Here is how the New York Times is framing the incident right now:
The authorities in Minnesota on Sunday were investigating the killing of a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident by federal agents, despite resistance from Trump administration officials who sought to cast blame on the victim and local Democratic lawmakers.
The victim, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was an intensive-care nurse and a U.S. citizen with no criminal record who held a legal permit to carry a firearm, local officials said. Federal officials, without presenting evidence for the claims, sought to portray Mr. Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” who was armed and wanted to “massacre” law enforcement officers…Mr. Pretti was shot dead on Saturday during protests against the federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Videos analyzed by The New York Times show no sign that Mr. Pretti pulled his weapon during the encounter with federal agents in which he was killed, or that they knew he had one until he was already pinned on the ground…
Federal authorities said the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and Border Patrol, would lead the federal shooting investigation. But senior Homeland Security and Justice Department officials claimed it was already clear that Mr. Pretti and local officials were to blame for the shooting.
The killing of Mr. Pretti in Minneapolis’s Whittier neighborhood prompted a new round of protests in the city, where tensions have reached a breaking point after weeks of aggressive federal immigration action. Increasingly, U.S. citizens have taken to the streets to protest what many have described as a military-style occupation of an American city. At least 1,000 people gathered for a vigil for Mr. Pretti in Whittier Park on Saturday night despite subzero temperatures.
Mr. Trump and administration officials cast blame on local lawmakers, who are Democrats, for the unrest. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and other lawmakers of allowing “lawlessness” to spread and made a series of demands, including for state officials to turn over voting records to the Justice Department. In response, Mr. Walz’s office said that federal agents had “brought chaos and destruction to our state.”
Observations:
1. All of the arguing over this cell phone camera angle or that cell phone camera angle is irrelevant and intellectually dishonest. The only view that matters is the view of the officer who shot first, and no footage that I’ve seen shows that.
2. No non-illegal alien resisting arrest has been shot in any I.C.E. operations where the officers were not being harassed and their operations interfered with. That’s a fact. Democratic leaders and city and state officials in Minnesota are actively encouraging citizen interference with legal I.C.E. operations there. They are also using false and inflammatory rhetoric to create a sense of righteousness among those inclined to oppose Trump Administration law enforcement.
3. The position that the deaths of two protesters are absolutely the fault of these officials and the victims is, I believe, irrefutable. Of course, the Biden policies leading to mass violation of U.S. Immigration laws created the conditions for this to be occurring.
4. The Axis news media, as always, is doing all it can to vilify law enforcement. Renee Goode is usually described as a “mother” and Pretti is already being pigeonholed as a “nurse.” (The current WaPo headline on its website: “ICU nurse fatally shot by Border Patrol in Minneapolis cared for veterans.”) As far as the shootings go, these deliberately sanctifying descriptions are gratuitous and irrelevant. It wouldn’t change the nature of the shootings if Goode had been an exotic dancer who gave lap dances on the side and Pretti had been a convicted felon and a pimp. Are I.C.E. officers supposed to call out, “Before I shoot you, I have to ask, are you a mother of small children or a trusted caregiver?” When Goode and Pretti were shot, they were illegally interfering with law enforcement operations.
5. Nor does it matter that the semi-automatic pistol Pretti was carrying was licensed and he was lawfully carrying it. The man brought a weapon (what his party likes to call “a weapon of war”) to a demonstration/protest/riot where necessarily armed Federal agents were dealing with illegal and dangerous conditions. It would also be legal to be carrying a baseball bat or a chainsaw, but such a choice is likely to unsettle the officers trying to do their jobs.
6. It sure would help if Secretary Noem and others didn’t make unsubstantiated and hyperbolic statements in the wake of these incidents. They could demonstrate some compassion and sympathy for these misguided people without terming them “domestic terrorists” or exaggerating the facts. Pretti never “brandished” his pistol, for example. But when you are carrying a pistol and your hand goes for your cell phone, you are likely to get shot.
7. I will not say that the Democratic Party is deliberately fomenting the violence in Minnesota trying to create a useful backlash that will advance their interests in November. But this is an old, old strategy we have seen on the part of the forebears of our dangerous Mad Left, from the Labor riots in the early 20th Century, S.D.S and the Weathermen in the Sixties, to “Occupy Wall Street” through to the Black Lives Matter movement. The Left needs martyrs, and knows how to get them and exploit them.
8. Republicans clearly don’t. Ashlii Babbitt was shot dead during the Capitol riot under far more dubious circumstances, and the Right never protested or demonstrated, while few news sources gave her death any serious attention.
9. Democrats are using pure emotion and deliberate chaos for political gain here. If Republicans and sensible citizens can’t win the messaging war with history, facts, law and ethics on their side, they deserve to lose, and so does the United States, whose public will have proven what the Founders always feared: we are too weak, stupid, ignorant and ethically confused to keep a Republic.
10. As for the right and effective way to handle Minnesota’ insurrection, I have no constructive ideas. Megyn Kelly’s suggestion that I.C.E. should pull out of the state, that illegal immigrants who come and stay there would be left alone, and that any caught anywhere else would be would be deported to CECOT, the giant prison in South America, is enticing but impossible.
[Side note: This is a long post and I would love to include a page break. But WordPress again has inflicted an “improvement” on its software, and the old method no longer works. If anyone out there has figured out the new procedure, call me at 703-548-5229, and talk me through it. WordPress’s “Happiness Engineers” were no help at all.]
Ethics Alarms 
Let Minneapolis St. Paul join Canada as some sort of protectorate. I’m going to assume the rest of Minnesota would be glad to be rid of the Twin Cities. The Twins, Vikings and Timberwolves could move to new stadiums outside Canada’s new mini-province.
The denizens of the Twin Cities really are incorrigible.
“Let Minneapolis St. Paul join Canada as some sort of protectorate.”
Anyone still wondering why they pay Idea Guys like OB the Big Money, wonder no more; to wit:
PWS
They could keep their NHL team, eh.
Aren’t guns only supposed to be for the military and law enforcement? But this saintly fellow was carrying a pistol! By definition, wasn’t he in the wrong? He didn’t have a right to be carrying that gun. Only the government can carry guns. And if it comes down to it, shouldn’t all guns be confiscated from gun owners, by force if necessary?
Yeah, this is why NRA types are defending the asshole. Strange bedfellows. Or deadfellows…
I guess they nurse should have waved his carry permit at the ICE guys. That would have solved it. They would have thought, “Oh. This guy’s not going to shoot me. He’s got a permit.”
The blood of the dead is fully on the hands of the progressive elite who have convinced ordinary boring people that they will be heroes of the “Resistance” if they actively impede, interdict or otherwise interfere with officers pursing constitutionally enacted laws.
Remember the progressive elite pushing their foot soldiers to die for a photo op are comfortable in their warm mansions or are, like milquetoast Tim Walz, hollering through a bullhorn over a 7 foot tall iron fence, to “go make good trouble”, while he’ll shortly retreat to his warm mansion safe from fighting lawful authorities.
By the way, if anyone is curious, the progressives encouraging these interactions-to-deaths, you can be assured they’re trying to figure out to get a child killed as the result of one of their street soldiers confronting an ICE agent.
It’s literally the next step. And the progressive pushers won’t care when the child dies. They want the photo op.
They have been strumming the “separated children” chord of late.
You might want to read the following article at PJ Media as the anti-ICE efforts resemble a discipline military-style operation, where the ant-ICE protesters act in a highly coordinated fashion with the help of a technical infrastructure using mobile apps, secure communication, and with knowledge of were any BP / ICE agents and vehicles are located.
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/01/25/the-left-doesnt-want-you-to-know-this-about-the-man-shot-by-border-patrol-n4948728
Megan Kelly suggestion is tantamount to ICE admitting defeat. If her advice is followed then all blue states will follow in Minnesota’s path. This will lead to a guaranteed loss for Trump at the mid-term elections, as Republicans will see no reason to turn out to vote as the promise to enforce immigration law has been broken. The left will celebrate their victory and draw the lesson that the losses at the voting booth can be undone with nullification, physical resistance (riots) and judicial activism.
The alternative solution is that the state of Minnesota / Minneapolis yields to federal law, as dictated by the Constitution. As Walz, Frey, Ellison clearly do not intend to do this, and the Minnesota counts are undoing the arrests of the rioters, Trump should recognize this for what it is, namely an insurrection.
There is a historical precedent for this, namely the Nullification Crisis in 1832. In 1928 VP John C Calhoun declared federal tariffs affecting South Carolina null and void. These tariffs were enacted in 1828 and 1832 on agricultural imports and designed to protect Northern industry. As these high taxes on imports severely harmed the Southern economy, Vice President John C. Calhoun to secretly draft the “South Carolina Exposition” arguing for a state’s right to nullify it. He also stepped down as Vice President.
President Jackson, also not in favor of those tariffs, however regarded nullification as treason. His response was to issue a proclamation asserting federal supremacy. In 1833 he obtained authorization from Congress to use military force to collect the duties. To avoid armed conflict, Calhoun and Henry Clay negotiated the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which gradually reduced duties over ten years to 20%. South Carolina accepted this, repealing its nullification ordinance.
President Donald Trump needs to take a page out if Andrew Jackson. As Commander in Chief he definitively has the power to instill his will on a state or city in open insurrection. However power without the will to power can lose against insurrectionists and revolutionaries with less power but an unmatched will to power (I am taking a page out of Nietzsche here).
As I am not a lawyers I am not going to weigh in on all the legalities such as the Insurrection Act; I notice that this act has been used before successfully before, e.g. when Governor Wallace of Alabama stood in the door of a public school to stop segregation. However Trump should be willing to deploy overwhelming military force to bring the sanctuary states and cities to heel. If the courts try to stop him, he should give the courts the middle finger a la Andrew Jackson (“Marshall has made his ruling, now let him enforce it”), and Abraham Lincoln when he ignored Chief Justice Taney on the matter of habeas corpus. Exercise of raw power settles things. Trump may declare martial law, complete with curfews and shooting of insurgents on site. And to make an example of Minnesota, deport every single illegal you can find, and not only the sex offenders and gang bangers ICE is now trying to deport.
I am totally indifferent to any bloodshed under the insurrectionists; successful enforcement of the law should be more important than PR and favorable TV coverage.
If the Trump Administration does not have the stomach and will to enforce the law, and fulfill the promises on which they were voted into office, all you have to do is to look how things are going in the UK right now, where the right has learned from the left that lawlessness pays off, and act accordingly.
I am not going to vouch for the veracity of the following news reported at November 9th, 2025 from Belfast. However he it is the right who is rioting against the lenient asylum policies of the Labour administration under Keir Starmer. Here it is the right willing to engage in rioting and violence. If this is possible in the UK, it is possible in the USA. In order to prevent lawlessness the laws need to be enforced, no matter which administration is power. We have already seen at January 6th, 2021 that unpunished lawlessness of one side of the political spectrum invites lawlessness of the other side of the political spectrum. This lawlessness invites the specter of a future civil war. So therefor it is paramount to the Trump administration to restore law and other in Minnesota (including enforcement of immigration laws) by any means necessary.
37 Hotels Burn as 100,000 Protesters FLOOD Belfast Streets.
News UK Northern Ireland burns as over 100,000 protesters fill the streets. 37 hotels destroyed, 114 injured, and Westminster still silent. What began as a cry for fairness has become Britain’s largest civil unrest in a decade. From Belfast to Ballymena, exhaustion has replaced faith. This is not just a protest — it’s a reckoning. Stay with news UK for every update, every image, every truth behind the smoke.
I’m having trouble understanding just why anyone would carry a firearm, legal or not, into a civil disobedience demonstration. Never carry a gun into a situation where you can’t pull it, and pulling a gun in the presence of armed law enforcement is “suicide by cop”. Maybe that’s what he expected.
In the videos shown so far, one officer is shown having taken a gun and then — strangely — he seems to escape the situation, darting off between a car (unless I have not seen accurately).
I wonder if the man shot had another weapon (?) and if perhaps he made a brusque movement after the gun was taken off from him.
There had to be a reason why so many shots were fired, it seems to me.
Two possibilities.
The officer who removed the gun duischarged the gun. It was a P320, implicated in many accidental discharges. It has gone off, on video, while in a holster. So even if the officer did nothing wrong, it could have gone off.
The nurse reached for the empty holster and the other agents didn’t know the holster was empty.
Sadly this was all predictable, and I’ve been beating this drum a while.
What I fear developing next is the left’s narrative will become “they’re going to murder us anyways so let’s go to lethal violence first and take as many as we can on the way.” It has already happened, but I fear an uptick.
I’ll also add that this example, more than any other, has both sides seeing what they want. I’ve been looking at every video, and I honestly can’t be sure what really happened. Anyone claiming certainty is full of crap. I think there will never be an honest consensus about what happened. Each side has their mind made up and isn’t moving.
I’m probably in the camp that it looks bad, but I doubt a prosecution comes out of this. Maybe a future administration, but only if a pardon doesn’t happen. I’d that comes to pass, I’m hoping to see a conviction of Lon Horuchi and Michael Bird, as both of those are more marginal than this one.
We also have a reidiculous reversal on both sides. Suddenly all of these Democrats who want guns banned are sticking up for a guy with a gun. Meanwhile too many on the right are saying that just carrying at a protest will get you shot. Which is crap. It isn’t carrying at a protest, it is messing with and then fighting officers while armed that is dangerous.
We have a chronic complaint of “not trained enforcement”, “not seeking medical care fast enough” and “unnecessary force”. All of these are, in fact, legitimate concerns. I’ve heard a lot of stories about I.C.E. agents being extremely rough before anyone was even able to dispute claims. Does that mean that the political parties should use this tragedy as an excuse to further their agenda? No. But can these other issues be addressed? Yes. Can we make sure that some sort of Nazi style hate group hasn’t influenced I.C.E.? Yes. Can we have a EMT with the ice agents as they raid? Yes. Can they start going through refresher courses on proper engagement? Yes. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I don’t want people hurt just because they have assumed they are illegal. I have visa workers coming that have the possibility of being detained by I C E and I don’t want them mishandled before they can even show papers.