From The Atlantic:
Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong
The pushback against ICE exposed a series of mistaken assumptions.
By Adam Serwer
Photographs by Jack Califano
It took only a few minutes before everyone in the church knew that another person had been shot. I was sitting with Trygve Olsen, a big man in a wool hat and puffy vest, who lifted his phone to show me a text with the news. It was his 50th birthday, and one of the coldest days of the year. I asked him whether he was doing anything special to celebrate. “What should I be doing?” he replied. “Should I sit at home and open presents? This is where I’m supposed to be.”
He had come to Iglesia Cristiana La Viña Burnsville, about 15 miles south of the Twin Cities, to pick up food for families who are too afraid to go out—some have barely left home since federal immigration agents deployed to Minnesota two months ago. The church was filled with pallets of frozen meat and vegetables, diapers, fruit, and toilet paper. Outside, a man wearing a leather biker vest bearing the insignia of the Latin American Motorcycle Association, his blond beard flecked with ice crystals, directed a line of cars through the snow.
The man who had been shot—fatally, we later learned—was Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who had been recording agents outside a doughnut shop. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security claimed that he had threatened agents with a gun; videos of the shooting show him holding only his phone when he is pushed down by masked federal agents and beaten, his licensed sidearm removed from its holster by one agent before another unloads several shots into his back. Pretti’s death was a reminder—if anyone in Minnesota still needed one—that people had reason to be hiding, and that those trying to help them, protect them, or protest on their behalf had reason to be scared.
The church has a mostly Hispanic and working-class flock. Its pastor, Miguel Aviles, who goes by Pastor Miguel, told me that it had sent out about 2,000 packages of food since the federal agents had arrived. Many of the people in hiding, he said, “have asylum cases pending. They already have work permits and stuff, but some of them are legal residents and still they’re afraid to go out. Because of their skin color, they are afraid to go out.”
Federal agents have arrested about 3,000 people in the state, but they have released the names of only about 240 of those detained, leaving unclear how many of the larger number have committed any crimes. Many more thousands of people have been affected by the arrests and the fear they have instilled. Minnesota Public Radio estimates that in school districts “with widespread federal activity, as many as 20 to 40 percent of students have been absent in recent weeks.”
I don’t know what the feds expected when they surged into Minnesota. In late November, The New York Times reported on a public-benefit fraud scheme in the state that was executed mainly by people of Somali descent. Federal prosecutors under the Biden administration had already indicted dozens of people, but after the Times story broke, President Trump began ranting about Somalis, whom he referred to as “garbage”; declared that he didn’t want Somali immigrants in the country;and announced that he was sending thousands of armed federal immigration agents to Minneapolis. This weekend, he posted on social media that the agents were there because of “massive monetary fraud.” The real reason may be that a majority of Minnesotans did not vote for him. Trump has said that “I won Minnesota three times, and I didn’t get credit for it. That’s a crooked state.” He has never won Minnesota.
Perhaps the Trump-administration officials had hoped that a few rabble-rousers would get violent, justifying the kind of crackdown he seems to fantasize about. Maybe they had assumed that they would find only a caricature of “the resistance”—people who seethed about Trump online but would be unwilling to do anything to defend themselves against him.
Instead, what they discovered in the frozen North was something different: a real resistance, broad and organized and overwhelmingly nonviolent, the kind of movement that emerges only under sustained attacks by an oppressive state. Tens of thousands of volunteers—at the very least—are risking their safety to defend their neighbors and their freedom. They aren’t looking for attention or likes on social media. Unless they are killed by federal agents, as Pretti and Renee Good were, other activists do not even necessarily know their names. Many use a handle or code name out of fear of government retaliation. Their concerns are justified: A number of people working as volunteers or observers told me that they had been trailed home by ICE agents, and some of their communications have already been infiltrated, screenshotted, and posted online, forcing them to use new text chains and code names. One urgent question among observers, as the videos of Pretti’s killing spread, was what his handle might have been.
Olsen had originally used the handle “Redbear” in communicating with me, but later said I could name him. He had agreed to let me ride along while he did his deliveries. As he loaded up his truck with supplies, he wore just a long-sleeved red shirt and vest, apparently unfazed by the Minnesota cold.
“This is my first occupation,” Olsen said as I climbed into the truck. “Welcome to the underground, I guess.”
Read the rest of the story at the link above.
They thought they would overwhelm Minnesota and bully them into submission. They were wrong.
Marc Elias
@marcelias.bsky.social
Follow
🚨BREAKING: Senate Democrats condemned the Trump administration for crossing a dangerous new line in its effort to seize state voter rolls, warning that the Justice Department is now using coercion and intimidation after courts rejected its legal claims. http://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
https://bsky.app/profile/marcelias.bsky.social/post/3mdlmxu7css2g
Will Stancil
@whstancil.bsky.social
I know all eyes are on Minneapolis, but there’s a fast-approaching nightmare in Springfield, Ohio.
Trump is revoking protected status for tens of thousands of Haitians living there on Feb. 3.
Reportedly, on Feb. 4, 1000 ICE agents are arriving to remove this population. Ethnic cleansing.
4:38 PM · Jan 28, 2026
Timothy Snyder
@timothysnyder.bsky.social
Getting the impression that ICE is gearing up for a pogrom in Springfield, Ohio, which was ground zero of Vance’s lies about Haitians during the campaign. Haitians lose temporary protected status on February 3rd. Reporters, lawyers, neighbors — please get ready.
2:49 PM · Jan 29, 2026
Amir Tibon אמיר תיבון
@amirtibon
Why did Netanyahu suddenly go on the attack against Joe Biden yesterday, seemingly out of the blue, with no immediate reason to publicly trash a former U.S. president?
The answer has little to do with Biden, Trump, or the U.S.-Israel relationship. It is much simpler: Netanyahu was trying to divert attention from a politically damaging remark he made in a recent interview with The Economist.
Earlier this week, a short clip from that interview began circulating widely on Israeli social media. In it, Netanyahu says, almost proudly, that Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza because he ruled out massive air bombardments, or “carpet bombing,” and that as a result Israel lost many soldiers in ground combat. He makes clear that this was his personal decision.
Netanyahu made this statement to an influential international outlet after more than two years of war, during which Gaza was heavily devastated and most homes destroyed, and while he himself is facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes. This was the context of the statement, and it was clearly an attempt by Netanyahu to respond to mounting international criticism and the sharp deterioration in Israel’s global image.
For years, Netanyahu has followed a familiar political pattern: one message in Hebrew for his base, and a very different one in English for the outside world. In Hebrew, he rejects a two-state solution. In English, he affirms his commitment to it. Anyone who has been following him knows the game. In 2024, he praised Israel’s independent judiciary in front of the UNGA, all while his own government pushes legislation designed to weaken that same system and place it under the government’s control.
The problem is that sometimes Netanyahu gets caught in his own contradictions. That is what happened with the Economist interview.
A decade ago, Likud spent millions on a campaign attacking Benny Gantz for a remark made after the 2014 Gaza war. Gantz, then IDF chief of staff, said that in some cases soldiers’ lives were put at risk because of the army’s moral code. Netanyahu’s campaign portrayed him as someone who valued Palestinian lives over those of Israeli soldiers, nearly a traitor.
Now the tables have turned. Netanyahu’s own quote is arguably “worse,” by the twisted standards of his own party, than the one his advisers weaponized against Gantz.
Once his advisers saw that the Economist quote was gaining traction online, they had to somehow divert attention away from it. His most die-hard supporters can tolerate almost anything, as the past two years have shown. These days, they are turning a blind eye to the fact that Netanyahu’s closest advisers received millions of dollars from Qatar while working for him, including after October 7. But a statement, in his own voice, suggesting that his decisions led to the deaths of many Israeli soldiers is politically dangerous even for him.
That is the context of his decision to throw mud at an easy scapegoat: Joe Biden.
If you have been following my writing on these issues over the past year, you know how much credit I have given President Trump and his team for brokering the ceasefire that ended the Gaza war and brought our hostages home. But just as Israelis rightly credit Trump for the ceasefire and for saving the hostages, we also remember President Biden’s crucial support in the immediate aftermath of October 7, when he sent U.S. forces to the region and warned Iran to stay out of the war.
Those actions were vital for Israel’s security, and they also helped stabilize Netanyahu politically at his lowest moment after the catastrophic failure of 7/10.
His attack on Biden was ugly and ungrateful, but with Netanyahu, that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
We’re talking about a man whose closest advisers were bought by Qatar, the country that financed Hamas ahead of October 7, and he continues to back them fully, even covering some of their legal fees as they face police investigations over their allegedly corrupt actions. There really is no bottom for him. And if you think he cares about the damage his words have caused to Israel’s standing in the Democratic Party, you haven’t been paying attention.
With the attack on Biden, Netanyahu had one goal: to shift attention away from his own damaging words. Based on the headlines in the Israeli media over the past 24 hours, it worked. For him, nothing else matters.
(Photo by Reuters from Biden’s October 17, 2023 visit to Israel)
https://x.com/amirtibon/status/2016594523246285211?s=20
POLITICOEurope
@POLITICOEurope
Slovak PM Robert Fico was left shocked by Donald Trump’s state of mind after a recent meeting with him, he told his European counterparts at a summit last week, according to five diplomats briefed on the conversation.
https://x.com/POLITICOEurope/status/2016437734286438606?s=20
scary lawyerguy
@scarylawyerguy
There were roughly eleventy billion think pieces about Biden’s mental cognition based on Robert Hur’s biased, politically motivated hit job, but a foreign leader’s concerns over Trump’s state of mind won’t even break through here in the States.
https://x.com/scarylawyerguy/status/2016535041090715798?s=20
Phillips P. OBrien
@PhillipsPOBrien
A very important reveal in this story. ICE is being pulled out of Maine after starting its “enhanced” operations over a week ago. Maine is also a swing state in the Senate elections this year.
Internal Republican polling about the impact of ICE must be gruesome.
https://x.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/2016938496947061068?s=20
Rep. Oscar De Los Santos
@RepODLS
WTF?? House Republicans just introduced a measure to REPEAL the 17th Amendment of the US Constitution. They want to ban the people from voting for our US Senators. Instead, they want the Legislature to appoint our Senators.
WTF are they thinking?
https://x.com/RepODLS/status/2016545424002420992?s=20
SURE. RAND…SURE…LIKE YOU’LL STAND UP FOR WHAT’S RIGHT.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar.com
Follow
Rand Paul: “There has to be an investigation. I don’t know who trusts an investigation done by DHS when they’re the ones calling this person an ‘assassin,’ a ‘domestic terrorist,’ saying he was assaulting police. How can they be in charge of an independent investigation? Something’s got to happen.”
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mdie7ysyue2y
The Editorial Board
@editorialboard.bsky.social
Follow
The most important thing is discrediting the regime in the eyes of respectable white people who are essential to maintaining the racial hierarchy desired by the Republicans.
Rand Paul knows it’s all over if the GOP loses respectable white people. All they will have left is cranks and weirdos.
https://bsky.app/profile/editorialboard.bsky.social/post/3mdiu7dcssc2x
OH MY….
LOL
Tim Wise
@timjacobwise
Candace Owens releasing audio of Erika Kirk giggling about merch sales at Charlie’s memorial, 11 days after he was killed, is awesome for two reasons: 1) it shows what a grifting ghoul Erika is, and 2) it ensures more civil war on the right. More fighting, by all means!
8:42 AM · Jan 28, 2026
https://x.com/timjacobwise/status/2016522369611829332?s=20
Have side-eyed her for years……
YEARS
Jay’V
@JayVTheGreat
So in other words, this bitch, Amanda Seales, is saying she’s the house negro. All of you field negros go out and die for a cause that doesn’t serve you. 😂😴
https://x.com/JayVTheGreat/status/2016218398166753709?s=20
Justin Baragona
@justinbaragona.bsky.social
Follow
NEW from
@justinrohrlich.bsky.social
:
“I’m not surprised this happened,” Ilhan Omar attacker Anthony Kazmierczak’s brother said. “Not at all. Unfortunately, he and my mother are both right-wing extremists.”
“In my mind, he’s a piece of s**t,” he added.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
https://bsky.app/profile/justinbaragona.bsky.social/post/3mdiwi4qonc2z
Tim Wise
@timjacobwise
Attention all spineless colleges and K-12 districts that eliminated DEI programs bc you’d rather bend to fascism than fight for the Constitution: you can restore them now. And if you don’t, we’ll know it’s bc you never cared about racial equity (or free speech) to begin with
https://x.com/timjacobwise/status/2016175955488748024?s=20
to this day, these muthaphuckas have NEVER gone into the neighborhoods where people know the ‘gang elements’ live. NOT ONCE
NOT IN LOS ANGELES
NOT IN CHICAGO
NOT IN NEW YORK
NOT IN DC
Never ONCE have they gone into neighborhoods were the criminal elements reside.
BECAUSE THOSE PUNK AZZ BYTCHES ARE NOT ABOUT THAT LIFE.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
@ReichlinMelnick
On Monday the Minnesota Department of Corrections accused
@DHSGov
of “publishing false arrest claims at scale,” highlighting 68 cases where DHS suggested they were saving Minnesotans from dangerous criminals when in reality they just picked them up at prison in a routine handoff.
https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/2016522381280280894?s=20
What’s really going on here is this: Trump is looking to defuse anger among congressional Democrats for purposes that don’t portend a meaningful shift. An administration official gave away the game to Punchbowl News, admitting that these “de-escalatory measures” are about placating Senate Democrats so they don’t seize this moment to demand restrictions on ICE as part of any government funding package.
newrepublic.com/article/205768/donald-trump-scared-ice-minneapolis
PBS News
@NewsHour
Just days after a group of mainly American investors, approved by President Trump, took over control of TikTok’s U.S. operations, some users now say the app is censoring and limiting their content, including posts and messages about Jeffrey Epstein and the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis.
@GeoffRBennett
speaks to
@byjacobward
for more.
https://x.com/NewsHour/status/2016294003717628037?s=20
Anna Kramer
@anna_c_kramer
scoop: Kristi Noem has more than $1 billion in disaster prevention projects piling up on her desk.
Somehow, three states w/ powerful GOP politicians have escaped the logjam — Georgia, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.
Everyone else left begging for help.
https://x.com/anna_c_kramer/status/2016501678795587604?s=20
Democrats
@TheDemocrats
Last night, in the wake of tragedy, Minnesota voters came together to end the Republican majority in the Minnesota House, electing Democrats Shelley Buck in District 47A and Meg Luger-Nikolai in District 64A.
https://x.com/TheDemocrats/status/2016506578480833017?s=20
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊