United States | News & Politics

Amelia Schafer
ICT

At least one tribal member was arrested during widespread protests in Minneapolis following the shooting and killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by immigration agents on Jan. 24.

In a social media post Saturday night, 13 individuals listed as “violent agitators” were photographed in law enforcement custody, including Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribal citizen, William Lafromboise, 23.

Lafromboise was released just before midnight central time on Jan. 24.

Lafromboise was arrested by ICE agents during an Anti-Immigration Control Enforcement protest in Minneapolis on Jan. 24 sometime around 2 p.m Central Time, family members told ICT.

The post said that he and 12 others assaulted agents or obstructed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. Lafromboise is wearing a gray Champions sweater in the photo.

“On January 24, our officers were swarmed and attacked by these violent agitators,” the post said.

They also accused the list of individuals for crimes against the agents including: throwing objects at agents, physically assaulting agents, ramming agents with vehicles, issuing death threats, obstruction of law enforcement, vandalization of government vehicles and brandishing homemade weapons.

As of Jan. 24, charges have yet to be filed against Lafromboise.

ICE did not respond to ICT’s requests about what charges Lafromboise is facing.

ICE agents can arrest United States citizens who are in violation of United States Code Section 111 Title 18, which pertains to interfering with law enforcement investigations or assaulting federal officers. Immigration agents are considered federal law enforcement under this legal code.

Assault on a federal law enforcement officer is a federal offense punishable by up to 20 years in prison under United States Code Section 111 Title 18. Penalties typically are determined by the severity of the assault.

Initially, community members were concerned that Lafromboise had been detained by ICE. The family immediately contacted Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Chairman Garret Renville.

Renville told ICT he had contacted the Department of Homeland Security and searched federal immigration databases prior to news that Lafromboise was arrested, rather than detained.

Reports indicate both ICE and FBI are making arrests. It’s not clear who is handling the arrests.

Unverified claims of the detainment of a Standing Rock Sioux Tribe citizen have also been brought to the attention of the Standing Rock Tribal Council.

This is a developing story.

I don't have time right now to corroborate this. Also, if you rely on .world News/Politics, start checking modlogs on removals, they're gobsmacking. A particular mod likes to remove threads as a sneaky way to rm comments.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7465174

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22733

This story was originally published by Shasta Scout and shared through the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network. ICT is a member of INN and the network.

Marc DadiganShasta Scout

As a Wintu cultural monitor, Shawna Wilson says she always carries her hard hat, clipboard, and tribal ID card in her vehicle because she never knows when she might have to step into her role and stop a construction project.

California law requires that state and local agencies contact the appropriate tribes when they’re planning development projects within their ancestral territories. After a consultation process, agencies often broker agreements with tribes to place cultural monitors like Wilson on construction sites to prevent damage to ancestral village sites, sacred places, cemeteries and other cultural resources.

However, the system doesn’t always work as intended. Even though agencies should consult with tribes long before breaking ground, Wilson says she often learns about construction projects in her Wintu homelands, which includes the Redding area, when she happens to drive past them.

“It can be difficult to navigate when you’re dealing with foremen who don’t want to listen or slow down their work,” said Wilson, a member of the Wintu Tribe of Northern California. “But it’s important we speak up for our lands and ancestors.”

Sometimes her tribe is left in the dark simply due to poor communication, but Wilson said sometimes public officials falsely believe they don’t have to consult with her tribe because the Wintu are federally unrecognized.

Wilson and several California tribal leaders say excluding non-recognized tribes, which violates state law, could soon become encoded into California regulations, much to their alarm. A state commission is currently evaluating a proposal that would remove unrecognized tribes, including the Wintu, from an important list agencies use to determine which tribes to consult.

The public comment period on the draft regulations will end on Tuesday, Jan. 26.

Known as the tribal contact list, it’s been curated by the tribal-led Native American Heritage Commission for 50 years. The list is a valuable resource for public officials because it can be challenging to know which tribe is culturally affiliated to a given place, given the sheer diversity of tribes in California and the sometimes overlapping nature of tribal territorial boundaries.

For non-recognized tribes —  many of whom suffer from their exclusion from federal Indian funding and legal protections as well as the lack of a land base — the list is a lifeline, one of the few legal avenues they have to advocate for their place-based ways of life, they say.

“It’s going to make the exclusion and silencing we experience now more permanent.” Wilson said.

For this story, Shasta Scout interviewed seven representatives of non-recognized tribes from throughout the state. They all say their removal from the list could leave their territories extremely vulnerable to cultural and environmental destruction. In many cases, tribal representatives said, the nearest recognized tribe that would be consulted for any given project may be some distance away and may also lack the experience and capacity to advocate for homelands that are not their own.

Hereditary Chief Caleen Sisk said her tribe, the Winnemem Wintu, is the only one qualified to advocate for their ancestral homelands of the McCloud River watershed, where they have been working with government agencies to protect sacred sites, revitalize ceremonies and restore the river’s ecology for decades. For example, the tribe has spent more than 20 years resisting the Bureau of Reclamation’s raise of Shasta Dam and since 2022 have been working with state and federal agencies to restore salmon to the McCloud.

In part because of the Winnemem Wintu’s advocacy for their river, the State Assembly passed a joint resolution in 2009 urging the federal government to recognize the tribe. Sisk said she doubted the Redding Rancheria, the closest recognized tribe that has Wintu members, would have the resources or knowledge to work on the river.

“If we don’t have the right to speak up for our sacred sites, who is going to do that? Other tribes don’t know where the sacred sites are or know how to protect the river,” Sisk said.  “[The proposed regulations] would be opening up thousands of acres of land that will have no one to protect it.”

Cultural monitor Wilson echoed Sisk’s concern that the Rancheria could become the one stop shop for Redding-area tribal consultations when they “don’t represent the full Wintu history or all of the Wintu voices.”

Redding Rancheria Chairman Jack Potter noted that his tribe has regularly written letters for the other Wintu tribes, supporting their cases for recognition and their inherent Indigenous rights. He added that Redding Rancheria tribal members can empathize with unrecognized tribes’ struggles today because Congress terminated them as a tribe in 1959, and it wasn’t until 1983 that the courts restored their sovereign status with the U.S. government.

“We were also without a voice at one time. We honor and respect the entire Wintu country because if we don’t respect all Wintu people ourselves, how can we expect other people to?” he said.

Non-recognized tribes call proposal “administrative erasure”

Under the proposed regulations, the current list would be discarded, and only federally recognized tribes, such as the Redding Rancheria, would stay on the revised list. About 60 non-federally recognized tribes, including three Wintu tribes whose territories cover parts of Shasta County, would be forced to apply to the commission for consideration to be re-added to the list. The current draft of the regulations indicates that would require extensive documentation and records, and tribal leaders say it would likely be a long and uphill battle to get added back to the list.

When a tribe is federally recognized, it means that the United States has established a government-to-government relationship with a tribe as a sovereign nation, although U.S. law does place some constraints on tribes’ ability to self-govern. Historically this relationship with the U.S. was established primarily by treaties and the establishment of reservations held in trust for tribes by the federal government.

Winnemem Wintu Hereditary Chief Caleen Sisk signs a co-management agreement with leaders from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on May 1, 2023, to co-steward McCloud River Salmon Restoration Projects. Credit: Photo by Jessica Abbe, courtesy of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe

In California, it’s well known that many historical and legitimate tribes lack federal recognition because of systemically oppressive actions by the state and federal governments’. Numerous government studies and academic analyses have concluded that the lack of recognition is rooted in the state’s complex history of unratified treaties, the impacts of the Spanish Missions — which fragmented many tribal societies through enslavement and high death tolls — and the devastating state-led campaigns of genocide and removals that accompanied 19th century Euro-American settlement.

In recent decades, being on the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ official list of federally recognized tribes has become a precondition for tribes to access federal funding and legal protections, such as receiving an eagle feather permit, protection for ceremonies on public lands and many other rights specific to tribes, including the ability to operate gaming businesses.

Tribal legal advisors and scholars told Shasta Scout the proposed changes to the contact list would undermine decades of established practice at the Native-led Heritage Commission. The commission was created in 1976 to help tribes protect their cultural sites, and the group has historically been careful to be inclusive of both unrecognized and recognized tribes, they say.

“It’s very transparent that these regulations are not about enabling California Indians to engage with our sacred places, to practice our religions or our traditional ecological knowledge. It’s really about creating this discriminatory hierarchy among our tribes and prioritizing recognized tribes,” said Olivia Chilcote**,** a tribal member of San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians and associate professor of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University.

Native American Heritage Commissioners declined to answer questions about the proposed regulations for Shasta Scout noting that those regulations are still in draft form and haven’t been finalized, according to an email from Gita Chandra, Communications and Special Projects Director for the California Natural Resources Agency.

Regulations with unclear motivations and legality

Claire Cummings, a legal advisor for the Winnemem Wintu, said the proposed regulations would violate the equal protection principle outlined in the state’s constitution. She said the regulations arbitrarily creates two separate classes of California Indians and would give the NAHC a new role of judging the legitimacy of different tribes. This is a role it is not legally entitled to wield, Cummings explained.

“The issue here is sovereignty. The law clearly states that California must protect the sovereignty of unrecognized tribes, but now the NAHC is trying to put itself in the position of deciding who is and isn’t worthy of sovereignty,” said Cummings.

Cummings as well as tribal leaders also said it’s unclear why the NAHC is pursuing the regulation changes and that commissioners have not explained what problem they’re trying to solve.

Wintu cultural monitors help protect and preserve cultural items that may be disturbed by construction, such as arrowheads, mortars, pestles and other cultural items that belonged to their ancestors. Credit: Photo by Marc Dadigan/Shasta Scout

The proposed regulations do refer to problems with disputes over tribal boundaries as well as “splinter” tribes, and sets up a process by which the NAHC would evaluate these conflicts and the legitimacy of unrecognized tribes. However, unrecognized tribal leaders interviewed by Shasta Scout do not think NAHC is the appropriate body to be acting as a final judge on these disputes.

Potter, chairman of the Redding Rancheria, said he believes the proposed changes to the contact list are designed to address what he calls “boy scout clubs,” or illegitimate groups who are staking claims to tribal lands.

“I don’t think it’s their intention to eliminate anyone. I think they’re just trying to figure out how to deal with these imaginary groups who have ties to nothing and have legitimate tribes going around and around in the courts,” Potter said.

Cummings said the law is clear that tribes have the power to put themselves on the list, and it’s the NAHC’s role simply to facilitate that rather than evaluate the legitimacy of other tribes. NAHC commissioners are politically appointed by the governor, and historically there has been a mixture of unrecognized and recognized commissioners. Today, there is only one unrecognized commissioner and five who are enrolled with recognized tribes.

Tribal representatives are also concerned about commissioner ties to wealthy gaming tribes, some of whom were co-sponsors on a 2025 bill that similarly would have excluded unrecognized tribes from the state’s environmental review process.

“It’s really concerning for me that the NAHC would have this kind of discretionary authority to judge our tribal communities and it really raises serious questions about who has the ability, time and resources to review the documentation they’re requesting,” said Chilcote, the San Diego State professor.

Chilcote also noted that the commission’s proposed regulations create an evaluation process that is similar to a petition process the Bureau of Indian Affairs created in 1978. For decades that process had been criticized as highly political, unnecessarily laborious and discriminatory toward California tribes, none of whom have been recognized through the process since 1983.

“To say (the commission) is going to decide who is the right tribe is antithetical to our cultures and the history of how our communities functioned,” said Chilcote. “There were always shared territories, places that were sacred to many of us.”

A barrier to healing

The proposed regulations come at a time when non-recognized tribes in California have made tremendous progress in cultural revitalization and healing some of the scars of the historical genocide and land dispossession.

In recent years, many non-recognized tribes have restored land bases and re-engaged in traditional environmental stewardship, often with state partnerships. For instance, since 2023, the Winnemem Wintu have been co-managers with state and federal wildlife agencies on a historic project to restore salmon to the McCloud River where the fish have been absent for nearly 80 years.

However, if they are removed from the contact list, non-recognized tribes fear these informal and formal partnerships may be undermined, and they may be excluded from funding streams such as the state’s $101 million Tribal Nature-Based Solutions grant program.

In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an official acknowledgment of California’s role in the 19th century genocide, and initiated a Truth and Healing Council to investigate reconciliation. Many tribal leaders are now wondering how their removal from the contact list fits into this vision.

“There’s no truth and healing for us if we can’t protect our sacred sites, if we can’t get back to the river and get back our salmon,” said Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu. “Taking us off the list is just another type of the same genocide.”

The post ‘Administrative erasure’: Wintu people say proposed California reforms would threaten their homelands appeared first on ICT.

From ICT via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7465168

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22691

Amelia Schafer
ICT

At least one tribal member was arrested during widespread protests in Minneapolis following the shooting and killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by immigration agents on Jan. 24.

In a social media post Saturday night, 13 individuals listed as “violent agitators” were photographed in law enforcement custody, including Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribal citizen, William Lafromboise, 23.

Lafromboise was released just before midnight central time on Jan. 24.

Lafromboise was arrested by ICE agents during an Anti-Immigration Control Enforcement protest in Minneapolis on Jan. 24 sometime around 2 p.m Central Time, family members told ICT.

The post said that he and 12 others assaulted agents or obstructed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. Lafromboise is wearing a gray Champions sweater in the photo.

“On January 24, our officers were swarmed and attacked by these violent agitators,” the post said.

They also accused the list of individuals for crimes against the agents including: throwing objects at agents, physically assaulting agents, ramming agents with vehicles, issuing death threats, obstruction of law enforcement, vandalization of government vehicles and brandishing homemade weapons.

As of Jan. 24, charges have yet to be filed against Lafromboise.

ICE did not respond to ICT’s requests about what charges Lafromboise is facing.

ICE agents can arrest United States citizens who are in violation of United States Code Section 111 Title 18, which pertains to interfering with law enforcement investigations or assaulting federal officers. Immigration agents are considered federal law enforcement under this legal code.

Assault on a federal law enforcement officer is a federal offense punishable by up to 20 years in prison under United States Code Section 111 Title 18. Penalties typically are determined by the severity of the assault.

Initially, community members were concerned that Lafromboise had been detained by ICE. The family immediately contacted Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Chairman Garret Renville.

Renville told ICT he had contacted the Department of Homeland Security and searched federal immigration databases prior to news that Lafromboise was arrested, rather than detained.

Reports indicate both ICE and FBI are making arrests. It’s not clear who is handling the arrests.

Unverified claims of the detainment of a Standing Rock Sioux Tribe citizen have also been brought to the attention of the Standing Rock Tribal Council.

This is a developing story.

The post Dakota citizen arrested by federal officers during Minneapolis protests Saturday appeared first on ICT.

From ICT via This RSS Feed.

Chandra Colvin
MPR News

Originally published on MPR News.

Heather Friedli leads Team Kwe — the all-female Indigenous snow carving team. Kwe means “woman” in the Ojibwe language.

She said the three-person team is the only one of its kind in North America.

“One of the significances, too, of being a Kwe woman, is that women are the keepers of the water. And so, by sculpting with snow, we are protecting snow water as part of what we are doing, and we approach it as a spiritual practice,” Friedli said. The team did their first snow sculpture five years ago.

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board named the public art installation, “Carved in Snow: Stories of Land and Legacy.” The project highlights Indigenous history, seasonal storytelling and youth mentorship.

The art installation includes four snow sculptures across riverfront parks near downtown Minneapolis. Each sculpture will represent one of the four seasons.

During the second week of January, Team Kwe worked on the project’s first sculpture at Mill Ruins Park. The sculpture depicts a merganser, a waterfowl, with flames emerging from its torso.

Friedli said the sculpture’s imagery is adapted from stories in the Ojibwe culture about the transition from winter to spring.

“The birds were singing their sacred song of springtime to fight back biboon, which is winter,” she said.

Juliana Welter carves snow on second sculpture at Father Hennepin Bluff Park in Minneapolis. The sculpture will feature imagery of a fox and its kit surrounded by floral, representing spring on Wednesday.Chandra Colvin | MPR News

Teammate and Friedli’s sister, Juliana Welter, said she hopes people can find new perspectives in the installation.

“People have their own version of how the spring comes, but to maybe see the story we’re putting on here with the merganser — the fire in his belly, singing the song of spring — like, maybe they’ll go, ‘Oh, that’s a new way for me to see it,’” Welter said.

Meryt Watkins-Wright is a stand-in member on the team this year. It’s her first time snow carving, an activity she said made her both nervous and excited.

“It’s definitely a learning experience,” Watkins-Wright said.

She added that, as someone who is mixed Afro-Indigenous, participating on Team Kwe and designing the sculptures has allowed her to connect with her Indigenous heritage through storytelling.

“This is Indigenous land, and I think that it has been overlooked, taken away. It’s really important to — in the middle of the park in downtown — have it be like the centerpiece. I think it’s very meaningful,” she said.

Team Kwe began working on the project just days before the shooting of 37-year-old Renee Macklin Good. They took a brief pause in their work to be with community, but continued crafting sculpture the next day.

“We knew that it’s important as artists to continue the work, because what we’re doing is important to bring joy and vitality to the downtown area, and we want to make sure that people can find solace in what we do,” Friedli said.

This week, Team Kwe has been working at Father Hennepin Bluff Park on the second sculpture of the public installation. The sculpture will feature imagery of a fox with its kit surrounded by floral designs, representing spring.

She shared that the events over the last week “have weighed heavy on our souls.”

“Many, many people have come up to us just saying, ‘Thank you so much for being out here and creating this work when everything is so chaotic and feels so upsetting right now in the Twin Cities,’ and people really are feeling that this artwork is important to bring them joy right now, and so we’re happy to do that,” Friedli said.

Friedli encourages community members to stop by the parks to see Team Kwe’s progress on each sculpture.

The team plans to finish the second sculpture at Father Hennepin Bluff Park on Friday.

Other parks included in the art installation include Nicollet Island Park and Graco Park. The project concludes the first week of February.

Chandra Colvin covers Native American communities in Minnesota for MPR News via*Report for America**, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.*

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7465126

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22879

Minnesotans have been fighting to kick ICE out of the Twin Cities for over a month, since the Trump administration authorized “Operation Metro Surge,” unleashing thousands of federal agents onto the streets in a sweeping, indiscriminate attack on immigrants and their communities. The people of Minneapolis and St. Paul immediately jumped into action — drawing on the experiences of Los Angeles and Chicago — organizing within their neighborhoods to form patrols that identify and follow ICE agents, memorizing their rights and those of their immigrant neighbors, and delivering groceries to people too afraid to leave their houses in case ICE snatches them on their way to school or church.

This has become part of daily life for hundreds of people across the city, from activists who learned the brutality of state repression firsthand during Black Lives Matter in 2020 to people who are being politicized for the first time as a result of the second Trump administration’s assault on immigrants and so-called “sanctuary cities.”

Meanwhile, ICE’s tactics have escalated — targeting Black and Brown people regardless of their immigration status, dressing in plain clothes, using children as bait to abduct their parents, and using deadly force against those who protest or try to document their atrocities.

But even as ICE and federal agents tear through the city with increasing brutality — acting with the explicit sanction of the Trump administration — Minnesotans from every walk of life have adapted again and again to protect their neighbors, coworkers, classmates, and loved ones and to demand justice for those who have already been taken by ICE. Teachers are walking their students to and from school to prevent them from being followed by ICE; people show up every day to protest outside the building where ICE agents are deployed; they picket for hours outside hotels housing ICE agents with noisemakers and even a full band to keep the agents from sleeping; workers at local businesses have turned their workplaces into distribution centers for supplies; the networks to warn of ICE sightings have become even more well-organized and expanded, ready to organize and send people to the scene of ICE activity in minutes, in the full knowledge that they are risking their lives to do so.

Yet ICE has not left the streets — and agents have only become more emboldened. In response to the protests against the murder of Renee Nicole Good in broad daylight, the Trump administration has not sought to de-escalate the situation. Instead it recruited and deployed hundreds more federal agents to the city, calling protesters “domestic terrorists.” The administration has defended complete immunity for ICE agents, including the one who murdered Good. Trump officials even continue to spread lies after ICU nurse Alex Pretti’s murder, calling federal agents “victims.”

So Minneapolis decided to escalate. Local religious leaders, NGOs, and influential unions called for a city-wide economic shutdown to stop business as usual. In just a week, dozens of unions and social and political organizations endorsed the call. And Minnesotans responded in force.

No Work, No School, No Shopping

On January 23 over 700 workplaces shut down across the area. Signs hung in windows of businesses all over the city:

We’re closed in solidarity with our neighbors.

We welcome everyone except ICE.

ICE out of Minneapolis

January 23 — No work, no school, no shopping.

Meanwhile, the neon signs of major chains like Whole Foods and Target lit empty streets and shuttered shops, showing exactly whose side they’re on.

Over 50,000 people marched through the heart of the city in sub-zero temperatures to demand not just the end of ICE’s siege in their city, but for the abolition of ICE altogether. Children of immigrants marched to protect their parents and families. Indigenous communities marched together. Students and teachers whose plans to walk out were postponed by weather-related school closures flocked to the streets in defense of their students and classmates. Echoing the sentiment of the massive “No Kings” marches over the last several months, protesters railed against Trump, the Republican Party, and the political establishment — denouncing the Epstein scandal, attacks on healthcare, and the administration’s trampling of democratic rights.

But in an unfamiliar experience for the U.S. working class, tens of thousands of people across all different sectors refused to go to work on Friday. Some called in sick, others organized directly with their coworkers to stop work and mobilize. In one CWA local, 86 percent of workers refused to work on Friday. Starbucks workers across six stores — four unionized and two not — walked off the job, forcing their stores to close. Other unionized workers — transit workers, teachers, airport workers, nurses, and service workers — dotted the crowd, union pins attached to their winter jackets and union logos on the scarves shielding their skin from the cold.

Whether they came with unions or not, workers showed up to defend their coworkers and communities. The historic action has linked workers in new ways, giving life to the words “An attack on one is an attack on us all.”

Speaking on the importance of Friday’s shutdown, many of the people we interviewed said that “money talks.” What speaks louder, however, is the unity of the working class in stopping business as usual because, we are the ones who make everything run. The workers who organized and participated in the shutdown on January 23 are emblematic of a growing feeling among the working class in the United States that our position as workers is a powerful place from which to organize — to unite, plan, and fight back by withholding our labor. Rather than giving in to the cycle of demoralization that comes from days of protest that result in nothing but empty promises from Democratic Party politicians, Minnesotans are digging their heels in. That’s why the call in Minneapolis was taken up in several cities across the country, from New York to Los Angeles.

From Outrage to Organization

Less than a day after tens of thousands took to the streets and participated in an economic shutdown, federal immigration police responded to the massive repudiation of their presence in Minneapolis by shooting another community member — just seventeen days after ICE shot Renee Nicole Good in her car.

Within 30 minutes after the brutal footage of Pretti’s murder circulated on social media feeds and group chats, community members were showing up on the scene. With the knowledge that only comes from weeks of organizing against ICE in freezing temperatures, protesters showed up with their car trunks full of hand warmers and emergency blankets for the cold, masks and goggles for the tear gas and flashbangs, and whistles to alert fellow protesters of ICE activity. Neighbors stood outside their houses as armored vehicles with federal reinforcements barreled down their streets, inviting protesters inside to get warm or drink a glass of water to wash the tear gas down.

DHS’s lies about Pretti still ringing in their ears, hundreds of people faced off against federal agents who attempted to close off the blocks surrounding the scene of the shooting, trying to prevent people from gathering to mourn their neighbor. Protesters converged on Nicollet Avenue and 26th Street with the goal of pushing federal agents out of the site of Pretti’s murder.

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis police stood by, directing traffic as protesters were beaten by federal agents. Calling for peace and order miles away from the scene of the protest, Chief of the Police Brian O’Hara said that MPD would not be sent as reinforcements for federal agents. Far from condemning ICE’s presence in the Twin Cities, however, he made it clear that nearly five years after the massive uprising against police brutality that shook Minneapolis and the world, MPD fears the resurrection of that movement more than anything. There has been an uneasy peace in the Minneapolis between the community and the police since 2020, but no one has forgotten that only years ago it was the police and National Guard who were throwing tear gas into their faces.

Protesters confronted armed agents for hours, dodging hundreds of tear gas canisters and flashbangs, building barricades out of dumpsters and trash that were immediately struck down by agents shooting rubber bullets directly at the crowd. A local diner opened its doors to serve as a spontaneous medic station to treat those suffering the effects of the tear gas and rubber bullets. ICE advanced down the block, and protesters repeatedly pushed them back after the clouds of gas dispersed.

Soon an armored vehicle attempted to break the frontline; a lone voice was projected to the crowd: “this is the FBI. We demand you disperse immediately.” But protesters held the line and ultimately the vehicle turned around and left. The other agents soon followed.

Protesters rushed in to reclaim the block where Pretti was murdered. They set up a memorial on the spot where he was shot, just as they did for Renee Good weeks before and just a couple blocks away. Community members faced off against deadly ICE agents to take back a street that many of them cross each day. On Saturday they fought for their right to mourn their neighbor, an act of defiance in the face of the Trump administration’s attempt to cover up what millions of people across the world have seen on their phones.

The people of Minneapolis are fed up with ICE’s presence in their communities. After the uprising of 2020, they will not allow armed forces to control their city and terrorize their communities with impunity. They’re tired of wondering which of their neighbors is going to be kidnapped next or murdered in the street. And if you ask anyone who has been in the streets over the last two days, Minnesotans know that no one is coming to save them. This is their fight and they are willing to do whatever it takes to kick ICE out for good and abolish the institution entirely. With that realization has and must come new ways of organizing.

Shut It Down Until ICE Is Out for Good

Friday’s economic shutdown was a taste of what could be achieved if the people of Minnesota unite across their cities, in all the places they are, to stop business as usual in an all-out rejection of ICE and Trump’s immigration policies, and to get justice for all those murdered by the state. And if Friday showed what’s possible, then Saturday’s shooting shows that there is no time to lose in drawing more people into the fight.

Trump is not backing down. His administration has little room to maneuver as his poll numbers drop and the call to abolish ICE reverberates out from Minneapolis across the country, with over half of Americans saying they support that demand. Meanwhile, the administration and DHS — from Kristi Noem to Greg Bovino — continue to spread lies about what is happening in Minneapolis in order to cling to some amount of ICE’s (and Trump’s) legitimacy among their base. In that sense, Minneapolis is on the front line of the fight against Trump. Forcing a retreat there means strengthening the entire movement against Trump’s authoritarian policies in the United States and abroad.

“General strike” is the phrase on everyone’s lips. University of Minnesota student unions have already called for a second shutdown on January 30. A general strike is nothing less than shutting down the operations of the entire city: no school, no public transportation, no production, no profits for the ruling class. This will require the initiative and participation of the entire city, uniting all their different efforts over the last weeks toward this single purpose.

Neighborhood networks that have been running grocery deliveries to families too afraid to leave the house and conducting patrols to alert people to ICE activity have shown an incredible level of organization. These efforts must unite with the workers organizations, social organizations, and political organizations that mobilized en masse on Friday. These networks can be activated to build for this new phase of the struggle — holding community assemblies to organize next steps and provide a way for community members, workers, and students to discuss the steps forward together and how to organize toward a real general strike that paralyzes the city.

Imagine what would have been possible if, instead of simply endorsing the call, unions and union leaders went all out to enable their members to strike: calling it what it is, walking off the job and stopping operations until their demands are met, and marching in massive contingents to confront ICE and ensure that not another single member of their community is taken away. This would give strength to the thousands of unorganized workers to strike as well and unite with their class siblings in the streets, even shutting down the big corporations who so far have been able to keep their doors open.

Unleashing the power of the working class to fight indefinitely until our demands are met requires workers — organized and unorganized alike — to confront “no strike” clauses and anti-labor laws head on. Forcing ICE out will mean breaking the passivity of union leaders and Democratic politicians who hope that statements and critiques will be enough to channel the Minnesotans’ anger into protests that do not confront these repressive forces and the administration head on. From their workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods, Minnesotans — not the Democratic Party, not the National Guard — are going to be the ones to decide the next steps of the struggle, as they have been all along.

Minnesota can’t do this alone. Friday wasn’t just a day of protest in the Twin Cities. People across the country have mobilized in solidarity with Minneapolis — in outrage over those murdered by ICE, but also because they know that if ICE isn’t stopped now, they will — and already are — coming to other cities across the country to do the very same thing. Minneapolis’s efforts must be supported by active solidarity across the country, with affiliate unions organizing their own walkouts, strikes, and pickets to support the efforts of workers in the midwest. The national AFL-CIO denounced the events in Minneapolis and endorsed the action on January 23 — now it’s time to put words into real action and organize their members in every local to support Minneapolis and the right to stand up to the Trump administration’s attacks, which will be used to attack the working class in the future.

What happens next in Minneapolis will reverberate across the country and across the world. Kicking ICE out of the city for good represents nothing less than forcing a retreat for the Trump administration and its war on immigrants and the entire working class.

The post Outrage and Organization in Minneapolis: Chronicle from a Historic Uprising appeared first on Left Voice.

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The largest nurses’ union in the U.S. has demanded the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after a federal agent shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday, joining a rapidly growing chorus calling for Congress to do away with the rogue agency.

In a statement, National Nurses United (NNU) strongly condemned the killing of Pretti, saying the shooting demonstrates the “violence, terror, and lawlessness” and “dire public health threat” that federal immigration agencies pose to communities nationwide.

“The nation’s nurses, who make it their mission to care for and save human lives, are horrified and outraged that immigration agents have once again committed cold-blooded murder of a public observer who posed no threat to them,” NNU said. “ICE agents have been kidnapping hard working people — mothers, fathers, and children — and now murdered a registered nurse, one of the most trusted professions in the country.”

“Nurses demand the immediate abolition of ICE,” the group said. “Abolish ICE now.”

Pretti, 37, was an intensive care nurse at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital. He was shot and killed by a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent on Saturday as he was filming immigration agents conducting a raid on a Minneapolis street. Videos from bystanders showed multiple agents tackling him, taking his gun, and then shooting at him at least 10 times, killing him.

In their statement, NNU called on the Senate to block the funding package for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) slated to come to a vote this week. Senate Democrats have said that they are going to block the vote, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly told his caucus in a call on Sunday not to back calls to abolish the agency; instead, he said, the message must be to “restrain, reform and restrict ICE.”

On the date of the general strike in Minneapolis on Friday, just a day before Pretti’s killing, NNU had put out a statement condemning the House for its passage of the DHS appropriations bill.

The union, which has 225,000 members, has pledged to do “everything in our power” to get any members of Congress who vote to pass funding for ICE voted out of office.

Source

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Americans stripped supermarket shelves Friday ahead of potentially "catastrophic" winter weather that threatened at least 160 million people across the country with transportation chaos, blackouts and life-threatening cold.

The massive storm system was set to drop a mix of freezing rain and heavy snow starting Friday evening on its days-long march across the continental US.

The storm could bring "catastrophic ice accumulation," the National Weather Service said, potentially causing "long-duration power outages, extensive tree damage, and extremely dangerous or impassable travel conditions," including in many states less accustomed to intense winter weather.

After battering the country's southwest and central areas, the storm system was expected to hit the heavily populated mid-Atlantic and northeastern states—stretching from New Mexico to the Eastern seaboard—before a frigid air mass settles in.

More than 2,700 weekend flights have already been canceled, according to the tracker Flightaware, including many in and outbound from Texas.

State officials there vow the grid is in better shape than it was five years ago, when it failed during a deadly winter storm and left millions without power.

The southern state's Republican Governor Greg Abbott told journalists the grid "has never been stronger, never been more prepared and is fully capable of handling this winter storm."

Yet Michael Webber, a University of Texas engineering professor, warned ice accumulations would remain "a big risk" across the country—ice could amass and weigh down trees, for example, downing power lines and provoking outages.

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Kevin Abourezk
ICT

OMAHA, Nebraska – Kylesse Walker didn’t need to dance Wednesday to make the jingles on her dress clang. Nearly 40 mph winds did the work for her.

The 18-year-old Omaha and Ho-Chunk woman joined several other young Native women and dozens of other protesters on a busy street near downtown Omaha to protest the mass raids on immigrant communities being conducted nationally by federal agents.

“It’s not even just immigrants at this point,” she said. “It’s our own people. Nobody deserves to just be kidnapped like that and taken to who knows where. All Natives should stand up for what’s happening on our land and speak up.”

Kylesse Walker, 18, Omaha and Ho-Chunk, holds her ears to keep them warm during a protest held on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Omaha, Neb. Walker organized the event to protest recent immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota. (Kevin Abourezk/ICT)

Walker organized the protest with the help of the Bluebird Cultural Initiative’s Youth Council. The cultural initiative is an Omaha-based cultural revitalization nonprofit organization that offers cultural education and training programs and youth programs.

Nicole Benegas, director of the cultural initiative, said the youth council decided to host the event after discussing the events taking place in Minneapolis, where hundreds of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were sent in December to conduct mass immigration enforcement.

The young people created a flyer and shared it on their social media pages. Older Native people responded by attending the protest and standing beside them as they danced on the sidewalk, hoisting scarves, including a Palestinian kufiyah, that flailed in the wind.

“It’s important to support our young people in what they want to do, just make sure they’re safe and have the things that they need to do so,” Benegas said.

She said many members of the cultural initiative’s youth council are part Hispanic or Latino, and many of them, as well as their loved ones, have friends and relatives in Minnesota being impacted by the surge of federal agents and who are taking part in community demonstrations opposing that surge.

The youth council members also are concerned that similar federal immigration enforcement surges could happen in Omaha as well.

“For centuries, we’ve been fighting for our rights here on this land,” she said. “We have a lot of Indigenous relatives who should have some of the same rights too. They were here before those borders were placed there.”

While the protest was hastily organized, Benegas said the youth are planning to host future demonstrations and also plan to undergo training that will prepare them to more effectively organize future actions.

“This is the only way to grow new leaders is to pour into our young people when they want to do something like this,” she said.

Demonstrators in Omaha, Neb., on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, protest immigration enforcement efforts. The protest was organized by Native American youth. (Kevin Abourezk/ICT)

Demonstrators on Wednesday held signs that read: “Abolish ICE,” “Fascist out of Omaha,” and “Make America safe again.”

Walker said the youth council hosted a similar event in February 2025 when the Trump Administration began increasing immigration enforcement efforts. That event included a drum group and powwow dancers.

“A lot of my friends from the Mexican community really appreciated us stepping up for them and showing that we’re all in this together,” she said.

She said she was reminded of the earlier demonstration after seeing Mexican dancers performing in Minneapolis recently.

Walker said it’s important for Native Americans to understand that Hispanic immigrants are Indigenous to the Americas as well, and she said she is concerned by seeing Natives being taken into custody by ICE agents.

She said the youth council plans to host a much larger demonstration in the future with drummers, dancers and speakers.

“Hopefully it’ll be warmer,” Walker said.

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In yet another display of the Trump administration's disregard for the US Constitution, there have been at least 2,300 cases in which federal judges have ruled that immigration officials illegally detained people without bond or due process since just July, according to one journalist.

Politico reporter Kyle Cheney shared some of the cases he's tracked in a thread on the social media platform X late Saturday. "This is one that stands out," he said of Sonik Manaserian, an Iranian woman of Armenian ethnicity who is a member of the Baha'i faith.

According to an order out of the Central District of California in Manaserian's case, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "arrested a chronically ill, 70-year-old woman, who came to this country to avoid religious persecution and applied for asylum, who has lived here peacefully for 26 years and complied with all check-in requirements and other conditions of release, who has no known criminal record and poses no threat to anyone, without notice or the process required by their own regulations and without any plan for removing her from this country, then kept her in detention for months without sufficient medical care—and they do not have any argument to offer to even try to justify these actions."

Cheney's thread came just hours after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fatally shot legal observer and nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, less than three weeks after ICE officer Jonathan Ross similarly killed Renee Good in Minnesota's largest city.

"Minnesota courts have been inundated with these cases since the beginning of Operation Metro Surge last month," said the journalist, noting a Friday order in which a judge freed Audberto J., a Mexican man residing in the state, "where he and his wife have lived and raised three children together over the last 20 years."

While the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that its immigration enforcement operations are targeting "the worst of the worst," like the vast majority of immigrants actually seized by agents with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in recent months, Audberto J. has no criminal history, according to the order.

— (@)

"Yet another ruling from Friday, freeing a man detained by ICE in Minnesota who suffered severe head injuries during his arrest and has been hospitalized since. The man claims ICE has required him to be shackled in the hospital, against the wishes of doctors," Cheney noted. "Here's another Minnesota ruling that just came in tonight: A federal judge is threatening DHS with contempt for transferring a petitioner out of the state despite a court order enjoining the administration from doing so."

The journalist added to the thread on Sunday, as judges in Minnesota continued issue to rulings. In one of those cases, "Judge [Katherine] Menendez—who issued last week's injunction against ICE's retaliatory use of pepper spray—just ordered the release of a Kenyan woman arrested while picking up seizure medication at CVS."

Sharing the thread, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick stressed "this is what 'mass deportations' looks like. Neither due process nor basic humanity. Don't look away."

Immigrant Defenders Law Center co-founder and CEO Lindsay Toczylowski said that "as you read this excellent thread, let it sink in that one of the most pervasive issues for people in ICE detention is lack of access to counsel which means in most cases people have no shot at filing these challenges to their illegal detentions in federal court."

— (@)

The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution states in part that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," and protects various rights in legal proceedings. The Trump administration has also faced intense criticism recently for its disregard of rights protected by the First, Second, and Fourth amendments.

Cheney was praised by other journalists for "such good shoe-leather reporting," as "PBS NewsHour" correspondent Lisa Desjardins put it. Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff suggested that he "should get a Pulitzer for this thread."

John Yarmuth, a former newspaper editor and Democratic congressman from Kentucky, said that "this is a great example of a journalist doing his very critical job. Now it's up to government officials to act to correct these injustices. AND be shamed and replaced if they don't."

Last Thursday, seven Democrats in the US House of Representatives voted with nearly all Republicans to pass a multibillion-dollar DHS funding bill. Pretti's killing has increased pressure on all senators to reject it. While immigration agents' deadly and illegal actions have fueled calls to "abolish ICE," some lawmakers are demanding reforms at the agency and across the department.

Pointing to Cheney's findings, anti-monopoly lawyer Basel Musharbash said: "This is fucking insane. What reforms are supposed to fix an agency that commits 2,300 adjudicated constitutional violations in just six months? And those are just the ones that made it to court!"

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One of the architects of the Department of Homeland Security says the agency he helped create has turned into a monster.

Following this weekend's fatal shooting of 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, the second this month, John Mitnick—a conservative lawyer who served under both Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump—took to social media to express his fury at the agency's conduct.

"I helped to establish DHS in 2002 and 2003 and later had the Homeland Security portfolio as a White House counsel and served as general counsel of the department," said Mitnick on Saturday. "I am enraged and embarrassed by DHS’s lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty. Impeach and remove Trump—now."

— (@)

Mitnick, a former Republican candidate for Congress, served as an associate general counsel for science and technology at DHS from 2002-04, during the agency's infancy. An agency webpage credits him as someone who "assisted in establishing the department as an attorney in the Transition Planning Office."

After the Bush presidency, Mitnick served in a number of private-sector roles, including as senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary at the Heritage Foundation—the influential right-wing think tank that would go on to author much of the second Trump administration's agenda.

He returned to DHS in 2018, when he was confirmed by the US Senate as general counsel to the department under Trump. The New York Times explained that "part of Mr. Mitnick’s job as general counsel was to push back against policies that could put the Homeland Security Department in a legally dubious position."

In an ominous precursor to Trump 2.0, Mitnick was forced out of his role as DHS counsel in 2019 after pushing back against a policy to release detained migrants into Democratic-led sanctuary cities as part of a political stunt, as opposed to border towns.

That policy was spearheaded by none other than Stephen Miller, who was then serving as a senior adviser to Trump, who has become arguably the most powerful single figure in his second White House and the brains behind his "mass deportation" agenda.

Multiple White House sources described Miller as the driving force behind Mitnick's ouster as part of a larger "purge" of officials who refused to cosign orders they felt were legally questionable.

In contrast with other officials who have stated that they regret their involvement in creating DHS, believing it paved the way for Trump's authoritarianism, Mitnick contested on Saturday that "the name [of the agency] is not responsible for the conduct."

"Laws do not apply themselves; it takes officials of integrity and good character devoted to the rule of law to apply them," he said. "Current DHS leadership is devoid of those qualities."

Within hours of Pretti's shooting—just as they did following the shooting of 37-year-old mother Renee Good weeks ago—White House officials raced to absolve the agents involved of any wrongdoing while casting the victim as a dangerous terrorist threat, even as video evidence directly contradicted their claims.

Miller specifically described Pretti as a "would-be assassin" who sought to kill agents despite zero evidence of this being the case, other than the fact that he was legally carrying a handgun, while Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem baselessly described his actions as “domestic terrorism," prompting calls for her impeachment.

In the Guardian, columnistGeorge Chidi described it as part of "a pattern... emerging, in which the Trump administration prioritizes the vilification of the dead victim as to blame for the incident over preserving the neutrality of any investigative process."

Polls show that the American public has rapidly grown hostile to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the wake of its rampage across Minnesota, which—in addition to the extrajudicial killings of two US citizens—has involved cases of explicit racial profiling, unconstitutional "citizenship checks," and extreme uses of force against protesters, legal observers, and detainees.

A YouGov poll published Sunday found that just 20% of American adults found Pretti's shooting to be justified. That same poll found that a record high 46% of Americans now want to abolish ICE, compared with just 41% who want to maintain it. This includes 19% of Republicans, a higher percentage than ever recorded during Trump's second term.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that if ICE's conduct has so disturbed even a lifelong conservative functionary like Mitnick, it's a sign of how far the agency has truly gone.

"Beyond helping establish DHS itself in 2003, Mr. Mitnick was a Senate-confirmed Trump choice for general counsel for DHS in his first term, and is not a man for hyperbole," Reichlin-Melnick said. "So bear that in mind when you see him calling out DHS's 'lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty.'"

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Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requests support from the Department of War (DoW) to provide existing infrastructure to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a component of DHS, specifically an area for parking approximately 300-500 vehicles and 10 storage trailers, a ready room space for approximal 500-800 CBP personnel, a space to house, maintain and operate five CBP Air Assets, access to a magazine to store munitions, and other necessary facilities to support operations in the Minneapolis, Minnesota metropolitan area,” the email said,

The approval strongly suggests that any withdrawal without prosecution of ICE and Border Patrol is temporary, and that they are planning on a return in greater numbers.

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Kirk Milhoan's comments come as federal vaccine policy slides to insignificance.

Cities across the nation are cutting ties with the Atlanta-based police tech firm after revelations that Donald Trump’s deportation squads have repeatedly gained access to its data. Io Dodds reports

Nearly half of routinely-updated CDC databases have experienced delays or shutdowns in 2025, with vaccination-related systems disproportionately affected, according to a new study.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260126221616/https://www.404media.co/dozens-of-cdc-health-databases-have-gone-dark-under-trump-the-consequences-will-be-dire/

"We have an unaccountable secret police force that answers only to Trump." Nearly three days after the killing of Alex Pretti, the administration has still not released the identities of the agents who shot him.

Democrats have offered cussing and scolding after the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. We need a real plan of attack, now.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://theintercept.com/2026/01/26/alex-pretti-democrats-abolish-ice/

The only appropriate answer to this murderous violence is to expand the general strike.

The day after a historic general strike by the people of Minnesota, federal agents involved in Trump’s mass deportation campaign have committed yet another shocking act of deadly violence. Video footage from this morning shows federal agents in south Minneapolis wrestling a man to the ground, pinning him on the sidewalk, and shooting him multiple times while he was restrained and fully surrounded by officers who were striking him. Authorities confirmed shortly after that the victim had been killed.

The only appropriate answer to this murderous violence is to expand the general strike. The entire country was electrified at the moving images of massive unity and resistance from the Twin Cities yesterday. Federal agents have answered this mobilization with yet another murder. Now, the struggle must widen and grow stronger than ever.

Trump has unleashed a wave of terror nationwide. ICE and Border Patrol are the frontline enforcers of his racist campaign to expel huge numbers of people from the country that this white supremacist administration considers “incompatible with western civilization”. In the pursuit of this horrifying mission, federal cops have been given a license to kill with impunity.

Trump plans to continue his ICE invasions city by city, sending in thousands of agents to rip families apart and murder anyone who stands in their way. Just yesterday, the people of the Twin Cities showed the way. The people need to use our power to shut down business as usual and make it impossible for this reign of terror to continue.

Residents near the scene of a shooting by a federal law enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, 2026. Photo: Jaida Grey Eagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Border Patrol agents on Saturday shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen. Pretti was an ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital and legally carrying a Sig Sauer pistol. Bystander video shows him filming agents with a phone before being tackled and pinned facedown on the pavement as more than six officers swarm him. According to video of the shooting, at least one officer can be heard shouting “he’s got a gun,” and an agent appears to take Pretti’s weapon and begin to walk away before at least 10 shots ring out. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said in a press conference that Pretti was “a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.” Federal officials initially defended the shooting as self-defense, insisting Pretti had resisted disarmament and threatened agents. But open-source analysis by Bellingcat concluded the gun had already been taken from Pretti by the time the shots were fired.

Already, much has been made by the administration over the fact that Pretti was armed, a startling legal shift for officials who publicly espouse their love of the Second Amendment.

The Trump Justice Department has now formally embraced the idea that a citizen carrying a legal firearm who approaches federal officers can be shot on sight. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli — a Trump appointee — put this new doctrine bluntly: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.” In effect, the president who demanded absolute loyalty from gun rights voters is sanctioning deadly force against those voters whenever they come near a line of federal officers. This pronouncement came just hours after Pretti’s killing, turning a local tragedy into a national declaration of policy. The gap between Second Amendment rhetoric and the on-the-ground reality of federal law enforcement has never been more obvious.

Have a Gun? Expect a Bullet.

Essayli’s declaration sent shockwaves through America’s gun community, and leaders of pro-gun groups immediately distanced themselves from the White House line. (On Truth Social, Trump posted a photo of the gun, writing, “This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go – What is that all about?” Less than 24 hours later, Trump had seemingly moved on, posting about construction on the White House ballroom.) Dana Loesch, a former spokesperson for the National Rifle Association and a conservative radio host, questioned the administration’s contention that Pretti had two loaded magazines as evidence he intended to harm immigration agents: “What he has or didn’t have isn’t the issue. What he was doing, with or without it, is the issue.”

By the end of the day, the NRA — historically among Trump’s biggest backers — had finally issued a lukewarm call for calm and due process and called Essayli’s remarks “dangerous and wrong,” but only after its social media followers lambasted the group for inexplicably staying silent at first. Remember: the NRA funneled some $25 million into Trump’s campaigns. For gun owners who gave Trump everything, the silence was deafening.

For gun owners who gave Trump everything, the silence was deafening.

The conservative advocacy group Gun Owners of America called for a “complete, transparent, and prompt investigation” and flatly rejected the idea that federal agents can justifiably shoot and kill legal gun owners. In a statement responding to Essayli, GOA warned “agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm.”

On the ground in Minnesota, gun rights advocates were outraged. The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus demanded evidence that Pretti posed any real threat, and insisted that every lawful citizen has the right to carry arms — even in a protest. Its general counsel, Rob Doar, told local news station KSTP that officers “have to have been in reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm” to use deadly force and his read based on the video is “that at the time that the shots were fired he had been disarmed seconds before.” Rick Hodsdon, an expert on permit to carry laws in the state, put an even finer point on the issue: The idea that any citizen approaching armed agents with a legal gun should be shot is “absurd.”

Other vocal critics rebuked Border Patrol statements implying that Pretti was armed to the teeth, and aiming, as official Greg Bovino claimed, to do “maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Veteran gun rights commentator Stephen Gutowski reminded followers that carrying extra magazines is common for permit holders. Others pointed out that this new paradigm risks transforming routine encounters with public safety officials into moments of terror for lawful gun owners. Kostas Moros, director of legal research and education for the Second Amendment Foundation, told The Reload, “People should not fear interacting with police officers simply because they are lawfully carrying a firearm.”

For many Second Amendment stalwarts, the Trump administration’s new stance is the ultimate betrayal. The man who vowed never to infringe on gun rights is now sanctioning lethal force against his own voters.

Thou Shalt Infringe

The Pretti killing and its official defense expose a wider hypocrisy in Trump’s approach to gun rights, despite his rhetoric. While Trump once praised Kyle Rittenhouse — the armed teenager who killed two people at a protest in Wisconsin — as “really a nice young man” who never deserved to go to trial, he has, throughout his career, quietly supported more gun safety measures than he admits.

During his first term, he casually let it slip that he was fine with taking guns without due process before backtracking. During his first administration, he also famously signed a rule banning bump-fire stocks (devices that simulated fully automatic fire) after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, a rule that was later struck down by the Supreme Court. Just last year, that same court — which is dominated by Trump appointees — upheld a sweeping new Joe Biden-era rule restricting untraceable “ghost guns,” rejecting challenges by gun rights groups.

Meanwhile, Trump has increasingly deployed federal forces into jurisdictions with some of the strictest gun-control laws in the country, using federal authority to lean into those regulations — despite promising to protect gun owners from government overreach. In August 2025, federal agents embedded with local police in Washington, D.C., and seized 111 firearms as part of Trump’s federal surge in the district to combat “crime.” For gun rights advocates, the operation exposed the quiet inversion underway: Federal agents can now treat gun ownership as a novel way to target, harass, and enforce their authority in ways that have little to do with any actual crime. Luis Valdes, a spokesperson for Gun Owners of America, said at the time that these seizures amounted to low-hanging fruit. “Charging [citizens] only for possession of a firearm means they couldn’t even establish reasonable suspicion or probable cause for any other crime,” he said. “We’re not against law enforcement going out there and going after real criminals. We’re just against law enforcement resources being mis-utilized, and having those resources used to violate people’s due process and Second Amendment rights.”

From Chicago to Los Angeles, these federal “surges” have meant heavily armed federal agents roaming neighborhoods looking to scoop up American firearms along the way — hardly a symbol of Second Amendment liberation. At the same time, the Justice Department has quietly pursued policies that make life harder for gun owners, not easier. While Trump’s February 2025 executive order on firearms directed the DOJ to review Biden-era regulations, many of his more expansive campaign promises remain outstanding, leaving little evidence that his administration has meaningfully expanded ordinary Americans’ access to firearms.

Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” for instance, made it cheaper to purchase suppressors and short-barreled weapons but not easier — keeping buyers locked behind the same federal regulatory regime his campaign promised to dismantle. In response, major gun rights groups have moved to mount new legal challenges against Trump’s ATF to eliminate outstanding red tape. And despite early promises to enact national concealed-carry reciprocity — a policy that would require every state to recognize gun permits issued by other states, much like driver’s licenses — that reform has yet to materialize.

Under Trump, gun rights have increasingly been filtered through federal power, not individual freedom.

It is also worth noting who Trump is in this equation: a gun-violence survivor, raised in one of the most restrictive gun safety environments in the country, who publicly champions the gun industry but now governs a far more heavily armed nation from behind layers of federal security. In Trump’s America, the question is no longer whether guns should exist, but whether the government still views the people who legally carry them as legitimate.

The bottom line is harder to ignore: Under Trump, gun rights have increasingly been filtered through federal power, not individual freedom. Now, after a second fatal shooting by federal immigration authorities in Minneapolis in as many weeks, his administration is crystallizing this shift as de facto policy: If an American simply owns a gun in front of feds, the use of “deadly force” is not just permitted but justified. And now that the feds are everywhere, the implications for an armed citizenry are chilling.

All of this flies in the face of Trump’s campaign promises of a Second Amendment utopia. The millions the NRA and pro-gun political action committees funneled into electing him have bought little more than cold comfort. Gun rights groups can protest and litigate but the precedent is now set: Under this administration, trained federal officers can, on executive authority alone, treat legally armed citizens — protesters or otherwise — as legitimate targets. The president who promised not to take away Americans’ guns has effectively signed off on taking away any safety those guns once provided. If this shift endures, it points toward a country with more federal deployments, more armed encounters, and a Second Amendment that exists in theory but not in practice