It is time for local and state governments to resist more forcefully the lawlessness and cowardice of an out-of-control federal government under the thumb of Trump.
Protestors clash with federal agents outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on January 8, 2026.
(Photo by Octavio Jones / AFP via Getty Images)
Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler
Jan 27, 2026
Common Dreams
He broke it! He did not wait for permission to change things. He simply bent and, in most cases, broke it. If the answer was going to be no, why wait for the no is his strategy. The strategy is to test the basic mores of the country. Don’t ask about tearing down the West Wing of the White House. He ordered the dismantling of DEI and government and businesses fell into line. It resulted in one of the biggest reductions in workforce in government employment with workers surprised and left scurrying to find new job security. Vastly significant portions of Black women, estimated 300,000 “lost their good government job.” He did not ask for permission to do that. He demanded that historical language be sanitized in museums and on official signage erasing historical social and racial justice messaging. He just did it. As he bombed boats in the Caribbean Sea, killing a hundred people, he did not ask whether it was legal but simply let the incendiary devices fly. The justification offered was that they were bringing drugs to America which was not feasible or truthful given where the boats were. When he commandeered ships carrying oil from Venezuela he did not ask. He hijacked the ships without seeking permission. He sent troops into American cities without respect for local governments using the weight of the national government.
Trump’s right-wing agenda has inspired and turned loosed a viciousness embodied in the actions of trained and also hastily onboarded federal law enforcement that are acting more like storm troopers than anything else. Renee Good was shot three times as she served as a monitor observing these storm troopers. She seemed to try and connect appealing to the humanity of the federal agents, as observed on video but was spurned and in futility she tried to drive away. As she turned the wheels on her vehicle to leave the hatred and right-wing zeal of a federal agent stepped in front of her vehicle and discharged his weapon. He killed her for no apparent reason other than she for watching and monitoring the action of these federally protected agents. She was not an immigrant, but she was a mother, wife and an American citizen. They shot her three times. Then approximately two and a half weeks later, early on a Saturday morning Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the VA was shoved to the ground, brutally beaten by this death squad and shot nine time in five seconds. He died on the spot. He also was an American citizen exercising his right to protest trying to safeguard the community from this lawless occupation. The Trump administration quickly swung into action to discredit and devalue their lives by calling them “terrorists”. This is a word DHS and Christie Noem use to justify any and all ICE shootings and killings. ICE and immigration officials have discharged their weapons into the American public at least 16 times. The headlines, as the media try to collect information, expands not necessarily daily but certainly. In January 2026, The Wall Street Journal identified at least 13 instances of immigration officers “firing at or into civilian vehicles” but by the end of the month that figure was obsolete. There is a violent, murderous hatred embedded in the attitudes of these so-called officers of the law.
Expert Who Ran Simulations on ‘How Civil Wars Start’ Warns Minnesota Is Exactly What It Looks Like
Local government has tried to resist. In Montgomery County, Maryland there is currently a bill, The County Values Act, that would require a judicial warrant for ICE to access nonpublic areas in county facilities. It would also prohibit the use of county-owned parking lots, garages and vacant lots for immigration enforcement. There is also The Unmask ICE Act, that would prohibit federal, state and local law enforcement from wearing masks on the job. That seems only fair since because in many jurisdictions it was already illegal for citizens to be masked! Currently some 15 states have proposed bills to prohibit law enforcement officers from wearing masks. The federal law enforcement agencies claim that masks are to protect DHS officers and their families by shielding their identities. That is ironic since cameras are in use by ICE and other federal agencies to build a facial recognition database. There are and has been attempts to pushback against federal masks and the conduct of federal agents. Bills have been proposed in Alaska, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. Each of these legislative bodies are appalled by the dangers of troops in the streets and are seeking to reestablish democratic norms. Twenty-one state attorney generals penned and sent a letter to Members of Congress urging them to pass legislation to prohibit immigration agents from wearing masks. They warned that ICE agents wearing masks “have the effect of terrorizing communities rather than protecting them.” They further stated in the letter that “the commonplace use of masks and the failure of ICE to identify themselves as law enforcement makes everyone less safe and weakens the integrity of our justice systems.” The pushback is admirable and needed but the issues are far more than masks but the overall viciousness and violent attacks being carried out with impunity on American streets against immigrants and citizens alike.
These bills and letters are local governments and political leaders operating within the culture and structure of American conformity where decorum is presented and the traditional rules of law applies. Civil protest and discourse are exercised believing that the structures have power. They have been trained to abide by the rules of civility. Meanwhile the federal behemoth is trampling standard political decorum by bending things until they break and using the weight of the federal government to crush any the resistance. What is needed now and before it is too late is the deliberate creation of a constitutional crisis.
The 10th amendment has swung in opposite streams through US history. Its purpose was to maintain boundaries between the federal government and the states. It was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. This is one reason why it took so long for slavery to be abolished in the United States. The federal government was restrained in ordering states what to do and nearing the Civil War battles were fought within certain territories of whether they would become a free state or a protectorate of enslavement. It took the Civil War for slavery to be abolished. Then with federal troops stationed in the former slave states there were several years where enfranchisement and relative freedom was advanced. That period is called Reconstruction. The federal government used its powers to enforce political and social inclusion. However, the racists fought back through acts of terror and sabotage until Reconstruction ended with federal troops being withdrawn from the south. Once again, those former slave states were free to institute Black codes and legally enforced racial stratification and separation. The federal government did not intervene for another 100 years until the civil rights movement challenged the legalities of racial segregation by pushing and passing laws using the weight of federal government to restrain the racial excesses of local governments. We in the racial justice movement wanted the federal government to regulate the behavior of the states. So, you can imagine the angst I have in this historical moment for a stronger state and local government.
The irony is that in this historical moment I would like to see a strong local and state government that is able to muster its own law enforcement to confront, challenge, question, apprehend, and arrest masked federal armed marauders. This requires local governments to call upon local law enforcement to be loyal to the local community and committed to protecting the community from the violence being perpetuated by federal authorities.
The local authorities need to have future employment predicated on whether local law enforcement is committed to the safety of the local population or will continue to stand assisting federal agents as they assault the population. They need to be tested as to whether they are more loyal to local government or obedient to federal agents who are racially targeting, terrorizing, assaulting, shooting and killing the local population. This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. Local government must demand that members of local law enforcement go after masked agents, arrest them for every act that threatens, every person kidnapped without due process, each violation of property rights, and for acts of violence against the local population. In other words, local law enforcement should be pressured to do what they have always done in every social and racial justice uprising - demand order, protect property, people, and make arrest!
We are in a civil war, and the tables of history have turned because the federal government is trampling over all the rights at the local level.
This historical moment demands that we find strategies to bend it back and maybe do our own breaking in this horrific moment of American history. When this federal behemoth monster is subdued then we can redress normal order. However, as the behemoth tramples the landscape in America bending things until he breaks them something more graphic and demonstrative is need then bills that are proposed and passed but have little to no impact. Local governments and the states need to precipitate a national and constitutional crisis where the local governments challenge the legalities of national government in more than letters, bills and grassroots petitions.
Local governments need to demand local officials to enforce local laws, and in most cases laws that are already on the books. This would be the wake-up call that is needed for the courts to pay closer attention, create a vigorous debate in Congress, and challenge the powers of these grotesque beings that are occupying our cities and towns and shooting and killing our neighbors and friends.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler
Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler is an advisor with FOR-USA and the founder and president of Faith Strategies USA. Until retiring from his position in 2022 Hagler was Senior Minister at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C.
Full Bio >
He broke it! He did not wait for permission to change things. He simply bent and, in most cases, broke it. If the answer was going to be no, why wait for the no is his strategy. The strategy is to test the basic mores of the country. Don’t ask about tearing down the West Wing of the White House. He ordered the dismantling of DEI and government and businesses fell into line. It resulted in one of the biggest reductions in workforce in government employment with workers surprised and left scurrying to find new job security. Vastly significant portions of Black women, estimated 300,000 “lost their good government job.” He did not ask for permission to do that. He demanded that historical language be sanitized in museums and on official signage erasing historical social and racial justice messaging. He just did it. As he bombed boats in the Caribbean Sea, killing a hundred people, he did not ask whether it was legal but simply let the incendiary devices fly. The justification offered was that they were bringing drugs to America which was not feasible or truthful given where the boats were. When he commandeered ships carrying oil from Venezuela he did not ask. He hijacked the ships without seeking permission. He sent troops into American cities without respect for local governments using the weight of the national government.
Trump’s right-wing agenda has inspired and turned loosed a viciousness embodied in the actions of trained and also hastily onboarded federal law enforcement that are acting more like storm troopers than anything else. Renee Good was shot three times as she served as a monitor observing these storm troopers. She seemed to try and connect appealing to the humanity of the federal agents, as observed on video but was spurned and in futility she tried to drive away. As she turned the wheels on her vehicle to leave the hatred and right-wing zeal of a federal agent stepped in front of her vehicle and discharged his weapon. He killed her for no apparent reason other than she for watching and monitoring the action of these federally protected agents. She was not an immigrant, but she was a mother, wife and an American citizen. They shot her three times. Then approximately two and a half weeks later, early on a Saturday morning Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the VA was shoved to the ground, brutally beaten by this death squad and shot nine time in five seconds. He died on the spot. He also was an American citizen exercising his right to protest trying to safeguard the community from this lawless occupation. The Trump administration quickly swung into action to discredit and devalue their lives by calling them “terrorists”. This is a word DHS and Christie Noem use to justify any and all ICE shootings and killings. ICE and immigration officials have discharged their weapons into the American public at least 16 times. The headlines, as the media try to collect information, expands not necessarily daily but certainly. In January 2026, The Wall Street Journal identified at least 13 instances of immigration officers “firing at or into civilian vehicles” but by the end of the month that figure was obsolete. There is a violent, murderous hatred embedded in the attitudes of these so-called officers of the law.
Expert Who Ran Simulations on ‘How Civil Wars Start’ Warns Minnesota Is Exactly What It Looks Like
Local government has tried to resist. In Montgomery County, Maryland there is currently a bill, The County Values Act, that would require a judicial warrant for ICE to access nonpublic areas in county facilities. It would also prohibit the use of county-owned parking lots, garages and vacant lots for immigration enforcement. There is also The Unmask ICE Act, that would prohibit federal, state and local law enforcement from wearing masks on the job. That seems only fair since because in many jurisdictions it was already illegal for citizens to be masked! Currently some 15 states have proposed bills to prohibit law enforcement officers from wearing masks. The federal law enforcement agencies claim that masks are to protect DHS officers and their families by shielding their identities. That is ironic since cameras are in use by ICE and other federal agencies to build a facial recognition database. There are and has been attempts to pushback against federal masks and the conduct of federal agents. Bills have been proposed in Alaska, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. Each of these legislative bodies are appalled by the dangers of troops in the streets and are seeking to reestablish democratic norms. Twenty-one state attorney generals penned and sent a letter to Members of Congress urging them to pass legislation to prohibit immigration agents from wearing masks. They warned that ICE agents wearing masks “have the effect of terrorizing communities rather than protecting them.” They further stated in the letter that “the commonplace use of masks and the failure of ICE to identify themselves as law enforcement makes everyone less safe and weakens the integrity of our justice systems.” The pushback is admirable and needed but the issues are far more than masks but the overall viciousness and violent attacks being carried out with impunity on American streets against immigrants and citizens alike.
These bills and letters are local governments and political leaders operating within the culture and structure of American conformity where decorum is presented and the traditional rules of law applies. Civil protest and discourse are exercised believing that the structures have power. They have been trained to abide by the rules of civility. Meanwhile the federal behemoth is trampling standard political decorum by bending things until they break and using the weight of the federal government to crush any the resistance. What is needed now and before it is too late is the deliberate creation of a constitutional crisis.
The 10th amendment has swung in opposite streams through US history. Its purpose was to maintain boundaries between the federal government and the states. It was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. This is one reason why it took so long for slavery to be abolished in the United States. The federal government was restrained in ordering states what to do and nearing the Civil War battles were fought within certain territories of whether they would become a free state or a protectorate of enslavement. It took the Civil War for slavery to be abolished. Then with federal troops stationed in the former slave states there were several years where enfranchisement and relative freedom was advanced. That period is called Reconstruction. The federal government used its powers to enforce political and social inclusion. However, the racists fought back through acts of terror and sabotage until Reconstruction ended with federal troops being withdrawn from the south. Once again, those former slave states were free to institute Black codes and legally enforced racial stratification and separation. The federal government did not intervene for another 100 years until the civil rights movement challenged the legalities of racial segregation by pushing and passing laws using the weight of federal government to restrain the racial excesses of local governments. We in the racial justice movement wanted the federal government to regulate the behavior of the states. So, you can imagine the angst I have in this historical moment for a stronger state and local government.
The irony is that in this historical moment I would like to see a strong local and state government that is able to muster its own law enforcement to confront, challenge, question, apprehend, and arrest masked federal armed marauders. This requires local governments to call upon local law enforcement to be loyal to the local community and committed to protecting the community from the violence being perpetuated by federal authorities.
The local authorities need to have future employment predicated on whether local law enforcement is committed to the safety of the local population or will continue to stand assisting federal agents as they assault the population. They need to be tested as to whether they are more loyal to local government or obedient to federal agents who are racially targeting, terrorizing, assaulting, shooting and killing the local population. This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. Local government must demand that members of local law enforcement go after masked agents, arrest them for every act that threatens, every person kidnapped without due process, each violation of property rights, and for acts of violence against the local population. In other words, local law enforcement should be pressured to do what they have always done in every social and racial justice uprising - demand order, protect property, people, and make arrest!
We are in a civil war, and the tables of history have turned because the federal government is trampling over all the rights at the local level.
This historical moment demands that we find strategies to bend it back and maybe do our own breaking in this horrific moment of American history. When this federal behemoth monster is subdued then we can redress normal order. However, as the behemoth tramples the landscape in America bending things until he breaks them something more graphic and demonstrative is need then bills that are proposed and passed but have little to no impact. Local governments and the states need to precipitate a national and constitutional crisis where the local governments challenge the legalities of national government in more than letters, bills and grassroots petitions.
Local governments need to demand local officials to enforce local laws, and in most cases laws that are already on the books. This would be the wake-up call that is needed for the courts to pay closer attention, create a vigorous debate in Congress, and challenge the powers of these grotesque beings that are occupying our cities and towns and shooting and killing our neighbors and friends.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler
Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler is an advisor with FOR-USA and the founder and president of Faith Strategies USA. Until retiring from his position in 2022 Hagler was Senior Minister at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C.
Full Bio >
Trump Sent Lawless, Murderous Thugs to Minnesota
The threats and the invasion have come home. We are all Minnesotans now.
Demonstrators march through downtown protesting ICE operations and the death of Renee Good and Alex Pretti on January 25, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pretti, an ICU nurse at a VA medical center, died Saturday after being shot multiple times during a brief altercation with border patrol agents in the Eat Street district of Minneapolis. Good was killed by an ICE agent on January 7.
(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Mitchell Zimmerman
Jan 27, 2026
The threats and the invasion have come home. We are all Minnesotans now.
Demonstrators march through downtown protesting ICE operations and the death of Renee Good and Alex Pretti on January 25, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pretti, an ICU nurse at a VA medical center, died Saturday after being shot multiple times during a brief altercation with border patrol agents in the Eat Street district of Minneapolis. Good was killed by an ICE agent on January 7.
(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Mitchell Zimmerman
Jan 27, 2026
Common Dreams
Do Americans who engage in lawful and peaceful protest enjoy the protection of the United States Constitution? Not any more, the Trump regime says in authorizing the shameless misconduct and lethal violence ICE agents are perpetrating against citizens in Minnesota.
ICE has invaded the state of Minnesota to show America that nothing can restrain Trump’s army of thugs. Not the Constitution. Not the laws which make it a crime to commit assault and murder. Not public opinion. And not thousands of citizens exercising their rights.
Trump Vows ‘Reckoning and Retribution is Coming’ to Minnesota as ICE Brutality Mounts
‘Minneapolis Is the Test Case’: Trump Threatens Insurrection Act to Put Down Protests
Although far from the first instance of ICE brutality, the slaying of Renee Nicole Good shocked the nation as a clear case of murder in cold blood.
The killing was not in “self-defense”—if a car is really hurtling toward you, you don’t pause to take out your gun, aim and shoot, because you know shooting won’t stop the car. You run. Good’s autopsy confirms that it was murder: the fatal bullet was the one fired into the victim’s left temple, when the ICE agent shot through the driver’s side window from alongside the car.
In response to the homicide, President Trump false asserted the agent had been run over, and charged the victim with the “crime” of having been “very, very disrespectful to law enforcement”; the chief of Homeland Security called Good a “domestic terrorist,” supposedly “stalking“ ICE (meaning she followed them to observe their conduct); and the Department of Justice launched an investigation, not of the killing, but of the victim’s widow.
Meanwhile, the Vice President proclaimed ICE impunity. Speaking of Renee Good’s killer, Vance stated, “That guy’s protected by absolute immunity.”
The claim is legally baseless, but ICE agents got the message they can brutalize and even summarily execute at will, without consequences. And now, within weeks, ICE agents have committed another murder, this time of Alex Pretti, a citizen who was an ICU nurse, with a burst of bullets in the victim’s back while he lay defenseless on the ground.
Since the Supreme Court approved of ICE stopping individuals based on racial profiling, ICE agents have seized and frequently assaulted individuals simply because they appeared to be Hispanic—or Hmong or Somali or Native American. They are freely employing the same tactics in Minnesota.
Do you carry proof of citizenship with you? Neither do I. But in an echo of Nazi Germany, ICE agents demand to “see your papers,” particularly if you are non-white.
Targeting journalists and citizen observers. An official policy of breaking into homes without a judicial warrant. Detaining children. Handcuffing individuals until they come up with proof of identity. Dragging people out of their cars without probable cause to think they committed a crime. Assault on suspected “illegals.” Attacking nonviolent, peaceful demonstrators with pepper balls, tear gas, rubber bullets. Threatening with guns, shooting at cars, and now, actual murders.
These are the abuses of a conquering army, inflicted upon an occupied nation.
ICE and Border Patrol, the entities now inflicting these wounds on our democracy, are no more law enforcement agencies than was Hitler’s Gestapo. ICE is an unrestrained, racist, violence-craving gang, trying to impose Trump’s will on a state. It should be disbanded.
Hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans have taken to the streets to bravely defy ICE’s intimidation and violence, to insist on their rights under law, and to express solidarity with their neighbors who are ICE victims. And across the nation, many thousands came out in support.
In other places where liberty has been challenged, Americans and our leaders identified with a threatened people. “I am a Berliner,” President John F. Kennedy affirmed at the Berlin Wall in 1963. “I am a Greenlander,” some now say in response to President Trump’s threats to invade an ally’s territory.
The threats and the invasion have come home. If our constitutional rights are not to be erased, we must act with the courage displayed by Minnesotans. “I am a Minnesotan.” So are we all.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Mitchell Zimmerman
Mitchell Zimmerman is an attorney, longtime social activist, and author of the anti-racism thriller "Mississippi Reckoning" (2019).
Full Bio >
Do Americans who engage in lawful and peaceful protest enjoy the protection of the United States Constitution? Not any more, the Trump regime says in authorizing the shameless misconduct and lethal violence ICE agents are perpetrating against citizens in Minnesota.
ICE has invaded the state of Minnesota to show America that nothing can restrain Trump’s army of thugs. Not the Constitution. Not the laws which make it a crime to commit assault and murder. Not public opinion. And not thousands of citizens exercising their rights.
Trump Vows ‘Reckoning and Retribution is Coming’ to Minnesota as ICE Brutality Mounts
‘Minneapolis Is the Test Case’: Trump Threatens Insurrection Act to Put Down Protests
Although far from the first instance of ICE brutality, the slaying of Renee Nicole Good shocked the nation as a clear case of murder in cold blood.
The killing was not in “self-defense”—if a car is really hurtling toward you, you don’t pause to take out your gun, aim and shoot, because you know shooting won’t stop the car. You run. Good’s autopsy confirms that it was murder: the fatal bullet was the one fired into the victim’s left temple, when the ICE agent shot through the driver’s side window from alongside the car.
In response to the homicide, President Trump false asserted the agent had been run over, and charged the victim with the “crime” of having been “very, very disrespectful to law enforcement”; the chief of Homeland Security called Good a “domestic terrorist,” supposedly “stalking“ ICE (meaning she followed them to observe their conduct); and the Department of Justice launched an investigation, not of the killing, but of the victim’s widow.
Meanwhile, the Vice President proclaimed ICE impunity. Speaking of Renee Good’s killer, Vance stated, “That guy’s protected by absolute immunity.”
The claim is legally baseless, but ICE agents got the message they can brutalize and even summarily execute at will, without consequences. And now, within weeks, ICE agents have committed another murder, this time of Alex Pretti, a citizen who was an ICU nurse, with a burst of bullets in the victim’s back while he lay defenseless on the ground.
Since the Supreme Court approved of ICE stopping individuals based on racial profiling, ICE agents have seized and frequently assaulted individuals simply because they appeared to be Hispanic—or Hmong or Somali or Native American. They are freely employing the same tactics in Minnesota.
Do you carry proof of citizenship with you? Neither do I. But in an echo of Nazi Germany, ICE agents demand to “see your papers,” particularly if you are non-white.
Targeting journalists and citizen observers. An official policy of breaking into homes without a judicial warrant. Detaining children. Handcuffing individuals until they come up with proof of identity. Dragging people out of their cars without probable cause to think they committed a crime. Assault on suspected “illegals.” Attacking nonviolent, peaceful demonstrators with pepper balls, tear gas, rubber bullets. Threatening with guns, shooting at cars, and now, actual murders.
These are the abuses of a conquering army, inflicted upon an occupied nation.
ICE and Border Patrol, the entities now inflicting these wounds on our democracy, are no more law enforcement agencies than was Hitler’s Gestapo. ICE is an unrestrained, racist, violence-craving gang, trying to impose Trump’s will on a state. It should be disbanded.
Hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans have taken to the streets to bravely defy ICE’s intimidation and violence, to insist on their rights under law, and to express solidarity with their neighbors who are ICE victims. And across the nation, many thousands came out in support.
In other places where liberty has been challenged, Americans and our leaders identified with a threatened people. “I am a Berliner,” President John F. Kennedy affirmed at the Berlin Wall in 1963. “I am a Greenlander,” some now say in response to President Trump’s threats to invade an ally’s territory.
The threats and the invasion have come home. If our constitutional rights are not to be erased, we must act with the courage displayed by Minnesotans. “I am a Minnesotan.” So are we all.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Mitchell Zimmerman
Mitchell Zimmerman is an attorney, longtime social activist, and author of the anti-racism thriller "Mississippi Reckoning" (2019).
Full Bio >
Defeating Trump’s Fascism Is Going to Take You and Me—All of Us
We have now crossed the border to authoritarian rule in the United States. But the fight is not over.
People mourn at a makeshift memorial in the area where 37-year-old Alex Pretti was shot dead by federal immigration agents earlier in the day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 24, 2026.
(Photo by Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images)
Chuck Idelson
Jan 27, 2026
Common Dreams
“The border between democracy and authoritarianism is the least protected border in the world.”
Ivan Krastev, Bulgarian chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, dropped that assessment on Jon Stewart’s weekly blog last week.
“The border between democracy and authoritarianism is the least protected border in the world.”
Ivan Krastev, Bulgarian chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, dropped that assessment on Jon Stewart’s weekly blog last week.
Four days later, that stark reality took a quantum leap with the brutal murder of registered nurse Alex Pretti by a member of President Donald Trump’s paramilitary army in Minneapolis. Pretti is not the first killing by an agent of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) or CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) in recent weeks.
Renee Nicole Good was maliciously shot through a car window by an ICE agent earlier in Minneapolis. Keith Porter was shot and killed while celebrating on New Year’s Eve by an off-duty ICE agent in a Los Angeles suburb. At least six others have died in ICE detention facilities, including Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, who was strangled in what an El Paso autopsy has ruled a homicide.
Yet the Twin City murders of Good followed so soon by Pretti, two white US citizen observers who were appalled by the violent ICE invasion of their city, has transformed the dialogue on whether our country has crossed the road to authoritarian rule.
Neither could be easily demonized by the administration despite desperate attempts by HHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Vice President JD Vance, Press Secretary Karoline Leavett and other administration attack dogs to label them as “domestic terrorists” and justify their murders.
The violence has escalated as Trump, Miller, Vance, and Noem seek to secure and expand their power through what they believe will intimidate and force consent for their authoritarian rule. But they are also afraid of the growing popular resistance.
The usually compliant major media rapidly rejected the administration’s lies and cover-up efforts. Almost immediately, the media rejected the excuse that Pretti was planning a “massacre” of ICE agents with a firearm he had a legal permit to carry under Minnesota law. That was especially hypocritical considering the administration’s regular celebration of those on the far right who bring lethal weapons to protests from Kyle Rittenhouse to militia seeking to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists pardoned by Trump.
“Videos Contradict Federal Accounts of Federal Shooting,” blared a New York Times headline, as the Times had pioneered video documentation exposing the lies on Good’s murder. The footage, the Times wrote, shows Pretti “stepping between a woman and an agent pepper spraying her. Other agents then pepper spray Mr. Pretti who is holding a phone in one hand and nothing in the other. His concealed weapon is found and only after he is restrained on the sidewalk …and taken from him before the agents opened fire.” He was killed with 10 shots then, and the agents blocked a physician who saw the shooting from providing medical aid.
The Washington Post presented the clearest video evidence in a report labeled “Federal agent secured gun from Minn. man before fatal shooting, videos show.” Even the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal called the shooting “the worst … to date in what is becoming a moral and political debacle for the Trump Presidency.” A Journal editorial dismissed administration “spin” saying it “simply isn’t believable.”
Few missed that the Pretti shooting occurred just a hours after tens of thousands of Minnesota residents marched through the streets of Minneapolis in minus 10 degree weather in a general strike and economic boycott to send a message of overwhelming public opposition to Trump’s Minneapolis invasion.
“I do believe that the real problem is that the border between democracy and authoritarianism is the least protected border in the world,” Ivan Krastev, also a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, prompting Stewart to proclaim, “you can’t just drop that in the middle of a podcast and expect me not to stand up and applaud. Say that again.”
State sponsored violence is the clearest signpost of a regime that has embraced autocratic rule, whether the dictatorship is appointed following an election, as in the case of Hitler or Suharto, marched on the capital by his paramilitary troops like Mussolini, imposed by a military coup like Pinochet and the Argentine “dirty war” generals, or through a bloody civil war like Franco.
ICE and CPB agents most resemble Hitler’s SA Brown Shirts, his paramilitary troops who engaged in violent assaults on political opponents even before Hitler was appointed chancellor by fading democratic Weimar Republic leaders. Two months before Hitler was anointed, a document was leaked in one Nazi sympathetic state that ordered “all orders of the SA or other paramilitary force were to be obeyed under pain of death,” as Benjamin Carter Hett points out in The Death of Democracy.
“While the junta’s national project had several ideological pillars—neoliberalism, social conservatism, and Pinochet’s authority – violence fueled it and made it possible,” writes Ruth Ben-Ghiat in Strongmen.
Social media posts from the White House and several executive departments have begun borrowing Nazi slogans and translating them to justify the ICE campaign. “One People, One Realm, One Leader,” posted the US Department of Labor this month, echoing the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.” Just days after assuming office, Hitler declared “There can be only one victor: either Marxism or the German Volk,” notes Peter Fritzsche in Hitler’s First Hundred Days.
On Ezra Klein’s podcast, Atlantic journalist Caitlin Dickerson describes how after passage of Trump’s massive bill to extend the tax breaks to the super rich and nearly doubling the number of agents for the anti-immigrant campaign, there was a rush to fill the new ICE spots with “lots of people, it seems, within this new workforce who have absolutely no experience, who are learning how to enforce the law, how to carry a weapon, how to interact with the public, just starting from square one right now.”
“But we’re also seeing a lot of explicit references to white nationalist ideas and the kind of dog whistles that we’ve all become used to when Trump is president. The fact is that if you’re a member of the Proud Boys or you’re a follower of QAnon, you recognize these exact phrases that are being used as a kind of call to action and to apply for a job as an ICE agent.”
They’ve all received a message, Dickerson continues, from anti-immigrant campaign leader Stephen Miller, who said on TV: “To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties, and anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you, is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one, no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties. And the Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.”
“Obstruction” to Miller and company has become a license to threaten, assault, and arrest anyone bearing witness—especially filming—ICE violence and brutality. Legal citizens have been dumped far away from where they were picked up, even in unsafe conditions. Agents are now also using technology to identify observers for economic retaliation, an escalation of the goal of intimidation and seeking to silence observation and dissent.
Miller, Dickerson emphasized, “is just underscoring that argument that you’re not going to get in trouble for being too aggressive. And in fact, the only thing you will get in trouble for is not being aggressive enough.”
The violence has escalated as Trump, Miller, Vance, and Noem seek to secure and expand their power through what they believe will intimidate and force consent for their authoritarian rule. But they are also afraid of the growing popular resistance symbolized by the massive march in Minneapolis in horrific freezing conditions, and the solidarity protests from coast to coast in red states and blue.
In Jacobin, Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of Twin Cities Sunrise Movement, described the increasingly effective fightback campaign in her state. Their tactics have focused on targeting corporations like Hilton, and Home Depot to stop collaborating with ICE, and have been especially successful in tormenting ICE agents in hotels at all hours with noise intended to drive out the agents and create conditions where “ICE agents won’t want to stay there, and hotels won’t want to house them.”
“I think about it as leverage and power looking everywhere ordinary people have leverage and seeing where we can pull those levers. Under a functioning democracy, you play the game of public opinion,” said Shiney-Ajay. “If you convince the majority, then you can get legislation or win an election. But what we’re living under right now is not a democracy.”
“A lot of establishment advocacy groups seem to be hoping we’ll show America that Trump is really bad, then in the midterms we’ll take back power… I don’t think that’s accurate,” Shiney-Ajay says. “Just look at what Trump is doing now and how similar it is to how authoritarians in other countries have grabbed power.”
“You have to look at what ways ordinary people are directly upholding a regime’s ability to logistically function, and switch from purely persuasion campaigns to the logic of non-cooperation. It’s like building a muscle of solidarity across race, across class. It’s something the Left talks about a lot, but I’ve never experienced it like this. And it’s truly ordinary people—it’s not majority organizers or activists. It’s people who’ve never organized a day in their lives but know something wrong is happening and want to do something.”
We all need to do something. That includes non-cooperation, continuing to bear witness; recording the abuses; pressuring media to report and expose the ICE lawlessness; organizing national economic boycotts and general strikes; mobilizing to win elections, and more. No one leader or political party will save us from fascism. We have to do it ourselves.
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Chuck Idelson
Chuck Idelson, retired, is the former Communications Senior Strategist for National Nurses United, the nation's largest union and professional organization of registered nurses with 225,00 members.
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