VA Officials Tried to Block a Memorial Service for Alex Pretti

National leadership at the Department of Veterans Affairs initially blocked a memorial planned for Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis.

In an email obtained by The New Republic, officials at the Minneapolis VA claimed that “local leadership was instructed to pause the memorial” for Pretti, initially scheduled for Tuesday at noon.

“So in other words, somebody told our people, ‘Back off,’” said one Minneapolis VA employee, who spoke with TNR under the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“Our local leadership I think is very good, they’re quite sensitive, I mean they’re really trying to do that. But they’re getting it from above,” the employee said. “I mean, there’s supposed to be a memorial service yesterday, they’re told to postpone it? I mean, come on! That doesn’t seem consistent with how they usually respond.”

“As an institution, we owe it to him,” the employee said. “And I think the formal ritualized events help some people.”

Two employees also told The Washington Post that a memorial for Pretti had been initially blocked, but another service is scheduled for next week.

In response to an inquiry Wednesday about why the first memorial was canceled, Minneapolis VA Medical Center spokesperson Melanie Nelson told TNR that the organization was still working to schedule an event.

“VA employees are welcome to memorialize Alex Pretti in their own way as long as they are respectful and it does not interfere with their work duties,” the statement said.

At the Minneapolis VA, the decision to cancel Pretti’s memorial was another blow in an ongoing struggle with national leadership under the Trump administration. During the Biden administration, “we felt like the national office was there to support us in our mission as opposed to hamper us,” the first employee told TNR.

While VA Secretary Doug Collins has reportedly not issued an agency-wide statement about Pretti’s killing, he did blame Democratic leadership for his death on social media. “Such tragedies are unfortunately happening in Minnesota because of state and local officials’ refusal to cooperate with the federal government to enforce the law and deport dangerous illegal criminals,” Collins said on X Sunday.

“Really, that kind of got to me,” the employee said, referring to Collins’s statement. “And that’s our leader at the highest level.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz revealed President Donald Trump brought up the military operation in Venezuela when discussing the situation in Minnesota.

Speaking to MS NOW Wednesday night, Walz described his conversation with Trump earlier this week, which the president had claimed was a “very good call.” Walz had a different take.

“He told me that he doesn’t understand what’s wrong with Minnesota. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you people,’” Walz recounted.

“And he told me, ‘Well look, Tim, we did this in New Orleans, we did it in Louisville. There’s no problems.’ And I said, ‘You didn’t kill anybody in Louisville or New Orleans, and the operation here looks very different from that.’

“And then he told me it was successful in Venezuela,” Walz said.

“I’m not sure what gave him the indication that at this point in time, what’s happening to my state, that I’m interested in Venezuela. But he told me how well that went,” he said, adding that the remark was “strange.”

“He saw an operation in Venezuela against a foreign nation in the same context he saw an operation against a U.S. state, a U.S. city.”

Either the president was doing what he always does, flitting from one subject to another in order to inflate his own ego—or he was attempting to intimidate Walz by invoking a violent regime change.

The immigration enforcement operations in Louisville and New Orleans were incredibly different from the large-scale occupation in Minnesota. In Louisville, the operation lasted less than a week, and in New Orleans, only 200 federal immigration officers were dispatched. In the Twin Cities, at least 3,000 federal immigration agents have been dispatched for multiple weeks, resulting in two American citizens being killed in broad daylight.

For some reason, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was at the FBI’s raid at an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, Wednesday.

Gabbard was photographed at the raid while boxes of documents (and ballots) seized by the bureau were being loaded onto trucks. Authorities had a search warrant for the raid related to Trump’s long-debunked allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Gabbard’s job deals with foreign intelligence, so her presence doesn’t seem to make sense.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement questioning what exactly she was doing there.

“There are only two explanations for why the Director of National Intelligence would show up at a federal raid tied to Donald Trump’s obsession with losing the 2020 election,” Warner said.

“Either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus—in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns—or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”

Gabbard may have been there in an attempt to legitimize a conspiracy theory popular in right-wing circles (and the Trump administration) that the Venezuelan government was involved in a plot to overthrow the 2020 election. The Justice Department has been investigating the false claim, debunked in a Delaware court in 2023, since November. Is the Trump administration attempting to create a case out of thin air to validate the president’s 2020 election lies?

MAGA is using a new clip of an earlier interaction between Alex Pretti and federal agents in Minnesota to justify him being shot 10 times while defenseless.

In the video that emerged Wednesday evening, Pretti is seen yelling at agents in an SUV before kicking the vehicle’s taillight as it begins to drive away. Then four agents get out of the vehicle and tackle him to the ground before releasing him. It is unclear what happened immediately before and after the clip. Eleven days later, he was killed.

President Trump posted the video of Pretti on Truth Social without comment. Donald Trump Jr. posted the clip as well, with the caption “just a peaceful legal observer?!?!?”

“LEFTIST HOAX DESTROYED. New video shows Alex Pretti violently attacking federal officers and destroying federal law enforcement vehicles. His firearm is fully visible in the footage,” right-wing commentator Benny Johnson wrote. “This video PROVES that Alex Pretti was not an ‘innocent bystander’ or ‘legal observer.’ He was a violent agitator and psychopath hellbent on attacking federal law enforcement. Another left wing hoax destroyed.”

Disgraced former New York City Mayor and Trump stooge Rudy Giuliani used the clip to suggest that “[Pretti] and his female activist accomplice seemed to be executing a classic ‘rearrest,’ they were trained to do, when he got himself shot.?” It is unclear what Giuliani is even talking about, as it is clear from the video of Pretti’s killing that he was protecting a woman from agents while being pepper-sprayed in the face.

“Alex Pretti was itching for another confrontation with Border Patrol, whom he’d been stalking, harassing and terrorizing,” Megyn Kelly chimed, lying through her keyboard. “HE had been victimizing THEM. His felonies are on tape. He was reckless, and it cost him his life. Find another poster boy, illegal-loving Leftists.”

The pathetic argument quickly received a lot of blowback.

“Federal agents shot him ten times after disarming him, Megyn,” liberal podcaster Jon Favreau responded. “If you’d like to live in a country where the punishment for kicking a taillight is a public execution, you’re free to leave America. No one is buying your bullshit. You’ve lost the country on this one. Go juice your audience numbers with some other rage bait.”

It’s hard to fathom just how morally bankrupt you have to be to use a video of Pretti kicking a car—just days after agents murdered Renee Good—to determine that he’s a “violent agitator and psychopath” who deserved those 10 bullets. These are the same people who think January 6 insurrectionist Ashley Babbitt is some kind of martyr. And don’t ever forget—the Trump administration’s first response to Pretti’s killing was to slander him as a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”

An FBI operation to capture former Olympian turned suspected cocaine trafficker Ryan Wedding in Mexico has shaken relations between the U.S. and its southern neighbor.

Last week, the U.S. deployed the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team to Mexico to capture Wedding, who once was protected by the powerful Sinaloa cartel. But that was supposed to be kept secret, especially since Mexican law prohibits foreign law enforcement officers from being physically present in operations on Mexican soil, let alone take part in raids and arrests.

On Friday, however, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the joint operation publicly on X. “Our FBI HRT teams executed with precision, discipline, and total professionalism alongside our Mexican partners to bring Ryan James Wedding back to face justice,” he wrote, sending shock waves through Mexico.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum scrambled to perform damage control, as foreign intervention in Mexico is politically toxic. She said that there was no U.S. involvement in the operation and that U.S. agents in Mexico are limited by law.

“I’m not going to get into a debate with the FBI director, nor do I want there to be a conflict,” Sheinbaum said at a press conference Tuesday. “What they, the U.S. authorities, told the Mexican authorities is that it was a voluntary surrender.” She pointed to a picture Wedding posted to his Instagram account at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico announcing that he was turning himself in.

Wedding’s lawyer Anthony Colombo disputes that account, saying that Wedding was handcuffed by FBI agents and transported to California.

“He was arrested, he didn’t surrender,” Colombo told The Wall Street Journal, adding, “If the U.S. government is unilaterally going into a sovereign country and apprehending somebody, you can understand the concern that sovereign entity might have.”

Tensions between Mexico and the U.S. are high, considering Trump’s threats to levy tariffs and take military actions against the country, ostensibly to combat drug trafficking. Mexico has sought to placate Trump in some ways, increasing border security, placing tariffs on Chinese goods, and sending drug lords on planes to U.S. custody without the normal extradition process, possibly breaking laws.

Patel’s rash decision to post about Wedding’s arrest online doesn’t help the situation right now. It opens Sheinbaum up to political attacks in Mexico and makes the U.S.-Mexico relationship even shakier. Under Trump, though, American law enforcement is playing fast and loose with not just the law but diplomatic relations.

The president’s decision to wield U.S. troops against American cities has cost taxpayers a pretty penny.

A report published Wednesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the numerous deployments cost Americans nearly $500 million over the last year.

Since June, the Trump administration has dispatched National Guard personnel or active-duty Marine Corps personnel to six cities across the country: Los Angeles, Washington, Memphis, Portland, Chicago, and New Orleans. All but New Orleans, which saw troops deployed at the tail end of the year, were included in the CBO estimation.

“The factors CBO used to estimate the costs of deployments in 2025 suggest that continuing the ongoing deployments at their size as of the end of 2025 would cost $93 million per month,” the office said in a statement. “More generally, deploying 1,000 National Guard personnel to a U.S. city in 2026 would cost $18 million to $21 million per month, depending mainly on the city’s cost of living.”

Donald Trump deployed thousands of National Guard members over 2025 to “protect federal government personnel and property.” Ultimately, he exclusively targeted Democratic cities for what he described as fostering a crime-riddled hellscape, though the data he used to justify such claims were often outdated or just plain incorrect.

Red states—Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, South Carolina, and Ohio—lent significant assistance, sending hundreds of their respective National Guard members to assist in his occupations.

To tally up the total cost, the CBO examined military pay, benefits, and health care, as well as the costs for lodging the active-duty personnel while they were away from their home stations.

Food costs were also calculated, as were transportation costs “to move personnel from their home stations to their deployments and back again, as well as costs to transport personnel between their lodging and their assigned location each day.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi has started sharing the names and photographs of protesters arrested in Minneapolis—in violation of Department of Justice rules.

Bondi took to X Wednesday to share the names and photographs of 16 protesters who had been arrested for allegedly assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal law enforcement agents. “We expect more arrests to come,” she warned.

DOJ policy expressly prohibits releasing mug shots of defendants charged with federal crimes, unless releasing their photo would serve a “legitimate law enforcement function.” Not only did Bondi’s posts fail to serve a clear law enforcement function, they were blatantly intended to have a chilling effect on protesters’ expression of their First Amendment rights.

Notably, these protesters have only been arrested—not convicted. And somehow, the public still hasn’t been told the names of the federal agents who shot and killed Alex Pretti.

Among those Bondi posted about was Nasra Ahmed, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen who said she was wrongly detained by ICE for two days, that one federal agent called her a racial slur, and that she suffered a concussion after officers pushed her to the ground.

Bondi’s escalating antics come as immigration agents have repeatedly failed to provide sufficient evidence that demonstrators in Minnesota have committed actual crimes, such as assault, when trying to obtain warrants for arrest.

There is mounting evidence that suggests federal law enforcement has lost the plot on what protesters “impeding” their work actually looks like. Federal agents have aggressively approached citizen ICE watchers simply monitoring their operations, threatening to arrest them—or worse. And former FBI agents have complained of watching ICE officers in Minnesota arrest protesters who appear to be using their First Amendment rights to taunt or yell at federal officers, according to MS NOW.

There’s also evidence that federal agents don’t know what assault looks like—or that they don’t care. Last year, when ICE pursued felony assault charges against anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles, inaccurate and misleading testimonies from law enforcement officers unraveled multiple cases.

Local officials in Springfield, Ohio—the subject of Vice President JD Vance’s racist smears about Haitian immigrants—are bracing for a 30-day ICE surge. 

In a message obtained by the Springfield News-Sun, Springfield City School District Superintendent Bob Hill said that local officials had discussed the likelihood that federal immigration authorities could descend on the city sometime after Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants expires on February 3.

“Federal authorities signaled an enforcement window of at least 30 days,” Hill’s message said. “A federal list of individual removal orders has been identified in Springfield as an initial focal point for enforcement activity, with discretion to detain additional individuals encountered who lack lawful status.”

Hill specified that there was no evidence that immigration enforcement would take place on school property. However, as we have seen in Minneapolis and elsewhere, immigration enforcement directly affects school-age children, who can either be left stranded or detained alongside their relatives. 

In a city such as Springfield, which has seen an influx of new Haitian residents in the past few years, this is especially true. Pam Shay, director of federal programs at Springfield City Schools, claimed that immigrant students count for anywhere between 5 and 40 percent of the population of an individual district building. She also said that approximately 20 percent of the district’s 1,400 students were admitted after 2021, and do not have citizenship documents. 

The meeting of state leaders and emergency management officials that prompted Hill’s message was reportedly hosted by Governor Bob DeWine. However, the governor’s spokesperson, Dan Tierney, said there had been no “formal communication” of ICE’s plans for the city, and he could not verify whether the governor had warned administrators about the enforcement window or the list. 

Once TPS expires, many Haitian immigrants will be stripped of their legal status, unless they sought alternative protections, such as asylum. However, there have been numerous reports that immigration judges are routinely dismissing asylum cases and the asylum-seekers are then taken into ICE custody for expedited removal. 

Advocates in Springfield who warned about the impending immigration enforcement when TPS expires were instructed by government officials to help Haitian immigrants “self-deport” to a “third country.”  

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Vance elevated racist lies that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs, using incendiary rhetoric to drum up votes. President Donald Trump then echoed these lies during a presidential debate, and vowed to enact aggressive immigration enforcement in Springfield. Trump had initially attempted to end TPS in September, but a federal judge extended the deadline until February.

The blowback is not slowing down for Representative Tom Suozzi, in the wake of his vote to continue funding ICE.

Several strategically placed activists appeared at an event in Suozzi’s district Tuesday night, wielding a diaper, kneepads, and some harsh words for the Long Island Democrat.

“I wanted to get something for you: This is an adult diaper for when you pee yourself in front of Donald Trump,” said a man associated with the group Climate Defiance as he approached the dais. “You can wear this, it’s really nice. You’re the type of leader we need right now, someone who soils himself when the fascists are at our door.”

As the man was escorted away, another member popped up out of the audience.

“Sorry, I didn’t know we were doing gifts,” the second activist said. “I have some kneepads for you, you can use these while you blow Donald Trump. Alternatively you can get off your knees and you can stand up to him literally and figuratively. Abolish ICE, defund them. You do not show any moral courage. You are funding the gestapo.”

As that activist was shuffled away, yet another voice rose up, walking across the stage with a microphone before he was ultimately dragged out of the room by a small crowd.

“I just would like to say one thing,” the third man said. “As a Jewish man, I have never felt safer than when there is a mass gestapo in the street. So, thank you Congressman Tom Suozzi for funding ICE.

“I think the only way we can fight antisemitism is to align ourselves with white supremacists,” he snarked. “I know he apologized, but I just want to reiterate that nobody could have predicted that ICE would have been killing innocent people.”

Suozzi was one of seven liberal lawmakers who voted in support of the Department of Homeland Security’s $64.4 billion funding bill last week. At the time, Suozzi argued that the bill—and by extension, his vote—was not intended to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Not even 48 hours later, ICE agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, renewing a public fury that ultimately forced Suozzi to publicly defend his decision.

In an email to his campaign list Monday, 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.”

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.