Local Prosecutors Launch “FAFO” Team to Go After Feds Breaking the Law

A group of local, elected prosecutors from around the country is launching an effort to hold federal agents liable for abuses of power. They’re calling it the Fight Against Federal Overeach, or “FAFO” for short. The name FAFO turns “fuck around and find out,” a term Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to make happen at his emergency military summit last fall, against the Trump administration.

A press release on Wednesday noted that the group would be particularly focused on states undergoing an influx of federal agents.

“The coalition launches amid growing concerns about warrantless entries, unlawful detentions, and coercive enforcement tactics by federal agents, and it’s intended to ensure that constitutional limits on federal power are actively enforced through lawful institutions,” the statement read. “The coalition will share strategies and best practices among prosecutors, provide regular public updates on efforts to rein in unlawful federal conduct and educate the public on what paths are legally available, and coordinate on accountability efforts across jurisdictions.”

FAFO’s founding members are a group of district attorneys including Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, Austin, Texas’s José Garza, and Pima County, Arizona’s Laura Conover, among others.

The launch comes as federal immigration agents in the past year have descended upon Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tennessee; Los Angeles; and Minneapolis, where Minnesotans watched agents gun down two of their neighbors—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—in broad daylight. Aside from the killing, these deployments have been marked by door-to-door raids, detained toddlers, and maimed protesters. While it’s unclear how likely FAFO is to succeed in charging a federal agent with abuse of power, this one of the most pointed statements from local, legal leadership to date.

“No agency and no officer is above the law,” Krasner said in the statement. “When federal agents exceed their lawful authority, local prosecutors have both the power and the duty to act. The project exists to ensure that accountability is real, coordinated, and enforced through lawful institutions.”

The FAFO coalition will convene in February to discuss tactics and next steps.

Rock and roll legend Bruce Springsteen released a protest song Wednesday condemning the violence occurring at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol in Minneapolis.

The song, titled “Streets of Minneapolis,” denounces “Trump’s federal thugs,” the administration’s attempts to cover up the killings and raids they’ve conducted, and ICE’s ongoing presence in the city.

“I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis,” Springsteen said in a statement posted to Instagram. “It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free.”

The song also took aim at active participants within the Trump administration, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller, who have unsuccessfully tried to smear Pretti’s and Good’s name in the aftermath of their deaths in order to salvage Trump’s immigration agenda.

“Their claim was self defense, sir / Just don’t believe your eyes / It’s our blood and bones / And these whistles and phones / Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies,” Springsteen sings on the new track.

Springsteen has been a vocal critic of the president for years. Since Trump’s second inauguration, the “Born in the USA” singer has accused the president and his allies of “rolling back historic civil rights legislation,” abandoning longtime U.S. allies to side with dictators, “defunding American universities,” and “taking sadistic pleasure” in inflicting pain on “loyal American workers.”

Before ICE agents killed Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked in Veterans Affairs, Springsteen appeared at the Light of Day benefit in Red Bank, New Jersey, with a similar fury.

“If you believe in the power of law and that no one stands above it,” Springsteen said on January 17, “if you stand against heavily armed masked federal troops invading an American city, using gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens, if you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest, then send a message to this president, as the mayor of the city said: ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

This story has been updated.

The Department of Homeland appears to have found a new scapegoat on behalf of federal agents who brutally killed a U.S. citizen in broad daylight: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has reportedly started blaming Miller for her decision to label Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minnesota over the weekend, as a “domestic terrorist.”

Although Noem’s Cabinet position means she outranks Miller, the ghoulish presidential adviser is an architect of the Trump administration’s lethal immigration policy, and his power extends over DHS functions.

In a meeting with Donald Trump Monday—which notably excluded Miller—Noem made sure to emphasize that in the aftermath of the shooting, she’d been taking her directions from Miller and the president, a source told Axios.

“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” Noem told a person who relayed her remarks to Axios.

Some in the White House are blaming Customs and Border Protection for furnishing Trump administration officials with an incident report offering scant details, leading them to believe Pretti had “brandished” a weapon. Once Miller heard that a gun had been involved, he immediately started to formulate a narrative in which Pretti intended to massacre federal agents, one source told Axios.

Minutes after DHS published a statement Saturday claiming Pretti was an “armed suspect” who “violently resisted” federal officers’ attempts to disarm him, Miller posted the baseless claim that Pretti was a “would-be assassin” who’d attempted to murder federal law enforcement officers. Noem then repeated this language in her press conference later that day.

Footage of the arrest indicated that federal agents were not aware that Pretti was armed when they started beating him and that Pretti was already disarmed with his arms pinned above his head when he was shot at least 10 times.

It seems that Miller may be hoping to backtrack on his callous lies, and he has suddenly changed his story on Alex Pretti’s killing after Trump’s inner circle began to turn on him.

The MAGA movement—and even some sitting Republican congressmen—are blaming progressive Somali Representative Ilhan Omar for the spray attack she experienced at a town hall on Tuesday night.

Representative Randy Fine clearly stated it was Omar’s fault, even when prodded to say otherwise.

“Obviously we often disagree with her politics, but this is not acceptable at any level,” a NewsMax host said while asking for Fine’s reaction, expressing a basic level of empathy that MAGA seems unable to access.

“Look, I want Ilhan Omar to be deported and denaturalized, but I don’t want her to be attacked or hurt,” Fine said, mispronouncing her first name as “Elon.” “But I also blame Ilhan Omar for what happened.”

GOP Representative Ron Johnson went on a nonsensical rant about what would happen if the attacker was an undocumented immigrant (he wasn’t).

“Let’s talk about how crazy this is. Had that been a Republican member of Congress, had that been an illegal immigrant spraying something at a Republican member of Congress—in Minneapolis what would probably happen is they would release that illegal immigrant, and then frustrate ICE’s attempt to apprehend and deport that individual,” Johnson said, rambling on about some hypothetical scenario rather than acknowledging that his colleague was doing the same job he’s supposed to do: talking to constituents.

“We want criminals off the street. We want people that are criminals who came to this country illegally, we want them out of the country. Democrats … created this mess. Now they’re doing everything they can to frustrate DHS, ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, in their effort to clean up the Democrat-created mess,” he continued.

These claims are based entirely on speculation and preexisting racist hatred for Omar fomented by Trump, who on Tuesday evening suggested that Omar “probably had herself sprayed.” MAGA quickly followed suit.

“Nobody cares about your staged victim propaganda. Please go back to Somalia,” MAGA sycophant Laura Loomer wrote, in response to Omar announcing that she was OK after the attack. “We are getting really tired of people like you taking up space in our country.”

All of these comments come after President Trump himself gave them their messaging, claiming that Omar sprayed herself without even watching the video.

“No. I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud. I really don’t think about that. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,” the president told ABC’s Rachel Scott on Tuesday. “I haven’t seen [the video]. No, no. I hope I don’t have to bother.”

The FBI is carrying out a search warrant at an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, related to the 2020 election.

The search is taking place at the Fulton County Elections Hub & Operations Center, the FBI said Wednesday. A spokesperson in the Atlanta office said the bureau was conducting “court-ordered activity” at the election office, without providing additional details.

The building has served as storage space for election equipment, as well as office space for multiple Fulton County agencies, since it opened in 2023. Atlanta TV station WSB-TV reports that the FBI is seeking to take custody of Fulton County election ballots from the 2020 election.

The Justice Department sued the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections last month, claiming that the office hadn’t complied with a subpoena demanding “used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.”

Trump and his supporters continue to claim that he won the 2020 presidential election and that it was stolen from him, alleging widespread fraud in places like Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis pursued a criminal investigation against Trump and 18 allies over the attempt to overthrow election results in her state, but she was disqualified from the case in 2024 over conflict of interest concerns, and the case was dismissed last year.

This story has been updated.