> I’m told by those in the know that the footage itself does more to move Trump’s numbers than any kind of abstract message about the footage or about immigration or democracy.
> Absorbing abuses from security forces without retaliating in kind is extraordinarily difficult, but it does seem to be working.
> What’s not out of our hands, though, is to remember the lesson that protesting really does work if you stay organized and disciplined.
I would like these claims to be true. But two weeks later, it's far from clear that they are. I am thinking in part of Nate Silver's polling aggregation (https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin), which suggests that, if anything, Trump is more popular now than he was a day before Pretti was shot.
Many people want large and vigorous protests. But in the contemporary United States, we can't tell a plausible story about the way that big protests might cause political change at the federal level.
re: " you cannot hold a person who is already in custody and wait for ICE personnel to pick him up"
Are you describing individuals that are scheduled to be released in the very near-term (few days?) but where ICE does not have the "time" to pick them up and so they need to be held for several more days?
Seems like an "edge" case - likely a fraction of one percent of the people on ICE's list. Why is such a small number such a big deal? What am I missing?
"I do not *agree* with anyone who made the decision to vote for Trump in 2024 despite January 6, despite pardoning the perpetrators, and despite his boastful claims that he wanted to be a dictator."
I assume that somewhere among the (currently) 877 comments, someone has already pointed out that all of those who made a decision to vote for our felonious president did so *before* he pardoned the perpetrators of the January 6th Capitol attack. I assume that someone has pointed this out. But, as I don't see a correction in the article, I'll point it out again, and urge that the slip be properly corrected.
It's important to point out that the ability of a state to choose not to help enforce federal law is a fundamental guarantee of the federalism in our constitution. Maybe it isn't a good rule, but it is supposed to be part of the design limiting federal power. As such, trying to punish states for that choice -- not merely ensure immigration law is enforced at parity -- is no different than prosecuting someone because they said something unflattering about the government. It's blatantly unconstitutional.
And yes, it is retaliation is a difficult thing to police via the courts but that doesn't mean it's not unconstitutional. We need to get over this idea that the constitution is something only for the courts to consider and accept that we as voters need to take protecting our constitutional rights seriously -- both from Trump and in conveying that we do take it seriously even for policies we like.
C'mon, this isn't even plausibly just the federal government trying to enforce the laws and that's what it takes. This is an attempt to punish states for not cooperating. There are fucking states that are *trying* to turn over people to the feds for immigration enforcement and who are having to let them go because ICE doesn't have the resources to pick them up within the hold window because they sent all the officers up to terrorize people.
And yes the federal government needs to be able to enforce the law but the safeguard here is that to do so congress needs to be willing to appropriate the money and pass the laws to do it themselves not hide the costs by making the states do it. But Trump knows he can't get congress to pass the laws he wants so he is punishing states he feels aren't being cooperative.
If congress wanted to enforce the laws it could do so easily without anywhere near this fuss. For starters just make it mandatory employers use e-verify when they hire anyone and if it comes up flagged as fake now they know where and who to look for. And it's just not true that this is anything like the most effective way to actually bring in suspected illegal immigrants.
Doing raids and busting down doors takes a ton of resources. Processing people at a jail does as well. 90% of people -- even illegal immigrants -- are simply going to show up if you serve them with a subpoena. Very few people have the kind of lifestyle where they can just go on the run. If you just issue subpeonas and used normal process this would happen far more efficiently -- but Trump is deliberately choosing to do otherwise because he wants a spectacle and wants to punish blue states. Even within the Trump admin there is dislike of this strategy because they actually want to maximize deportations not make statements.
What exactly qualifies as a mob stopping enforcement? Yes, protests impose extra costs on the police to enforce the laws and that's just part of living in a free society. If congress chooses not to write large enough checks to enforce the laws in a legal and constitutional manner tough cookies. And realistically congress all the time says: ok yah this is a law but you don't get to go overboard enforcing it. Just because it is frustrating that congress says "yah this is illegal but you can't really fix it" doesn't give any extra license -- hell congress has kept weed illegal and literally banned the DOJ from enforcing the law against state legal activities.
So yes, mobs do get to veto laws in the sense that when large parts of the population go out and protest the rest of society has a choice to either say "hmm, let's rethink this" or "here's the resources to enforce the law despite the protests." At no point is one of the options to try to punish the protestors for protesting except via the normal and regular application of law -- in particular nothing allows ICE to pepper spray, arrest or drag off people who are merely chanting and filming because they feel threatened because they don't have sufficient manpower to respond.
If congress approves of what Trump is doing in Minnesota they can authorize him to use the military, overrule posse comitatus or whatever. The problem is Trump knows congress won't back him and thinks he should be able to do it anyway.
Regarding swarms it depends what you mean. Sometimes there is an attempt to make those crimes less common by creating common knowledge that if you commit that crime in X area you'll be arrested that way the crime rate in that area goes down and you can slowly move out to reduce it everywhere. But that doesn't make much sense with immigration when the crime occurred at the border or just by not leaving after a visa expired. And in all cases the goal is to effectuate the arrests with minimal resources.
Here ICE is delibrately performing the arrests in the most resource intensive and harsh ways -- arrest is never supposed to be a punishment -- when they could achieve more by just issuing summons in the area. And no it's obviously not for any kind of deterrence impact it's a political move so Trump can say he isn't pussy footing around the issue like the democrats did.
It's certainly true that these states rights don't mean that states get to prevent federal law enforcement. It just means that if congress wants to do it they need to have the political will to spend the money to do the enforcement themselves. My argument isn't that the federal government shouldn't be able to effectively enforce immigration law -- merely that one important safeguard is requiring congress to actually spend the money and pass the laws themselves rather than hiding costs and negative impacts by getting locals to do it for them.
Indeed, if congress wanted really effective immigration reform it could do it. For starters simply make e-verify (the check employers can do that looks to make sure these aren't fake docs on the I9) mandatory. Even republican congresses have been unwilling to do this out of fear it will harm farming.
A big part of the reason there is trouble in Minnesota is that Trump is trying to do it without congressional backing. Congress can't force the state law enforcement to help but it absolutely can make sure their are sufficient federal resources to enforce the law and do so in a manner that doesn't require these tactics.
"In the hopes that anyone of a more conservative bent might be reading this, I would really strongly recommend the points made by Representatives Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene about the Second Amendment aspect of this situation."
You can't just keep blaming Thomas Massie for everything!
Yeah I know that song isn't really relevant to this current situation. But it is weirdly relevant to Trump's recent idea to build a new fleet of battleships, which came out shortly *after* that song.
Part of the reason things got out of hand in 2020 and aren't now is because the 2020 protests were, because of the pandemic, very, very young. Everybody who has gone to a No Kings protest knows that our protest crowds in 2025 are EXTREMELY different. The older protestors have more experience, milder tempers, and can command the respect of kids who might otherwise be running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
The presence of older people also makes protests inherently less intimidating for law enforcement, and encourages restraint - they don't want to go barreling into crowds and knocking over grandmothers (although of course, push comes to shove, they will.)
This “Minneapolis activist community has tactically out-dueled ICE and the Border Patrol”is pretty irritating. How about a massive peaceful protest from Minnesotas furious about the authoritarian, fascistic and murderous policies of this administration proved sympathetic among Americans. This bloodless and wrong headed analysis makes me long for the pre-Trump (or pre-even I care about the misdeeds of the Trump admin now) boring, historical policy articles in your wheelhouse.
So help me out here. I'm reading through all the comments dunking on "Heather Cox Richardson and the Bluesky crowd.
I'm a person that reads Heather Cox Richardson and goes to protests. I guess that makes me part of HCR + Bluesky.
But I'm also a corporate communications person who spent a lot of time during the Biden years supporting clients (individuals and businesses) who were arguing for infrastructure investment and an all-of-the-above energy policy. A sizable portion of their arguments turned on the economic impact of infrastructure and a variety of renewables. But there were also LNG supporters in the mix.
I guess that makes me an Abundance Democrat.
How can that be?
Maybe because multiple things can be true at once?
Maybe because it's possible to argue for sensible immigration enforcement AND be outraged at ICE... and because it's possible to understand nuanced policy arguments and know when the times and conditions call for something more direct, more emotional and more basic.
Maybe because "HCR and the Blusky crowd" and "Abundance Democrat" and all these other things are simplistic constructs that serve mainly to drive straw-man arguments.
So... maybe it's time to put aside the concepts and categories and deal with something messier - like "things as it is," as Shunryu Suzuki liked to say.
Lots of overheated rhetoric today. Important to remember, Obama deported over 3 million people and gave Tom Homan Presidential Rank Award as a Distinguished Executive. This isn't as much of a departure from the past people make it out to be.
Crucially, Obama deported all those people WITHOUT pulling the kind of repugnant fascist shit this administration has been doing. This fact is a condemnation of Trump’s ICE, not an exoneration. You can deport people without being an evil douche! Who knew?!?
The point is these are differences of degree, not of kind. Trump is simply trying to ratchet up the salience of the culture war and liberals are playing right into this hands.
Babbit personally tried to storm a barricade; by contrast Good and Pretti were both on public streets where they had a full right to be and not doing anything illegal.
"I don’t want to say that the video footage speaks for itself, because if we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that footage never does."
On that - sometimes the video footage doesn't even make the news.
I checked the NY Times, the WaPo and the LA Times - unsurprisingly, all have extensive breakdowns of the Alex Pretti videos despite their legacy print history.. So does CNN, and why not? Videos are visual media.
But Fox News? I rarely go the that site but even after a patient search I couldn''t find anything like a detailed breakdown of the Pretti videos. I did find stray paragraphs describing the controversy. As to what they actually broadcast, I would think the website has that content, but maybe not.
I welcome assistance and correction, but this seems to be a major bit of See No Evil "journalism". Does hint at why Trump stays afloat in the polls.
One point that needs to be made here is that the "goon squad" as you call them did not know that Pretti was armed until they had piled on and driven him to the ground. Then they disarmed him prior to shooting him. Whether this was a result of bad training, someone yelling "gun", or whatever, the Federal agents would not even have known Pretti was armed had they not jumped all over him. But Pretti interjected himself, decently I think, into the situation.
My advice to anyone with a carry permit is that if you plan on mixing it up during a protest, leave the hardware home. Being arrested and found armed should not result in being killed but I don't think the Feds I have seen in Minneapolis remind me of well trained city cops. If you are there to peacefully observe or protest but not interact with Feds in a tense environment, that's different. As many prominent gun organizations as well as some prominent Repubicans have noted, Pretti was well within his rights. This is creating quite a schism between Trump and a lot of gun activists, who normally are the president's allies.
As far as the Fed law enforcement acting like a gang of what the NRA once called "jack booted thugs", I blame Trump and his minions for most of that. I think they consider it a feature rather than a bug. That said, some of the in-your-face actions of those protesting ICE are a far cry from what I remember of the MLK demonstrations, and probably add matches to the ICE gasoline. I think the protests need to dial it back as far as directly confronting ICE.
After reading this I can’t shake the feeling that the point is “protesters did a good job [peacefully agitating to the climax of having two of their number be murdered and look extremely sympathetic] and this will be politically effective.”
This is why nonviolent resistance is braver than it looks. The endpoint of the tactic is what you describe. We lose a lot of potential understanding to the idea that leftist organizing is about agoraphobic 19 year olds, but old people are in the streets because they’ve been there and had these conversations before. I had to stop my mom from flying to Minneapolis. Plenty of hazy speculation about MLK and zero references to Bayard Rustin in these comments.
That "predicate for tragedies" blame-the-victim quote from Rich Lowry gives me the opportunity to share a quote from MLK Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" which I had occasion to read this morning:
'We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?"'
I have to strongly disagree on one point. The Minnesota protesters need to keep a safe distance from ICE agents. Martyrdom does not help the cause. It gives the administration an opportunity to normalize killing. I think this has been a grave tactical mistake. It is simultaneously killing good people and making the left look crazed.
It is not legal to put yourself between a federal law enforcement agent and someone they are physically interacting with. It doesn’t matter if you think the agent is in the wrong. It doesn’t matter if the agent IS in the wrong. Intentionally getting in the way is a Class A Misdemeanor if you make NO physical contact with the agent. If you make contact, it is a Class D Felony. Pretti committed a misdemeanor at best.
In addition, he brought a gun to his interaction with law enforcement. That is 100% legal. It is also completely crazy. The people whose votes we need to win to get the fascists out of our government are not going to be impressed by a party whose adherents behave like that.
Pretti could have stayed at a safe distance, filmed, and voiced disapproval. He could have left his weapon at home. If he had, he would be alive, the temperature in Minneapolis would be lower, and more people in purple districts would vote Democrat in the next election. His actions do not represent “successful tactics”.
You said he did nothing wrong. He committed a misdemeanor, or maybe a felony. That’s not “nothing wrong”.
I did not say it was okay for ICE to kill him. I think it is very bad they did. I said the world would be in a better place now if he had exercised the least bit of common sense and not given ICE the opportunity to kill him by breaking the law while carrying a firearm.
That’s what I said. Do you think the world is better off with Pretti dead? Should we encourage others to die as he did so we can rack up the martyrdom score against ICE? Do you want to keep fascists in office so we can keep increasing our virtue by dying? Are you ready to just straight-up take up arms against the government like Trump is accusing us of already?
I’m in favor of being smart, not dying, and winning elections.
>The central paradox of our time is that the single most important issue on the table — Donald Trump’s authoritarian aspirations and the conservative movement’s indulgence of those aspirations — is by almost all accounts a political loser.
I want to signal-boost what commenter Xantar said below: *this*, this right there is The Problem with a capital P and that rhymes with T and that stands for This Is No Way to Have a Liberal Democracy.
I like baseball, so let's have a baseball analogy:
Imagine a team, let's say the New York Yankees, that just blatantly breaks all the rules in order to win. They make the Astros' stealing signs look like a child's play. They bribe the umpire; they punch opposing players in the face; their outfielders pick up a ball off the ground and yell, "See, I caught it! The runner is out!" and the rest of the team will just roll with it.
Meanwhile, the opposing team - let's say the LA Dodgers - must play perfectly in order to even have a chance of winning, and cannot break any rules without risking widespread condemnation.
The fans' reaction is:
20% are outraged, keep saying "they can't get away with this! Both teams must obey the rules! What the Yankees are doing is unacceptable and wrong!!!"
20% go "fuck yeah, this is the way to win! Go Yankees! Rules are for losers!!!"
20% go "I'm disturbed by the level of vitriol and anger from Both Sides. Can't we all just Get Along and reach a Sensible Compromise?"
40% look up from their phones and say, "Huh? There's a game? Oh yeah, I guess it's a baseball game. I dunno, I'm just here for a hot dog and soda."
Can you have a game worth watching under these conditions? I'd say no, unless you're both a Yankees fan and a massive douche.
I don't know what the solution is, or if there even is a solution.
I don't get it. Why do you say the protests are working? I think it is great that they are disciplined and not making things worse, but why do you think the protests have changed anyone's opinion? It seems to me that ICE is doing that by itself by killing people.
And that's kind of the point of protest, it causes ICE to show their true colors and willingness to kill as part of the MAGA project. It shows this has nothing to do with immigration enforcement.
This. The point is to clarify the real stakes. Ideally, peaceful protest shows that everybody is really on the same side of rights and respect for the law regardless of specific policy differences, and protesters’ energy is channeled through specific, effective actions. Where that’s not the case, protest aims to make tolerated violence intolerable by making it public and providing a more sympathetic victim. Good organizers plan in ways that maximize impact and appeal. Minneapolis is a well-organized city on a number of levels.
Protest shows other people that, no, we are all not on board with whatever the hell the administration wants us to think it is, or whatever they are calling it. It also reminds ICE that they are being watched, and their abuses of power are being documented and live streamed. And it shows elected officials that they have some support - including some Republican elected officials who were maybe counting on squishy swing voters this fall.
> I’m told by those in the know that the footage itself does more to move Trump’s numbers than any kind of abstract message about the footage or about immigration or democracy.
> Absorbing abuses from security forces without retaliating in kind is extraordinarily difficult, but it does seem to be working.
> What’s not out of our hands, though, is to remember the lesson that protesting really does work if you stay organized and disciplined.
I would like these claims to be true. But two weeks later, it's far from clear that they are. I am thinking in part of Nate Silver's polling aggregation (https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin), which suggests that, if anything, Trump is more popular now than he was a day before Pretti was shot.
Many people want large and vigorous protests. But in the contemporary United States, we can't tell a plausible story about the way that big protests might cause political change at the federal level.
re: " you cannot hold a person who is already in custody and wait for ICE personnel to pick him up"
Are you describing individuals that are scheduled to be released in the very near-term (few days?) but where ICE does not have the "time" to pick them up and so they need to be held for several more days?
Seems like an "edge" case - likely a fraction of one percent of the people on ICE's list. Why is such a small number such a big deal? What am I missing?
"I do not *agree* with anyone who made the decision to vote for Trump in 2024 despite January 6, despite pardoning the perpetrators, and despite his boastful claims that he wanted to be a dictator."
I assume that somewhere among the (currently) 877 comments, someone has already pointed out that all of those who made a decision to vote for our felonious president did so *before* he pardoned the perpetrators of the January 6th Capitol attack. I assume that someone has pointed this out. But, as I don't see a correction in the article, I'll point it out again, and urge that the slip be properly corrected.
Many thanks.
It's important to point out that the ability of a state to choose not to help enforce federal law is a fundamental guarantee of the federalism in our constitution. Maybe it isn't a good rule, but it is supposed to be part of the design limiting federal power. As such, trying to punish states for that choice -- not merely ensure immigration law is enforced at parity -- is no different than prosecuting someone because they said something unflattering about the government. It's blatantly unconstitutional.
And yes, it is retaliation is a difficult thing to police via the courts but that doesn't mean it's not unconstitutional. We need to get over this idea that the constitution is something only for the courts to consider and accept that we as voters need to take protecting our constitutional rights seriously -- both from Trump and in conveying that we do take it seriously even for policies we like.
C'mon, this isn't even plausibly just the federal government trying to enforce the laws and that's what it takes. This is an attempt to punish states for not cooperating. There are fucking states that are *trying* to turn over people to the feds for immigration enforcement and who are having to let them go because ICE doesn't have the resources to pick them up within the hold window because they sent all the officers up to terrorize people.
And yes the federal government needs to be able to enforce the law but the safeguard here is that to do so congress needs to be willing to appropriate the money and pass the laws to do it themselves not hide the costs by making the states do it. But Trump knows he can't get congress to pass the laws he wants so he is punishing states he feels aren't being cooperative.
If congress wanted to enforce the laws it could do so easily without anywhere near this fuss. For starters just make it mandatory employers use e-verify when they hire anyone and if it comes up flagged as fake now they know where and who to look for. And it's just not true that this is anything like the most effective way to actually bring in suspected illegal immigrants.
Doing raids and busting down doors takes a ton of resources. Processing people at a jail does as well. 90% of people -- even illegal immigrants -- are simply going to show up if you serve them with a subpoena. Very few people have the kind of lifestyle where they can just go on the run. If you just issue subpeonas and used normal process this would happen far more efficiently -- but Trump is deliberately choosing to do otherwise because he wants a spectacle and wants to punish blue states. Even within the Trump admin there is dislike of this strategy because they actually want to maximize deportations not make statements.
What exactly qualifies as a mob stopping enforcement? Yes, protests impose extra costs on the police to enforce the laws and that's just part of living in a free society. If congress chooses not to write large enough checks to enforce the laws in a legal and constitutional manner tough cookies. And realistically congress all the time says: ok yah this is a law but you don't get to go overboard enforcing it. Just because it is frustrating that congress says "yah this is illegal but you can't really fix it" doesn't give any extra license -- hell congress has kept weed illegal and literally banned the DOJ from enforcing the law against state legal activities.
So yes, mobs do get to veto laws in the sense that when large parts of the population go out and protest the rest of society has a choice to either say "hmm, let's rethink this" or "here's the resources to enforce the law despite the protests." At no point is one of the options to try to punish the protestors for protesting except via the normal and regular application of law -- in particular nothing allows ICE to pepper spray, arrest or drag off people who are merely chanting and filming because they feel threatened because they don't have sufficient manpower to respond.
If congress approves of what Trump is doing in Minnesota they can authorize him to use the military, overrule posse comitatus or whatever. The problem is Trump knows congress won't back him and thinks he should be able to do it anyway.
Regarding swarms it depends what you mean. Sometimes there is an attempt to make those crimes less common by creating common knowledge that if you commit that crime in X area you'll be arrested that way the crime rate in that area goes down and you can slowly move out to reduce it everywhere. But that doesn't make much sense with immigration when the crime occurred at the border or just by not leaving after a visa expired. And in all cases the goal is to effectuate the arrests with minimal resources.
Here ICE is delibrately performing the arrests in the most resource intensive and harsh ways -- arrest is never supposed to be a punishment -- when they could achieve more by just issuing summons in the area. And no it's obviously not for any kind of deterrence impact it's a political move so Trump can say he isn't pussy footing around the issue like the democrats did.
It's certainly true that these states rights don't mean that states get to prevent federal law enforcement. It just means that if congress wants to do it they need to have the political will to spend the money to do the enforcement themselves. My argument isn't that the federal government shouldn't be able to effectively enforce immigration law -- merely that one important safeguard is requiring congress to actually spend the money and pass the laws themselves rather than hiding costs and negative impacts by getting locals to do it for them.
Indeed, if congress wanted really effective immigration reform it could do it. For starters simply make e-verify (the check employers can do that looks to make sure these aren't fake docs on the I9) mandatory. Even republican congresses have been unwilling to do this out of fear it will harm farming.
A big part of the reason there is trouble in Minnesota is that Trump is trying to do it without congressional backing. Congress can't force the state law enforcement to help but it absolutely can make sure their are sufficient federal resources to enforce the law and do so in a manner that doesn't require these tactics.
"In the hopes that anyone of a more conservative bent might be reading this, I would really strongly recommend the points made by Representatives Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene about the Second Amendment aspect of this situation."
You can't just keep blaming Thomas Massie for everything!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g627wgcgEdI
Yeah I know that song isn't really relevant to this current situation. But it is weirdly relevant to Trump's recent idea to build a new fleet of battleships, which came out shortly *after* that song.
Part of the reason things got out of hand in 2020 and aren't now is because the 2020 protests were, because of the pandemic, very, very young. Everybody who has gone to a No Kings protest knows that our protest crowds in 2025 are EXTREMELY different. The older protestors have more experience, milder tempers, and can command the respect of kids who might otherwise be running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
The presence of older people also makes protests inherently less intimidating for law enforcement, and encourages restraint - they don't want to go barreling into crowds and knocking over grandmothers (although of course, push comes to shove, they will.)
This “Minneapolis activist community has tactically out-dueled ICE and the Border Patrol”is pretty irritating. How about a massive peaceful protest from Minnesotas furious about the authoritarian, fascistic and murderous policies of this administration proved sympathetic among Americans. This bloodless and wrong headed analysis makes me long for the pre-Trump (or pre-even I care about the misdeeds of the Trump admin now) boring, historical policy articles in your wheelhouse.
So help me out here. I'm reading through all the comments dunking on "Heather Cox Richardson and the Bluesky crowd.
I'm a person that reads Heather Cox Richardson and goes to protests. I guess that makes me part of HCR + Bluesky.
But I'm also a corporate communications person who spent a lot of time during the Biden years supporting clients (individuals and businesses) who were arguing for infrastructure investment and an all-of-the-above energy policy. A sizable portion of their arguments turned on the economic impact of infrastructure and a variety of renewables. But there were also LNG supporters in the mix.
I guess that makes me an Abundance Democrat.
How can that be?
Maybe because multiple things can be true at once?
Maybe because it's possible to argue for sensible immigration enforcement AND be outraged at ICE... and because it's possible to understand nuanced policy arguments and know when the times and conditions call for something more direct, more emotional and more basic.
Maybe because "HCR and the Blusky crowd" and "Abundance Democrat" and all these other things are simplistic constructs that serve mainly to drive straw-man arguments.
So... maybe it's time to put aside the concepts and categories and deal with something messier - like "things as it is," as Shunryu Suzuki liked to say.
How 'bout it?
Lots of overheated rhetoric today. Important to remember, Obama deported over 3 million people and gave Tom Homan Presidential Rank Award as a Distinguished Executive. This isn't as much of a departure from the past people make it out to be.
Crucially, Obama deported all those people WITHOUT pulling the kind of repugnant fascist shit this administration has been doing. This fact is a condemnation of Trump’s ICE, not an exoneration. You can deport people without being an evil douche! Who knew?!?
The point is these are differences of degree, not of kind. Trump is simply trying to ratchet up the salience of the culture war and liberals are playing right into this hands.
Yes, yes. I'm sure when a woman is a victim of domestic violence, it's all her own fault for being bitchy and talking back to her husband. 🙄
Woah, talk about esclation.
Babbit personally tried to storm a barricade; by contrast Good and Pretti were both on public streets where they had a full right to be and not doing anything illegal.
Good tried to run over a cop.
"I don’t want to say that the video footage speaks for itself, because if we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that footage never does."
On that - sometimes the video footage doesn't even make the news.
I checked the NY Times, the WaPo and the LA Times - unsurprisingly, all have extensive breakdowns of the Alex Pretti videos despite their legacy print history.. So does CNN, and why not? Videos are visual media.
But Fox News? I rarely go the that site but even after a patient search I couldn''t find anything like a detailed breakdown of the Pretti videos. I did find stray paragraphs describing the controversy. As to what they actually broadcast, I would think the website has that content, but maybe not.
I welcome assistance and correction, but this seems to be a major bit of See No Evil "journalism". Does hint at why Trump stays afloat in the polls.
WaPo:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/what-videos-show-of-the-fatal-minneapolis-shooting/2026/01/26/9b95036c-45fe-4d16-a2db-d14b852f4549_video.html
One point that needs to be made here is that the "goon squad" as you call them did not know that Pretti was armed until they had piled on and driven him to the ground. Then they disarmed him prior to shooting him. Whether this was a result of bad training, someone yelling "gun", or whatever, the Federal agents would not even have known Pretti was armed had they not jumped all over him. But Pretti interjected himself, decently I think, into the situation.
My advice to anyone with a carry permit is that if you plan on mixing it up during a protest, leave the hardware home. Being arrested and found armed should not result in being killed but I don't think the Feds I have seen in Minneapolis remind me of well trained city cops. If you are there to peacefully observe or protest but not interact with Feds in a tense environment, that's different. As many prominent gun organizations as well as some prominent Repubicans have noted, Pretti was well within his rights. This is creating quite a schism between Trump and a lot of gun activists, who normally are the president's allies.
As far as the Fed law enforcement acting like a gang of what the NRA once called "jack booted thugs", I blame Trump and his minions for most of that. I think they consider it a feature rather than a bug. That said, some of the in-your-face actions of those protesting ICE are a far cry from what I remember of the MLK demonstrations, and probably add matches to the ICE gasoline. I think the protests need to dial it back as far as directly confronting ICE.
After reading this I can’t shake the feeling that the point is “protesters did a good job [peacefully agitating to the climax of having two of their number be murdered and look extremely sympathetic] and this will be politically effective.”
It’s both true and sickening.
This is why nonviolent resistance is braver than it looks. The endpoint of the tactic is what you describe. We lose a lot of potential understanding to the idea that leftist organizing is about agoraphobic 19 year olds, but old people are in the streets because they’ve been there and had these conversations before. I had to stop my mom from flying to Minneapolis. Plenty of hazy speculation about MLK and zero references to Bayard Rustin in these comments.
That "predicate for tragedies" blame-the-victim quote from Rich Lowry gives me the opportunity to share a quote from MLK Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" which I had occasion to read this morning:
'We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?"'
I have to strongly disagree on one point. The Minnesota protesters need to keep a safe distance from ICE agents. Martyrdom does not help the cause. It gives the administration an opportunity to normalize killing. I think this has been a grave tactical mistake. It is simultaneously killing good people and making the left look crazed.
Government agents kill a person who had done nothing wrong, in broad daylight, and it's "the left" that looks "crazed"?
Truly, we have the government half of us deserve.
Yes.
It is not legal to put yourself between a federal law enforcement agent and someone they are physically interacting with. It doesn’t matter if you think the agent is in the wrong. It doesn’t matter if the agent IS in the wrong. Intentionally getting in the way is a Class A Misdemeanor if you make NO physical contact with the agent. If you make contact, it is a Class D Felony. Pretti committed a misdemeanor at best.
In addition, he brought a gun to his interaction with law enforcement. That is 100% legal. It is also completely crazy. The people whose votes we need to win to get the fascists out of our government are not going to be impressed by a party whose adherents behave like that.
Pretti could have stayed at a safe distance, filmed, and voiced disapproval. He could have left his weapon at home. If he had, he would be alive, the temperature in Minneapolis would be lower, and more people in purple districts would vote Democrat in the next election. His actions do not represent “successful tactics”.
“It is not legal to do x” != “it’s cool to kill somebody on the spot for doing x”
I did NOT have “explaining Rule of Law 101 to Slow Boring readers” on my bingo card for today!
You said he did nothing wrong. He committed a misdemeanor, or maybe a felony. That’s not “nothing wrong”.
I did not say it was okay for ICE to kill him. I think it is very bad they did. I said the world would be in a better place now if he had exercised the least bit of common sense and not given ICE the opportunity to kill him by breaking the law while carrying a firearm.
That’s what I said. Do you think the world is better off with Pretti dead? Should we encourage others to die as he did so we can rack up the martyrdom score against ICE? Do you want to keep fascists in office so we can keep increasing our virtue by dying? Are you ready to just straight-up take up arms against the government like Trump is accusing us of already?
I’m in favor of being smart, not dying, and winning elections.
>The central paradox of our time is that the single most important issue on the table — Donald Trump’s authoritarian aspirations and the conservative movement’s indulgence of those aspirations — is by almost all accounts a political loser.
I want to signal-boost what commenter Xantar said below: *this*, this right there is The Problem with a capital P and that rhymes with T and that stands for This Is No Way to Have a Liberal Democracy.
I like baseball, so let's have a baseball analogy:
Imagine a team, let's say the New York Yankees, that just blatantly breaks all the rules in order to win. They make the Astros' stealing signs look like a child's play. They bribe the umpire; they punch opposing players in the face; their outfielders pick up a ball off the ground and yell, "See, I caught it! The runner is out!" and the rest of the team will just roll with it.
Meanwhile, the opposing team - let's say the LA Dodgers - must play perfectly in order to even have a chance of winning, and cannot break any rules without risking widespread condemnation.
The fans' reaction is:
20% are outraged, keep saying "they can't get away with this! Both teams must obey the rules! What the Yankees are doing is unacceptable and wrong!!!"
20% go "fuck yeah, this is the way to win! Go Yankees! Rules are for losers!!!"
20% go "I'm disturbed by the level of vitriol and anger from Both Sides. Can't we all just Get Along and reach a Sensible Compromise?"
40% look up from their phones and say, "Huh? There's a game? Oh yeah, I guess it's a baseball game. I dunno, I'm just here for a hot dog and soda."
Can you have a game worth watching under these conditions? I'd say no, unless you're both a Yankees fan and a massive douche.
I don't know what the solution is, or if there even is a solution.
Alienating the vast Yankees fan base with this hypothetical is not the big tent liberalism we need.
lol the Yankees are the team all other teams’ fans love to hate!
But ok, feel free to substitute “Kansas City Royals” or “Florida Marlins” if you prefer
Yes, I have seen it too, and many times on SB.
People don't like sustained excellence and a high performance culture as much as they claim to do, after all.
I don't get it. Why do you say the protests are working? I think it is great that they are disciplined and not making things worse, but why do you think the protests have changed anyone's opinion? It seems to me that ICE is doing that by itself by killing people.
And that's kind of the point of protest, it causes ICE to show their true colors and willingness to kill as part of the MAGA project. It shows this has nothing to do with immigration enforcement.
This. The point is to clarify the real stakes. Ideally, peaceful protest shows that everybody is really on the same side of rights and respect for the law regardless of specific policy differences, and protesters’ energy is channeled through specific, effective actions. Where that’s not the case, protest aims to make tolerated violence intolerable by making it public and providing a more sympathetic victim. Good organizers plan in ways that maximize impact and appeal. Minneapolis is a well-organized city on a number of levels.
Protest shows other people that, no, we are all not on board with whatever the hell the administration wants us to think it is, or whatever they are calling it. It also reminds ICE that they are being watched, and their abuses of power are being documented and live streamed. And it shows elected officials that they have some support - including some Republican elected officials who were maybe counting on squishy swing voters this fall.