Skyline Happenings

Commentary by Heather Cox Richardson

As the nation mourned the killing of VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti yesterday at the hands of federal officials in Minneapolis, President Donald J. Trump spent last night at the White House at a black-tie private screening of a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump. Amazon paid $40 million for the rights to the film just weeks after executive chair Jeff Bezos dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago following the former president’s reelection and is spending another $35 million to promote the film.

Then, this morning, Trump’s social media account posted a 450-word social media screed complaining about the lawsuit against his addition of a massive ballroom to the White House. Calling the National Trust for Historic Preservation a “Radical Left” organization, the account claimed that the addition “is being done with the design, consent, and approval of the highest levels of the United States Military and Secret Service. The mere bringing of this ridiculous lawsuit has already, unfortunately, exposed this heretofore Top Secret fact. Stoppage of construction, at this late date, when so much has already been ordered and done, would be devastating to the White House, our Country, and all concerned.”

This morning, administration officials doubled down on their insistence that the killing had been justified.

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, U.S. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino claimed the true victims of yesterday’s shooting were federal agents. He confirmed that the agents who killed Pretti yesterday remain on the streets today, though they have been reassigned elsewhere. FBI director Kash Patel claimed on the Fox News Channel that the fact Pretti was carrying a weapon proved that he was planning trouble, although because he was part of a community-led first-responder network, carrying the weapon for which he had a permit made sense.

But Americans are not buying it. They are coalescing around the idea of the American people versus an out-of-control government. As conservative lawyer George Conway put it: “I just checked—it turns out that Art. II, Sec. 1 of the Constitution of the United States does *not* say ‘The executive Power shall be vested in a bunch of sociopaths who think they can do whatever the f*ck they want and make sh*t up as they go along.’”

Reports out of Minnesota say that in the face of the terror inflicted on it by federal agents, the people there are even more closely linked together in community solidarity. They are patrolling the streets, donating food, delivering groceries, helping with legal services, organizing to look out for each other in a demonstration of community solidarity so foreign to administration figures that Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday suggested that there was something nefarious about how well organized they are as they protect their neighbors.

In Minneapolis today, the Minnesota prison system took the extraordinary step of launching its own website to combat lies from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Its first major announcement suggested that Bovino had lied about the Border Patrol operation that was underway when agents killed Alex Pretti. The Minnesota Department of Corrections expressed its condolences to the family and loved ones of Alex Pretti and said that although Bovino claimed that the operation was targeting a man with a significant criminal history, that information was false. (continued on Page 2 or here)

In fact, the individual Bovino identified had never been in custody in Minnesota, and records showed only traffic-related offenses for him. Records did show, though, that he had been in federal immigration custody during Trump’s first administration and had been released.

Chief Brian O’Hara of the Minneapolis Police Department told Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation, “People have had enough. This is the third shooting now in less than three weeks. The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone, and now this is the second American citizen that’s been killed, it’s the third shooting within three weeks…. This is not sustainable. This police department has only 600 police officers. We are stretched incredibly thin. This is taking an enormous toll, trying to manage all of this chaos on top of having to be the police department for a major city. It’s too much.”

The Minnesota National Guard made it clear which side they were on. Wearing neon vests to distinguish themselves from federal agents, they handed out doughnuts, coffee, and hot chocolate to anti-ICE protesters.

The National Basketball Players Association said it could no longer remain silent. “Now more than ever,” it said, “we must defend the right to freedom of speech and stand in solidarity with the people in Minnesota protesting and risking their lives to demand justice. The fraternity of NBA players, like the United States itself, is a community enriched by its global citizens, and we refuse to let the flames of division threaten the civil liberties that are meant to protect us all. The NBPA and its members extend our deepest condolences to the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, just as our thoughts remain focused on the safety and well-being of all members of our community.”

The newest killing has opened up a rift in Republican ranks. Administration officials not allied with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and her cronies are complaining to reporters, including Bill Melugin of the Fox News Channel, that they are frustrated with DHS officials’ statements that Pretti was intending a “massacre” of federal agents in the face of videos that disprove such absurd claims. They have told Melugin such comments are “catastrophic.” “[W]e are losing this war,” sources say, “we are losing the base and the narrative.”

Indeed, at the base level of politics, MAGA supporters who support gun ownership are appalled by statements like that of FBI director Kash Patel, who told the Fox News Channel’s Maria Bartiromo, “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple. You don’t have the right to break the law and incite violence.” But Pretti had a license to carry a weapon, and he did not brandish it. President Rob Doar of the Minnesota Gun Owners Law Center noted that Pretti had the right to carry a gun in that situation and that it shouldn’t be necessary “to choose between exercising your First Amendment rights or your Second Amendment rights.” He expressed concern that “our government and agents of our government are not engaging in good faith with what we’re seeing with our own eyes.”

Lawyer John Mitnick, who served as deputy counsel of the Homeland Security Council from its inception during the George W. Bush administration and then served as general counsel of the United States Department of Homeland Security from 2018 to 2019, when he clashed with Stephen Miller, wrote on social media: “I helped to establish DHS in 2002 and 2003 and later had the homeland security portfolio as a White House Counsel and served as General Counsel of the Department. I am enraged and embarrassed by DHS’s lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty. Impeach and remove Trump—now.”

Aside from a few strong MAGA voices, elected Republicans appeared reluctant to defend the killing. Neither Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) nor House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) commented on it.

Vermont’s Republican governor Phil Scott did, though, leading the way for other Republicans in districts that are sliding away from MAGA. In a statement, he said: “Enough…It’s not acceptable for American citizens to be killed by federal agents for exercising their God-given and constitutional rights to protest their government. At best, these federal immigration operations are a complete failure of coordination of acceptable public safety and law enforcement practices, training, and leadership. At worst, it’s a deliberate federal intimidation and incitement of American citizens that’s resulting in the murder of Americans…. The president should pause these operations, de-escalate the situation, and reset the federal government’s focus on truly criminal illegal immigrants. In the absence of presidential action, Congress and the courts must step up to restore constitutionality.”

G. Elliot Morris of Strength in Numbers noted today that even the Republican-leaning Rasmussen polls have shown that 59% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, while only 39% approve. In Strength in Numbers today, he reported that “Trump’s 2024 coalition has come undone.” He explained that “[y]oung voters, non-white voters, and low-turnout voters who swung to Trump from 2020 to 2024 have swung back against him in force. In many cases, these groups are even more anti-Trump now than they were ahead of the 2020 election.”

Morris also noted that Trump’s approval rating is not underwater in ten of the states he won in 2024, as I wrote last night. It’s underwater in fifteen.

Today the editorial boards of both Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and his New York Post urged the administration to pause its ICE operations in Minneapolis after the killing of Alex Pretti. The Wall Street Journal’s famously right-wing editorial board warned that “[t]he Trump Administration spin on this simply isn’t believable.” It continued: “Ms. Noem and Mr. Miller aren’t credible spokesmen. Their social-media and cable-TV strategy is to own the libs, rather than to persuade Americans. This is backfiring against Republicans…. Mr. Miller’s mass deportation methods are turning immigration, an issue Mr. Trump owned in 2024, into a political liability for Republicans in 2026. Americans don’t want law enforcement shooting people in the street or arresting five-year-old boys.”

Tonight, the editorial board of the New York Post warned that Trump’s ICE actions in Minneapolis are “backfiring.” “Swing voters…see US citizens dying at federal agents’ hands, and recoil in horror.” It concluded: “Mr. President, the American people didn’t vote for these scenes and you can’t continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes.”

Trump’s social media account turned defensive tonight. After repeating Trump’s false claim that he had won election in a historic landslide (in reality, he won less than 50% of the vote), it blamed Democrats for the chaos ICE and CBP agents have caused in Democratic-led cities. It demanded that every Democratic mayor and governor cooperate with the administration to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Yesterday, after Alex Pretti’s death, the son of a man Pretti had cared for at the VA hospital published a video of Pretti speaking at his father’s deathbed. “Today we remember that freedom is not free,” Pretti said. “We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom. So in this moment, we remember and give thanks for their dedication and selfless service to our nation in the cause of our freedom. In this solemn hour, we [give] them our honor, and our gratitude.”