The time for silence is past.
We are living under a fascist government. Democrats in Congress are failing to resist. We must look for leaders elsewhere – and take action ourselves.
© 2026 CWhisenhunt
I told you last week that I’d send out a Fast Forward outlining the outrageous pardons that Trump is quietly granting to criminals, some takeaways from Jack Smith’s public testimony before Congress, and the ACL epidemic among female athletes, specifically in basketball, soccer, and volleyball.
None of that matters in this moment.
Nothing matters except the fact that our government has killed another American in cold blood and once again lied about it.
The president lied, the vice president lied, the attorney general lied, the Homeland Security secretary lied. It’s almost as though the most critical qualification for a job in the Trump administration is the ability to spectacularly fail a lie detector test.
Thanks to bystander videos released over the past couple of days, and some excellent, frame-by-frame analysis of those videos by news organizations like The New York Times and CNN, it’s abundantly clear that the Border Patrol officers had no justification for killing Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the local VA hospital.
Videos from various angles and subsequent reporting show:
— The episode started when someone being pursued by Border Patrol agents ran into a donut shop; the owners locked the doors to prevent the agents from entering.
— That apparently enraged the agents, because they then turned their wrath on the observers and protesters on the street who were videotaping and blowing whistles to warn other immigrants. Pretti was one of those who was videotaping.
— The agents started approaching these observers and protesters and pushing them around, including Pretti. They violently pushed a couple of women, including one who fell to the ground. Pretti went over to help her up.
— His effort to help the woman up apparently infuriated the agents, who sprayed him and another woman with pepper spray. Several agents then grabbed Pretti, threw him to the ground, and piled on top of him. One smashed Pretti’s head several times with his metal pepper spray canister. Pretti was on his knees, face down, trying to use his arms to protect his head even as the agents grab his arms.
Let’s stop right here for a moment. What sort of men get enraged when they see an honorable man lean over to help a woman who was just assaulted? An honorable man whose first instinct was to step between her and her attackers? An honorable man who wanted to protect her, to make sure she wasn’t injured, to help her to her feet?
The same type of men who would shoot an unarmed woman in the head three times, stroll away, and mutter: “Fucking bitch.”
One can only assume that every employee of ICE and Border Patrol support these actions. If not, are any resigning? A Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota was so upset by the Pretti murder that he dropped his election bid and condemned the federal agents and Trump’s violent policy. His move was stunning because he’s a lawyer who was representing Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Renee Good.
How about you, ICE and Border Patrol agents? Staying employed at these agencies makes you complicit. We can only assume that all of you wholeheartedly agree that Renee Good and Alex Pretti deserved to be murdered. I hope that having this job on your resume makes you unemployable in the future at any decent company or organization. Maybe you could join the Aryan Freedom Network. Friends and family of ICE agents: Are you proud?
Back to the timeline:
— At some point during the struggle with agents, Pretti’s shirt and jacket rode up on his back to expose a gun tucked in the waistband of his pants — a gun he was licensed to carry. An agent standing at Pretti’s feet drew his gun. Another agent who had been standing off to the side walked over, reached in, and removed the gun from Pretti’s waistband — in clear view of the agent standing with his gun drawn. Pretti was still on his knees, hunched over.
— The agent who removed Pretti’s gun turned and ran away, for some reason. There’s no indication that he yelled or signaled to his fellow agents that he had secured Pretti’s gun. Instead, he grabbed the gun and ran. A second or two later, an agent shot Pretti; it appeared to be the agent standing at his feet with gun drawn, who apparently had a clear view of the removal of Pretti’s gun, but it’s not clear.
— Immediately, other shots rang out. In all, agents fired at the prone, defenseless Pretti about 10 times. It was chaos reminiscent of the Keystone Cops. The agents looked clueless about how to de-escalate the situation, focused on nothing but violence and brute force. They were tripping over each other, getting in each other’s way, clearly untrained, undisciplined, way out of their depth.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
— A pediatrician who saw the shooting from her apartment window ran down to help Pretti, performing CPR even though he had no pulse. She said she saw 4-5 bullet wounds in his back and neck. She also noted that none of the Border Patrol agents offered any assistance to Pretti. Instead, they were searching his clothes and counting the number of bullet holes in his body. EMS eventually arrived.
These are sick individuals.
The New York Times has a new analysis of videos of the Pretti shooting that shows how lethal force came to be used against a man who didn’t pose a threat.
CNN also has an analysis of the videos.
Trump, unsettled by the public resistance in Minneapolis and the national backlash over the two recent murders, has yanked ICE chief Greg Bovino out of there, along with some of his Border Patrol agents, and sent him back to the southern border where he can wreak havoc on desperate migrants instead of US citizens. (Unfortunately, Trump says he isn’t going to fire DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He just asked her to please not shoot his attack dog, Stephen Miller.)
He sent border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis in an effort to calm things down. Yup, the guy who made an art out of separating families at the southern border. Homan met with Governor Tim Walz this morning, and Walz asked for a reduction in the number of federal agents in the state and impartial investigations of both recent murders. Good luck with that. Maybe he can try bribing him. I hear that $50,000 is his sweet spot.
Also, Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey talked with Trump on the phone, a call Trump said was very “respectful.” Apparently they refrained from calling him a moron.
Three thoughts:
The fight against fascism often requires martyrs. Kierkegaard wrote, “The tyrant dies and his rule is over. The martyr dies and his rule begins.” I think of civil rights leaders and workers slain in the South for simply trying to end segregation. The four Kent State students gunned down in 1970 for protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. In Trump’s violent crackdown on undocumented immigrants, Renee Good and Alex Pretti just may be the martyrs who change the course of history.
Democratic leaders in Congress are letting us down. They issue these meaningless statements condemning whatever the latest Trump outrage is, yet continue to take actions and vote on issues as though this is a normal administration.
Seven House Democrats joined all Republicans except one (Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky) last Thursday to give ICE $10 billion and Border Patrol $18.3 billion, despite the murder of Renee Good and other violence against protesters in Minneapolis.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who’s been all over TV issuing toothless statements about DHS, refused to pressure members of his caucus to oppose the bill. Doubtful we’ll be seeing him at the Kennedy Library in Dorchester getting the Profiles in Courage award.
Remember these names:
Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi of New York, Jared Golden of Maine, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state. The vote was 220-207.
The bill now goes to the Senate. The GOP also has a majority there, but may need some Democratic votes on this one. The Dems, meanwhile, are actually engaging with the Trump administration as though it’s normal, requesting that mandatory body cams and training be added to the bill in exchange for their votes.
Big mistake. This guy sums up the rage pretty well:
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It’s time to find new leaders — and take action ourselves. I’ve given up on the Democratic members of Congress. At a time of national emergency, they’ve proven themselves to be useless time and time again. Where will leaders with guts emerge? Hard to say.
Tad Stoermer, a scholar of resistance history and the American Revolution, says the belief among some Democratic leaders that they can end this period of Trumpian terror though peaceful means, that the strength and logic of their arguments will persuade the Republicans in power to come to their senses, is absurd.
To those Democrats, “Peace is more important than ending the abuse,” he says. As an historian, it reminds him of another critical period in history when the mantra was: “Preserving the union is more important than ending slavery.” And another: Post-Revolution America, when Federalists like George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton favored a strong national government run by aristocratic urban elites and tried to roll over the anti-Federalists like Thomas Jefferson, who had a more egalitarian vision of governance.
Did the anti-Federalists merely try to persuade? No. They agitated and demanded and used whatever leverage they could find to force the issue. Their victory? A Bill of Rights added to the Constitution. A product of American resistance, Stoemer says. Not American reform, and not American restraint. American resistance.
That’s what’s at stake today, he argues. Are you a Loyalist, or are you a Patriot? Are you wedded to the status quo, satisfied with fruitless attempts at persuasion, because resistance will create scary conflict?
A great man called it “Good trouble.” It’s time to find leaders who’ll embrace that and stop this reign of terror in our cities.
Tomorrow: What you can do.
Brava! Cogent and well-stated.
Well put. Can't believe Democrats in the House voted to give DHS another dime!!! You're right, Trump nor his administration can be placated. Come on Democrats get spine; the GOP totally lost theirs!