Nate, don't say "Good did ignore an order to exit her car" without context. The video obviously had multiple agents screaming at her with conflicting orders simultaneously. Definitionally, she had to ignore one order or another.
And ignoring an order to leave the car isn't a crime that deserves execution in the street, nor should they have prevented doctors from administering lifesaving aid, nor should the officer called her a fucking bitch, nor should he have fired multiple shots through the open side window as the car was passing even if the guy might have been near the front of the car when she started moving.
Also, an important (and underreported) part of the story is that Renee Good is was alive and had a pulse for at least 8 minutes after the shooting, and medics were there at the sight of the shooting trying to give her urgent care, but ICE agents blocked their access and refused to let them treat her injuries. Renee Good might have survived if it weren’t for the deliberate obstruction of ICE agents after the shooting.
Also, a few days after the shooting, another group of ICE agents yelled, “You gotta stop obstructing us, that’s why that lesbian b*tch is dead” at protestors/observers. So based on ICE’s own words, it sounds like they murdered Renee Good out of spite, and possibly out of homophobia, instead of self-defense. https://www.reddit.com/r/stpaul/comments/1qcx3x8/you_gotta_stop_obstructing_us_thats_why_that/
The people of Minneapolis should stop obstructing. They act like zombies, waving both hands in the air, coming closer and closer: of course disaster happens. They are being deliberately obnoxious on purpose: what do they expect?
Nate was merely pointing out that this slightly complicates the analysis; he was not claiming that this precludes a finding that the shooting of Good was unjustified.
Saying that it was "a chaotic and unpredictable situation" is a reasonable way to describe that. Claiming she "ignored orders" is ridiculous. Like, four different armed people screamed different things at her simultaneously.
But she did, in fact, ignore orders, and this did contribute to her death. Let's not vilify the ICE agents or pretend that she did everything perfectly.
How is she supposed to obey 2 directly conflicting orders at the same time. Literally, if 1 police officer tells you "Stand up!" at the same moment another says "Sit down!", then no matter what you do they can say you ignored orders.
I've always wondered what would have happened if Good's Pilot, after she was killed, had run over a pedestrian or hit a car that was driving, instead of the parked car it eventually hit. Or hit another ICE officer.
It's really a comment on how reckless Ross was firing into that car, regardless of what personal risk he might have faced. Would Ross have then been liable for any subsequent injuries or deaths? Probably not, because law enforcement legally can seem to do no wrong, which of course makes accountability impossible.
Get out the car bitch is an order? Or a threat. Nate's categorization of this interaction is bs. Do better. Look at the NYT video and tell me again that she was a threat and getting shot in the face was the right response. FFS
As a Democrat, I found the DNC’s strategy of screeching that Trump is a fascist to be over the top to the point of being cringe. But the footage of Pretti being shot execution-style in the back while restrained by numerous federal agents, and their reasoning is that they were threatened that he was exercising his 2nd Amendment rights…. completely insane. If Trump does not reign in the behavior of ICE and clearly articulate that American citizens including Pretti have the right to bear arms, he is not only going to quickly lose the respect of his base but risk a civil war. Maybe not like a 1860s style of civil war, but Minneapolis is looking a lot like 1980s Belfast.
I never thought it was over-the-top, but it undermined their credibility just a tetch to call Trump a fascist while simultaneously telling us that the best way to defeat said fascists was to run a presidential candidate whom 86% of Americans thought too old for the job.
Years ago, conservatives call the Republicans the Stupid Party and the Democrats the Evil Party.
Now, those labels are reversed. The GOP under Trump is Evil. And boy, are the Democrats Stupid, catering to their leftist base instead of reaching out to the center. Had they done that in 2024, Trump would not now be President.
It wasn’t so much that they were super-left (I mean, Harris had some pretty left-wing stances in the past that were hard to run away from, and Biden DID swing harder to the left during his tenure than his 2020 campaign would have implied). But Phil H is correct that Trump could’ve easily been prevented from returning to the Presidency if the Dems had not been so moronic in their candidate choices. A robust primary - which was completely within the realm of possibility, but actively shut down - could’ve yielded us a far, far stronger candidate than Biden OR Harris.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are establishment and middle of the road. Saying the Democrats somehow catered to the left wing with those candidate choices is straight up wrong. You can have a look at their careers yourself -- no progressive would consider them left wing. If you want to think they are super left, then you may be too far to the right to begin with.
Phil H didn't say anything about a primary, so not sure why you are putting words in his mouth for something he did not say.
Also, argument to moderation is an argumentative fallacy by the way, which both you and Phil H are engaging in. All the general election candidates have been center to center left. The only way you could get someone more 'moderate' than them is actually voting Republican and being okay with throwing in your lot with MAGA. Choosing moderation between people detaining 5 year olds / suspending habeas corpus on the basis of race and political beliefs, and those that want healthcare for all means you are an extremist yourself. That's like saying you're trying to be moderately fascist.
I think you misunderstand me. You are correct that Phil H didn't call for a primary. I agreed with him though, that Trump could have been prevented from returning to office; I was the one that inserted the primary argument. Which I steadfastly defend. And I don't think they are super-left - I said they took stances that were probably too left for the general electorate, and it harmed their prospects in 2024.
Biden's age was his main liability. The Democrats flatly ignored their own voters, whom polls repeatedly showed did NOT want him to be their 2024 nominee. And Harris sunk herself when she said she "couldn't think of anything she would do differently" than Biden. So then why the fuck did we change candidates, genius?
My point was that a STRONGER candidate, one unattached to the Biden administration - like Beshear or Shapiro - would have beaten Trump. I'd even go far as to say Mikie Sherrill or Abigail Spanberger could have beaten him. The electorate was HUNGRY for a non-Biden AND non-Trump candidate. Had the Dems not been stupid, they would have let the Republican primary voters nominate Trump, and THEN vetted a moderate, younger, pro-choice nominee.
What I find infuriating - and I'm not suggesting this applies to you - is when people tell me, "Well, it's the voters' fault - they had a choice between someone who was clearly anti-democracy and someone who wasn't." OK, sure. But when the voters broadcast as early as DECEMBER of 2023 that they intended to vote for Trump over Biden, in a race in which BOTH MEN HAD BEEN PRESIDENT BEFORE, and you ignore them, well then that's on you. Counting on people to vote the way they SHOULD, rather than the way they're actively telling you they INTEND to, is the embodiment of condescension, and in this case it ran completely counter to the end goal, which was to keep Trump from getting re-elected.
What SJB said. yes, the Dems should have eased Biden out and held competitive primaries rather than settle for their California liberal VP to replace Biden.
Remember it doesn’t matter what you or I think, it matters what the voters think, especially the non-progressive non-Trump voters, who were looking for a reason to hold their nose and vote for Kamala Harris. She gave then no such reason other than being “not Trump.” That was not enough.
And I think Harris had a chance— IF — she chose a moderate like Shapiro as a running mate (not the Uber liberal Walz) AND pivoted hard from her 2020 primary stances, maybe stating that she is putting those on hold in order to build a coalition to beat Trump. But apparently she lacked the vision to do that.
Victory was within her reach. But she didn’t reach for it. That was the last mistake the Democrats made during the 2024 race, on top of all the others as SJB called out.
Now sadly Trump is opening a new sales opportunity to keep up I know a moderately distasteful analogy. but in 2024 it was the wrong sales pitch for an electorate.
As authoritarianism goes, they are bunglers - these things when surrounded by cellphone cameras that will provide ample video that Looks Very Bad are the sorts of things that in real regimes do set-off revolts and so competent authoritarians do seek to avoid (thus night-time snatch and grab highly preferable).
ETA: it makes me think of the Napoleonic era quote often attributed to Talleyrand (in re the assasination/execution of a certain legitimist opponent to Napoleon, "Worse than a Crime, A Blunder.")
Yep, I still genuinely don’t think Trump wants to be a Stalin/Mao/etc style of authoritarian, I think he just wants to be remembered as a strong leader and change-maker. He’s not particularly conservative and has shown willingness to pull back on right-wing positions when they’re proven unpopular (eg abortion). If he’s smart (a sizable if), he will temper his position on immigration too. Or at the very least do an Apprentice-esque “You’re fired” to the ICE agents responsible for Pretti’s murder.
I do think it's relevant that immigration is one of two major policy issues (the other being trade) where Trump is a true believer rather than merely adopting whatever position's most immediately expedient. So he might be more reluctant to pivot on that when the political winds change.
I think Americans are in denial about immigration in that we are an aging society with a very low birth rate. There is already a shortage of labor in the hospitality, elder and health care, agriculture and construction industries. Our Social Security system also needs more younger workers paying into the system to keep it viable. Furthermore, immigration has always been a stimulus to economic growth. We should be facilitating more immigration through reform which would provide a legal path to immigration and citizenship. At the present time this is made almost impossible to do because of MAGA's obsession with creating an ethnically homogeneous society.
Well I could be wrong, I think he’s a true believer in that he wants immigration laws to be enforced and the border secured, but I don’t think that includes ICE agents conducting executions of American citizens in the street.
I don't think Trump's antipathy to immigration is based on a desire to abide by the law. Not all of the people he is deporting are illegal and he is also opposed to legal immigration unless it is from Northern European countries or is white. Witness his welcoming of white South Africans. He shares Stephen Miller's desire for an ethnically homogeneous society.
I think he truly believes that, while the current spate of messy ICE operations is a worse outcome than all the immigrants leaving voluntarily, it's a better one than them remaining in the country (and that he applies this even to most immigrants who are here legally).
Maybe I'm wrong, but honestly, I think illegal immigration in the U.S. is a systemic issue. It stems partly from refugee waves driven by political collapse in Global South countries (everyone can judge for themselves why those flows are happening), and partly from domestic labor shortages. The influx of too many undocumented workers lets some employers drive down wages without much pushback, which in turn pushes American citizens further out of those jobs. It's a vicious spiral that won't be fixed just by deporting everyone— you need a mature pipeline of skilled native-born workers to step in, not just shuffling currently unemployed Americans straight into those roles (and if I remember right, Trump has actually said something along those lines himself).
Plus, a lot of Americans probably aren't willing to take the pay and working conditions that undocumented immigrants are currently accepting, which would drive costs up even more.
On a side note, about tariff policies: a lot of people might hate hearing this, but let's compare China and Germany. Both are export-oriented economies (whatever you think of Chinese manufacturing, the reality is that even under current tariffs, the U.S. is heavily dependent on China for a ton of industrial goods—like phones, machinery, drones, and especially rare earths. And rare earths aren't just about mining ore; it's a full industrial supply chain).
Germany used to run a structural trade surplus with China, but in recent years that's flipped and the deficit has been growing bigger and bigger.
Some might chalk it up to wage differences, but the real core is that China has a complete supply chain, massive scale that spreads costs thin, super-low logistics thanks to infrastructure, and plenty of power generation capacity.
I'm not advocating for totally free trade—in fact, I think America's deindustrialization since the 1990s is largely a direct result of those policies. But the fix clearly isn't just slapping on more tariffs. You need massive infrastructure investment, you need a huge number of engineers and skilled workers—these aren't things you can pull off in one presidential term (and let's be real, getting reelected isn't a given anymore). And good luck getting the current Congress to pass a clean infrastructure bill without loading it up with partisan riders.
(Oh, and by the way—when it comes to actually building and repairing that infrastructure, a lot of it still relies on immigrant labor)
I'd hope everyone would agree with that. Obviously it's a huge problem that there are all these illegals in this country, and a huge operation to remove them is not going to be done perfectly.
You were right: Trump is back-tracking on all this and did get rid of Bovino and call in Homan. When Minnesota rebels from America, that could really become a problem.
Mao Zedong led Communist China to basically survive and come out on top in the war against Japan (at the very least, his side didn’t collapse), then beat Chiang Kai-shek in the civil war to take over the whole country, fought the U.S. to a standstill in Korea, and in the early-to-mid years of his rule he actually pulled off a pretty impressive economic recovery and built up China’s industrial base from almost nothing. Of course, as a dictator who soaked up insane levels of cult-of-personality worship, he completely wrecked the country in his later years and led it into disaster.
Stalin? The West’s view of him is pretty much settled—no need to rehash it—and even Khrushchev slammed him hard. But you can’t deny the guy led the Soviet Union through World War II and came out the other side as a superpower; those achievements are just facts.
As for Trump, he gives off this strong vibe of having a classic performative personality—constantly acting out, craving everyone’s approval and applause. The second someone pushes back or criticizes him, he flips into full meltdown/hysterical mode. You can say he’s willing to cut deals and make concessions when it suits him, but the impression he leaves is that he doesn’t really have any coherent, consistent ideology or thought process underneath it all. It feels more like he’s just improvising on the spot, playing to the crowd, and feeding his own brand/image the whole time.
He’s probably closest to Peron of all the 20th century dictators. Funny, self-indulgent, non-ideological. But he’s not a smart. And his wife’s not as good looking.
I've always thought that tossing around the term "fascist" is the first cousin to a reductio ad Hitlerum, and it's better to stick to the facts--especially when you have them in hand!--over name-calling.
I'm up with Second Amendment rights, but to say Pretti had a total right to carry a loaded gun to a protest and then advance aggressively closer and closer to the agents, yelling imprecations all the time and carrying a small device that was either a phone videoing them or a gun ------------ darn, the guy had no sense at all!!! Or more likely, he got carried away. That happens in protests, I remember. The police NEED to set a perimeter to keep the public out of the game.
The Republican gaslighting on the Pretti killing is insane. Anyone can look at the various videos and see that it was a straight up murder. Even before they shot a defenseless man in the back repeatedly you can seem them beating the absolute crap out of him for daring to protect a woman.
Of course the response was completely predictable. Everyone knew they would completely lie about the incident and call him an aggressive terrorist. We know that none of the murderers will face any accountability. We know this will lead to another similar murder in the near future.
If openly murdering peaceful protesters in the streets doesn't turn Americans against Trump I think our democracy is truly lost.
I'm confused by your murder definition quibble. Are you arguing that a completely unjustified killing doesn't count as murder, or that shooting a non-aggressive disarmed man in the back 10 times is justified?
As I said in my original post the the lies from the right are entirely predictable. Of course they were going to say that Pretti was so aggressive he deserved to be murdered in the street. The shooting was so justified it wasn't even murder! I guess according to MAGA an unarmed man pinned down by a half dozen masked govt goons deserves to be shot in the back for questioning the regime. Obviously people like one I'm replying to will dutifully regurgitate whatever talking points Trump and his minions tell them to. I know he's a lost cause, but to anyone else reading this who is capable of independent thought and isn't sure who to believe I encourage you to watch the videos for yourself.
You'll see Pretti peacefully filming the ICE agents. You'll see a nearby woman get thrown to the ground by those agents and assaulted. You'll see Pretti try to shield her body with his, without taking a single aggressive action towards the agents or his own firearm. You'll see him pepper sprayed, thrown to the ground, and get brutally beaten. If he hadn't been murdered he likely would have been maimed for life from this; the blows to his face are sickening. After disarming and beating him you can see the agent by his left leg deliberately pull out a gun and shoot Pretti in the back. This was not some scramble where the gun went off accidentaly in the confusion, this was a very deliberate murder. After the initial shot you can see the other agents jump back and riddle his body with bullets.
This is the most clear and brutal murder I've personally ever seen on video. Thank god some bystanders were able to film it so the MAGA lies can be so easily refuted by anyone who cares to look for themselves.
I watched: I thought Pretti fought like hell. They could NOT get him to stop struggling --- it went on and on.
When they felt or saw that gun, of course, that was it: he wasn't going to outlive that. What an idiot. How could he expect to bring a loaded gun to a protest and then dive into a fight with eight agents and expect to survive?
The simplest thing for Dems to do is decouple the ICE issue from the immigration issue.
Wedge away "border security" from "should armed thugs get to attack protestors". As in "we can have robust immigration enforcement that doesn't involve killing citizens, violating civil rights, and kidnapping little kids". As a political message, the administration / ICE is basically giving this to them.
Excellent point. Americans clearly are annoyed about what seems like uncontrolled immigration, but absolutely HATE having masked armed men in their neighborhoods.
I think you’re making a sharp observation here wrt Trump admin in a sense that while Trump often doubles down on stupid stuffs, he still has some capability to back off when he realized he fucked up while likes of Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance and whoever’s running DHS X account (who prob is at a Nazi mor or less) only know to double down…
Except for the Nazi name-calling, I agree with you. Many of Trump's subordinates are out of control. Add Noem and her minion Bovino who keeps overriding Tom Homan (perhaps the only adult in the room) to your list.
well nazi name calling specifically applies to the one running X account, who def posts actual codeworded stuffs... I do not insinuate Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and JD Vance as Nazi per se... (and as for Stephen Miller though, i think it is very shameful that he engages in this while his ancestors escaped literal Nazi and were accepted to this country...)
The Nazi name-calling comes from a bunch of codeword stuff that's been posted that indicates an affinity to the modern Neo-Nazi movement as well as the 1930s-1940s German Nazi movement.
yeah thaks that's what I meant by nazi name calling (and as elaborated above, it is specifically for whoever running the DHS account)
and why they claim to be America First while fetishizing a German ex autocrat is beyond my brain... lol (and also, I wonder how many of them know anything above "Hitler was actually good" - I can bet $100 that 90% of them believe Hitler to be the founder of the party)
Oh --- you are referring, I think, to the bundle of sticks tied into one strong pillar, maybe, that in America refers to "E pluribus unum," that originally was the symbolic weapon carried by the police force supporting Roman magistrates. Hmmmm, that's really boring ---- sorry. [:-)
Presumably, if Trump more-than-passingly decided that it was a good idea under the circumstances to back down on this issue, he wouldn't allow his subordinates to post tweets doubling down on it.
This presumes that Donald Trump is in minute-to-minute effective command of his executive branch, and I think there are reasons to question whether this is true.
(President Grandpa just yells at shadows sometimes. Sad.)
Really good point. Trump is responsible for all of this but there are reasons to doubt that he has a handle on everything that’s happening. The job is too much for him. And he gutted state capacity and put bigoted idiots in charge of NHS.
Yeah I think you’re right on that here- I think the distinction to be made here is “does he feel strongly about correcting the course” vs “doesn’t feel like doubling is a good idea” and I wonder trump is in the second.
And seeing Noem’s comment where she said “shootings should not have happened”, I kinda wonder even she started to feel that way to an extent (like after all she *was* a politician) while likes of Hegseth and Miller do not…
My inner Matt Yglesias is telling me that Nate is asking the wrong question here. The question Nate is asking is, "do most Americans think the Republicans are doing the right thing on immigration?", and he makes a good case that the answer is no. The question he doesn't ask in this piece is, "according to most Americans, which party comes closer to doing the right thing on immigration?". Yglesias argues that the answer to *that* question is "the Republicans", because as much as Americans disapprove of the stuff Nate writes about here, they disapprove *even more* of the kind of laxity that they expect the Democrats to engage in.
Therefore, goes the argument, the best case for Democrats is if the electorate ignores the immigration issue entirely and instead pays attention to issues like health care where Democrats are trusted more than Republicans. So playing up issues like ICE running amok harms Democrats *even if the Republicans' net favorability on this issue is underwater*.
I don't know how confident I should be in this analysis, but it's something to think about.
Yglesias is broadly correct about this, but he would also say that there are limits. There is a point at which the public will prefer Democrat toxic empathy to Republican evil. I think the butchering of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have moved us past that threshold. If Democrats are disciplined about this and embrace a moderate position, they have a legitimate opening here.
Praying for moderation in the face of a backlash is like hoping for a trickle when the sky opens up on a droughted land. The land will not hold the water, and you will just be swept away.
The reality is the democrats won't be, and won't need to be, moderate on this category. I don't say that as a liberal, I say that as a libertarian who knows how the GOP was on shaky ground already with their own allies after ICE pulled over the head of the Freestate movement and copied the computer contents containing American citizens data. Look up Eric Brakey for info on that, but there have been others over the course of the past year. The libertarians are not going to vote GOP this year, and they may vote for the Liberals for various reasons.
The pendulum swing is going to be harsh on this area, since in 2028 the DHS and ICE will likely be political pariahs and the damage done by this administration will have a chilling enough effect on people wanting to enter the country the democrats can get away with being super lax for a few years with no major effect.
I actually expect them to moderate their position on the 2nd Amendment instead. I'm seeing a lot more liberals at the range and they are discovering that sanity is needed in that field. After this administration, there's less belief on the left that the cops or military will keep people safe. There's more support on their side for a push in that direction.
And, to be blunt, the housecleaning liable to follow this administration would be good overall for everyone.
We benefited too long from a competent meritocracy that minimized the damage of bad policies. Yes, I am a libertarian person who respects the civil service of past years. I view them the way others view the musicians who played as the Titanic sank. We taught our leaders that they could do anything, and the civil services would keep them from hurting themselves.
It was the wrong lesson to teach them.
Being forced to go in an muck out the stalls isn't pleasant, and we should have never let it get this bad, but it'll be a good reminder to future generations to not blindly trust a government or organization to stay good.
It would be great if the Dems moderated on the right to keep and bear arms, and politically smart for them.
I just don't think anything that happens with ICE will allow the Dems to be super lax on immigration. They have a choice, moderate hard, and win, or go far left with "Defund ICE" and lose. We saw what happened last time they faced that choice.
I find it best not to engage with the bobble heads and the tourists.
I'm just glad to not have to yell over them at brunch right now, although I cringe at the inevitable return of the tourists in 2027,
locked in tears claiming about how they were misled *yet again* and how *this time* they mean it when they say they are with us and will never vote Republican ever again. It'll be 2007 all over again, and the younger crowd will let them in, because they know their friend *really means it this time*.
*Slams head repeatedly into desk*
I'm going to start multiplying a person's dues for the hall rental for every time someone does it. I swear I will.
Are you calling me a bobble head or tourist? Lol. And I promise you, I'll never say that I'll never vote Republican again. I see myself voting only R or Libertarian for the foreseeable future...
I hope you are right, but this would be enough of a departure from how things have gone up until now that I'd want to see polling data specifically backing this up (which the data in this post doesn't do) before I believe it.
Increasingly "immigration" is not the issue. But just "should the government be allowed to roll into a blue city and wreak havoc because they don't like them"
That’s not the question. The public reacts to what it’s currently experiencing. Border crossings is no longer an issue. The issue is overreach and cruelty. The pendulum always swings too far.
Again, it's not impossible in principle that the latest round of antics went too far and wiped out this edge, but I'd need to see data showing that this has in fact happened.
First, it takes a while for things to register with the public. Second, the situation in Minneapolis is a significant ramp up and obvious departure from border control. Third, the data is in. The polls show that it has registered.
All the polls showing Trump’s approval on the issue of immigration, broadly and on the question of whether ICE has gone beyond too far. Especially look at the strongly held approval vs disapproval and within that at the independents. Every poll I’ve seen. Take your pick.
The entire argument I'm making here is that approval-vs.-disapproval numbers don't establish that one party has the advantage over the other on a given issue.
In a world where Trump is the current president, has had his approval on this issue crater, and is also going meaningfully further than previous Republican administrations, I don't think it's that important in the present-day political context that there's still an issue advantage for "Republicans" vs "Democrats" generically. It's potentially a good reason for caution on the issue in a future Democratic administration (rather than taking a Trump backlash for granted), but shouldn't be a reason to not fight back on the issue right now.
My suspicion is that this is similar to how Republicans still would poll than Democrats better on "national security" issues in 2006-2008. This illustrated that there was still some residual "we trust the right-wing party more to be tough" sentiment, but it ultimately didn't benefit Bush much, because he specifically was viewed as incompetent, and his failures both on the war and on other issues meant that fence sitters wouldn't give him benefit of the doubt anymore. And ultimately, Democrats were on solid ground in nominating an anti-Iraq War candidate, and while McCain had more "not like Bush" credibility than some other Republicans (a better opportunity for distance from the unpopular lame duck president than current Republicans are likely to seek out in 2028), at the end of the day, he still supported the now-unpopular war and was big picture tied to a discredited political party.
Trump is underwater on immigration and deportations, but above water on border security. The question of which party is more trusted on immigration is even, while border security massively favors Republicans. That's some good evidence that, as long as the discussion is about what ICE is doing, it will be good for Democrats. Just maybe stay away from discussion of Biden or the southern border. It isn't really part of the current topic anyway.
The data in that article indicates that, even after you factor out "border security" as a separate issue, Republicans are still more trusted than Democrats on immigration policy, albeit just barely.
Yes, I was counting the -1 result as even since it's well within the margin of error. I still think an even issue where Trump is underwater is a good issue for Democrats, at least in 2026. Democrats don't have to run against Trump directly, just "vote for me as a check on Trump's power".
A different message will be required in 2028, unless the situation changes.
That seems a bit odd to me—surely to make the case for change you have to point at issues where most voters actively prefer the alternative?—but at this point I'm not especially confident in anything and maybe it works out that way.
Midterms aren't "which party do you want to run the country?" Midterms are "do you want the president's party to continue their program?" That's why I specified 2026. Most people won't think about if they want Dems in charge when they're casting their ballots. An issue with no trust advantage for either side, but where the president himself is very underwater, is going to favor the out party.
It's very possible that this could be the outcome in low-turnout midterms.
But upcoming Presidential general elections (in particular 2028) will pit Democrats painted by Republicans as for open borders versus Republicans painted by Democrats as for brutal ICE practices. Who will prevail? Likely the Republicans since, even at this GOP popularity low point, the Democrats are even more unpopular.
Keep in mind, in a presidential election it doesn't matter if the Republican or Democratic party is popular. It matters if their candidate is personally popular. If the candidate is popular, they'll drag up the popularity of the party.
Also, we don't know if another Republican candidate can win low propensity voters like Trump can. Nobody else so far has been able to, but then again there hasn't been a presidential election with a Republican who isn't trump since 2012. If the answer is no, then the question becomes if the next Republican candidate can distance themself from Trump enough. We won't know the answers to these questions until 2028.
All the negative campaigning at the end of election cycles shows that modern elections are more about voting against the other side than voting for one side. The bases will show up to vote in the end, even if very disenchanted for the first 3 3/4 years leading into an election. Unless there is some game-changing issue currently not in evidence. (e.g., A backlash among the base like the Covid handling by the last administration.)
It may be possible that it's Trump personally and not what his voters see him as representing that turns out MAGA voters. But there are probably more who prefer MAGA over the Democrats but can't bring themselves to vote for such a flawed person as Trump. That may put the GOP in an even better position than we're calculating.
Does it? Especially if partisan (right-wing media in this case) doesn't present these incidents as indiscriminate killings. We're really lacking polling of how voters look back on 2024. Do they regret their vote? Are there many who voted for one candidate but, seeing what happened, would redo their vote now if they could.
We live in an era of media catering its coverage to the preconceived views of its audience. And very few independent voters whose vote next election isn't pretty much locked into how they voted last time.
Trump led Biden by about 1.5% in 538's voting averages polls for four months leading into the infamous debate. Harris lost the election by the same amount. This is because we have an electorate that is pretty locked in on their overall preference and not influenced much by policy performance.
The only exception I've seen this decade was the Biden administration Covid vaccine policy, which drove significant Biden voters into the non-duopoly club (and IMO lost the Democrats 2024). In that case, it was policy that betrayed core beliefs (free speech, medical choice, anti-censorship) of some of its base voters, not going too far on an issue that the base wanted.
Trump lost 2020 election by 4.5 points. Something happened there, presumably incompetent and incoherent Covid policy. Remember his advice to drink bleach?
Erratic Covid policy, bad economy, and unpopular throughout his first term and Trump lost by 4.5%. (After losing the popular vote by 2.5% four years earlier.) Afterwards, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman (the judge said the charge was considered rape in 47 states), led a coup attempt, and he won by 1.5% in 2024.
So, the real question is how did the Democrats go from +4.5% in 2020 to -1.5%? We don't have direct polling of the relative Biden&Harris/Trump that went from 4.5% to -1.5% between November 2020 and March 2024. But we have Biden popularity data, where his popularity tanked over a six-month period starting with him flipping on vaccine mandates and never coming back in the polls. The other factors during that time period were transitory. (E.g., Believed to have mishandled Afghanistan but then being quite adept at the start of the Ukraine war.)
I think you are right. Look at how pretty much everything the government said about Covid and what to do was lies, lies, and mistakes. And now watch the rebellion against elitist vaccine policy. I always hated that ---- the docs just do it to get people in their offices paying. Same with flu shots. Corruption, just like the "Medical Advantage" plans that are designed to empty out everyone's Medicare account.
See Hudson County, NJ Latino vote 2024 Presidential vs 2025 Gubernatorial. If memory serves the turn around was more than 40%. The overall race was supposed to be close. It was double digit. Angry people vote.
Yes, in off-year elections the angrier side often wins. But not always. The GOP flipped the House in 2022 despite the Democrats anger over abortion.
Aside: Polling in NJ (where I live) is not good. Monmouth University, based here, used to do horse-race polling of elections and they were consistently one of the top-rated pollsters by 538. They were way off in 2021 and believed their polling (saying the race wouldn't be close) depressed turnout and perhaps was decisive in Governor Murphy's reelection. (Anecdotical, I agree based on locals I spoke to.) So, they stopped polling candidates altogether. Other pollsters had mainly stayed away from NJ thinking why bother compete with Monmouth on its home turf. Which leaves us without good polling data.
The main limit to Matt Y's analysis of this particular issue is that this is no longer just about immigration.
What this really reminds me of is the pepper spray incident that happened while I was at UC Davis. I personally wasn't all that sympathetic to the Occupy protestors because I thought the tents were dumb and unsanitary. But then the cops pepper sprayed a line of students who were literally sitting on the ground in the quad and not doing anything at all. I came out to protest the next day because it wasn't about the original issue anymore, it was about the cops using force against students for no reason. Similarly, I don't think protesting ICE is really about immigration anymore, it's about not wanting brownshirts roaming the streets murdering random citizens.
That's why I said it's about not wanting brownshirts murdering random citizens. That is not abstract at all. People do not want to have to fear for their lives just for visiting a normal Midwestern city.
Seriously? They shot a guy in the back for helping a woman who'd fallen in the street. Have you been reading the first-person accounts of people living in Minneapolis? A lot of them are just trying to visit the normal restaurant area. They've all been transformed into “protestors” because ICE is preventing them from living normally in their city.
I am not sure enough attention is being directed to the fact that DHS is obstructing any meaningful investigation of how these two American citizens were killed in plain daylight on a public street. DHS will do all of the investigation itself and let us know? I wouldn't be surprised if all of the relevant guns have already been destroyed and internal communications scrubbed. This is outrageous.
You mention that Minneapolis is 1500 miles from the nearest southern border crossing. But it's also 150 miles from the nearest Great Lakes port (Duluth) and about 300 miles from the International Falls crossing into Canada.
It was Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) who shot Pretti, not ICE. They have nearly Carte Blanche at the border (including International ports and airports). The courts have established their powers in a border "buffer" zone (generously set at 100 miles from borders and coasts - meaning nearly all of Floridais CBP-land). Within those zones, they can set up checkpoints and they can do traffic stops with "reasonable suspicion". They can't search your car without warrant or your permission (note: never, ever give any peace officer permission to search your car or your house). They can get a drug-sniffing dog to make a pass around your car.
In addition, the first question they must ask is "are you a US citizen?". A lie is an offense. Answering "no" will result in a follow-up question about paperwork. But a "yes" shouldn't result in a follow-up "prove it" - we aren't supposed to be a "show me your papers" nation (yet).
So, WTF is CBP doing in Minneapolis shooting people?
Other food for thought:
* The 5-year-old detained and shipped to Texas
* The young kid chased through the snow while yelling (in Spanish) "I'm legal"
* The picture on the front page of the MPLS paper of two officers holding someone face down in the snow while while a third sprays a chemical irritant into the part of his face showing
The correct responses to "are you a citizen" is "Pardon me while I record this conversation... now who are you, including your name, badge number, and legal authority, and what is your reason for asking?"
If people are shocked enough at what the Democrats allowed, and see what ICE is doing as a necessary corrective, they will properly frame these shootings as minor blips.
Most people didn't want to eliminate all police officers in the country after George Floyd. Similarly, they won't want to eliminate all immigration enforcement after this. If they see the Democrats as wanting to eliminate all immigration enforcement, they still won't support Dems.
Sane countries that are democracies often tolerate silly "gestures" like sanctuary cities - which I note I do not myself think are good but really are not the explainer of the illegal immigration issue (that would be the idiotic Biden first years stance re the exploitation of refugee claims plus lax border, and then add to not actually using existing internal tools like job status checking(
This has zero relevance to Federal agents committing a shooting reminiscent of, to use the Trumpy term, "third world shithole" enforcement squads. Like Hamas goons going around masked.
I'm making to make a wild guess that you aren't equally outraged about the fed's unprecedented refusal to cooperate with local officials when they kill someone in their city.
What if I want to go after everyone, absolutely everyone, who is not legally in this country? After all, that's why I voted for Trump. I don't care if they are a drug dealer or a heart surgeon. If they're here illegally, they need to go.
It's a lot of Studs-Terkel-type scenes with different types of people telling what happened in the civil war in America after it's over. One such scene is a man whose job it is to get out ALL the illegals still here, in hiding various ways. It's not a sympathetic picture, but thought-provoking.
For instance, I started thinking how many people *I* know came in illegally! My granddaughter has taken up with some Indian and I know he's after a green card. A good friend years ago said at the age of 12 she and her mother and father just walked across the Canadian border in an out-of-the way place --- I didn't think much about it at the time she told this, but now it seems significant. I can think of some other examples.
My conviction is that America was exemplary because it was so hard to get to, only smart and able and healthy people could get here. Switch that to taking in all the "refuse yearning to be free" or at least to be rich, and we'll just be another Mexico, which would be a pretty sad fate and bad management. I'm in favor of brain-drain, but not taking in the world's failures, which is pretty much what happens with mass migrations. Same thing is happening in Europe.
Nationalizing local police reduces their ability to enforce local laws. Crimes are not reported, witnesses refuse to testify, and criminals can become impossible to catch and convict.
That is borne out in actual crime statistics on the US.
In terms of real impact, you are arguing that relatively minor Federal civil offenses are more important than local felonies.
As for "sane countries" and immigration policy enforcement, name a single place with a police force operating like ICE.
But if local police had set a perimeter around the planned ICE operations, keeping people out of the area instead of yelling and whistling and marching closer and closer with hands up like zombies, neither of the people who were killed would have been killed.
I believe this is an ongoing illustration of the point Daniel Drezner made back in September 25: "The Weakness and Incompetence of American Authoritarianism, And why it needs to be continually highlighted." (https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-weakness-and-incompetence-of) - competent even wanna be authoritarian regimes know they need a certain level of general populalrity.
Trump, Miller are not genuinely competent (thank God for that).
Where did "poorly-trained ICE officers roaming city streets" come from? While there are concerns that rapid hiring and compressed training has eroded the quality of ICE agents, all the ones involved in killings were highly trained and experienced. And how does any peace officer enforce the law without "roaming the streets."
I see irrationality on both sides. Enforcing laws will cause some innocent people to be harassed and even some killed. This is particularly true when the targets of enforcement are embedded among the population, and include some violent criminals, and the law is locally unpopular. If you don't like the harassment and killings, change the law, don't close your eyes and imagine enforcement without pain.
On the other hand, the Minnesota killings and other brutalities are clearly unjustified. They shouldn't have happened. That doesn't mean officers are murderers, like pilots and doctors, police officers' mistakes can lead to deaths. But it does mean you should rethink whether enforcement is worth it, and whether tactics and rules of engagement should change.
I wish people would see this as an issue for all secret police forces, not just ICE. Public police protect and serve the public by investigating complaints of things like robbery or assault (or a body in the case of murder).
Secret police do not have complaining victims or bodies, they're enforcing government wishes against citizens. That requires them to use paid or coerced informers, mass surveillance, entrapment, sting operations, no-knock warrants with stun grenades and other unpleasant tactics that erode civil rights. It brings them into contact will large numbers of non-criminals, some of whom are abused or die.
While public police often act as if they work for prosecutors, in theory they are neutral in court and they usually have strong local democratic control. ICE not only works for prosecutors, it is the prosecutor, and it is insulated from local control.
Ultimately deporting people with criminal records remain popular. Or just deport people who already have a FRO but remain in US.
Definitely not a bunch of armed goons roaming street, definitely not all the racial profilings, and definitely not detaining children.
And yes, this is different than Renee Good - you can make an argument about Jonathan Ross having to make a split second decision with a vehicle possibly heading his way (even if videos show otherwise). But a 7-on-1 beating of somebody that's just filming follow by 10 shots after he was already down on the ground? No excuses, none, zero. What's worse is that despite multiple videos showing otherwise, the same people are still trying to lie, to gaslight, to twisting the narratives.
The only place you see the latter is an authoritarian govt, period.
Trump isn't losing anyone who was on his side. The childlike antics of the Left are losing people who generally sit out elections. Removing all illegals is what we voted for, and the moronic antics of the leftist agitators are not going to change our minds, regardless of how many of them choose to suicide by cop.
All those polls are from a time before the Dem grift of bribing illegals with US tax dollars became apparent to all. Wait until Waltz and Frey and Ilhan are in prison and see what the polls say then. Besides - there is a path to citizenship for unauthorized residents right now. Take the very generous offer to get paid to self-deport. Get in line with everyone else trying to get into America legally, and wait your turn. Eventually you might get a chance to become a citizen that way. Otherwise you have no hope. Trump is doing the right thing here, as usual. There is no way for the radical left to win this fight, the only question is how many of them will foolishly suicide-by-cop themselves before they give it up.
I remember all the polls saying Trump had no chance of winning in 2016, 2020 AND 2024 - and yet he won all three!! Feel free to rely on the polls all you like, doesn't bother me at all.
Oh - and everything I said was true. Have a nice day!
Like it or not - 2020 was stolen. The fact that you think it is laughable shows just how much of a bubble you live in. Some day you will wake up, I hope.
Trump's immigration policies and more importantly, actions, are waaay beyond the pale.... calling them unacceptable is a bull shit euphemism ...Trump should go back to where he came from...
We even have "mainstream" conservative media like National Review and Erick Erickson expressing serious concerns over Trump's desire for Greenland as well as how ICE is handling immigration enforcement. Heck, NR is starting to bring up impeachment and 25A.
We may be nearing the point where Trump "loses Cronkite and Middle America", if we're not already there.
Of course, if the Dems want to take advantage they need to play their hand well, and stay away from extremism like "no human being is illegal". Otherwise they will continue to make the GOP look less insane.
I've been thinking about how things escalated to this point. Even when people watch the exact same video, they end up drawing completely different conclusions based on their own biases.
These days, when a public figure weighs in on something, more and more folks seem to care way more about whose political side they're on than about their actual expertise or credentials. It's like, "This guy disagrees with me on all these other issues, so obviously his take here is biased as hell—I can't let myself be swayed by anything he says."
Social media algorithms are turbocharging this whole thing too—they're designed to amplify division and keep people locked in echo chambers. People are quick to ditch any real logical analysis and just boil everything down to a simple us-vs-them binary fight.
Take these two shooting incidents: I really can't get behind the government jumping to label them "domestic terrorism" without even doing a proper investigation first. And then on top of that, it sounds like they're basically saying you can't carry a gun at a protest. So what's the point of the Second Amendment then? Just for everyday self-defense at home, or maybe to fight back if federal agents kick down your door? It all feels like the government is making these calls with zero real planning or foresight about how different scenarios could play out.
Why do you think it's okay that Pretti carried a gun to a protest? I think he was a total idiot, and now he's a dead idiot, no surprise there! As soon as they felt or saw that gun, he was never getting up again. I'm on the right, but I don't think it's a GOOD idea to carry a gun to a protest demonstration! Why would it be?
Yeah, carrying to a heated protest is usually a terrible tactical decision. I wouldn’t do it, and I’d tell any buddy not to. You’re basically painting a target on your back the second things get physical. But ‘terrible idea’ doesn’t mean ‘deserves to die’ or ‘forfeits his rights.’ He was legally allowed to carry there. Period. The agents aren’t judge, jury, and executioner just because they yelled ‘he’s got a gun’ after they already took it away. If bad judgment = death sentence without due process, then we’re in a really dangerous spot. Plus, if we start saying ‘you shouldn’t exercise your rights in certain places just because it’s risky,’ we’re basically letting the government (or mobs) decide when and where the right applies.
Thanx for your interesting reply. I was interested in seeing a defense of Pretti's decision to carry a gun in there. Apparently he fought physically with ICE personnel a week before, according to the WSJ tonight, and they SAW the gun ---- but at this time, they didn't shoot him. The next time, they did.
The Supreme Court may have decided that the militia clause is a typo, but it is still a good idea.
You want to carry a gun in public? You should pass a mandatory training and testing process at least as comprehensive as a driver license, including regular retesting.
It is impossible to prove that Pretti's gun caused the shooting rampage, but he should have known not to get involved when he was carrying a weapon.
Of course getting between a rabid dog and its meal is always risky.
Nate, don't say "Good did ignore an order to exit her car" without context. The video obviously had multiple agents screaming at her with conflicting orders simultaneously. Definitionally, she had to ignore one order or another.
And ignoring an order to leave the car isn't a crime that deserves execution in the street, nor should they have prevented doctors from administering lifesaving aid, nor should the officer called her a fucking bitch, nor should he have fired multiple shots through the open side window as the car was passing even if the guy might have been near the front of the car when she started moving.
You don't have to equivocate on everything.
Also, an important (and underreported) part of the story is that Renee Good is was alive and had a pulse for at least 8 minutes after the shooting, and medics were there at the sight of the shooting trying to give her urgent care, but ICE agents blocked their access and refused to let them treat her injuries. Renee Good might have survived if it weren’t for the deliberate obstruction of ICE agents after the shooting.
Also, a few days after the shooting, another group of ICE agents yelled, “You gotta stop obstructing us, that’s why that lesbian b*tch is dead” at protestors/observers. So based on ICE’s own words, it sounds like they murdered Renee Good out of spite, and possibly out of homophobia, instead of self-defense. https://www.reddit.com/r/stpaul/comments/1qcx3x8/you_gotta_stop_obstructing_us_thats_why_that/
The people of Minneapolis should stop obstructing. They act like zombies, waving both hands in the air, coming closer and closer: of course disaster happens. They are being deliberately obnoxious on purpose: what do they expect?
Nate was merely pointing out that this slightly complicates the analysis; he was not claiming that this precludes a finding that the shooting of Good was unjustified.
Saying that it was "a chaotic and unpredictable situation" is a reasonable way to describe that. Claiming she "ignored orders" is ridiculous. Like, four different armed people screamed different things at her simultaneously.
But she did, in fact, ignore orders, and this did contribute to her death. Let's not vilify the ICE agents or pretend that she did everything perfectly.
How is she supposed to obey 2 directly conflicting orders at the same time. Literally, if 1 police officer tells you "Stand up!" at the same moment another says "Sit down!", then no matter what you do they can say you ignored orders.
What were the conflicting orders?
Personally, I think ICE is doing a Pretti Good job!
One ICE agent told her to drive away and then another one told her to get out of the car.
I don't think that joke works here.
I've always wondered what would have happened if Good's Pilot, after she was killed, had run over a pedestrian or hit a car that was driving, instead of the parked car it eventually hit. Or hit another ICE officer.
That's one of many reasons why the use-of-force doctrine for almost every LEO says not to shoot into moving vehicles.
As the old saying goes, you can't outrun a Motorola.
That would have been even more tragic. Are you wondering if the backlash would have been even stronger and more unified?
Yes
you mean, would her estate have been liable for the damage? Or what are you asking?
It's really a comment on how reckless Ross was firing into that car, regardless of what personal risk he might have faced. Would Ross have then been liable for any subsequent injuries or deaths? Probably not, because law enforcement legally can seem to do no wrong, which of course makes accountability impossible.
Get out the car bitch is an order? Or a threat. Nate's categorization of this interaction is bs. Do better. Look at the NYT video and tell me again that she was a threat and getting shot in the face was the right response. FFS
Thank you
As a Democrat, I found the DNC’s strategy of screeching that Trump is a fascist to be over the top to the point of being cringe. But the footage of Pretti being shot execution-style in the back while restrained by numerous federal agents, and their reasoning is that they were threatened that he was exercising his 2nd Amendment rights…. completely insane. If Trump does not reign in the behavior of ICE and clearly articulate that American citizens including Pretti have the right to bear arms, he is not only going to quickly lose the respect of his base but risk a civil war. Maybe not like a 1860s style of civil war, but Minneapolis is looking a lot like 1980s Belfast.
I never thought it was over-the-top, but it undermined their credibility just a tetch to call Trump a fascist while simultaneously telling us that the best way to defeat said fascists was to run a presidential candidate whom 86% of Americans thought too old for the job.
As Nate said, these are Democrats, after all.
Years ago, conservatives call the Republicans the Stupid Party and the Democrats the Evil Party.
Now, those labels are reversed. The GOP under Trump is Evil. And boy, are the Democrats Stupid, catering to their leftist base instead of reaching out to the center. Had they done that in 2024, Trump would not now be President.
Yeah, everyone knows Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are so famously progressive and left wing
It wasn’t so much that they were super-left (I mean, Harris had some pretty left-wing stances in the past that were hard to run away from, and Biden DID swing harder to the left during his tenure than his 2020 campaign would have implied). But Phil H is correct that Trump could’ve easily been prevented from returning to the Presidency if the Dems had not been so moronic in their candidate choices. A robust primary - which was completely within the realm of possibility, but actively shut down - could’ve yielded us a far, far stronger candidate than Biden OR Harris.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are establishment and middle of the road. Saying the Democrats somehow catered to the left wing with those candidate choices is straight up wrong. You can have a look at their careers yourself -- no progressive would consider them left wing. If you want to think they are super left, then you may be too far to the right to begin with.
Phil H didn't say anything about a primary, so not sure why you are putting words in his mouth for something he did not say.
Also, argument to moderation is an argumentative fallacy by the way, which both you and Phil H are engaging in. All the general election candidates have been center to center left. The only way you could get someone more 'moderate' than them is actually voting Republican and being okay with throwing in your lot with MAGA. Choosing moderation between people detaining 5 year olds / suspending habeas corpus on the basis of race and political beliefs, and those that want healthcare for all means you are an extremist yourself. That's like saying you're trying to be moderately fascist.
I think you misunderstand me. You are correct that Phil H didn't call for a primary. I agreed with him though, that Trump could have been prevented from returning to office; I was the one that inserted the primary argument. Which I steadfastly defend. And I don't think they are super-left - I said they took stances that were probably too left for the general electorate, and it harmed their prospects in 2024.
Biden's age was his main liability. The Democrats flatly ignored their own voters, whom polls repeatedly showed did NOT want him to be their 2024 nominee. And Harris sunk herself when she said she "couldn't think of anything she would do differently" than Biden. So then why the fuck did we change candidates, genius?
My point was that a STRONGER candidate, one unattached to the Biden administration - like Beshear or Shapiro - would have beaten Trump. I'd even go far as to say Mikie Sherrill or Abigail Spanberger could have beaten him. The electorate was HUNGRY for a non-Biden AND non-Trump candidate. Had the Dems not been stupid, they would have let the Republican primary voters nominate Trump, and THEN vetted a moderate, younger, pro-choice nominee.
What I find infuriating - and I'm not suggesting this applies to you - is when people tell me, "Well, it's the voters' fault - they had a choice between someone who was clearly anti-democracy and someone who wasn't." OK, sure. But when the voters broadcast as early as DECEMBER of 2023 that they intended to vote for Trump over Biden, in a race in which BOTH MEN HAD BEEN PRESIDENT BEFORE, and you ignore them, well then that's on you. Counting on people to vote the way they SHOULD, rather than the way they're actively telling you they INTEND to, is the embodiment of condescension, and in this case it ran completely counter to the end goal, which was to keep Trump from getting re-elected.
What SJB said. yes, the Dems should have eased Biden out and held competitive primaries rather than settle for their California liberal VP to replace Biden.
Remember it doesn’t matter what you or I think, it matters what the voters think, especially the non-progressive non-Trump voters, who were looking for a reason to hold their nose and vote for Kamala Harris. She gave then no such reason other than being “not Trump.” That was not enough.
And I think Harris had a chance— IF — she chose a moderate like Shapiro as a running mate (not the Uber liberal Walz) AND pivoted hard from her 2020 primary stances, maybe stating that she is putting those on hold in order to build a coalition to beat Trump. But apparently she lacked the vision to do that.
Victory was within her reach. But she didn’t reach for it. That was the last mistake the Democrats made during the 2024 race, on top of all the others as SJB called out.
Beyond Cringe - it was ineffective to reach people not-aready-convinced.
It wasn't per se "wrong" (although Trump's general incompetence in authoritarianis as highlighted by Dan Drezner [https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-weakness-and-incompetence-of] mitigates) but it was ineffective - Selling to the alreayd sold.
Now sadly Trump is opening a new sales opportunity to keep up I know a moderately distasteful analogy. but in 2024 it was the wrong sales pitch for an electorate.
As authoritarianism goes, they are bunglers - these things when surrounded by cellphone cameras that will provide ample video that Looks Very Bad are the sorts of things that in real regimes do set-off revolts and so competent authoritarians do seek to avoid (thus night-time snatch and grab highly preferable).
ETA: it makes me think of the Napoleonic era quote often attributed to Talleyrand (in re the assasination/execution of a certain legitimist opponent to Napoleon, "Worse than a Crime, A Blunder.")
Yep, I still genuinely don’t think Trump wants to be a Stalin/Mao/etc style of authoritarian, I think he just wants to be remembered as a strong leader and change-maker. He’s not particularly conservative and has shown willingness to pull back on right-wing positions when they’re proven unpopular (eg abortion). If he’s smart (a sizable if), he will temper his position on immigration too. Or at the very least do an Apprentice-esque “You’re fired” to the ICE agents responsible for Pretti’s murder.
Oh Trump no, he hasn't any such coherence. His mental model is like him in charge of his shambolic family company. Nothing more complex than that.
Miller... well that's another matter.
I do think it's relevant that immigration is one of two major policy issues (the other being trade) where Trump is a true believer rather than merely adopting whatever position's most immediately expedient. So he might be more reluctant to pivot on that when the political winds change.
I think Americans are in denial about immigration in that we are an aging society with a very low birth rate. There is already a shortage of labor in the hospitality, elder and health care, agriculture and construction industries. Our Social Security system also needs more younger workers paying into the system to keep it viable. Furthermore, immigration has always been a stimulus to economic growth. We should be facilitating more immigration through reform which would provide a legal path to immigration and citizenship. At the present time this is made almost impossible to do because of MAGA's obsession with creating an ethnically homogeneous society.
Well I could be wrong, I think he’s a true believer in that he wants immigration laws to be enforced and the border secured, but I don’t think that includes ICE agents conducting executions of American citizens in the street.
I don't think Trump's antipathy to immigration is based on a desire to abide by the law. Not all of the people he is deporting are illegal and he is also opposed to legal immigration unless it is from Northern European countries or is white. Witness his welcoming of white South Africans. He shares Stephen Miller's desire for an ethnically homogeneous society.
Works for me. Let's do that.
I think he truly believes that, while the current spate of messy ICE operations is a worse outcome than all the immigrants leaving voluntarily, it's a better one than them remaining in the country (and that he applies this even to most immigrants who are here legally).
Maybe I'm wrong, but honestly, I think illegal immigration in the U.S. is a systemic issue. It stems partly from refugee waves driven by political collapse in Global South countries (everyone can judge for themselves why those flows are happening), and partly from domestic labor shortages. The influx of too many undocumented workers lets some employers drive down wages without much pushback, which in turn pushes American citizens further out of those jobs. It's a vicious spiral that won't be fixed just by deporting everyone— you need a mature pipeline of skilled native-born workers to step in, not just shuffling currently unemployed Americans straight into those roles (and if I remember right, Trump has actually said something along those lines himself).
Plus, a lot of Americans probably aren't willing to take the pay and working conditions that undocumented immigrants are currently accepting, which would drive costs up even more.
On a side note, about tariff policies: a lot of people might hate hearing this, but let's compare China and Germany. Both are export-oriented economies (whatever you think of Chinese manufacturing, the reality is that even under current tariffs, the U.S. is heavily dependent on China for a ton of industrial goods—like phones, machinery, drones, and especially rare earths. And rare earths aren't just about mining ore; it's a full industrial supply chain).
Germany used to run a structural trade surplus with China, but in recent years that's flipped and the deficit has been growing bigger and bigger.
Some might chalk it up to wage differences, but the real core is that China has a complete supply chain, massive scale that spreads costs thin, super-low logistics thanks to infrastructure, and plenty of power generation capacity.
I'm not advocating for totally free trade—in fact, I think America's deindustrialization since the 1990s is largely a direct result of those policies. But the fix clearly isn't just slapping on more tariffs. You need massive infrastructure investment, you need a huge number of engineers and skilled workers—these aren't things you can pull off in one presidential term (and let's be real, getting reelected isn't a given anymore). And good luck getting the current Congress to pass a clean infrastructure bill without loading it up with partisan riders.
(Oh, and by the way—when it comes to actually building and repairing that infrastructure, a lot of it still relies on immigrant labor)
Yeah you're probably right. Maybe he'll invade Greenland or something to change the news cycle quickly.
I'd hope everyone would agree with that. Obviously it's a huge problem that there are all these illegals in this country, and a huge operation to remove them is not going to be done perfectly.
You were right: Trump is back-tracking on all this and did get rid of Bovino and call in Homan. When Minnesota rebels from America, that could really become a problem.
Think 12 year old boy. With access to a military.
Mao Zedong led Communist China to basically survive and come out on top in the war against Japan (at the very least, his side didn’t collapse), then beat Chiang Kai-shek in the civil war to take over the whole country, fought the U.S. to a standstill in Korea, and in the early-to-mid years of his rule he actually pulled off a pretty impressive economic recovery and built up China’s industrial base from almost nothing. Of course, as a dictator who soaked up insane levels of cult-of-personality worship, he completely wrecked the country in his later years and led it into disaster.
Stalin? The West’s view of him is pretty much settled—no need to rehash it—and even Khrushchev slammed him hard. But you can’t deny the guy led the Soviet Union through World War II and came out the other side as a superpower; those achievements are just facts.
As for Trump, he gives off this strong vibe of having a classic performative personality—constantly acting out, craving everyone’s approval and applause. The second someone pushes back or criticizes him, he flips into full meltdown/hysterical mode. You can say he’s willing to cut deals and make concessions when it suits him, but the impression he leaves is that he doesn’t really have any coherent, consistent ideology or thought process underneath it all. It feels more like he’s just improvising on the spot, playing to the crowd, and feeding his own brand/image the whole time.
don't believe the propaganda about those leaders...
He’s probably closest to Peron of all the 20th century dictators. Funny, self-indulgent, non-ideological. But he’s not a smart. And his wife’s not as good looking.
She is when she doesn't wear that hat.
yeah, there is a reason he likes that song so much...
I've always thought that tossing around the term "fascist" is the first cousin to a reductio ad Hitlerum, and it's better to stick to the facts--especially when you have them in hand!--over name-calling.
If the Dems had taken your advice there, they probably would have won the election...
Using the term ‘fascist’ would be more effective if the average American knew what it meant.
I'm up with Second Amendment rights, but to say Pretti had a total right to carry a loaded gun to a protest and then advance aggressively closer and closer to the agents, yelling imprecations all the time and carrying a small device that was either a phone videoing them or a gun ------------ darn, the guy had no sense at all!!! Or more likely, he got carried away. That happens in protests, I remember. The police NEED to set a perimeter to keep the public out of the game.
He had a right to carry a gun. He also should have had the wisdom to not put himself in harm's way, or engage in a confrontation while strapped.
Kamikaze missions aren't going to win any battles. Remember, the Japanese lost.
! Well said.
The Republican gaslighting on the Pretti killing is insane. Anyone can look at the various videos and see that it was a straight up murder. Even before they shot a defenseless man in the back repeatedly you can seem them beating the absolute crap out of him for daring to protect a woman.
Of course the response was completely predictable. Everyone knew they would completely lie about the incident and call him an aggressive terrorist. We know that none of the murderers will face any accountability. We know this will lead to another similar murder in the near future.
If openly murdering peaceful protesters in the streets doesn't turn Americans against Trump I think our democracy is truly lost.
Oh, come on, he was obviously resisting. When they sprayed his face with an irritant, he reacted! /s
I don't think so - I think ICE did a Pretti Good job!
And let's not completely misuse the word "murder" which has an actual meaning.
I'm confused by your murder definition quibble. Are you arguing that a completely unjustified killing doesn't count as murder, or that shooting a non-aggressive disarmed man in the back 10 times is justified?
quibble? You're calling it a quibble?
read this account, which involves Pretti interfering multiple times with ICE agents doing their lawful duty, and then tell me it was a "murder."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/witness-videos-cbp-killing-minnesota-man-appear-counter-trump-administ-rcna255791
As I said in my original post the the lies from the right are entirely predictable. Of course they were going to say that Pretti was so aggressive he deserved to be murdered in the street. The shooting was so justified it wasn't even murder! I guess according to MAGA an unarmed man pinned down by a half dozen masked govt goons deserves to be shot in the back for questioning the regime. Obviously people like one I'm replying to will dutifully regurgitate whatever talking points Trump and his minions tell them to. I know he's a lost cause, but to anyone else reading this who is capable of independent thought and isn't sure who to believe I encourage you to watch the videos for yourself.
You'll see Pretti peacefully filming the ICE agents. You'll see a nearby woman get thrown to the ground by those agents and assaulted. You'll see Pretti try to shield her body with his, without taking a single aggressive action towards the agents or his own firearm. You'll see him pepper sprayed, thrown to the ground, and get brutally beaten. If he hadn't been murdered he likely would have been maimed for life from this; the blows to his face are sickening. After disarming and beating him you can see the agent by his left leg deliberately pull out a gun and shoot Pretti in the back. This was not some scramble where the gun went off accidentaly in the confusion, this was a very deliberate murder. After the initial shot you can see the other agents jump back and riddle his body with bullets.
This is the most clear and brutal murder I've personally ever seen on video. Thank god some bystanders were able to film it so the MAGA lies can be so easily refuted by anyone who cares to look for themselves.
I watched: I thought Pretti fought like hell. They could NOT get him to stop struggling --- it went on and on.
When they felt or saw that gun, of course, that was it: he wasn't going to outlive that. What an idiot. How could he expect to bring a loaded gun to a protest and then dive into a fight with eight agents and expect to survive?
The simplest thing for Dems to do is decouple the ICE issue from the immigration issue.
Wedge away "border security" from "should armed thugs get to attack protestors". As in "we can have robust immigration enforcement that doesn't involve killing citizens, violating civil rights, and kidnapping little kids". As a political message, the administration / ICE is basically giving this to them.
This man speaks truth.
Excellent point. Americans clearly are annoyed about what seems like uncontrolled immigration, but absolutely HATE having masked armed men in their neighborhoods.
I think you’re making a sharp observation here wrt Trump admin in a sense that while Trump often doubles down on stupid stuffs, he still has some capability to back off when he realized he fucked up while likes of Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance and whoever’s running DHS X account (who prob is at a Nazi mor or less) only know to double down…
Except for the Nazi name-calling, I agree with you. Many of Trump's subordinates are out of control. Add Noem and her minion Bovino who keeps overriding Tom Homan (perhaps the only adult in the room) to your list.
No way to run a railroad.
well nazi name calling specifically applies to the one running X account, who def posts actual codeworded stuffs... I do not insinuate Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and JD Vance as Nazi per se... (and as for Stephen Miller though, i think it is very shameful that he engages in this while his ancestors escaped literal Nazi and were accepted to this country...)
The Nazi name-calling comes from a bunch of codeword stuff that's been posted that indicates an affinity to the modern Neo-Nazi movement as well as the 1930s-1940s German Nazi movement.
Here, Edited in:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/16/trump-labor-nazi-slogan-social-media.html
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1955011982488228231
The following two posts are "fashwave" style.
https://x.com/dhsgov/status/1987250187384099019
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/2006379912543064168
yeah thaks that's what I meant by nazi name calling (and as elaborated above, it is specifically for whoever running the DHS account)
and why they claim to be America First while fetishizing a German ex autocrat is beyond my brain... lol (and also, I wonder how many of them know anything above "Hitler was actually good" - I can bet $100 that 90% of them believe Hitler to be the founder of the party)
Or the founder of fascism: which, however, was Mussolini. About 1920, IIRC.
Yeah like the namesake of that is something like “pillar” in Italian right?
Like it is just so funny that they are all like Hitler fan club basically…
Oh --- you are referring, I think, to the bundle of sticks tied into one strong pillar, maybe, that in America refers to "E pluribus unum," that originally was the symbolic weapon carried by the police force supporting Roman magistrates. Hmmmm, that's really boring ---- sorry. [:-)
Presumably, if Trump more-than-passingly decided that it was a good idea under the circumstances to back down on this issue, he wouldn't allow his subordinates to post tweets doubling down on it.
This presumes that Donald Trump is in minute-to-minute effective command of his executive branch, and I think there are reasons to question whether this is true.
(President Grandpa just yells at shadows sometimes. Sad.)
Really good point. Trump is responsible for all of this but there are reasons to doubt that he has a handle on everything that’s happening. The job is too much for him. And he gutted state capacity and put bigoted idiots in charge of NHS.
*DHS
I suppose we can't rule out the possibility that he yelled at Miller after the fact for posting that tweet—but I'd bet against it.
Yeah I think you’re right on that here- I think the distinction to be made here is “does he feel strongly about correcting the course” vs “doesn’t feel like doubling is a good idea” and I wonder trump is in the second.
And seeing Noem’s comment where she said “shootings should not have happened”, I kinda wonder even she started to feel that way to an extent (like after all she *was* a politician) while likes of Hegseth and Miller do not…
My inner Matt Yglesias is telling me that Nate is asking the wrong question here. The question Nate is asking is, "do most Americans think the Republicans are doing the right thing on immigration?", and he makes a good case that the answer is no. The question he doesn't ask in this piece is, "according to most Americans, which party comes closer to doing the right thing on immigration?". Yglesias argues that the answer to *that* question is "the Republicans", because as much as Americans disapprove of the stuff Nate writes about here, they disapprove *even more* of the kind of laxity that they expect the Democrats to engage in.
Therefore, goes the argument, the best case for Democrats is if the electorate ignores the immigration issue entirely and instead pays attention to issues like health care where Democrats are trusted more than Republicans. So playing up issues like ICE running amok harms Democrats *even if the Republicans' net favorability on this issue is underwater*.
I don't know how confident I should be in this analysis, but it's something to think about.
(Yglesias also had a good post years ago on the "Overton window" idea and how to differentiate good vs. bad applications of it: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-myth-of-the-overton-window)
Yglesias is broadly correct about this, but he would also say that there are limits. There is a point at which the public will prefer Democrat toxic empathy to Republican evil. I think the butchering of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have moved us past that threshold. If Democrats are disciplined about this and embrace a moderate position, they have a legitimate opening here.
Praying for moderation in the face of a backlash is like hoping for a trickle when the sky opens up on a droughted land. The land will not hold the water, and you will just be swept away.
The reality is the democrats won't be, and won't need to be, moderate on this category. I don't say that as a liberal, I say that as a libertarian who knows how the GOP was on shaky ground already with their own allies after ICE pulled over the head of the Freestate movement and copied the computer contents containing American citizens data. Look up Eric Brakey for info on that, but there have been others over the course of the past year. The libertarians are not going to vote GOP this year, and they may vote for the Liberals for various reasons.
The pendulum swing is going to be harsh on this area, since in 2028 the DHS and ICE will likely be political pariahs and the damage done by this administration will have a chilling enough effect on people wanting to enter the country the democrats can get away with being super lax for a few years with no major effect.
I actually expect them to moderate their position on the 2nd Amendment instead. I'm seeing a lot more liberals at the range and they are discovering that sanity is needed in that field. After this administration, there's less belief on the left that the cops or military will keep people safe. There's more support on their side for a push in that direction.
And, to be blunt, the housecleaning liable to follow this administration would be good overall for everyone.
We benefited too long from a competent meritocracy that minimized the damage of bad policies. Yes, I am a libertarian person who respects the civil service of past years. I view them the way others view the musicians who played as the Titanic sank. We taught our leaders that they could do anything, and the civil services would keep them from hurting themselves.
It was the wrong lesson to teach them.
Being forced to go in an muck out the stalls isn't pleasant, and we should have never let it get this bad, but it'll be a good reminder to future generations to not blindly trust a government or organization to stay good.
This libertarian will be voting GOP!!
It would be great if the Dems moderated on the right to keep and bear arms, and politically smart for them.
I just don't think anything that happens with ICE will allow the Dems to be super lax on immigration. They have a choice, moderate hard, and win, or go far left with "Defund ICE" and lose. We saw what happened last time they faced that choice.
You are no libertarian.
I find it best not to engage with the bobble heads and the tourists.
I'm just glad to not have to yell over them at brunch right now, although I cringe at the inevitable return of the tourists in 2027,
locked in tears claiming about how they were misled *yet again* and how *this time* they mean it when they say they are with us and will never vote Republican ever again. It'll be 2007 all over again, and the younger crowd will let them in, because they know their friend *really means it this time*.
*Slams head repeatedly into desk*
I'm going to start multiplying a person's dues for the hall rental for every time someone does it. I swear I will.
Are you calling me a bobble head or tourist? Lol. And I promise you, I'll never say that I'll never vote Republican again. I see myself voting only R or Libertarian for the foreseeable future...
I am, though. I've voted for the Libertarian candidate for President in multiple elections.
No point, though. A thrown-away vote. Put your vote where it counts.
Never mind: I hate it when people say that to me.
I hope you are right, but this would be enough of a departure from how things have gone up until now that I'd want to see polling data specifically backing this up (which the data in this post doesn't do) before I believe it.
Increasingly "immigration" is not the issue. But just "should the government be allowed to roll into a blue city and wreak havoc because they don't like them"
Exactly right
That’s not the question. The public reacts to what it’s currently experiencing. Border crossings is no longer an issue. The issue is overreach and cruelty. The pendulum always swings too far.
As recently as October—which was long after Trump cracked down on border crossings and started engaging in various unpopular forms of overreach and cruelty—Republicans still held a significant edge on immigration: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/10/30/how-americans-see-the-parties-on-key-issues/pp_2025-10-29_views-of-republican-democratic-parties_2-03/
Again, it's not impossible in principle that the latest round of antics went too far and wiped out this edge, but I'd need to see data showing that this has in fact happened.
First, it takes a while for things to register with the public. Second, the situation in Minneapolis is a significant ramp up and obvious departure from border control. Third, the data is in. The polls show that it has registered.
Mind linking me to the relevant data?
All the polls showing Trump’s approval on the issue of immigration, broadly and on the question of whether ICE has gone beyond too far. Especially look at the strongly held approval vs disapproval and within that at the independents. Every poll I’ve seen. Take your pick.
The entire argument I'm making here is that approval-vs.-disapproval numbers don't establish that one party has the advantage over the other on a given issue.
In a world where Trump is the current president, has had his approval on this issue crater, and is also going meaningfully further than previous Republican administrations, I don't think it's that important in the present-day political context that there's still an issue advantage for "Republicans" vs "Democrats" generically. It's potentially a good reason for caution on the issue in a future Democratic administration (rather than taking a Trump backlash for granted), but shouldn't be a reason to not fight back on the issue right now.
My suspicion is that this is similar to how Republicans still would poll than Democrats better on "national security" issues in 2006-2008. This illustrated that there was still some residual "we trust the right-wing party more to be tough" sentiment, but it ultimately didn't benefit Bush much, because he specifically was viewed as incompetent, and his failures both on the war and on other issues meant that fence sitters wouldn't give him benefit of the doubt anymore. And ultimately, Democrats were on solid ground in nominating an anti-Iraq War candidate, and while McCain had more "not like Bush" credibility than some other Republicans (a better opportunity for distance from the unpopular lame duck president than current Republicans are likely to seek out in 2028), at the end of the day, he still supported the now-unpopular war and was big picture tied to a discredited political party.
Check out this G Elliot Morris article from a few days ago. https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/new-poll-trump-slips-on-immigration
Trump is underwater on immigration and deportations, but above water on border security. The question of which party is more trusted on immigration is even, while border security massively favors Republicans. That's some good evidence that, as long as the discussion is about what ICE is doing, it will be good for Democrats. Just maybe stay away from discussion of Biden or the southern border. It isn't really part of the current topic anyway.
Edits for wording and clarity.
The data in that article indicates that, even after you factor out "border security" as a separate issue, Republicans are still more trusted than Democrats on immigration policy, albeit just barely.
Yes, I was counting the -1 result as even since it's well within the margin of error. I still think an even issue where Trump is underwater is a good issue for Democrats, at least in 2026. Democrats don't have to run against Trump directly, just "vote for me as a check on Trump's power".
A different message will be required in 2028, unless the situation changes.
That seems a bit odd to me—surely to make the case for change you have to point at issues where most voters actively prefer the alternative?—but at this point I'm not especially confident in anything and maybe it works out that way.
Midterms aren't "which party do you want to run the country?" Midterms are "do you want the president's party to continue their program?" That's why I specified 2026. Most people won't think about if they want Dems in charge when they're casting their ballots. An issue with no trust advantage for either side, but where the president himself is very underwater, is going to favor the out party.
Exactly so!
Yes, but border security is not a bug issue now. The anger is on ICE activities. Angry people vote.
It's very possible that this could be the outcome in low-turnout midterms.
But upcoming Presidential general elections (in particular 2028) will pit Democrats painted by Republicans as for open borders versus Republicans painted by Democrats as for brutal ICE practices. Who will prevail? Likely the Republicans since, even at this GOP popularity low point, the Democrats are even more unpopular.
Keep in mind, in a presidential election it doesn't matter if the Republican or Democratic party is popular. It matters if their candidate is personally popular. If the candidate is popular, they'll drag up the popularity of the party.
Also, we don't know if another Republican candidate can win low propensity voters like Trump can. Nobody else so far has been able to, but then again there hasn't been a presidential election with a Republican who isn't trump since 2012. If the answer is no, then the question becomes if the next Republican candidate can distance themself from Trump enough. We won't know the answers to these questions until 2028.
All the negative campaigning at the end of election cycles shows that modern elections are more about voting against the other side than voting for one side. The bases will show up to vote in the end, even if very disenchanted for the first 3 3/4 years leading into an election. Unless there is some game-changing issue currently not in evidence. (e.g., A backlash among the base like the Covid handling by the last administration.)
It may be possible that it's Trump personally and not what his voters see him as representing that turns out MAGA voters. But there are probably more who prefer MAGA over the Democrats but can't bring themselves to vote for such a flawed person as Trump. That may put the GOP in an even better position than we're calculating.
lol, and we know Nate loves G Elliot Morris!
That changes once you start indiscriminately killing citizens as part of your immigration policy.
That's an extraordinarily biased way to present these situations, and I don't think it's a frame many people will accept
Does it? Especially if partisan (right-wing media in this case) doesn't present these incidents as indiscriminate killings. We're really lacking polling of how voters look back on 2024. Do they regret their vote? Are there many who voted for one candidate but, seeing what happened, would redo their vote now if they could.
We live in an era of media catering its coverage to the preconceived views of its audience. And very few independent voters whose vote next election isn't pretty much locked into how they voted last time.
Trump won popular vote by 1.5 points - it doesn’t take many people waking up to change that dynamic.
Trump led Biden by about 1.5% in 538's voting averages polls for four months leading into the infamous debate. Harris lost the election by the same amount. This is because we have an electorate that is pretty locked in on their overall preference and not influenced much by policy performance.
The only exception I've seen this decade was the Biden administration Covid vaccine policy, which drove significant Biden voters into the non-duopoly club (and IMO lost the Democrats 2024). In that case, it was policy that betrayed core beliefs (free speech, medical choice, anti-censorship) of some of its base voters, not going too far on an issue that the base wanted.
Trump lost 2020 election by 4.5 points. Something happened there, presumably incompetent and incoherent Covid policy. Remember his advice to drink bleach?
Erratic Covid policy, bad economy, and unpopular throughout his first term and Trump lost by 4.5%. (After losing the popular vote by 2.5% four years earlier.) Afterwards, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman (the judge said the charge was considered rape in 47 states), led a coup attempt, and he won by 1.5% in 2024.
So, the real question is how did the Democrats go from +4.5% in 2020 to -1.5%? We don't have direct polling of the relative Biden&Harris/Trump that went from 4.5% to -1.5% between November 2020 and March 2024. But we have Biden popularity data, where his popularity tanked over a six-month period starting with him flipping on vaccine mandates and never coming back in the polls. The other factors during that time period were transitory. (E.g., Believed to have mishandled Afghanistan but then being quite adept at the start of the Ukraine war.)
I think you are right. Look at how pretty much everything the government said about Covid and what to do was lies, lies, and mistakes. And now watch the rebellion against elitist vaccine policy. I always hated that ---- the docs just do it to get people in their offices paying. Same with flu shots. Corruption, just like the "Medical Advantage" plans that are designed to empty out everyone's Medicare account.
See Hudson County, NJ Latino vote 2024 Presidential vs 2025 Gubernatorial. If memory serves the turn around was more than 40%. The overall race was supposed to be close. It was double digit. Angry people vote.
Yes, in off-year elections the angrier side often wins. But not always. The GOP flipped the House in 2022 despite the Democrats anger over abortion.
Aside: Polling in NJ (where I live) is not good. Monmouth University, based here, used to do horse-race polling of elections and they were consistently one of the top-rated pollsters by 538. They were way off in 2021 and believed their polling (saying the race wouldn't be close) depressed turnout and perhaps was decisive in Governor Murphy's reelection. (Anecdotical, I agree based on locals I spoke to.) So, they stopped polling candidates altogether. Other pollsters had mainly stayed away from NJ thinking why bother compete with Monmouth on its home turf. Which leaves us without good polling data.
The main limit to Matt Y's analysis of this particular issue is that this is no longer just about immigration.
What this really reminds me of is the pepper spray incident that happened while I was at UC Davis. I personally wasn't all that sympathetic to the Occupy protestors because I thought the tents were dumb and unsanitary. But then the cops pepper sprayed a line of students who were literally sitting on the ground in the quad and not doing anything at all. I came out to protest the next day because it wasn't about the original issue anymore, it was about the cops using force against students for no reason. Similarly, I don't think protesting ICE is really about immigration anymore, it's about not wanting brownshirts roaming the streets murdering random citizens.
Yes, that’s right. It’s now about democracy and the rule of law.
those are concepts too abstract to motivate voters or win elections
That's why I said it's about not wanting brownshirts murdering random citizens. That is not abstract at all. People do not want to have to fear for their lives just for visiting a normal Midwestern city.
But no one does, though. I don't think anyone but wingnuts thinks that ICE is roaming around "murdering random citizens."
And only right-wing nuts think that people don't care that ICE has murdered two citizens.
Seriously? They shot a guy in the back for helping a woman who'd fallen in the street. Have you been reading the first-person accounts of people living in Minneapolis? A lot of them are just trying to visit the normal restaurant area. They've all been transformed into “protestors” because ICE is preventing them from living normally in their city.
I am not sure enough attention is being directed to the fact that DHS is obstructing any meaningful investigation of how these two American citizens were killed in plain daylight on a public street. DHS will do all of the investigation itself and let us know? I wouldn't be surprised if all of the relevant guns have already been destroyed and internal communications scrubbed. This is outrageous.
You mention that Minneapolis is 1500 miles from the nearest southern border crossing. But it's also 150 miles from the nearest Great Lakes port (Duluth) and about 300 miles from the International Falls crossing into Canada.
It was Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) who shot Pretti, not ICE. They have nearly Carte Blanche at the border (including International ports and airports). The courts have established their powers in a border "buffer" zone (generously set at 100 miles from borders and coasts - meaning nearly all of Floridais CBP-land). Within those zones, they can set up checkpoints and they can do traffic stops with "reasonable suspicion". They can't search your car without warrant or your permission (note: never, ever give any peace officer permission to search your car or your house). They can get a drug-sniffing dog to make a pass around your car.
In addition, the first question they must ask is "are you a US citizen?". A lie is an offense. Answering "no" will result in a follow-up question about paperwork. But a "yes" shouldn't result in a follow-up "prove it" - we aren't supposed to be a "show me your papers" nation (yet).
So, WTF is CBP doing in Minneapolis shooting people?
Other food for thought:
* The 5-year-old detained and shipped to Texas
* The young kid chased through the snow while yelling (in Spanish) "I'm legal"
* The picture on the front page of the MPLS paper of two officers holding someone face down in the snow while while a third sprays a chemical irritant into the part of his face showing
Who can think any of this makes sense in the US?
The correct responses to "are you a citizen" is "Pardon me while I record this conversation... now who are you, including your name, badge number, and legal authority, and what is your reason for asking?"
What sane country tolerates sanctuary cities?
Do immigration laws have meaning for don’t they?
Can those laws have integrity without deportation?
What does this have to do with people getting shot 10 times in the back while being held down after they recorded a video on their phone?
Everything. Absolutely everything.
If people are shocked enough at what the Democrats allowed, and see what ICE is doing as a necessary corrective, they will properly frame these shootings as minor blips.
Most people didn't want to eliminate all police officers in the country after George Floyd. Similarly, they won't want to eliminate all immigration enforcement after this. If they see the Democrats as wanting to eliminate all immigration enforcement, they still won't support Dems.
This has very little to do with immigration enforcement anymore
It looks more like ICE being used to punish Democratic cities for opposing the administration.
This is what one calls a red herring.
Sane countries that are democracies often tolerate silly "gestures" like sanctuary cities - which I note I do not myself think are good but really are not the explainer of the illegal immigration issue (that would be the idiotic Biden first years stance re the exploitation of refugee claims plus lax border, and then add to not actually using existing internal tools like job status checking(
This has zero relevance to Federal agents committing a shooting reminiscent of, to use the Trumpy term, "third world shithole" enforcement squads. Like Hamas goons going around masked.
I'm making to make a wild guess that you aren't equally outraged about the fed's unprecedented refusal to cooperate with local officials when they kill someone in their city.
What sane country tolerates summary executions of citizens in the street?
Same people who look at the data.
Sanctuary cities are better able to enforce local laws.
Do some research.
Weak ragebaiting attempt. Go back to the drawing board, sweetie
To reiterate, what sane country tolerates illegal immigration?
Ultimately, these deaths are a result of the resistance of the American left to any effort to enforce immigration laws within the US.
Until Democrats concede that those laws must be respected, this conflict is not ending.
Or until there is regime change in DC.
What immigration policy purpose does dragging a US citizen, near naked, out of his house into the snow?
Why are finite taxpayer resources spent on apprehending a 5 year old?
What immigration policy is served by executing a disarmed and subdued ICU nurse in the street?
You want secure borders, fine? You want a focused effort going after drug dealers or illegal immigrants involved in criminal enterprises fine.
But keep your fucking jackbooted thugs out of my home.
What if I want to go after everyone, absolutely everyone, who is not legally in this country? After all, that's why I voted for Trump. I don't care if they are a drug dealer or a heart surgeon. If they're here illegally, they need to go.
Have you read The Attack by Kurt Schlichter? I love it. One of the fictional set-pieces has just that scenario.
tell me more. which scenario?
It's a lot of Studs-Terkel-type scenes with different types of people telling what happened in the civil war in America after it's over. One such scene is a man whose job it is to get out ALL the illegals still here, in hiding various ways. It's not a sympathetic picture, but thought-provoking.
For instance, I started thinking how many people *I* know came in illegally! My granddaughter has taken up with some Indian and I know he's after a green card. A good friend years ago said at the age of 12 she and her mother and father just walked across the Canadian border in an out-of-the way place --- I didn't think much about it at the time she told this, but now it seems significant. I can think of some other examples.
My conviction is that America was exemplary because it was so hard to get to, only smart and able and healthy people could get here. Switch that to taking in all the "refuse yearning to be free" or at least to be rich, and we'll just be another Mexico, which would be a pretty sad fate and bad management. I'm in favor of brain-drain, but not taking in the world's failures, which is pretty much what happens with mass migrations. Same thing is happening in Europe.
You are missing the point.
It is about jurisdiction and authority.
National laws are enforced by national police.
Local laws are enforced by local police.
Nationalizing local police reduces their ability to enforce local laws. Crimes are not reported, witnesses refuse to testify, and criminals can become impossible to catch and convict.
That is borne out in actual crime statistics on the US.
In terms of real impact, you are arguing that relatively minor Federal civil offenses are more important than local felonies.
As for "sane countries" and immigration policy enforcement, name a single place with a police force operating like ICE.
Sanctuary cities are nothing more than local officials declining to have local officials co-opted into enforcing federal law.
But if local police had set a perimeter around the planned ICE operations, keeping people out of the area instead of yelling and whistling and marching closer and closer with hands up like zombies, neither of the people who were killed would have been killed.
I believe this is an ongoing illustration of the point Daniel Drezner made back in September 25: "The Weakness and Incompetence of American Authoritarianism, And why it needs to be continually highlighted." (https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-weakness-and-incompetence-of) - competent even wanna be authoritarian regimes know they need a certain level of general populalrity.
Trump, Miller are not genuinely competent (thank God for that).
Where did "poorly-trained ICE officers roaming city streets" come from? While there are concerns that rapid hiring and compressed training has eroded the quality of ICE agents, all the ones involved in killings were highly trained and experienced. And how does any peace officer enforce the law without "roaming the streets."
I see irrationality on both sides. Enforcing laws will cause some innocent people to be harassed and even some killed. This is particularly true when the targets of enforcement are embedded among the population, and include some violent criminals, and the law is locally unpopular. If you don't like the harassment and killings, change the law, don't close your eyes and imagine enforcement without pain.
On the other hand, the Minnesota killings and other brutalities are clearly unjustified. They shouldn't have happened. That doesn't mean officers are murderers, like pilots and doctors, police officers' mistakes can lead to deaths. But it does mean you should rethink whether enforcement is worth it, and whether tactics and rules of engagement should change.
I wish people would see this as an issue for all secret police forces, not just ICE. Public police protect and serve the public by investigating complaints of things like robbery or assault (or a body in the case of murder).
Secret police do not have complaining victims or bodies, they're enforcing government wishes against citizens. That requires them to use paid or coerced informers, mass surveillance, entrapment, sting operations, no-knock warrants with stun grenades and other unpleasant tactics that erode civil rights. It brings them into contact will large numbers of non-criminals, some of whom are abused or die.
While public police often act as if they work for prosecutors, in theory they are neutral in court and they usually have strong local democratic control. ICE not only works for prosecutors, it is the prosecutor, and it is insulated from local control.
Count me as a "normies".
Ultimately deporting people with criminal records remain popular. Or just deport people who already have a FRO but remain in US.
Definitely not a bunch of armed goons roaming street, definitely not all the racial profilings, and definitely not detaining children.
And yes, this is different than Renee Good - you can make an argument about Jonathan Ross having to make a split second decision with a vehicle possibly heading his way (even if videos show otherwise). But a 7-on-1 beating of somebody that's just filming follow by 10 shots after he was already down on the ground? No excuses, none, zero. What's worse is that despite multiple videos showing otherwise, the same people are still trying to lie, to gaslight, to twisting the narratives.
The only place you see the latter is an authoritarian govt, period.
Trump isn't losing anyone who was on his side. The childlike antics of the Left are losing people who generally sit out elections. Removing all illegals is what we voted for, and the moronic antics of the leftist agitators are not going to change our minds, regardless of how many of them choose to suicide by cop.
Surveys consistently show a large percentage of the country would like a path to citizenship for long term unauthorized residents.
You might have voted to remove all "illegals", but you are a fringe voter.
All those polls are from a time before the Dem grift of bribing illegals with US tax dollars became apparent to all. Wait until Waltz and Frey and Ilhan are in prison and see what the polls say then. Besides - there is a path to citizenship for unauthorized residents right now. Take the very generous offer to get paid to self-deport. Get in line with everyone else trying to get into America legally, and wait your turn. Eventually you might get a chance to become a citizen that way. Otherwise you have no hope. Trump is doing the right thing here, as usual. There is no way for the radical left to win this fight, the only question is how many of them will foolishly suicide-by-cop themselves before they give it up.
You are spouting right wing fiction on all sorts of things.
https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/american-support-legal-immigration-reaches-new-heights
I remember all the polls saying Trump had no chance of winning in 2016, 2020 AND 2024 - and yet he won all three!! Feel free to rely on the polls all you like, doesn't bother me at all.
Oh - and everything I said was true. Have a nice day!
Hahahah.
Won all three. That is a hoot. Thanks.
You are definitely disconnected from reality.
Like it or not - 2020 was stolen. The fact that you think it is laughable shows just how much of a bubble you live in. Some day you will wake up, I hope.
Oh, I don't know about "fringe: ---- we're the ones who won, so by definition, we're the majority. If they are illegal, they should all be gone.
Trump's immigration policies and more importantly, actions, are waaay beyond the pale.... calling them unacceptable is a bull shit euphemism ...Trump should go back to where he came from...
We even have "mainstream" conservative media like National Review and Erick Erickson expressing serious concerns over Trump's desire for Greenland as well as how ICE is handling immigration enforcement. Heck, NR is starting to bring up impeachment and 25A.
We may be nearing the point where Trump "loses Cronkite and Middle America", if we're not already there.
Of course, if the Dems want to take advantage they need to play their hand well, and stay away from extremism like "no human being is illegal". Otherwise they will continue to make the GOP look less insane.
I've been thinking about how things escalated to this point. Even when people watch the exact same video, they end up drawing completely different conclusions based on their own biases.
These days, when a public figure weighs in on something, more and more folks seem to care way more about whose political side they're on than about their actual expertise or credentials. It's like, "This guy disagrees with me on all these other issues, so obviously his take here is biased as hell—I can't let myself be swayed by anything he says."
Social media algorithms are turbocharging this whole thing too—they're designed to amplify division and keep people locked in echo chambers. People are quick to ditch any real logical analysis and just boil everything down to a simple us-vs-them binary fight.
Take these two shooting incidents: I really can't get behind the government jumping to label them "domestic terrorism" without even doing a proper investigation first. And then on top of that, it sounds like they're basically saying you can't carry a gun at a protest. So what's the point of the Second Amendment then? Just for everyday self-defense at home, or maybe to fight back if federal agents kick down your door? It all feels like the government is making these calls with zero real planning or foresight about how different scenarios could play out.
Why do you think it's okay that Pretti carried a gun to a protest? I think he was a total idiot, and now he's a dead idiot, no surprise there! As soon as they felt or saw that gun, he was never getting up again. I'm on the right, but I don't think it's a GOOD idea to carry a gun to a protest demonstration! Why would it be?
Yeah, carrying to a heated protest is usually a terrible tactical decision. I wouldn’t do it, and I’d tell any buddy not to. You’re basically painting a target on your back the second things get physical. But ‘terrible idea’ doesn’t mean ‘deserves to die’ or ‘forfeits his rights.’ He was legally allowed to carry there. Period. The agents aren’t judge, jury, and executioner just because they yelled ‘he’s got a gun’ after they already took it away. If bad judgment = death sentence without due process, then we’re in a really dangerous spot. Plus, if we start saying ‘you shouldn’t exercise your rights in certain places just because it’s risky,’ we’re basically letting the government (or mobs) decide when and where the right applies.
Thanx for your interesting reply. I was interested in seeing a defense of Pretti's decision to carry a gun in there. Apparently he fought physically with ICE personnel a week before, according to the WSJ tonight, and they SAW the gun ---- but at this time, they didn't shoot him. The next time, they did.
The Supreme Court may have decided that the militia clause is a typo, but it is still a good idea.
You want to carry a gun in public? You should pass a mandatory training and testing process at least as comprehensive as a driver license, including regular retesting.
It is impossible to prove that Pretti's gun caused the shooting rampage, but he should have known not to get involved when he was carrying a weapon.
Of course getting between a rabid dog and its meal is always risky.