The audio-only version of this episode is available in the GD POLITICS feed wherever you listen to podcasts.
Call this something of an emergency podcast. I’d planned on airing an episode setting the table for the 2026 midterms today. We’re going to save that for another day, because on Saturday a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37 year-old Veterans Affairs hospital ICU nurse.
It’s the second killing by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis in less than three weeks — the first being Renee Good, a 37 year-old mother, who was shot while impeding traffic as part of a protest.
We’ll get into some of the details of what happened on Saturday, but I think it’s fair to say the public and many lawmakers, even some Republicans, have lost patience with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.
In both killings in Minneapolis, the Trump administration rushed to brand Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists and fabricated events despite the shootings being visible in multiple videos. While there was plenty of pushback among Democrats, independents, and the press in the case of Good, this time a handful of Republicans, including the NRA, have joined that pushback as well.
As listeners well know, it’s going to take a minute before we can fully understand the impact of this weekend on American politics, but we’ll share what we know at this moment. With me to do that is head of research at FiftyPlusOne, Mary Radcliffe, and managing editor at Votebeat, Nathaniel Rakich.
