Democratic Lawmaker Apologizes for Vote to Keep Funding ICE

Democrats that voted in favor of the Department of Homeland Security’s latest funding package were hit by a maelstrom of public fury over the weekend, forcing some lawmakers to do a complete 180 on their decisions—albeit too late.

Not even 48 hours after seven Democrats banded together to help pass DHS’s $64.4 billion funding bill, ICE agents killed another U.S. citizen in Minnesota: 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti. His death summoned mass outrage, partially directed at the liberals who afforded the violent agencies more dough.

In an email to his campaign list Monday, New York Representative Tom Suozzi said that he had underestimated the significance of his vote, claiming he did not realize that the funding vote would be interpreted as a “referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis.”

“I hear the anger from many of my constituents, and I take responsibility for that,” Suozzi wrote. “I have long been critical of ICE’s unlawful behavior and I must do a better job demonstrating that.

“The senseless and tragic murder of Alex Pretti underscores what happens when untrained federal agents operate without accountability,” he continued. “President Trump must immediately end ‘Operation Metro Surge’ and ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis that has sown chaos, led to tragedy, and undermined experienced local law enforcement.”

The other Democrats who voted in support of the bill were Representatives Henry Cuellar (Texas), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Laura Gillen (New York), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington), Jared Golden (Maine), and Don Davis (North Carolina).

Ahead of the vote, Suozzi claimed that the bill—which would continue to fund ICE operations—was a better alternative than another government shutdown.

Some of the other lawmakers also called out ICE while trying to excuse their vote. In a video statement, Gonzalez said that the last week in Washington was one of the toughest of his career, and pledged to ask for a “thorough and independent investigation” into the myriad abuses perpetrated by ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents.

“Let me make it clear, [my vote] was not to fund ICE,” Gonzalez said. “But what I was voting for was to ensure that our agencies here in south Texas were funded.”

Gillen was similarly moved by Pretti’s untimely death, though she did not retract her support for the bill. Posting on X, Gillen claimed that Pretti’s death “at the hands of ICE” warranted the immediate impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Under her leadership, ICE has targeted U.S. citizens and children and killed Americans,” Gillen wrote. “She is not focused on safety or border security; she’s focused on chaos and self-promotion, undermining local law enforcement and stoking violence as a result. The American people deserve better.”

After months of denials, President Trump has finally admitted that he has been falling asleep during Cabinet meetings.

In an interview with New York magazine published Monday, Trump said that he closed his eyes during those meetings because they were “boring as hell.”

“I’m going around a room, and I’ve got 28 guys—the last one was three and a half hours. I have to sit back and listen, and I move my hand so that people will know I’m listening. I’m hearing every word, and I can’t wait to get out,” Trump said.

It’s a stark admission in an article about Trump’s health that the president agreed to in an attempt to quash negative reports about his age and his visibly declining mental and physical fitness. The president previously claimed to be “resting” or “blinking” his eyes, despite having fallen asleep multiple times in full view of the press and public: in the middle of his own military parade, while meeting foreign leaders, and four different times in the month of December.

Much of the article is Trump telling doctors, staffers, and members of his Cabinet to brag to writer Ben Terris about how healthy and energetic he is. At one point during his interview, he turned to his physicians from Walter Reed hospital and asked, “Real fast. Is my health perfect?”

“Your health is excellent, sir,” said Colonel James Jones, a physician’s assistant with a Ph.D. in health science.

The president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, said that Trump “can work harder and he has a better memory and he has more stamina and has more energy than a normal mortal. The headline of your story should be ‘The Superhuman President.’”

Sycophancy aside, it’s quite obvious that Trump’s health is declining, as the article points out, with bruising repeatedly showing up on his hands, his own admission that he takes a massive dose of aspirin each day, and the fact that he had trouble remembering the name of Alzheimer’s disease. But don’t worry, Trump doesn’t think about Alzheimer’s at all because, as he says, “I don’t have it.”

As Donald Trump’s administration proceeds to cover up the latest killing in Minneapolis, Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino confirmed that the agents who killed Alex Pretti are already back on the streets.

During a press conference Sunday, Bovino was asked for information about the two officers who were caught on camera firing multiple shots at Pretti after he was already pinned to the ground and disarmed.

“Are they both working right now, or are they on administrative leave?” the reporter asked.

“All agents that were involved in that scene are working, not in Minneapolis, but in other locations,” Bovino said. “That’s for their safety. There’s this thing called doxing. And the safety of our employees is very important to us, so we’re gonna keep those employees safe.

“As far as the number of shots, the number of agents involved, that again, is going to come out in the investigation,” he continued.

Not only did Bovino openly admit to moving the agents responsible out of Minneapolis jurisdiction, he referred to accountability as “doxing.” The commander prioritized the impunity of his officers over the safety of civilians they’re killing in broad daylight.

As for the so-called “investigation,” federal agents have blocked local access to the scene of the shooting, preventing local investigators from conducting an independent investigation into the incident—for the second time this month. A federal judge granted a request from Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and local prosecutors to prevent the federal government from “destroying or altering” evidence at the scene of Pretti’s killing.

Video analysis of the shooting shows that the CBP officers were not in any danger from Pretti, a 37-year old ICU nurse, who had been filming agents and civilians on his iPhone Saturday. Footage of the incident showed that Pretti was tackled by several federal agents after he approached a protester who’d been pepper-sprayed. When the agents realized the man they’d beaten and pinned to the ground was armed, they took his gun, and two of the agents shot him roughly 10 times.

Vice President JD Vance is calling for more accountability in Minnesota—but not from federal agents.

In a missive Sunday, Donald Trump’s number two claimed that the “crazy stories” he had heard while visiting Minneapolis last week did not involve any of the violent overreaches by ICE agents under his purview, but rather what he considered to be an inappropriate magnitude of local hatred for the federal officers.

“When I was in Minneapolis, I heard a number of crazy stories. But near the top of the list: A couple of off duty ICE and CBP officers were going to dinner in Minneapolis,” Vance posted on X. “They were doxed and their location revealed, and the restaurant was then mobbed. The officers were locked in the restaurant, and local police refused to respond to their pleas for help (as they’ve been directed by local authorities). Eventually, their fellow federal agents came to their aid.

“This is just a taste of what’s happening in Minneapolis because state and local officials refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement,” Vance continued. “They have created the chaos so they can have moments like yesterday, where someone tragically dies and politicians get to grandstand about the evils of enforcing the border.”

Vance, who spent weeks vilifying Renee Nicole Good as a domestic terrorist after she was shot dead by ICE agents, toured Minneapolis last week in a hollow effort to deescalate boiling tensions between federal officers and Minnesotans.

Speaking with reporters Thursday, Vance claimed that Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey needed to cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration agenda in order to quell the “chaos.”

“The directive that I got from the president of the United States is meet these guys halfway, work with them, so that we can make these immigration enforcement operations successful without endangering our ICE officers and so that we can turn down the chaos a little bit,” Vance said.

Local leaders roundly rejected Vance’s suggestion, throwing back that Washington needed to withdraw the 3,000 immigration agents in the city in order to restore order among residents.

“We don’t need 3,000 ice agents in our streets—more than every local police department combined,” Walz responded on X. “Take the show of force off the streets and partner with the state on targeted enforcement of violent offenders instead of random, aggressive confrontation.”

In his own words, Frey similarly urged for peace in his city—and he didn’t direct his message toward the thousands of protesters.

“Peace is not spraying irritants and chemicals at peaceful protesters, it’s not detaining a 5-year-old, it’s not dragging a pregnant woman through the streets,” he said.

Still, Vance has continued to blame Minnesotans for attempting to defend their own against the long arm of the federal government.

“The solution is staring everyone in the face. I hope authorities in Minneapolis stop this madness,” Vance concluded Sunday.

Far-right political operative Steve Bannon is calling on the Trump administration to crack down even harder in its “Operation Metro Surge,” claiming on his War Room podcast Monday that Minneapolis protests are part of a larger, advanced Marxist-antifa network.

“This is just not Minneapolis—this is an organized, well thought through effort to invade the country,” Bannon said of local activism in Minneapolis in the wake of a Border Patrol agent shooting Alex Pretti 10 times.

“Let me be blunt. If you blink in Minneapolis, they’re gonna overwhelm you, and they’re gonna win. You cannot blink in Minneapolis. That is one of the festering sores of this country, and that’s where they all come together.... You have to lance the boil there,” Bannon said, calling for even more targeted militance from the federal government.

Bannon was joined by fellow right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, who offered his own belligerent insight, claiming that leftist insurgents are flooding into Minneapolis on “Soros buses.”

“There are now these insurgents that are coming in.... We’ve got evidence of people coming from Boston, people coming from New England who are now flooding into Minneapolis,” he said, a claim that has not been corroborated. “Thanks to the One Big Beautiful bill, we can go into Maine, we can go into these places. But if you blink now in Minneapolis, they’re gonna send the insurgents to Maine.... If you blink in Minneapolis, you’ll never make it to Detroit, to Chicago, to Philadelphia, to Los Angeles, to New York. Take the fight here.... Put the insurgency down immediately.”

“They wanna put the people that defend the American republic on trial.... Double down, triple down. Sending Homan there is a good first effort,” Bannon continued, referring to Trump’s announcement earlier in the day that border czar Tom Homan will head to Minneapolis. “This is a Marxist—this is the red-green alliance coming together to try to take down the American republic.... It’s a domestic terrorist mob.”

What a strange reality these people live in. Is it not possible that Minneapolis residents watched masked men in tactical gear invade their city, pull people from their homes, arrest children, and shoot and kill two of their neighbors—and then organically decided to act on their constitutional right to protest? Perhaps these policies really are just as unpopular as nearly every major poll says they are, and blaming George Soros is not a sufficient dismissal of this activism.

Furthermore, the left wishes they were as organized as Bannon seems to think they are. What has antifa won? Who are their leaders? The conversation between Bannon and Posobiec was sparked by a tweet from a left-leaning account smaller than theirs that read “minneapolis could be our Fallujah. organize supply drives.” It has less than 80 likes currently. They also pointed to a GoFundMe for a “Community Defense Initiative” that barely raised any money and has since been taken down. And yet Bannon is calling for even more federal agents to flood into Minneapolis.

President Donald Trump says he doesn’t care whether he has the same neurological disease his late father suffered from—whatever it was.

Speaking to New York magazine’s Ben Terris, the president recounted stories about his father, Fred Trump, who died in 1999 at the age of 93.

“He had one problem,” Trump said. “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it?” He pointed to his forehead, and looked expectantly at White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt said.

“Is it something you think about at all?” Terris asked.

“No, I don’t think about it at all. You know why?” Trump replied. “Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.”

Trump’s laissez-faire attitude about his cognitive decline comes amid, well, a lot of apparent instances of cognitive decline. The president has repeatedly claimed that he has taken multiple cognitive tests amid multiple mysterious visits to the hospital for vague exams. Last week in Davos, Trump claimed that a massive bruise on his hand was the result of taking a “big aspirin.” But doctors have theorized that the president’s discolored hands could be a sign of something much worse.

A Republican candidate has dropped out of the race for governor in Minnesota following a federal agent’s killing of nurse Alex Pretti over the weekend. 

Minneapolis attorney Chris Madel announced he was leaving the race on Monday in a video announcement, saying that he could not support the “stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”

Madel said that he supported the initially stated goals of ICE and the federal government in Minnesota of deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records, but that federal action in the state has gone far “beyond its stated focus on true public safety threats.”

“United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear. United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong,” Madel said in the video, adding that he had read reports of U.S. citizens being detained by ICE agents “due to the color of their skin” and spoken to those allegedly targeted by federal agents.  

“Driving while Hispanic is not a crime,” Madel said. “Neither is driving while Asian.”

Madel was a top contender in the Republican primary, finishing among the top three in polls. He criticized the rest of his party in his message. 

“National Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota,” Madel said. Madel was not a maverick in his party: He had provided legal assistance to Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Minneapolis mother Renee Good earlier this month. 

Madel still stressed his support for President Trump, saying that while federal actions in Minnesota were an “unmitigated disaster,” many people “unfairly do not provide the president with nearly enough credit,” citing his “ceasefire” in Gaza, his proposal for a 10 percent cap on credit card interest, and his work to get NATO countries to increase their defense spending. 

All of this shows that Trump’s efforts are starting to backfire among all Minnesotans, not just Democrats or left-leaning people in the Twin Cities. Republicans in the state, even true believers like Madel, are beginning to see ICE’s actions for what they are: an attempt to assert control over Minnesota using violence. Even Republicans outside of the state are starting to wake up. 

Federal agents have terrorized, shot, and killed Minnesotans under the guise of advancing the Trump administration’s immigration goals—but the real victims, according to some officials, are ICE and Border Patrol.

Reacting to video footage of ICE’s lethal attack on ICU nurse Alex Pretti, CBP chief Greg Bovino unequivocally told CNN Sunday how he interpreted the situation, which involved several masked agents pinning Pretti on the ground before shooting him nearly a dozen times.

“With respect, it feels as though in some ways you’re blaming the victim here,” said host Dana Bash.

“The victims are the Border Patrol agents. I’m not blaming the Border Patrol agents. The victims are the Border Patrol agents,” Bovino said. “The suspect put himself in that situation.”

Pretti, a well-respected nurse who worked with veterans, was out on the streets of Minneapolis Saturday morning protesting the death of Renee Nicole Good, who was similarly shot point-blank several times earlier this month by a masked ICE agent shortly after dropping her child off at school.

Moments before Pretti’s death, video captured from onlookers at multiple angles depicted the 37-year-old filming ICE activity before intervening between another protester and an agent who had violently shoved her to the ground. The two protesters were then sprayed with a chemical irritant, and Pretti was ripped away from the other demonstrator while she continued to slip on a mound of snow.

At least seven officers were on top of Pretti, wrestling him to the ground, when one of them, standing above the situation and seemingly supporting the other agents, grabbed his gun and shot Pretti. Video footage captured audio of 10 gunshots ringing out.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed that the officer who killed Pretti was “fearing for his life” when he reached for his weapon.

“The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted,” McLaughlin said. “Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots.”

McLaughlin noted that Pretti was pronounced dead on the scene by medics.

More protests have swept Minneapolis in the wake of Pretti’s death, and Governor Tim Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard to contend with Washington’s overstep.

Senate Democrats are threatening to withhold funding to the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the latest civilian killing in Minneapolis.

Federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, on Saturday morning, the second time this month that federal agents have killed a civilian.

On Capitol Hill, multiple Democratic senators warned that they would not approve a $1.2 trillion package to keep the federal government open if it includes appropriations for the DHS, according to NBC News. The bill was first approved in the House last week with the help of seven Democrats.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement Saturday. “Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE.”

“Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included,” he added.

The Democratic Party’s weakest links in the Senate have also voiced their refusal to support funding DHS. Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who was one of eight Democrats to break with her party’s standoff over funding for the Affordable Care Act last year, said that other funding measures could pass, but not one for DHS.

“The Trump Administration and Kristi Noem are putting undertrained, combative federal agents on the streets with no accountability. They are oppressing Americans and are at odds with local law enforcement,” Cortez Masto said. “This is clearly not about keeping Americans safe, it’s brutalizing U.S. citizens and law-abiding immigrants.”

Senator Jacky Rosen, another Democrat from Nevada who broke with her party over the last shutdown, also said she opposed “any government funding package that contains the bill that funds this agency, until we have guardrails in place to curtail these abuses of power and ensure more accountability and transparency.”

Senator Tim Kaine, a third former defector, came out against the bill even before Pretti’s killing. He argued that Congress shouldn’t validate a president who is “acting chaotically and unlawfully.”

A few Republican senators have also criticized Pretti’s killing, calling for an independent investigation into the incident, but there has been no indication they intend to do anything to protect American citizens from ICE violence.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche went on Fox News Monday morning to attempt to walk back the baseless and absurd claims from many top officials in the Trump administration that Alex Pretti was committing an act of “domestic terrorism” before he was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis.

Blanche was questioned during a segment about the internal strife within federal law enforcement ranks over how the Trump administration has responded to Pretti’s shooting. 

“This is coming to a head, Todd. I ask you, based on the DOJ’s purview: Do the actions of Alex Pretti amount to domestic terrorism?” Fox & Friends co-host Griff Jenkins asked.

“Look we’re—it’s an investigation. So I’m not going to prejudge what his actions were or were not,” Blanche said, in stark contrast to the rest of President Trump’s Cabinet. “There’s two things that have to be part of this narrative.… Number one is the reason why that happened on Saturday is because we get zero cooperation from police.” Blanche went on to blame local law enforcement before the anchor interrupted him. 

“With all due respect sir, my question is more pointed. Do you believe your colleagues may have gone farther? You are an attorney at DOJ. 18 U.S. code 2331 has a legal definition of domestic terrorism, and it doesn’t appear to most of the country that watched the available video … it does not appear to have met that definition of domestic terrorism. So I’m just sort of wondering how you in the DOJ are viewing whether your colleagues may have gone too far.” 

“Look I don’t think anybody thinks that they were comparing what happened on Saturday to domestic terrorism,” Blanche said. “What we saw was a very violent altercation.…  I am not going to prejudge the facts.” 

That’s exactly what Blanche’s colleagues did in the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s killing.  Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino each came out and told us that Pretti meant to do violence and incite terror, deciding that their own warped version of events was the truth before any kind of investigation started. 

“A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement, and this is your response?” Miller wrote Saturday on X, responding to Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar condemning the killing. “You and the state’s entire Democrat leadership team have been flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country.”

“This individual went and impeded their law enforcement operations, attacked those officers, had a weapon on him and multiple dozens of rounds of ammunition, wishing to inflict harm on these officers, coming, brandishing like that,” Noem said Saturday.

“He brought a semiautomatic weapon to a riot, assaulted federal officers, and at some point, they saw that weapon,” Bovino said. “So, I do believe [Secretary Noem] is 100% spot-on in what she said.”

It’s hard to believe anything that Blanche says here when this false narrative has already been established.