SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
tim walz
'Do Your Job!': Protesters Gather Outside Walz's Office to Demand Criminal Charges for Trump's Killer Agents
“Minnesotans are asking, ‘Are we safe here anymore?’ and they need actionable leadership, not half-measures,” said a spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Minnesota.
Jan 28, 2026
Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the office of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in St. Paul on Tuesday to demand that state officials take action to bring the federal agents who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti to justice.
"We are demanding that they bring charges against the killer officers," said Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for Minnesota, which organized the protest. "We want the identity of the officers. We know the federal government is not investigating. They are lying to the American people. They are denying us justice. It is time for the state to do their job."
The crowd then broke out into a raucous chant: "Do your job! Do your job!"
The protest, which took place outside Walz's office in the Minnesota state Capitol building, came as the governor negotiates an end to federal immigration agents' takeover of Minnesota with Trump border czar Tom Homan, who was recently dispatched to oversee the Trump administration's operation in the state following the departure of Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino.
The Trump administration appears on the back foot after the killing of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, over the weekend, by a gang of federal agents, which was caught on camera and heightened the already simmering national anger at Trump's deployments around the US.
Minneapolis has become the epicenter of this outrage, with more than 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents deployed as part of what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said is "the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out."
In addition to the slayings of Good and Pretti, agents have been documented engaging in relentless brutality against the people of Minnesota, including many US citizens. Cases abound of residents being subject to explicit racial profiling, being threatened and assaulted for engaging in First Amendment-protected protest and legal observation, and being detained and interrogated as part of unconstitutional "citizenship checks."
Minnesota state officials, including Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, have faced mounting pressure to pursue criminal charges against Jonathan Ross, the agent who killed Good earlier this month. But Minnesota’s public safety commissioner has said “it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible,” for a local investigation to continue “without cooperation from the federal government.”
According to Walz's office, he outlined two main goals in his closed-door meeting with Homan: He wants the administration to dramatically reduce the massive presence of agents in the state and to give state investigators a role in the investigations of Good and Pretti's deaths.
A drawdown of agents reportedly began after a call between Walz and Trump on Monday, during which the governor said he would look for the state to work with the federal government “in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals.” Trump characterized it as a “request to work together with respect to Minnesota.”
But Suleiman Adan, the deputy executive director of CAIR Minnesota, told Common Dreams that such a compromise is inadequate, calling on Walz “to use every legal and political tool at his disposal.”
"That means empowering county attorneys to open their own inquiries, collecting and preserving bystander video and witness statements, and going to court when necessary to try to compel or preserve evidence," he said. "It also means using the governor’s political leverage, public pressure, legal action, and intergovernmental channels to make non-cooperation itself a public issue, not something that happens quietly behind closed doors."
According to a report on Wednesday by NBC News, DHS itself is conducting federal inquiries into its own agents' killings of Pretti and Good, which has raised immediate concerns about impartiality, especially after top officials have jumped to preemptively exonerate the agents while labeling the victims as "domestic terrorists."
Rather than simply serve a role in a federal investigation, CAIR wants Walz to demand an independent state-level investigation run by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), which attained a restraining order to prevent federal agents from destroying evidence in Pretti's case.
"Minnesotans are asking, 'Are we safe here anymore?' and they need actionable leadership, not half-measures," Adan said.
Adan said it was unclear at this point what guarantees Walz has secured to ensure proper oversight of agents and the protection of civil rights.
“While Governor Walz has met with Border Czar Tom Homan as part of efforts to address the situation, that meeting has not yet translated into real protections for community members on the ground,” he continued. “We are concerned that any agreement that normalizes or legitimizes an expanded federal enforcement presence without binding constraints, transparent accountability, and independent oversight does not protect Minnesota residents and undermines public trust.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Blamed for Fueling Assault on Ilhan Omar, Trump Says ‘She Probably Had Herself Sprayed’
"Nonstop hate and dangerous rhetoric from Trump and his allies has fueled this type of violence," said Rep. Jasmine Crockett .
Jan 28, 2026
President Donald Trump reacted dismissively to news that an assailant sprayed an unidentified substance at US Rep. Ilhan Omar during a town hall meeting, and insinuated without a shred of evidence that she may have staged the attack herself.
ABC News reporter Rachel Scott on Wednesday asked Trump if he had seen video of the incident, in which a man named Anthony Kazmierczak charged toward Omar (D-Minn.) and sprayed her with an unknown substance from a syringe before being restrained by security forces.
Shortly after, Kazmierczak was taken into police custody and charged with third-degree assault.
Trump indicated that he hadn't seen the video, and then started lobbing personal insults at the Minnesota congresswoman.
"I think she's a fraud," Trump told Scott. "I really don't think about that. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her."
When Scott asked Trump to clarify whether he'd seen the video or not, he said he hadn't, before adding, "I hope I don't have to bother" watching it.
There is no evidence whatsoever that Omar arranged to have someone attack her, and social media posts uncovered by the Daily Beast suggest that Kazmierczak was a Trump supporter.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) pointed the finger at Trump and Vice President JD Vance shortly after the attack on Omar.
"It is not a coincidence that after days of President Trump and VP Vance putting Rep. Omar in their crosshairs with slanderous public attacks, she gets assaulted at her town hall," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a social media post. "Thank God she is okay. If they want leaders to take down the temp, they need to look in the mirror."
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said she was "disgusted and outraged" by the attack on Omar, and she laid the blame for the assault on Trump.
"Let’s be clear: nonstop hate and dangerous rhetoric from Trump and his allies has fueled this type of violence," she wrote. "I stand with Rep. Omar. I stand with Minnesota. This must stop."
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also condemned the attack on Omar, insisting that "the cruel, inflammatory, dehumanizing rhetoric by our nation’s leaders needs to stop immediately."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Bondi Demands Walz Turn Over Minnesota Voter Rolls to 'Restore Rule of Law' to State
"This is blackmail. This is the way organized crime works."
Jan 25, 2026
As Minnesota residents and people across the US were reeling from the killing of protester Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents on Saturday—the second fatal shooting by federal immigration agents in the city in less than three weeks—US Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz, telling him it is in his power to "restore the rule of law" in his state.
One suggestion the attorney general gave amounted to a "shakedown," said US Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and had nothing to do with the Trump administration's persistent claims that immigrants have caused a crisis in Minnesota. Bondi demanded the Democratic governor turn over voter rolls for the state, as she has called on all 50 states and Washington, DC to do, prompting legal challenges from voting rights groups and voters.
Bondi wrote that Walz must allow the Department of Justice (DOJ) to access voter rolls to "confirm that Minnesota's voter registration practices comply with federal law."
"Fulfilling this commonsense request will better guarantee free and fair elections and boost confidence in the rule of law," she wrote.
Gallego accused the DOJ of "using fear to get their hands on voter information."
The Trump administration filed a federal lawsuit last September against Minnesota and several other Democrat-governed states to demand personal information for all voters, including driver's license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
Considering President Donald Trump's persistent, debunked claims of so-called "voter fraud" in the 2020 election, including the baseless claim that noncitizens are permitted by Democratic governors to vote in federal elections, advocates have said the DOJ's demands for voter rolls are aimed at further spreading lies and misinformation.
In the letter, Bondi also denounced Minnesota officials for speaking out against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the wake of an ICE agent's fatal shooting of Renee Good earlier this month, saying a "national tragedy" has resulted from the "anti-law enforcement rhetoric."
The "tragedy" the attorney general was referring to wasn't the killings of Good and Pretti, but a rise in "violence against ICE officers and agents" that the Trump administration has cited frequently. She didn't provide examples of violent attacks in the letter.
She also demanded that Walz turn over records on Medicaid and food assistance programs and "repeal sanctuary policies that have led to so much crime and violence in your state"—also providing no evidence of such a rise. According to data from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Minneapolis Police Department, crime has gone down in recent years.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said Bondi's letter suggested that Minnesota can expect more violence from federal immigration officers unless Walz turns over his constituents' sensitive data.
This isn’t leadership. This is blackmail.
The Department of Justice has now told Minnesota officials that they will remove ICE if they hand over their voter rolls - this is not how the law works. pic.twitter.com/V9udMnJgPn
— Arizona Secretary of State (@AZSecretary) January 25, 2026
"They're not entitled to that data," said Fontes. "This is blackmail. This is the way organized crime works. They move into your neighborhood, they start beating everybody up, and then they extort what they want. This is not how America is supposed to work, and I'm embarrassed that the administration is pushing in this direction."
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, noted that Bondi's demand came days after the DOJ acknowledged that a group aimed at challenging election results reached out to two Department of Government Efficiency Employees who were working at the Social Security Administration and requested they analyze state voter rolls.
"This is not a coincidence," said D'Arrigo. "Authoritarians crave legitimacy, and manipulated election results can provide that."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular