This time, it feels different.
You can tell the Trump administration knows it has crossed a line. Its response to the killing of Alex Pretti by ICE in Minneapolis last weekend was empty, cold, and built on lies. Pretti was a peaceful protester and legal observer, yet the administration’s story was so obviously false that it fell apart almost immediately.
Still, they tried to sell it. They claimed Pretti was not executed, but was instead a dangerous threat. Stephen Miller even described him as a “would-be assassin,” saying he went to the protest intending to “massacre” law enforcement officers.
That story collapsed the moment video footage was released.
From every angle, the truth was unmistakable. Pretti was pepper-sprayed, grabbed, beaten, disarmed, and then shot while lying on the ground, helpless. Ten bullets were fired into him. He was not attacking anyone. He was not standing. He was not resisting.
He was holding a cellphone. Not a gun. The difference is obvious.
Soon, people learned who he was. Alex Pretti was 37 years old. He lived in Minneapolis. He was a U.S. citizen who followed the law. He worked as an intensive care nurse for the Veterans Administration, caring for people who had served this country.
You could not design a more decent, honorable person if you tried.
And it still didn’t matter.
As Pretti’s body lay in a Minnesota morgue — just as Renee Nicole Good’s had earlier this month after she was also killed by ICE — the smear campaign began. Officials claimed Pretti had a gun in his hand. They said he was violent. They said officers feared for their lives and fired in self-defense.
Lie after lie after lie.
When that story no longer worked, Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem switched tactics. They argued that anyone who brings a gun to a protest must have bad intentions and therefore deserves to be killed.
They ignored the facts. Pretti’s gun was in his waistband. He never touched it. It was removed by officers. He was legally carrying it under Minnesota law.
That is where the hypocrisy became impossible to ignore. Pretti had a valid license in a state that allows concealed carry. This is exactly what Republicans claim to defend when they talk about the Second Amendment.
Even the NRA pushed back. So did gun rights activists. Many people pointed out the glaring double standard by bringing up Kyle Rittenhouse.
Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he showed up at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, carrying an assault rifle. He shot three people, killing two. He was later acquitted and celebrated by the right as a hero.
Yet for Trump supporters, the rules somehow didn’t apply to Alex Pretti. That contradiction cracked the Republican coalition. By Monday, it had turned into a full-blown crisis.
The administration’s brutality had finally gone too far. There were signs that even Trump and his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, were considering some form of investigation. They talked about discussions with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey instead of continuing to deny the obvious and destroy evidence.
Behind the scenes, Republican officials were pushing back. Governors, lawmakers, and senators quietly admitted things had spiraled out of control. What they really wanted was for Kristi Noem to take the fall and for the violence to stop. At the very least, they knew the situation looked terrible.
Then came the announcements. Bovino was “reassigned,” which everyone understood to mean fired. Border czar Tom Homan was brought in to clean up the disaster.
That’s when things crossed into the absurd. The man brought in to restore order was someone who had previously been forced to deny taking a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents.
On Tuesday morning, Trump told reporters he wanted an “honorable and honest” investigation.
But by Tuesday afternoon, the truth emerged. The Justice Department would not open a federal civil rights investigation into Pretti’s killing. Instead, Customs and Border Protection would investigate whether its own officers followed internal policy, while the Department of Homeland Security would look into Pretti himself to see if he broke any laws while being killed.
In plain terms, it was all for show. The cover-up was still happening.
At the core of this is a disturbing reality. A group of officials has been trained to repeat the same message over and over: that the administration is not destroying democracy, and that what we clearly see with our own eyes is somehow not real.
That lie is finally being challenged.
More people are openly condemning the lawlessness, the cruelty, and the authoritarian behavior. It has taken far too long. In just one year, Trump has damaged the government, alienated allies, destabilized the world, frightened the public, and shredded the values the country claims to stand for.
For Trump and the GOP, losing badly in the midterms should not even be the main concern. The real priority should be pulling the country back from the edge.
If Alex Pretti’s killing truly becomes a turning point, then his death will not have been entirely meaningless.
The first thing that must end is the ongoing assault on innocent Americans by poorly trained, unaccountable, militarized federal forces. This experiment in state violence has only produced fear and rage. ICE must be defunded.
Some Republicans are finally waking up, but nothing can bring back Renee Good or Alex Pretti. They are gone. Real justice will never fully be done.
What we can do is tell the truth about who they were. They were not “domestic terrorists.” They were ordinary, decent people. Not saints, not symbols, just human beings who did not deserve to die.
The real extremists are the ones who killed them — and then lied about it.
