Another shooting in Minneapolis

[Rideback]

George Packer from The Atlantic

"The killings in Minneapolis of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been compared to the murder of George Floyd, because they all happened within a few miles of one another, and because of the outrage they inspired. There’s an important difference, though: In 2020 the United States was in turmoil, but it was still a state of law. Floyd’s death was followed by investigation, trial, and verdict—by justice. The Minneapolis Police Department was held accountable and ultimately made to reform.

No one should expect justice for Good and Pretti. Today, nothing stands in the way of the brutal tactics of ICE and the Border Patrol. While President Trump seems to be trying to defuse the mayhem he’s caused by reassigning a top commander, he is not withdrawing the federal agents from the state or allowing local authorities to investigate, let alone prosecute, them for their actions.

Authoritarianism doesn’t disappear with the news cycle. The administration’s automatic lies about the killings and slander of the victims are less a cover-up of facts than a display of utter contempt for them. Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other top officials seem to invite incredulity as a way to flex their power: We say black is white. Agree or you’re a criminal. When Stephen Miller recently claimed that geopolitics is ruled by the “iron laws” of “strength” and “force,” he was expressing the administration’s approach to domestic governance as well. Those words are iron laws on American streets.

The prelude to the violence of January 7 and 24 came not in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, but in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021. Trump and his supporters were prevented from stealing an election and overthrowing the Constitution by democratic institutions—Congress, the courts, the police, the media, and public opinion. But the insurrection never ended. By the time Trump returned to power and pardoned the insurrectionists, almost half of the country believed that January 6 was a patriotic demonstration, a false-flag operation, or just no big deal. Throughout 2025, institutions that once restrained the presidency weakened or fell away one by one, until earlier this month Trump told The New York Times that the only limit to his power is his own mind. That same day, January 7, authoritarianism had its predictable consequence in freezing Minneapolis with the execution of Renee Good.

Nick Miroff: Greg Bovino loses his job

If rogue federal agents can shoot American citizens dead with total impunity, then it doesn’t matter whether state and local authorities, the courts, the media, the political opposition, and a mobilized public object. “ICE > MN,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on social media—an assertion of raw force, not constitutional authority. When Trump and his loyalists call protesters terrorists and warn that disobeying orders will get you killed, they strip away any illusion that the federal government respects the lives, let alone the rights, of those who oppose it—potentially half the population or more.

A lawless regime is an illegitimate one. If the country seems to have reached a breaking point in Minneapolis, this is why. And yet Minneapolis also offers a compelling answer to the question that democracy-loving Americans have asked for the past year: What can I do?

No historical precedent exists for where we are. Individuals and groups have often accused the U.S. government of denying their rights, and some of those accusations were irrefutable—as in the century between Appomattox and Selma, when the rights of Black Americans were denied throughout the South with the connivance of Washington. Some, though, were shams. In 1861, the Confederacy declared the government in Washington illegitimate and fired the first shots of the Civil War, not because any rights had been taken away from southern states—not even the right to hold human beings in bondage—but because they hated and feared Abraham Lincoln and his Republican Party. After the 2020 election, MAGA tried to claim that the election had been stolen and a Biden presidency would be illegitimate; truth and the law prevailed.

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The federal government has never declared itself immune to the law and the Constitution while explicitly denying protection to peaceful opponents, until now. Many Americans who thought they were living under the rule of law feel paralyzed. The vague exhortation to “do something while you still can” creates a sense of urgency but doesn’t provide a plan. Rather than inspiring action, the question of what to do more likely leaves you feeling depressed and alone. Not even the prospect of waiting out the year until the midterms provides much reassurance. Trump has made it clear that he will try to undermine any election that might cost him some of his power.

Without a constructive answer, the danger is that Americans who find themselves without legal remedies will turn to illegal and violent ones. That would be a catastrophic mistake, both strategically and morally.

So far, action has come in the form of either legal challenge or protest, including speeches and writings by politicians and public figures, and the occasional nationwide demonstrations known as “No Kings,” which draw on patriotic imagery and the historic American aversion to tyranny. The key to the popularity of No Kings lies in its unifying name. The focus is not a single issue, such as abortion, immigration, Ukraine, or Gaza, but a broad stance against autocracy and for democracy. Its demonstrations are orderly, peaceful, good-tempered, and irreverent, featuring countless American flags. No Kings hasn’t been hijacked by leftist groups with more extreme agendas, spouting strident anti-American language that’s bound to repel ordinary people. But No Kings has been inconspicuous since October. It will have to transform itself into something much more potent than a once-a-quarter day of demonstration.

George Packer: Why the ‘No Kings’ protest moved me

In Minneapolis, as the scale and intensity of oppression increased, the answer to “What can I do?” evolved from protest to something riskier and more demanding: nonviolent resistance. As my colleague Robert Worth has reported, networks of Minneapolitans that had formed after Floyd’s murder to protect their neighborhoods from both out-of-control police and rioters have been revived in the past few months to protect their immigrant neighbors from the invasion of federal agents. Residents undergo training in nonviolent resistance, which demands courage, wisdom, and restraint; they bring food to those hiding at home, escort children to school, and stand watch outside; they blow whistles and send out alerts on encrypted chats to signal the presence of ICE vehicles, and follow them; they try to de-escalate confrontations (sometimes with the opposite result), provide medical aid to the injured, and shame masked agents in military gear who seem poorly trained and undisciplined compared with the civilians.

Given the level of rage on the streets, the conduct of these local networks has been remarkable. One older suburban woman—nothing like the “lunatics,” “domestic terrorists,” or “assassins” Trump and his advisers see in Minneapolis—told Worth that she doesn’t even consider her involvement political. Her preferred term for what she’s doing is humanist. It could be a byword for the whole opposition to a cruel and predatory regime.

Minneapolis is setting an example for the rest of the country: a nameless, leaderless, self-organized movement. Self-organization is a term I heard from almost everyone I met in Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion. It’s an inherently hard form of activism, requiring high levels of motivation and trust. These obviously exist in the neighborhoods of South Minneapolis, where civic spirit and personal connections run deep. But replicating them on a wider scale—essentially, creating a mass movement for basic decency—raises obvious problems. That movement’s energy might depend on the arrival of conspicuous federal oppression in other blue cities and states (which Trump has promised). It would have to remain decentralized and maintain its local integrity while creating a capacity for nationwide coordination. It could fall apart for lack of discipline, coherence, trust, and leadership—or, conversely, because of leadership that devolves into factionalism. The civil-rights movement confronted all of these problems, and overcame them.

No Kings or another group could consider organizing and training people in other parts of the country to join the kind of civic action on display in Minneapolis—to move from protest to nonviolent resistance. Beyond neighbor-to-neighbor support in a moment of crisis lies a wide range of means to withhold cooperation from an illegitimate government. The late theorist Gene Sharp laid them out, along with ideas for strategic planning, in books such as From Dictatorship to Democracy and Waging Nonviolent Struggle. Sharp’s work has been used as an essential guide for democracy activists under dictatorial regimes in countries such as Serbia, Burma, and Iran. Americans should pick up these books and absorb their lessons.

Sharp analyzed various “methods of noncooperation”—political, economic, and social—that stop short of more aggressive disruptions. They include boycotts and strikes (such as the widely observed general strike in Minneapolis last Friday); refusal to participate in administration-supported organizations and events; “quasi-legal evasions and delays” and “reluctant and slow compliance” with government edicts; and finally, nonviolent civil disobedience. Anti-ICE actions that try to thwart the brutal and indiscriminate enforcement of immigration laws can become a form of civil disobedience.

Adam Serwer: Minnesota proved MAGA wrong

Nonviolent struggle carries serious risks. It can lead to social ostracism, legal harassment, state intimidation, prison, injury, and, as we’ve seen in Minneapolis, death. One sign of the authoritarian depth to which the U.S. has sunk under Trump is that none of these risks is hard to imagine. Examples accumulate every day. A movement of resistance against an illegitimate regime has a chance of succeeding only if it remains strictly nonviolent and avoids the familiar trap of sectarianism. It has to be democratic, patriotic, and animated by a sense of basic decency that can attract ordinary people—your TV-watching mother, your apathetic teen, your child’s teacher, the retiree next door, the local grocer.

I keep asking myself whether it’s wise to even consider these things. I don’t want to sound alarmist, or delusional, or needlessly provocative. For an American who grew up in the postwar order with its apparently permanent rules, in a democracy with obvious flaws that nonetheless seemed on a course of gradual, inevitable progress, I find it extremely hard to assess the peril. I’m tempted to believe that the country will somehow return to normal, because I want it to be normal. We’ve never been here before, and either the nervous system overreacts or the imagination fails. After Minneapolis, I fear the latter more. Trump is taking the country on a path to tyranny. The first obligation for each of us is to see it and name it. The next is to figure out what to do about it."

[PAL]

Remember what T said about guns in public. That he could go out in Times Square and shoot someone and wouldn't get arrested.

[mister_coffee]

WA State is preparing for an ICE onslaught:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYc_bl_U-Kw

[mister_coffee]

I think it would be fun to make a FOIA request on the official report that the agents in both the Good and Pretti killings had to have made. Just because it will make a lot of people squirm.

And the 2A aspects of this are on many levels catastrophic for Republicans. It seems like the default position of the cult is that the Second Amendment is only for their people, and not for all Americans -- well, if they ever thought of it at all. And a lot of them never thought that someone like that (liberal, male nurse, &c) would ever be packing heat and that is making their heads explode.

And even more interesting is that the idea of abolishing ICE is heading towards majority support.

[Rideback]

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1C6Q3AnaLC/

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USA Today:
"'...“When we drove to the scene, Brandon and I saw several ICE agents getting back into two unmarked vehicles. They turned down a side street and we followed for about 40 seconds, blowing our whistles and honking our horns – to warn our neighbors that ICE had come.
We did so knowing that monitoring and sounding the alarm about actions undertaken by government agents is our legally protected right. And any government that claims to be of, by and for the people must protect this right, not attack people of good conscience who exercise it.
But attack us is what ICE did. The agents got out of their vehicle, surrounded our car and yelled at us to stop following. On their way back to their vehicles, one of the agents suddenly turned around, as if deciding, “Hey, why not,” and walked back to my car and pepper sprayed into the vents near the front windshield.”
“'You guys gotta stop obstructing us – that's why that lesbian b---- is dead'”
“Brandon and I were paralyzed with shock, as our eyes and throats started to burn. When we did not immediately turn the car around, the ICE agents returned and, without warning or asking us to exit the vehicle, smashed the front windows of my car, dragged us out and arrested us.
They separated us. I was put in a car alone with three agents. When they got in and shut the doors, the taunting began.
One agent took a photo of me and showed it to the others, laughing. Another called me ugly. His colleague, apparently referring to Renee Good, said, “You guys gotta stop obstructing us – that’s why that lesbian b---- is dead.” In the presence of these masked men with weapons strapped to their bodies – men who claim to be safeguarding our cities – I felt only terrorized and vulnerable.”
“When we got to the Whipple Federal Building, they shackled my ankles. I asked four times to make a phone call but was denied that legal right. I had to beg for water and to be allowed to relieve myself in another crowded cell with a toilet behind a short wall.
On my way to that cell, I passed holding cells filled with people who appeared to be of Latino and East African descent. The despondent faces and the screaming, wailing and pleading from these men, women and children – reportedly as young as 5 years old – will forever haunt me. But perhaps more haunting still was the sound of agents nearby laughing. Are our lives all just a joke to them?”
“Eight hours later, I was released without charges because even these agents had no credible claim I had done anything wrong.
ICE is arresting people without cause. We can stand up to tyranny.
President Donald Trump and his administration spread lies about our neighbors based on what they look like or how they speak, all while making us less safe.”

[Rideback]

Army vet of 6 deployments shackled and detained responds, 'Why wouldn't I be out there, my Country is under attack, it's what I signed up for'
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUBb4ryErvi/

[Rideback]

By David Edwards — January 27, 2026
FBI Director Kah Patel reversed course after receiving backlash over his assertion that it was illegal to bring a firearm to a protest.


On Sunday, Patel responded to a DHS officer killing Alex Pretti by suggesting the 37-year-old nurse had deserved it because he legally carried a handgun while video recording ICE and Border Patrol agents.




"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," Patel told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
In an interview on Monday, the FBI director backtracked.

"Look, we've always said that, you know, we are going to defend absolutely your right to peacefully protest under the First Amendment, and we're also always going to uphold your right to bear arms in the Second Amendment. That's never changed," Patel insisted to MAGA influencer Benny Johnson. "We're going to equally protect all of those. The only thing we're not going to do is allow any of those amendments to be violated when you pursue a course of action of violence against law enforcement force them. It's that simple. That position has never changed. And that's the distinction."


He continued, "Do you want to go out there and peacefully protest? Have at it. You want to go out there and use your Second Amendment right to bear arms? Okay, no problem."

Following Patel's remarks on Sunday, gun rights groups criticized him for not knowing the law.

The Gun Owners Caucus of Minnesota said he was "completely incorrect on Minnesota law. There is no prohibition on a permit holder carrying a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines at a protest or rally in Minnesota."

[Rideback]

MN judge hauls ICE into court for failure to provide due process to detainees, among them a 2 year old girl who the judge had ordered released, ICE failed to comply and instead flew her to Texas!
https://aaronparnas.substack.com/p/majo ... dium=email

[PAL]

Exactly. And the reason ICE are going through the neighborhoods is that Trump wanted things to happen faster and he upped the quota numbers. So the thugs have been doing illegal acts. I bet they don't even take an oath to the Constitution for this job.
T being conciliatory just makes it all better now, huh.

[mister_coffee]

The previous day tens of thousands of good people in Minneapolis protested the depredations of armed goons who cosplay as federal law enforcement officers. Peacefully. Sure didn't look out of control to me.

The only people who look "out of control" are the goons.

[Jingles]

Where ICE and local LEO'S are messing up controlling the out of control protestors that have turned into rioters is It's Jan temp are cold instead of pepper spray, and tear gas break out the water cannons, hell with below freezing temps would not even have to add dye to the water, could leave the firearms in the armory.

[Rideback]

https://apnews.com/article/immigration- ... 1775082300

Judge wants to hear from head of ICE why detainees are not being given due process

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Joohn Choe:
"Withdrawing Bovino and Border Patrol agents from Minneapolis is the result of a lot of different factors operating, including non-cooperation by state and local law enforcement, protests by the people of Minneapolis, and of course the public outrage over the killings of two people from Minneapolis in the space of less than two weeks.
The likeliest course of events now is an end to the "surge" mentality that Bovino implemented, in favor of a quieter but still active enforcement regime under Tom Homan. It's a way for the Trump administration to blame everything on Bovino. This is fairly easy-to-predict regime behavior; it's just not in the nature of any federal government, much less one under Trump, to outright admit defeat.
But it is, nonetheless, hard to understand it any way other than as a defeat.
What's really interesting right now, in my opinion, is the degree to which this encourages other states and cities to actively resist federal occupation moving forward, because one way of looking at Minneapolis right now is as a success story in resistance to federal fascism."

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The court on Monday asked for a supplemental hearing for Wednesday on lawsuit to get ICE out of MN and then here's Jon Stewart's take

https://deadline.com/2026/01/jon-stewar ... 236698049/

[just-jim]

.
…sigh….kenny has the blaaaabbbbles, once again..he doesn’t know whether to sh*t, run, or go blind!

he’s soooo confused - as usual!
.

.

[dorankj]

Talk about a self licking ice cream cone! You pleasure yourself alot don't you?

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DHS has shut down access for Dan Bovino's social media. He's been given the boot.

[Rideback]

An Op-Ed by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, published in the Wall Street Journal
The Un-American Assault on Minnesota
Federal officials are lying. My state’s Corrections Department honors all immigration detainers.
St. Paul, Minn.
The Trump administration’s assault on Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. It is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state. It isn’t just. It isn’t legal. And, critically, it isn’t making anyone any safer.
Quite the opposite: Immigration agents have now shot and killed two of our neighbors: Renee Good and Alex Pretti. And there are countless other stories of protesters and bystanders being physically attacked by federal agents, to say nothing of the chaos and violence being unleashed against the targets of these raids, many of whom have done nothing wrong except exist as a person of color.
The pretext for all this is the Trump administration’s insistence that our immigration laws would otherwise go unenforced. This federal occupation of Minnesota is, administration officials insist, about our predilection for releasing “violent criminal illegal aliens” from state custody.
I can’t stress this enough: The Trump administration has its facts wrong about Minnesota.
The administration claims that Minnesota jails release “the worst of the worst.” In reality, the Minnesota Department of Corrections honors all federal and local detainers by notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement when a person committed to its custody isn’t a U.S. citizen. There is not a single documented case of the department’s releasing someone from state prison without offering to ensure a smooth transfer of custody.
Yet the lies persist. This week, ICE tweeted that rural Cottonwood County had refused to honor a detainer for an alleged child sex predator. That’s not true. The county sheriff followed procedure and contacted ICE when the subject posted bail, but ICE agents were too busy wreaking havoc in the Twin Cities to do their actual job and pick the prisoner up.
Some of the administration’s claims are ridiculous on their face. For example: It claims that 1,360 non-U.S. citizens are in Minnesota prisons. The truth: Our total state prison population is roughly 8,000, and only 207 of them are noncitizens.
Earlier this month, the administration published what it claimed was a list of people who have been arrested as part of this ICE sweep, asserting that this list represents “the worst of the worst” criminals, and implying that we have been protecting them from capture.
Minnesota Public Radio investigated this claim and found it to be completely false: “Most of the people on the list had been immediately transferred to ICE custody at the end of time served in Minnesota prisons. All of those transfers happened before ICE began its surge of operations in Minnesota on Dec. 1, 2025, with some even happening years before.”
In other words, ICE is taking credit for arrests that state and local law enforcement made, activity that took place before this assault on our state even began.
Everyone wants to see our immigration laws enforced. That isn’t what is happening in Minnesota. In recent weeks, masked agents have abducted children. They have separated children from their parents. They have racially profiled off-duty police officers. They have aggressively pulled people over and demanded to see their papers. They have broken into the homes of elderly citizens without warrants to drag them outside in freezing temperatures.
That isn’t effective law enforcement. It isn’t following the rule of law. It’s chaos. It’s illegal. And it’s un-American.
I have repeatedly appealed to President Trump to lower the temperature. But he refuses. I fear that his hope is for the tension between ICE agents and the communities they’re ransacking to boil over—that he wants you to see more chaos on your TV screens, protests turn into riots, more people get hurt.
Minnesotans aren’t taking the bait. They are protesting—loudly and urgently, but also peacefully. They are helping their neighbors cope with this violent, lawless assault on people of color throughout the state—walking children to school safely, preparing mutual-aid packages, and organizing to make sure these atrocities are well-documented so that those responsible can face justice.
Minnesota is a state that believes in the rule of law and in the dignity of all people. We know that true public safety comes from trust, respect and shared purpose, not from intimidation or political theater.
This assault on our communities is not necessary to enforce our immigration laws. We don’t have to choose between open borders and whatever the hell this is. Mr. Trump can and must end this unlawful, violent and chaotic campaign, and we can and must rebuild an immigration enforcement system that is secure, accountable and humane.

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Fox backs away from DHS versions of the shooting
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/a ... -narrative

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HCR -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkDWXbX4YVQ

[mister_coffee]

Today we remember that freedom is not free. We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom. So in this moment, we remember and give thanks for their dedication and selfless service to our nation in the cause of our freedom. In this solemn hour, we give them our honor, and our gratitude.

-- Alex Pretti, at the deathbed of Terrance Lee Randolph

[mister_coffee]

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” — Mike Godwin, founder of ‘Godwin’s law.’

“Yes, it’s okay to compare Trump to Hitler.” — Mike Godwin, founder of ‘Godwin’s law.’

It is more appropriate to refer to the Trump regime as rashist, not fascist or nazi. Rashism is Russian fascism, a political virus that has infected America, Hungary, and, to a lesser degree, many other states. It combines racism, nationalism, and rampant corruption to destroy states from within, causing them to commit national suicide.

National Suicide, that's it.