians, or institutions, or the legal establishment. From ordinary people. The people of Minneapolis organized to protect their neighbors and provide oversight of the regime’s forces that the local government either could not, or would not, perform.

Like the first skirmish at Gettysburg, Last suggests, the murder of Renee Good brought out local reinforcements and organized, neighborhood-by-neighborhood resistance. Walz urged Minnesotans to video everything federal agents did. “Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans, not just to establish a record for posterity but to bank evidence for future prosecution,” Walz said. 

Trump’s field commanders did not see it coming. Once begun, the engagements in Minneapolis escalated organically into a general strike on Friday. Then came Alex Pretti’s murder by CBP/ICE in full view of multiple cameras on Saturday. The national backlash to Pretti’s murder brushed aside Trump administration propaganda about Pretti the way Union cannon and rifle fire stopped General George Pickett’s disastrous attack on Cemetery Ridge.

What does it mean? “Maybe Minneapolis will prove to be a hinge point in the battle against American fascism,” Last writes. “You can never tell from inside the crucible.”

But DHS is in retreat. U.S. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino has been relieved. He’s been sent packing back to resume his duties as sector chief in El Centro, Calif. “Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her close adviser Corey Lewandowski, who were Bovino’s biggest backers at DHS, are also at risk of losing their jobs,” two people told Nick Miroff of The Atlantic. Trump is sending border czar Tom Homan to oversee ICE operations in Minnesota, whatever those look like going forward.

What’s needed now is for House Democrats to get their butts to Minneapolis, Last believes. Ordinary citizens started this parade. It’s now time for leading Democrats to get in front of it, in the streets, “cameras out and recording, observing and putting their bodies on the line.”

Minneapolis is not a fight that anyone wanted. But it is here and it has become a major engagement. The people of Minneapolis understand this truth. You and I understand it. The Democratic party must be made to understand it, too.

“If You See Something, Say Something®” is a national campaign by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) encouraging the public to report suspicious, terrorism-related activities. (AI feed)

Citizens of Minneapolis saw DHS. They said something.

Update: Yeah, I misspelled the headline. Fixed it.

pic.twitter.com/253GODuVWf

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) January 26, 2026

I guess he thinks America was great in the Roaring 20s? He’s certainly leading us into 1929 so that’s very possible.

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.

Now, he says he must… pic.twitter.com/WJifgCvSLu

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 25, 2026

Now, he says he must confront the damage he helped cause.

“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.”

A rare case but welcome. Godspeed.

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.

Engines without governors fly apart

A maxim by Frank Wilhoit (the composer, not the late political scientist) remains as true today as when he proposed it in 2018:

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.

At the core of the debate is that Pretti — who was permitted to carry a gun in public in Minnesota — had a concealed firearm on his person that eyewitness videos show federal agents apparently discovering and removing during the altercation that led to his death. Videos do not appear to show Pretti holding the weapon during that confrontation.

Bound but not protected

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. 🙌🙏🫶👇

— Bill Madden (@maddenifico.bsky.social) 2026-01-25T16:33:26.084Z

Walks like a duck

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

[earlier statement here]

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

At least one agent publicly celebrated the Pretti killing immediately:

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.”

this is the ice equivalent of hitler sending you to stalingrad pic.twitter.com/CciwJK0QBi

— ben doyle (@thewheatgerm) January 23, 2026

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?