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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.
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.
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.
This fascist propaganda dishonors the government agency whose charge is to support the workers of this country. It has no business deifying any President, particularly one already drunk with power.
Something is rotten in the Department of Labor. I’m not talking about the recent news that Secretary of Labor Chavez-DeRemer is being investigated about claims she used taxpayer money for personal trips disguised as business-related. Or that she allegedly engaged in an improper tryst with a subordinate.
If true, these are serious issues that call for appropriate responses. But, from my perspective as an attorney who committed a 39-year career to a government agency I continue to care deeply about, they pale in comparison to something that’s out in the open, carefully curated for all to see: the Department’s latest social media campaign.
Just take a look at the past few weeks’ postings on the Labor Department’s Facebook or X accounts. One might ordinarily expect to find content that reflects the Department’s worthy mission of lifting up all workers in the United States, regardless of race, religion, or national origin. That might include reminders about employers’ responsibilities under wage and workplace safety laws Congress enacted over the past several decades, or maybe spotlight a series of particularly impactful enforcement actions that vindicated workers’ rights.
Don’t hold your breath. Instead, watching a jarring graphic with a dystopian soundtrack, you’ll be instructed to “Remember who you are, American.” Those words are placed below the header, “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage”—a slogan promptly recognized by visitors to the Facebook site as a haunting echo of the 1930’s Nazi propaganda poster featuring Adolf Hitler and the slogan “One People, One Nation, One Leader.”
That’s only one of a steady drumbeat of similar phrases, like “Faith in God. Law and Order. Pride in Our Homeland…central tenets of the American Way of Life.” We learn that “[u]nder President Trump, the globalist dominance of our government is over,” and that a year ago “our country was dead.” Now, however, we’re “the hottest country anywhere in the world because we finally have a President who puts America first.”
We’re instructed not to “believe the fake news lies.” Multiple entries feature paintings and posters depicting 1940’s-era churchgoers and families with beatifically smiling children, all white. And most prolifically, we’re treated to one hero-like depiction of Donald Trump after another, mostly in bold silhouette, with captions like “Americans First,” “NEVER SURRENDER,” “Second to None,” “Trust the Plan, Trust Trump,” "PATRIOTS IN CONTROL,” and “One of One.” We learn that “No President has cared more about hardworking Americans than President Trump.”
There’s so much wrong with all this it makes the head spin. Most blatant is the unmistakable resemblance to the style and messaging of the Nazi propaganda machine. As described by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, during the Third Reich “public adulation for Adolf Hitler was an ever present feature in the public square of German life.” Hitler was portrayed “as the living embodiment of the German nation,” radiating strength as the savior of a beaten-down German nation, and idolized as a “gifted statesman who brought stability, created jobs, and restored German greatness.” Take a look at the Labor Department’s Facebook page and see if that description resonates.
Add to that: the posts’ repeated targeting of undefined “globalists”—a recognized “dog whistle” for racist, anti-Semitic and anti-government conspiracy theorists—as the shadowy characters responsible for our country’s woes, not unlike Nazi propaganda demonizing Jews and other “outsiders”; the Christian imagery and language, smearing the line that separates church and state, and implicitly, if not explicitly, promoting white Christian Nationalism; the full-on outrageous assertion made on X, just days after the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent, that “Mass Deportations are Improving Americans' Quality of Life.”
Appalling as all this is, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Substantively, in addition to the countless other ways Trump’s presidency has been a disaster for this country, he has been no friend to US workers—undermining their wages and economic security, weakening job creation, and assaulting their rights to organize. Federal worker ranks have been terrorized and dissembled by DOGE, and soon tens of thousands will be judged not by merit alone but by their loyalty to Trump. Religious prayer services have been introduced at the agency’s headquarters. Labor Department employees are demoralized. And for months, an enormous banner with Trump’s face has been hanging off the front of the Francis Perkins Building, sternly looking down at the passersby below.
Still, the Facebook/X campaign brings the Department to a new low. It dishonors the government agency whose charge is to support the workers of this country. It has no business deifying any President, particularly one already drunk with power. Nor should it be promoting a white, Christian nationalist vision for this country, that was built by immigrants -- people of all colors, places of origin, and beliefs. As a Labor Department veteran, I’m ashamed. And as a first generation son of Jewish refugees who lived through the horrors of Nazi Germany, I’m aghast, at seeing history rhyme, if not repeat.
This poem no one should have to recite to their grandchildren.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis is frightening, but the response of its people has been inspiring.
In 1965, as excessive state violence was being unleashed against the Black citizens in Selma, Alabama, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sent out a nationwide call to faith leaders: “The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all America help to bear the burden.”
Dr. King’s call for others to join him in leading a march to Montgomery was answered by clergy from across the country, marking a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement.
Sixty-six years later, in the same spirit and with the same clarity as King’s 1965 call, clergy in Minneapolis asked faith activists from across the country to join them in praying with their feet against the atrocities being committed by Immigration Customs and Enforcement against the good people of their state.
Upon hearing that my presence might be helpful, I immediately packed my tallit (Jewish prayer shawl), and on behalf of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, I jumped on an airplane. Arriving in Minneapolis on Thursday, here’s what I witnessed:
Images of Luis Ramos, a terrified and bewildered five-year-old in a tiny plaid coat and blue knit bunny hat, were dominating local media coverage. Coming home from school, just steps away from his front door, ICE agents took Luis from his father’s car using him as bait to lure his pregnant mother out of their home.
By the time I arrived in Minneapolis, only two days later, Luis and his father had already been whisked away to a detention facility in Texas.
Like Selma, Minneapolis has become this generation’s frontline in the struggle for freedom and justice.
Thursday night, as we were preparing for the next day’s mobilization with nonviolence training, a person with a distressed look on their face asked to make an announcement. Along with informing us that a car full of children had been tear gassed today, they had just received a message from one of the local schools warning people not to be deceived by flyers offering “food assistance” since this was one of the tactics being used by ICE to lure parents from their homes. There were other examples of ICE’s cruelty. Immigrants injured by ICE agents have been taken to hospitals and registered using false names so that their families couldn't find them.
In the face of this inhumane behavior, and given Minnesota’s expected below zero temperatures, it would have been easy to remain home, feeling depressed and yet powerless to help. But I recalled Rev. Jesse Jackson’s words, “both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.”
With this in mind, on the coldest day the Twin Cities area had experienced in seven years, I joined hundreds of other clergy and faith leaders at the Minneapolis St. Paul International (MSP) airport to protest Delta airlines complicity in over 2,000 deportations.
The designated “free speech zone” for legal protest was bursting at the seams with more than a thousand bundled-up Minnesotans who had turned out to support those of us who were to engage in civil disobedience.
Our action consisted of over 100 faith leaders kneeling down blocking the terminal, holding signs picturing the detained and disappeared. We prayed and we sang: “everybody’s got a right to live/love/learn and “before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail.” The assembled supporters chanted “Justice for Renee Good!”
With the bottom half of my face tucked into the bundles of warm clothing, I closed my eyes, and began quietly humming a nigun (wordless melody sung in a repetitive circular manner) to myself.
The man kneeling next to me, who I soon learned was the Community Engagement Organizers (CEO) program at Macalister College, asked if I was okay. He was grateful for our presence and wanted to make sure how we were handling the frigid temperatures.
The police lined up behind us with long clubs and chemical agents they had threatened to use. They arrest us. One by one, many in religious stoles, we stood and offered our bulky mitted wrists for handcuffing.
The crowd’s chants turned from “Justice for Renee Good!” to “Let them pray! Let them pray!” and we began to realize the significance. Our prayers were both exposing and healing the rot to which our country has been subjected for the past year that is now festering like an open infected wound.
While prayer can sometimes be meaningless, hypocritical, or even damaging. There are other times, when it can have a profound impact. As the Jewish siddur (prayerbook) Mishkan T’Filah says “prayer Invites God’s Presence to suffuse our spirits. Prayer may not bring water to parched fields,” but it ”can water an arid soul." The souls and spirits of the people of Minneapolis certainly need watering at this time.
On Saturday, I was preparing to leave Minneapolis when we received the news that Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, had been beaten and shot to death by federal agents. I traveled instead to the site of this murder to join with others who were holding a vigil and turning the crime scene into a holy site. I took the tallit I have been wearing over the last year to mourn the passing of my father off my shoulders and laid it on the pine branches among the crosses, candles, sage brush bundles, mala beads, and kuffiyehs. As the crowd circling the site wiped tears from their eyes, “Somali aunties,” who momentarily felt safe to leave their homes, to provide hot food from their kitchens to their fellow mourners.
Riding the city bus back to my hotel, I noticed that my fellow passengers were carrying gas masks and eye goggles for the tear gas that wafts through the city’s freezing air and one knew not when they might get tackled to the ground and sprayed directly in the face with a chemical agent. It felt more like being in the Occupied West Bank than in an American city.
Picking up a quick lunch, I had to knock on the door to be admitted to the restaurant. In order to check into my hotel, I had to use the doorbell to be let in, and to get into Ubers, I had to show a code. Because everyone is aware that ICE agents could barge in at any moment, they are taking extra precautions trying to keep themselves and their neighbors safe.
Many of the Uber drivers in Minneapolis are of Somali ethnicity. One driver, a US citizen who has been in the country for over 20 years, told me about having to show his naturalization papers (he now keeps them with him at all times) while trying to do his job. Another, a young Somali-American woman, told me that she has just spent days too afraid to leave her house, but then today had to get back to work because she needs to pay her rent.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis is frightening, but the response of its people has been inspiring. Between delivering groceries and supplies to those afraid to leave their homes, to roaming the streets with whistles strung around their necks so they can alert others when ICE is spotted, to rabbis and Jewish activists, including myself this past Sunday, keeping watch outside churches so Latinx communities can worship together, to providing emotional support—the work of care, mutual aid, and resistance, week after week, should fill us all with pride. And what was so moving to encounter was the degree to which everyone—from hotel staff, to restaurant workers, to Uber drivers—all expressed gratitude that so many of us had traveled to support them as they defend democracy for the entire country.
Like Selma, Minneapolis has become this generation’s frontline in the struggle for freedom and justice. And like Selma, it will be the disciplined, caring, and prayerful response of Minneapolis' people and their supporters that will win out in the end.
Top officials—despite what anyone with two good eyes could see for themselves—immediately activated Donald Trump's authoritarian playbook: lie, smear, double-down, and cover-up.
I was born and raised in Minnesota. One of my childhood homes in south Minneapolis is less than a mile from the scene of Saturday’s brutal Border Patrol killing. The victim was 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a US citizen born in Illinois and a registered ICU nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs hospital.
Pretti’s crime: He was “Minnesota nice.”
Before proceeding further, please watch this New York Times video.
But be warned, the footage is violent, graphic, and disturbing:
Footage and analyis of Alex Pretti killing
Similarly, a detailed CNN compilation of bystander videos confirms that Border Patrol officers took Pretti’s gun before shooting him an estimated 10 times:
And USA Today also offered a second-by-second analysis:
Now contrast what you just observed with the Trump administration’s four-step playbook for avoiding accountability: Lie, double-down, deflect, and cover-up.
Almost immediately, the Department of Homeland Security issued a false statement exonerating Border Patrol officers and blaming Pretti for his death:
No. Pretti approached the officers with a cellphone as he filmed their encounter with two protesters. Then he tried to aid a protester whom officers had shoved to the ground.
No. The officers didn’t even know that Pretti had a gun until seven of them had already swarmed, pepper-sprayed, and wrestled him to the ground. Then one of the officers exclaimed with surprise, “He has a gun!”
At that point, several officers were on top of Pretti. A gun matching the description of the one that DHS said Pretti owned (and for which he had a permit in the open-carry state of Minnesota) emerged from the group. After Pretti had been disarmed, an officer shot him in the back at close range. As the officer continued firing, another officer shot Pretti as he lay on the ground.
The agents fired a total of at least 10 shots.
During a six-minute press appearance, Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino doubled-down on the lies. He said that an “individual approached Border Patrol agents with a nine-millimeter semi-automatic handgun.”
No. It was a cellphone.
“The agents attempted to disarm this individual, but he violently resisted.”
No. Pretti was on the ground when officers noticed his gun and took it.
“Fearing for his life and lives and safety of fellow officers, a Border Patrol agent fired defensive shots.”
No. Two agents fired a total of 10 shots as Pretti lay on the street with his hands over his head.
“The suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID.”
I don’t know what an “accessible ID” is, but Minnesota is an open-carry state and Pretti had a permit to own the gun.
“This looked like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
There is no evidence supporting that claim.
“The officer was highly trained and had been serving as a Border Patrol agent for eight years. The officer has extensive training as a range safety officer and less lethal officer…”
Two officers fired a total of 10 shots at a man who had been disarmed. What about the second shooter? And what training recommends firing 10 shots at a defenseless US citizen lying on the ground?
Bovino then took questions but refused to answer them:
Q: “When did agents learn that he had a gun, and did he ever brandish that weapon at them?
Bovino: “This situation again is evolving. This situation is under investigation. Those facts will come to light. This particular incident is being investigated, just like we investigate other similar incidents like we’ve done over the past several years. It’s in the hands of professionals as facts will come to light.”
The videos show that Pretti never brandished a weapon at anyone. As for an investigation, the federal government had refused to allow Minnesota officials to participate after an officer killed Renee Nicole Good two weeks earlier. But this time, Minnesota officials took two extraordinary steps: the state obtained a warrant to search the public street where the officers had killed Pretti; and a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring federal officials from altering or destroying evidence.
Q: “Did he have an additional gun, or was the gun removed from the scene?... From the video, it doesn’t seem like he pulled a gun on anyone…. When did the gun come out?”
Bovino: “Again, this situation is evolving. This is under investigation. Those facts will come to light…”
The gun never “came out” until Border Patrol officers discovered and removed it after forcing Pretti to the ground.
Trump’s deputy chief of staff and the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, Stephen Miller, tripled down on the lies. Others quickly followed.
Trump’s minions had falsely smeared Renee Nicole Good as a “domestic terrorist” too. Then the Justice Department announced that the civil rights division would not even investigate whether her killer had used excessive force—as it typically has done in such situations. Instead, the Department would investigate the victim and her partner. Days later, six senior career federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over the issue.
Noem announced that DHS would lead the Pretti investigation—with assistance from the FBI.
In a press conference on Sunday, January 25, Bovino lectured Minnesotans on “choices,” suggesting that Pretti’s choices led to his death. But Pretti chose only to exercise his First and Second Amendment rights. For that, Trump’s newly expanded paramilitary organization chose to execute him in broad daylight. Bovino, Trump, and Trump’s sycophants chose to lie about it.
In the aftermath of Pretti’s killing, thousands of Minnesotans also made a choice: In sub-zero temperatures, they protested the federal government’s aggressive occupation of Minneapolis that had led to yet another death. They know that the whole world is watching. And if I know anything about Minnesotans, they will prevail.