‘Summarily executed in public.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link) says the murder of 37-year-old community volunteer and Veterans Administration nurse Alex Pretti by ICE agents “is beyond politics. This is about good vs. evil.”
■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Once again, masked thugs who have been conditioned—not trained, but conditioned—to shoot first and think never have gunned down a civilian in cold blood.”
■ Pretti was born in Illinois …
■ … and a gun owner with no criminal record.
A headline you could have written in your sleep. The AP: “Videos of the deadly Minneapolis shooting of Alex Pretti contradict government statements.”
■ The New York Times (gift link): Videos analyzed second-by-second show Pretti was holding his phone, not a weapon, when the feds pulled him to the ground, firing at least 10 shots in five seconds.
■ Cartoonist and columnist Mark Fiore: “Fascism is now out in the open, captured by angry observers on mobile phones for all the world to see.”
■ Tom Jones at Poynter: “It’s the second time in less than three weeks that … videos from bystanders … appear to contradict the federal account of the killing.”
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: “What if the only accounts came from Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller, depicting Pretti as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ imagining he wanted to ‘massacre’ officers?”
Even Trump. The president’s been reluctant to back Homeland Security Secretary Noem’s unsupported assertion that Pretti’s shooting was justified.
■ Journalist Aaron Parnas: Centrist Democrats who previously voted to fund ICE are now backing impeachment for Noem.
■ Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth wants an independent investigation.
■ A growing number of Republican senators are doing the same …
■ … a response that The Daily Beast sees as “markedly different” from the party’s reaction to the death of Renee Nicole Good three weeks ago.
■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “Republicans, Alex Pretti should be your breaking point.”
■ Saying he can’t support the Trump administration’s “retribution” against Minnesota, a Republican candidate—a lawyer who’s been representing the ICE agent who killed Good—has dropped out of the race for governor there.
■ Even the National Rifle Association is at odds with Trump’s team on this one.
■ Columnist Mary Geddry: “The gun debate, long calcified into pure tribal reflex, is starting to fracture under the weight of lived reality.”
■ Law prof Joyce Vance: “The administration cannot hope this will just all go away.”
■ The killing has increased the odds of another federal government shutdown.
■ Nobel-winning columnist Paul Krugman: “Centrist Democrats, who have spent weeks trying to ignore Minneapolis so they could talk about the price of eggs, are finally taking a stand.”
‘Is it so hard for journalists to clearly state that the Trump administration is lying?’ American Crisis columnist Margaret Sullivan bemoans sycophantic coverage of the story: A Times headline “magnified the statements of federal officials, even as the Times knew better.”
■ Media Matters’ Matt Gertz: Fox News’ “primary purpose” now “is to explain to viewers why it is good that masked agents of the state are executing Americans on the street” …
■ … and yet, Fox’s corporate sibling, The Wall Street Journal, is calling for ICE to stand down in Minnesota.
‘Nobody opens their door anymore, knowing that the next knock might be a federal agent demanding to know where the Brown people live in your neighborhood.’ But, a St. Paul City Council member—your Chicago Public Square columnist’s daughter-in-law—writes for Slate, “Our neighborhood has never been more united.”
■ AP photos convey the Twin Cities’ reaction to Pretti’s death.
‘ICE murders moms and nurses.’ That was one of the protest signs yesterday as hundreds of Chicagoans demonstrated along Michigan Avenue.
■ Popular Information calls out “the corporate enablers of the ICE crackdown” …
■ … including Amazon, whose White House screening of a Melania Trump-produced documentary about herself drew plutocrats including the chiefs of Apple, Zoom, GE and others Saturday, even as the nation mourned Pretti.
■ Columnist Gene Weingarten: “Time for a nationwide general strike modeled after the labor shutdown coordinated by Lech Walesa against the Soviet oppressors in Poland in 1980.”
Hm. Voter files, huh? Attorney General Pam Bondi’s offering to pull ICE out of the Twin Cities if the state turns over its voter registration records.
■ Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon: “No.”
■ Columnist and former U.S. Rep. Marie Newman says that lays bare the administration’s true goals: “It was never really about fraud or corruption. … Now … begins the extortion of state leaders.”
■ Marc Elias at Democracy Docket: “In the wake of a tragic killing, Bondi sought to leverage the state’s need for calm into turning over sensitive voting data on millions of citizens. While this might seem outrageous, it was not random.”
Votin’ time’s near. With Illinois’ primary less than two months out, WBEZ tonight airs—and streams—a debate among the three leading Democrats hoping to become the state’s next U.S. senator.
■ The Tribune (gift link): An Illinois law passed to protect public officials from politically motivated violence is making it harder to learn whether they actually live in the communities they serve.
Still cold. The snow’s passed out of Chicago, but the chill remains.
■ The city’s schools are open today …
■ … but not so in Northwest Indiana.
■ Axios digs through public records to find which neighborhoods file the most complaints about “dibs”—the practice of reserving shoveled-out parking spaces by putting lawn chairs, etc., in the public roadway.
■ Climate journalist Emily Atkin vows to keep that work up despite, well … “How am I supposed to keep writing about, and caring about, climate change and pollution and government capture by Big Oil, when the government is executing people in broad daylight?”
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