‘This Is a Dangerous, Dangerous Moment’: AOC Warns Trump, Noem Laying Groundwork for Insurrection Act
Original article by Julia Conley republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Mayor Frey is executing on the municipal laws passed by duly elected officials, by the people of Minneapolis,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “That is what it means to live in a democracy.”
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that President Donald Trump has “considered” invoking the Insurrection Act a day after Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that Border Patrol agents’ killing of Alex Pretti had plunged the US into a “dangerous, dangerous moment” in which the White House appeared to be “laying the groundwork” to use the law to deploy the US military for domestic law enforcement.
Noem and other top White House officials, said Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), have been suggesting that leaders like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—both Democrats who have demanded federal agents leave the city and state—are “breaking the law” by following local ordinances that protect immigrants and citizens from immigration enforcement.
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Noem has claimed that the two leaders are “’inciting,’ that their resistance and difference from this administration, that their political difference in policy from this administration—she is equating disagreement with incitement,” the congresswoman told CNN Saturday.
She suggested the narrative appears aimed at convincing Americans that actions taken by local and state leaders could result in Trump invoking the Insurrection Act and sending the US military into cities, if he doesn’t agree with the leaders’ policies.
Like Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have in recent days, Noem on Saturday accused the mayor and governor of “encouraging” violence against “our citizens and our law enforcement officers.”
“The Minnesota governor and the Minneapolis mayor need to take a long, hard look in the mirror,” Noem said. “They need to evaluate their rhetoric, their conversations, and their encouragement of such violence.”
She added that Walz “encouraged residents and citizens and violent rioters to resist.”
Over a week ago, Leavitt also accused Walz of “inciting the harassment” of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and said the governor should “pick up the phone and say that he will cooperate with the president and federal government in making Minnesota safer.”
Leavitt held up a photo of people she claimed were undocumented immigrants who had come into the country under the Biden administration and committed violent crimes, but analyses by the libertarian Cato Institute has shown nearly three-quarters of people booked into ICE detention in recent months had no criminal convictions.
The press secretary also accused Democratic governors and mayors of holding state and local law enforcement “hostage” with ordinances barring them from cooperating with ICE.
On CNN, Ocasio-Cortez said that while framing their attacks as though they are targeting Frey and Walz, Noem and Leavitt have actually been “taking issue with the people of Minneapolis and the people of Minnesota, who have duly elected their own elected officials to enact their will. They may not like it, but that is what the people of Minnesota and the people of Minneapolis want. They want people’s civil liberties and civil rights protected.”
“Mayor Frey is executing on the municipal laws passed by duly elected officials, by the people of Minneapolis,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “That is what it means to live in a democracy, and that is precisely what they are trying to threaten and undermine in this moment.”
On Fox News Sunday, Noem said that the question of whether to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow Trump to deploy the US military to American cities for domestic law enforcement purposes, is “up to the president” before repeating claims that Pretti was to blame for his own death.
The killing was caught on video by witnesses who saw him holding a cellphone as he tried to help a woman who’d been pushed to the ground by an agent, being pepper-sprayed, and then being thrown to the ground and surrounded by several officers, at least one of whom shot him 10 times after another agent had taken his legal firearm away.
Noem claimed, as she and other Trump officials did immediately after Pretti was killed, that he was “confronting” the officers and “impeding” their operations—assertions that are directly contradicted by videos of the incident.
Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN that following the fatal shooting, the administration has been “asking the American people to not believe their eyes, to not believe their ears, and to not believe what they are seeing right before them… They are asking you to instead hand over your belief to anything they say.”
Original article by Julia Conley republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Meta, Google Under Fire for Letting ICE Run ‘White Nationalist-Inspired Propaganda’ to Recruit Agents
Original article by Jake Johnson republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“The impact of an unqualified army of ICE agents being unleashed across the country has been severe,” wrote Reps. Becca Balint and Pramila Jayapal.
A pair of House Democrats on Thursday demanded that the tech behemoths Google and Meta stop allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use their platforms to bolster the Trump administration’s efforts to recruit agents for its mass deportation campaign and lawless assault on communities across the United States.
In letters to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Reps. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote that they are “alarmed by recent reports that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has partnered” with the tech giants “as part of a large-scale campaign that uses white nationalist-inspired propaganda to recruit immigration enforcement agents.”
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ICE, the lawmakers wrote, has “taken to Google’s platforms to draw in more applicants using advertisements that use white nationalist themes.” As for Meta, Balint and Jayapal pointed to a recent Washington Post story showing that DHS “spent $2.8 million on recruitment ads across Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram” last year.
“Since August, the agency has paid Meta an additional $500,000 to run recruitment advertisements on its platforms,” the House Democrats wrote. “In the first three weeks of the government shutdown last year alone, ICE spent an astounding $4.5 million on paid media campaigns.”
DHS, which oversees ICE, has repeatedly used white nationalist-linked rhetoric in social media posts and recruitment ads. Investigative journalist Austin Campbell reported for The Intercept earlier this month that “the Department of Homeland Security’s official Instagram account made a recruitment post proclaiming, ‘We’ll Have Our Home Again,’ attaching a song of the same name by Pine Tree Riots.”
“Popularized in neo-Nazi spaces, the track features lines about reclaiming ‘our home’ by ‘blood or sweat,’ language often used in white nationalist calls for race war,” Campbell noted. “It isn’t new to see extremist right-wing ideology perpetuated in online culture. What is new is seeing it echoed in official messaging from a federal law enforcement agency with the power to detain, deport, and use lethal force.”
In their letters on Thursday, Balint and Jayapal demanded that Meta and Google “cease further enabling this conduct,” arguing the companies are “complicit” in the Trump administration’s dangerous onslaught against US communities.
“The impact of an unqualified army of ICE agents being unleashed across the country has been severe,” they wrote.
Original article by Jake Johnson republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
‘Please Get the Truth Out,’ Alex Pretti’s Parents Plead as Trump Officials Baselessly Smear Shooting Victim
Original article by Julia Conley republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly thugs,” said Michael and Susan Pretti.
Michael and Susan Pretti urged the press and the public to counter the Trump administration’s baseless claims about their son, Alex Pretti, after he was fatally shot by US Border Patrol agents on a street in Minneapolis and immediately—with no evidence—declared a “domestic terrorist” by top White House officials.
Pretti’s parents expressed heartbreak as well as anger over their son’s killing, which no federal officials contacted the family about, leaving them to learn he had been fatally shot from an Associated Press reporter who reached out to them.
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“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital,” said the Pretti family. “Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.”
They emphasized that Pretti acted as a “hero” in his final moments, moving to help a woman who had just been forcefully pushed to the ground by a federal agent.
“His last thought and act was to protect a woman,” they said before directly disputing claims by officials including White House Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who have made claims that are contradicted by multiple videos of the shooting.
In addition to labeling Pretti a “domestic terrorist”—a claim likely stemming from a memo signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, which claims that acts of domestic terrorism include “impeding” or “doxing” law enforcement officers even though filming federal agents is a constitutional right—officials have claimed he “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun” and wanted to inflict “maximum damage” on the agents.
Bovino on Saturday refused to answer a direct question about when Pretti approached the officers with a weapon; videos show him holding a phone, not the firearm he was legally permitted to carry in a holster, and approaching the woman who was pushed to the ground. The agents then pushed him to ground and surrounded him before one reached into the fray and took Pretti’s gun just before at least one officer fired roughly 10 shots, killing him. Despite the fact that Pretti had just been disarmed and was on the ground, officials have called the shooting “defensive.”
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting,” said Michael and Susan Pretti. “Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by [President Donald] Trump’s murdering and cowardly thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.”
“Please get the truth out about our son,” the Pretti family concluded. “He was a good man.”
Pretti had no criminal record. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology, society, and the environment from University of Minnesota in 2011 and worked as a research scientist before going back to school to become a registered nurse.
Pretti’s father added in comments to the AP that his son “was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset,” and had exercised his First Amendment right to demonstrate against the Trump administration’s mass deportation and detention campaign and an ICE agent’s killing of Renee Good earlier this month.
“He thought it was terrible, you know, kidnapping children, just grabbing people off the street,” said his father. “He cared about those people, and he knew it was wrong, so he did participate in protests.”
After the fatal shooting, the son of a deceased veteran whom Pretti had cared for at the VA hospital posted a video of him reading a “final salute” for his father.
“My father’s final words to me were, ‘Continue to fight the good fight,” wrote the man. “He would be honored in Alex’s sacrifice, and ashamed of this current administration. In my dad’s words I encourage you all to continue to ‘fight the good fight.’”
The AP reported that as of Saturday night, Pretti’s family still had not heard from federal officials about their son’s killing.
Original article by Julia Conley republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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Thousands take to the streets to protest latest ICE’s latest killing in Minneapolis
Protesters gather at Embarcadero Plaza for a protest in San Francisco, January 24, 2026, in response to a fatal shooting in MinneapolisPROTESTERS took to the streets across the United States over the weekend after a man was “executed” in Minneapolis during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Footage aired across social media showed a group of officials from the Immigration Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency surrounding Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse on Saturday before shooting him after a brief struggle.
The footage showed Mr Pretti, a legal gun owner, was disarmed by Ice officials before being shot.
After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and protesters clashed with federal officers, who wielded batons and deployed stun grenades.
The Minnesota National Guard was assisting local police at the direction of Governor Tim Walz, officials said.
Guard troops were sent to both the shooting site and a federal building where officers have squared off with demonstrators daily.
Information about what led up to the shooting was limited, police chief Brian O’Hara said.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that federal officers were conducting an operation and fired “defensive shots” after a man with a handgun approached them and “violently resisted” when they tried to disarm him.
Bystander footage of the shooting that emerged soon after, show Mr Pretti with a phone in his hand but none show him with a weapon.
During a news conference DHS secretary Kristi Noem accused Mr Pretti of trying to “impede a law enforcement operation.” She questioned why he was armed but did not offer details about whether Pretti drew the weapon or brandished it at officers.
President Trump accused local politicians, including the Democratic governor and mayor, of “inciting insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York urged Democrats to “refuse to vote to fund Ice.”
The Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) condemned the killing as a “continuation of the fascist invasion of Minneapolis and an increase in state-violence against our working class and people.
“We are calling for arrests of all federal agents involved in these tragedies and for Ice to be removed completely from Minnesota by building on the general strike.”
The CPUSA was referring to the general strike in Minneapolis on Friday which saw thousands of workers walking out on strike and more than 700 businesses closing to protest against the presence of Ice agents.
The Party of Socialism and Liberation said: “The people need to use our power to shut down business as usual and make it impossible for this reign of terror to continue.”
Original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/thousands-take-streets-protest-latest-ices-latest-killing-minneapolis
dizzy: I occasionally quote Morning Star articles in full without asking. Morning Star‘s copyright is recognised.