Yesterday I was preparing a ‘daily view’ round-up, but then the Alex Pretti killing broke, which is by far the biggest story now. It’s like Groundhog Day, whether it’s ICE, tariffs, AI news, or MN. The meme is ‘nothing ever happens’, but I just want a week where nothing actually happens. Here are my thoughts on the situation:
This is one of those things where it’s like, ‘Why does everyone need to have made their mind up now?’ Let’s wait until more evidence released. It will be a long investigation, and there will be more footage from different angles and witness statements. Due to peer pressure, made worse by social media and partisan politics, everyone is forced to take a side or is put into a box. You can just choose to wait until more evidence comes out before having an opinion.
A question is, will this lead to further unrest (such as a repeat 2020 riots/looting), or be contained to MN? I predict the latter. Multi-state protests and looting are only reserved for sanctified black deaths, not white ‘shit libs’, who are basically considered disposable to the cause. Also, the left-wing establishment saw that BLM backfired. BLM, and civil unrest in general, ultimately was a failure. They didn’t get any of the sought policing reforms (except perhaps body cams, which have only hurt their cause by showing the arrests and homicides were justified) and it arguably killed wokeness too, and led to Trump being re-elected.
I was doing some research, and in 2025 there were 260,000 ICE detentions, or about 900 arrests/day. The overwhelming majority of arrests are uneventful and professional. By comparison, for 2025, there were 1201 cases of justifiable homicide by police out of more than 20 million traffic stops, or an incidence rate of 0.0048 percent. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, afik, are the only incidents of non-detainees being killed by ICE, and only because they put themselves in danger. For 2025, only 25 detainees died, and for reasons unrelated to excessive force. You’re more likely to die during a traffic stop than by ICE.
In the same way that police shooting videos periodically go viral, it is statistically inevitable that ICE arrests will produce similar footage. As civilians continue to involve themselves in these encounters, the likelihood of such incidents increases.
The question also is, why does MN keep showing up in the news. Why has this city become the proverbial battleground of the culture wars. It’s not as if NYC, SF, or LA have fewer illegals or less corruption, daycares notwithstanding. Demographically, MN has large populations of ‘activist whites’ who hold strong left-wing beliefs and are quite vocal about it, but are not that successful and have lots of free time, versus successful careerist types in those other cities, who have jobs and are disinclined to protest despite opposing Trump. CA and NY have much more power economically and politically. Trump knows that having ICE arrest videos going viral in SF or NYC is bad for the elite donor classes in tech and finance, who hold lots of clout and helped him be reelected, compared to MN.
But ICE, similar to Trump’s tariffs, is here to stay, whether or not people like it. Congress would have to step in, which is very unlikely, as any Republican who votes against Trump risks losing midterms. ICE agents have the broad authority to make these arrests and use deadly force when their lives are threatened, similar to police. Likewise, the Supreme Court is taking forever to rule on the tariffs, allowing them to keep running on, and giving Trump the discretion to threaten new ones.
In short, we’re living in ‘Trump’s America,’ and there is nothing the left can do about it. SCOTUS does not care, and neither does Congress. The left’s tactics, that worked in the past, are no longer effective, and morale is in the toilet. The defeatism or resignation is evident in the passive tone in the headlines by the major media like Washington post or New York Times, compared to pre-2024 and especially the 2010s. They know that openly being woke hurt their business and credibility post Covid, so the only options are to ‘cope and seeth’.