Category: Minneapolis
Memo to Trump: Stop negotiating and ramp up deportations
The America First movement and its realignment of the Republican Party around common-sense governance hangs in the balance. The organized left — politicians, media, and militia-style street actors — has now gone public with an alliance with lukewarm, establishment Republicans, especially in the U.S. Senate.
Their goal is obvious: Preserve the gains of mass illegal and legal immigration by shutting down deportations at any meaningful scale.
This coordinated campaign has now expanded into a political operation designed to force Donald Trump and his team into a public humiliation ritual.
The left wants that outcome because its political future depends on it. Establishment Republicans want it to protect their corporate donors’ access to cheap labor and, to some extent, to keep their standing with the New York Times cocktail-party set and similar elite networks.
To advance those aims, this alliance has seized on the shooting of Alex Pretti by United States Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis. Reports describe Pretti as part of an online group involved in doxxing, harassment, and physical obstruction of immigration enforcement operations. Officers shot him after he interfered with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations while armed and carrying two extra 21-round extended magazines.
News reports also indicate Pretti physically engaged federal law enforcement in a separate incident a week before his fatal encounter. If those reports hold — the FBI is investigating — they reinforce the threat posed by anti-ICE activists willing to escalate from propaganda to physical obstruction and violence.
The left’s framing collapses under the publicly available evidence. Our team of seasoned, independent law enforcement experts at the Oversight Project released an analysis clearing Border Patrol in the shooting based on that record. We expect the announced federal investigation to reach the same conclusion and to focus on the illegal conduct that led to Pretti’s death.
Our team also uncovered Signal chat messages that shed light on the riots in Minneapolis and appear to include Pretti.
First, those chats bolster federal warnings that violence against immigration enforcement has taken on the characteristics of domestic terrorism. One agitator urged fellow rioters to don “suicide vests.” That language speaks for itself.
Second, we located what may be Pretti’s final Signal messages. They show an active participant in a militarized, organized group engaged in unlawful activity, including doxxing and obstruction. That record shreds the propaganda portraying Pretti as a peaceful observer rather than someone who joined a broader effort to disrupt federal law enforcement and died as a result.
This coordinated campaign has now expanded into a political operation designed to force Donald Trump and his team into a public humiliation ritual.
At first, the president offered token separation from the actions of his own officials — either as a cautious gesture or a fig leaf meant to highlight the opposition’s radicalism. He pulled back some federal presence in Minneapolis, and some reports indicate officials were told to narrow operations temporarily to a limited subset of illegal aliens who have committed violent crimes in addition to immigration violations.
Establishment Republicans have moved in parallel. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) has launched a major amnesty push, announced — predictably — in the New York Times. Senate Democrats caused a partial government shutdown over ICE funding and say they won’t relent unless Republicans accept permanent de facto amnesty by crippling enforcement. They want new barriers, including judicial warrants for each operation, even for millions who have already exhausted years of due process they did not deserve in the first place.
That plan relies on narrative, not facts.
ICE received a considerable funding boost in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The funding bill headed for passage this week funds the rest of the DHS, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is responding to a major storm affecting large swaths of the country. Democrats and some Senate Republicans won’t let facts interfere with a useful storyline, and the corporate left-wing media will amplify it.
RELATED: The left is at war in Minnesota. America is watching football.
Blaze Media Illustration
The squeeze continues. They want Trump trapped in a corner. Under pressure in the streets and in the press — and on Capitol Hill — Trump sent border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis to negotiate some sort of settlement with local and state authorities.
The response came fast. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) and Gov. Tim Walz (D) made clear they would not change anything material about how their governments shield illegal aliens. They won’t even allow ICE into jails to pick up criminal illegal aliens. They understand their leverage against this White House: friendly media and weak Republicans. They plan to keep playing that hand instead of bargaining with Homan.
That leaves one prudent course for the president: Deport more illegal aliens.
The country decided this question through law when it barred illegal entry and unlawful presence in the first place. Voters decided it again in 2024 when Trump campaigned on the largest deportation operation in American history. That mandate matters more than any cable-news frenzy.
This fight won’t stay confined to Minneapolis. It forms part of a coordinated attempt by people who never supported Trump to cut his knees out from under him — through intimidation, propaganda, and political sabotage. He should treat them as adversaries, not good-faith partners. He can break out of this trap by enforcing the mandate.
When worship is interrupted, neutrality is no longer an option
Something important shifted in this country when a Sunday worship service in Minneapolis was interrupted by protesters. It was a deliberate, premeditated intrusion into a space set apart for worship.
This was not spontaneous. There was planning, agreement, and coordinated action. This sort of strategy requires a different posture.
Churches across the country are already alert. Security teams exist for a reason.
For generations, houses of worship were understood to be off-limits.When that boundary is crossed, we are no longer debating policy. We are testing whether restraint still exists and whether consequences still matter.
The line has been drawn. This is not an issue that can be treated casually or observed with indifference. Anyone who refuses to condemn the coordinated disruption of worship — or, worse, excuses it — has already chosen a side.
Moments like this tempt Christians toward outrage or bravado. But Scripture does not train the church for theatrics. It trains the church for endurance, clarity, and readiness.
This incident likely would not have unfolded the same way where I live in Montana. People here are not especially theatrical about conflict. Responsibility is assumed, and consequences are not abstract. Most folks are armed, and in many churches, that includes the pastors.
The reality beneath that observation is sobering. Churches across the country are already alert. Security teams exist for a reason. In a culture shaped by real church shootings, sudden disruption inside a sanctuary is no longer interpreted as mere protest. Provocation introduced into an environment already conditioned for worst-case scenarios increases the risk of irreversible outcomes.
Every police officer will attest that domestic calls are often the most unpredictable and volatile. Not because violence is inevitable, but because instability compresses time and judgment. When emotions are high and trust is thin, even small disruptions can escalate quickly.
Families who live with addiction or severe mental illness understand this intuitively. They remain vigilant not because they want conflict, but because unpredictability makes it necessary. Boundaries are not set because change is guaranteed, but because safety is required.
A space shaped for reverence, restraint, and peace cannot be treated as if it can absorb chaos without consequence.
In such situations, vigilance and preparedness are not aggression. They are necessary parts of responsible stewardship.
Intimidation rarely seeks hardened targets. Visibility, restraint, and hesitation make certain spaces attractive to disruption. Where ambiguity is denied, intimidation fails.
It is difficult to imagine these kinds of coordinated disruptions taking place in historically black churches. Not because those congregations are hostile, but because intimidation has never been indulged there. Those churches were forged when intrusion and disruption were never theatrical.
This is not a call to intimidation in return. It is a call to clarity.
When tensions rise, someone must lower the temperature. If one side refuses, the other is obligated to establish boundaries for safety.
Anyone who has dealt with addiction understands this principle. Change cannot be forced, but boundaries must still be set. Recovery, incarceration, or death often follow prolonged chaos. These are realities repeatedly observed when destructive behavior is indulged.
RELATED: Don Lemon ARRESTED over apparent involvement in church invasion; Jim Acosta whines
Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
The people setting boundaries are not the cause of the crisis. They are responding to it.
Scripture never promises that moments like this will not come. Jesus warned His followers that hostility would arrive. Paul urged believers not to avenge themselves, but to overcome evil with good.
Scripture states that what can be shaken will be shaken, so that what cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:27).
That truth is carried not only in Scripture, but in the church’s hymns.
The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to his foes.
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.
There is no clenched fist in that stanza. It shows a relief from strain because vigilance has been transferred to someone stronger. Calm is possible, not because the threat is small but because God is not.
So when worship is interrupted and the lines are clearly drawn, the church does not respond with hysteria or silence. It responds with moral clarity, firm boundaries, and settled confidence grounded in an unshakable kingdom. The path for believers is steadiness shaped by truth, restraint, and trust in God rather than reaction to provocation.
The church has never endured because it intimidated back. It has endured because God does not abandon His people.
New Video Shows Alex Pretti Confronting Federal Agents Days Before Fatal Shooting
A newly released video depicts Alex Pretti yelling at federal agents and damaging a government vehicle during a Minneapolis protest….
Trump offers hilarious rebuttal to Tim Walz’s absurd Civil War analogy
President Donald Trump gave a hilarious response to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s attempt to compare the conflicts in Minnesota to the Civil War.
Blaze News asked Trump to address Walz’s remarks likening the hostilities at Fort Sumter that sparked the Civil War to the heightened tensions seen on the ground in Minneapolis in recent weeks. When asked if he agreed with the characterization, Trump gave Blaze News a viral response.
‘I was elected to do a job.’
“Does he know what Fort Sumter was, or do you think somebody wrote it out for him?”
“I was elected on law and order,” Trump told Blaze News. “I was elected on a strong border. We had a border that allowed 25 million people to come in. Many were murderers. … We had open borders.”
RELATED: Trump’s unusual Cabinet meeting may reveal which officials are on thin ice
Trump brushed off Walz’s remarks, differentiating his tough-on-crime track record from the Democrat governor’s state that is rampant with fraud and violent crime.
“I was elected on a lot of reasons, because when I took over we inherited a mess,” Trump told Blaze News.
“When I was elected, I was elected to do a job, and one of the big things I was elected to do is law and order.”
RELATED: ‘Horrifying situation’: Some Republicans retreat following Minneapolis shooting of anti-ICE agitator
Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Trump criticized Democrats’ refusal to embrace law enforcement, pondering if they really want criminals to remain in their cities.
“If you look at Minnesota, Minneapolis, we have crime down there because we took out thousands of people, despite all the mess and everything else,” Trump told Blaze News.
“But do these people really want to have rapists? Do they really want to have drug dealers and people from prisons and murderers?”
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Church invasion suspect arrested by feds is woke Minneapolis prosecutor’s right-hand man
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Friday morning the arrests of several radicals who allegedly stormed Cities Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Jan. 18.
One of Don Lemon’s fellow arrestees, Jamael Lydell Lundy, is a newly announced Democratic candidate for the Minnesota Senate who previously worked for Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum and now serves as the right-hand man for Mary Moriarty, Hennepin County’s Soros-backed prosecutor.
Moments prior to the church invasion, Lundy told Lemon on camera, “I’m here to support our community activists,” reported the New York Post.
‘They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.’
“I’m currently a candidate for Minnesota state Senate District 65,” Lundy told the former CNN talking head. “I feel like it’s important if you’re going to be representing people in office, that you’re out here with the people as well.”
“We all we got,” continued Lundy. “I’m actually married to an elected official; I work closely with elected officials, but direct action from the community, certainly within the lines of the law, is so important to show that we have one voice.”
In footage of the subsequent church invasion, Lundy appears fully engaged in the mob’s disruption of the Christian service and the parishioners’ worship, pumping his fist in the air and shouting near the altar.
RELATED: Don Lemon ARRESTED over apparent involvement in church invasion; Jim Acosta whines
Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
According to Lundy’s campaign website, he is married to St. Paul City Councilwoman Anika Bowie, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s former political director.
In his role as Moriarty’s intergovernmental relations manager, Lundy — who supported the “bananas with rice” Somali accused this week of spitting on federal agents — is responsible for interfacing with the federal government, reported the Daily Wire.
Lundy’s radicalism is in keeping with that practiced by his anti-ICE boss, who launched a project with Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and other woke prosecutors on Wednesday aimed at “collaborating to ensure federal officials are held accountable when they exceed their lawful authority.”
The non-straight prosecutor has been one of the more unhinged critics of federal agents’ enforcement of federal immigration law in Minneapolis, claiming earlier this month, for instance, “If you do not have white skin, you are in danger of being approached by ICE.”
President Donald Trump suggested those who stormed the church were “agitators and insurrectionists.”
“These people are professionals! No person acts the way they act,” continued Trump. “They are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner, just like they are doing. They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.”
Blaze News has reached out to Moriarty’s office for comment.
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The Spectacle Ep. 320: Can ICE Save Minnesota From Democrat Corruption & Their Illegal Immigration Schemes?
The escalating outrage against ICE in Minnesota continues to show the Left’s ignorance of what ICE is actually doing —…
‘Gentle nurse’ narrative cracks: New video appears to show Pretti spit toward federal agents and kick out taillight
A video circulated on social media on Wednesday that appears to show Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, having an altercation with federal agents in Minneapolis on January 13, a week before he was fatally shot.
The News Movement stated that it was filming a documentary about Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Minneapolis when it received a tip that federal agents were blocking a street. Protesters had gathered in the area.
‘Now we know that Alex Pretti was not a kindly gentle nurse … he was a CRIMINAL!!!’
In the video, a man who appears to be Pretti is seen shouting at and spitting toward an agent inside a Ford SUV. He then kicks the right taillight, shattering it and dislodging it from the vehicle.
A federal agent steps out of the rear passenger side of the vehicle to confront the man and attempts to wrestle him to the ground, but the man resists. Other agents step in to pin the man to the ground.
The News Movement reported that the agents fired tear gas and pepper balls into the crowd of protesters.
After a brief altercation, the agents release the man, who returns to his feet and moves away from the officers. What appears to be a gun is seen in the man’s waistband.
Minutes later, the federal officers climb back into their vehicle and drive away.
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Blaze News that the department is “reviewing this footage.”
A representative for the Pretti family confirmed to CBS News that the person in the video was Alex Pretti.
The News Movement reported that the footage was analyzed using the BBC’s facial recognition technology, which confirmed Pretti’s identity with 97% accuracy.
When reached for comment, the BBC referred Blaze News to its news clip on the shooting of Pretti, which included the News Movement’s January video.
Steve Schleicher, an attorney for the Pretti family, said in a statement obtained by the BBC, “A week before Alex was gunned down in the street — despite posing no threat to anyone — he was violently assaulted by a group of ICE agents. Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex’s killing at the hands of ICE on Jan. 24.”
RELATED: Alex Pretti broke a rib in a previous altercation with feds a week before he died: CNN
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
Conservative commentators reacted to the newly surfaced video of Pretti, arguing that it shatters the left-wing narrative that he was a peaceful protester.
“This footage is so damning, that you and I both know it will never leave X,” Matt Van Swol wrote. “Now we know that Alex Pretti was not a kindly gentle nurse … he was a CRIMINAL!!! An ARMED, VIOLENT, DANGEROUS, UNHINGED criminal. HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN PRISON!!!!!!!”
Tim Pool stated, “WOW. Footage shows Alex Pretti ATTACKING DHS Agents. Could he have been known to the agents as they attempted to arrest him? Known violent extremist, armed, violent, actively resisting?”
“He committed 3 crimes and wasn’t arrested. He should have been in jail. Would have saved his life,” Owen Shroyer wrote.
A separate video from what appears to be the same incident captured Pretti seemingly shouting at federal agents, “F**king assault me, motherf**ker,” before he spat on and kicked the officers’ vehicle.
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Minnesota police crack down on anti-ICE protesters, multiple arrests outside hotel
As talks between the Trump administration and Minnesota leadership continue, with some possible success, police have begun dealing with protesters more efficiently this week.
In a surprising turn of events, protesters in Minneapolis were swiftly dealt with near the Graduate by Hilton hotel.
‘All individuals: You are under arrest. Please sit down.’
In video originally captured on independent reporter Brendan Gutenschwager’s livestream of the protests in Minneapolis on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, protesters could be seen being kettled by police on a street block.
Police officers, who were reported to be Minnesota state police and University of Minnesota police officers, quickly formed a line on the street.
Photo by Kerem YUCEL / AFP via Getty Images
“All individuals: You are under arrest. Please sit down,” one officer says once the police line is set.
The video showed a few dozen protesters on the street, many of whom sat down immediately in compliance with the order.
Gutenschwager reported that this kettling tactic was used near the Graduate by Hilton Minneapolis.
A second video of the aftermath of some arrests shows police walking arrestees toward a line of blue buses.
Frontlines TPUSA posted a video on the ground of the same event. Describing the scene, the cameraman says, “They’re being taken into these buses now with bars on the windows.”
Though the crowds seemed subdued during and after the kettling tactic, Gutenschwager’s livestream showed that the protesters were much more energetic and disruptive in the earlier hours of the night.
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No More Safe Spaces
“No More Safe Spaces,” editorial cartoon by Yogi Love for The American Spectator on Jan. 27, 2026.
Actress Molly Ringwald Claims Trump Supporters Will Be Found Guilty Of Treason
‘Right now this is a fascist government. It’s not becoming a fascist government’
