The inclusion of other sources and voices herein sheds further light on Alex Pretti's execution by Traitor Trump's ICE goons:
Kristi Noem, Donald Trump, Greg Bovino, and even whiskey Pete Hegseth are all out there trying to tell us that Alex Pretti was a domestic terrorist who came to a protest with the intention to “massacre” ICE agents.
But that’s not their real message.
Back in 1980, I went into Uganda during the Civil War against Idi Amin to take over a refugee camp up in the Karamoja region. When I was leaving the country, going through the Entebbe airport (which had only intermittent electricity and considerable damage from the war), I was confronted by three armed men, two of them Tanzanian soldiers (who’d just successfully occupied the country as Amin fled to Saudi Arabia) and one a local Ugandan policeman.
One of the soldiers had an AK-47 over his shoulder and he grabbed the clip and rotated the gun down so the barrel was pointed right at my nose from a distance of about 6 inches.
The Christian right will never turn down an opportunity to make false accusations of religious persecution. These days, they’re especially eager to play the victim. Doing so allows them to distract from the ugly reality that they, in voting for Donald Trump, have helped to unleash in Minnesota: A woman killed in front of her wife, children ripped from their parents, a baby nearly killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents firing tear gas at a family driving home from a basketball game. On Saturday, there was another unjustifiable shooting. Video appears to show 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive-care unit nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, helping a woman to her feet when Border Patrol agents swarm and pepper-spray him — and then shoot him in the head.
All this, though, apparently pales in comparison to a more serious form of oppression: right-wing Christians being told it’s immoral to support a brutal, racist assault on their neighbors.
The wintry whiteout that swept across half the United States over the weekend could not erase what the country had just seen unfold in Minneapolis. No amount of snow could block out the images: furious protesters clashing with masked officers, clouds of tear gas wafting through neighborhoods — and for the second time in three weeks, video of an American citizen being shot dead by a federal agent.
And for the second time in three weeks, the Trump administration’s account of a deadly shooting contradicted what many in the country believe they saw. Federal officials described both victims as “domestic terrorists” intent on harming federal agents; critics of the administration, and many others, said such a description was belied by the video evidence.
Scenes from the violent unrest in Minneapolis played on a loop throughout the weekend, overshadowing the extreme weather and two N.F.L. playoff games. The images conveyed the unmistakable sense of consequence, of a watershed moment, prompting reflections about what the nation stands for, and where it is heading. Minneapolis seemed close, no matter where one lived.
by Jordan Liz | January 27, 2026 - 5:49am | permalink
On January 24th, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old white US citizen, was murdered by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis. This comes less than three weeks after ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renee Nicole Good.
Video footage shows Pretti, an ICU nurse, stepping in between a woman and a federal agent who was pepper-spraying her. That agent proceeds to pepper-spray Pretti who was filming the encounter with his phone in one hand and nothing in the other. Several agents approached and forced Pretti onto the ground. He was restrained.
Despite this, one agent unholstered his gun and fired one shot at close range. As that agent continued to fire, another grabbed his gun and fired additional shots. In total, at least 10 shots were fired within five seconds.
ICE Agents Will Join Olympics Delegation in Italy. Many Italians are Angry. - The New York Times
Excerpt:
ICE will accompany the U.S. delegation to the Winter
Olympics in Italy next month, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed on
Tuesday, stoking a backlash among Italians angered by the conduct of ICE agents
in Minneapolis.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will join a
security team from the State Department at the Olympics “to vet and mitigate
risks from transnational criminal organizations,” D.H.S. said in a statement
attributed to Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary for
public affairs.
“All security operations remain under Italian authority,”
the statement said, adding that ICE “does not conduct immigration enforcement
operations in foreign countries.”
Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio
are expected to attend the start of the games on Feb. 6, and 232 American
athletes are set to compete in the events.
Rage and grief pulsate alongside each other in Minneapolis, tied together in images from the weekend’s protests and the killing of a U.S. citizen.
“The images conveyed the unmistakable sense of consequence, of a watershed moment, prompting reflections about what the nation stands for, and where it is heading. Minneapolis seemed close, no matter where one lived,” our reporter Dan Barry wrote.
Dan is one of The Times’s best chroniclers of the human condition. With help from reporters in many states, he tried to make sense of the nation’s current mood, for those who live in Minnesota and for those who live far from it — in coastal cities, in the Deep South, along the salt-sprayed shores of the Pacific Northwest.
Here’s some of what he found:
In Georgia, a high school teacher anticipated the questions his students would ask about the latest shooting death. In Indiana, broadcasts of the violence dampened a 97th birthday celebration. In Iowa, a married couple, on an outing with their autistic son, disagreed about what had happened, while in Wisconsin, a supporter of President Trump marveled at what she considered the stupidity of some protesters.
And in Rhode Island, a snowbound student at Brown University cried when he saw the video from Saturday of immigration officers pepper-spraying Alex Pretti, a 37- year-old registered nurse, wrestling him to the cold Minneapolis ground, and shooting him to death.
“I didn’t get any sleep last night,” the student, Jack DiPrimio, 23, said on Sunday. “The video was just replaying over and over again in my head.”
by Robert Becker | January 26, 2026 - 6:10am | permalink
Thuggery against the innocent — with depraved slayings, warrantless invasions and kidnapping of toddlers — cross every civilized notion of justice reliant on rules, due process, trials, even compassion.
The loudmouth bully running the White House has never hidden his knee-jerk appetites for brutal, violent responses to those he can’t abide. That’s especially true if they’re “enemy” minorities, legal protesters, swarming critics or victims seeking judicial regress. Even one “treasonous” ex-military chieftain. Long before channeling today’s vile grievance/vengeance crusade, Trump voiced his “dump-trials, hang ‘em high” vigilante mentality. So far, only E. Jean Carroll won criminal, sexual-harassment/defamation convictions (and massive penalties) for what that judge rightly deemed violent rape.
Viral killing turned cat forums, fitness groups into sites of protest - The Washington Post
The intensity of outrage over Alex Pretti’s death has broken
through the internet’s tribal barriers, transforming traditionally apolitical
online spaces into sounding boards for fierce criticism of the administration’s
immigration crackdown.
On Instagram, Reddit, TikTok and YouTube, influencers who
have built vast and politically neutral audiences with content about cooking,
sports and fashion have suddenly opted to speak out in fury about the clashes
in Minnesota, bringing many of their fans along for the ride.
Even some prominent conservatives broke with the political
right to criticize the Trump administration. The conservative radio host Erick
Erickson, who initially called Pretti an “agitator,” reversed course after
reviewing the footage, writing on his Substack that the rush to “malign him as
quickly as possible” was a huge mistake. Former congressman Trey Gowdy, now a
Fox News host, was even more blunt about the administration’s condemnation of
Pretti on the cable network. “We certainly should not be labeling him as being
a domestic terrorist who is going to execute cops,” he said. “There is no
evidence to support that.”
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