We Should All Be Talking About What's Happening in Minneapolis
This isn't about immigration policy. It's about something else entirely.
What’s happening in Minneapolis should concern every American.
This weekend, federal agents killed Alex Pretti, a nurse who was filming their activities. The Trump administration defended their actions saying that the man was a domestic terrorist who was attacking ICE agents.
This is an insult to every American’s intelligence. The killing was filmed by two witnesses and both videos show that Pretti had one hand up and another on his camera when he was taken to the ground. Federal agents then fired 10 shots into him.
Pretti had a handgun on him at the time he was killed, which the administration is using as evidence that he was a terrorist. But the right to bear arms is a constitutional right. Republicans frequently made this point in 2020 when Kyle Rittenhouse showed up to a protest in Wisconsin with a AR-15 and shot two people.
The killings of Pretti and Renee Good earlier this month aren’t the only injustices that have taken place in Minneapolis.
The Trump administration has detained US citizens, thrown children in jails apart from their parents, and entered homes without warrants. When peaceful protesters have filmed these activities, federal agents have threatened to put them on lists and hurt them.
Earlier this month ICE agents broke down the door of a US citizen, put a gun to his head, and dragged him out in the cold in his underwear—all without a warrant.
Since July, ICE agents have held more than 2,300 people across the US without due process, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney.
Peacefully protesting is a 1st amendment right; bearing arms, which I wish was less common, is a 2nd amendment right; and requiring a warrant to enter a home is a 4th amendment right.
The Trump administration is challenging all of these constitutional rights. And they are lying to the American people about it, claiming that peaceful protesters are terrorists.
None of this is about the issue of immigration. Democrats and Republicans can disagree on border enforcement or deportation policy. That’s a sign of a healthy democracy. But what’s happening in Minneapolis is something else entirely: it’s the stuff of a Founding Father’s nightmare.
Most Americans don’t approve of what’s happening in Minneapolis either. Since the federal government sent thousands of agents to the city to sow chaos, Trump’s poll numbers on the issue of immigration have fallen significantly.
When people see the videos—when they watch what actually happened to Alex Pretti and Renee Good—they recognize that something has gone deeply wrong. That’s why I think it’s important for all of us to talk about what’s happening and simply describe what we’re seeing with our eyes.
Every American should know what’s happening right now.
We want to believe the events and the moral transgressions on display in Minneapolis and across America speak for themselves. But they don’t. Or, if they do, they are being drowned out by a government intent on persuading you to “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” The survival of truth and the values we built this country on depends on you and I refusing to be silent. The truth lives in us. And only in us.
Thanks for raising these critical and outrageous issues, Michael. This should be top of mind for all Americans right now. I also feel like this is the time for all of us to flood our electeds- every day - to convey our outrage to both Rs and Ds.
This is a pivotal time with the budget, and not only to reduce the Homeland Security budgets and infuse some accountability and law based approach, but also to shift the funding back to health care subsidies and food assistance benefits.
Few of us have the opportunity to participate in a demonstration, but we can all be activists in our frequency of contact with our MoCs. Could this be possibly be the time and venue for the resistance to hit the 3.5% threshold? Seems like a critical opening.