President Obama's and Mrs. Obama's Statement on the Murder of Alex Pretti

JANUARY 25, 2026

The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.

Federal law enforcement and immigration agents have a tough job. But Americans expect them to carry out their duties in a lawful, accountable way, and to work with, rather than against, state and local officials to ensure public safety. That's not what we're seeing in Minnesota. In fact, we're seeing the opposite.

For weeks now, people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city. 

These unprecedented tactics—which even the former top lawyer of the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration has characterized as embarrassing, lawless and cruel—have now resulted in the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens. 

And yet rather than trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they've deployed, the President and current administration officials seem eager to escalate the situation, while offering public explanations for the shootings of Mr. Pretti and Renee Good that aren't informed by any serious investigation—and that appear to be directly contradicted by video evidence.

This has to stop. I would hope that after this most recent tragedy, administration officials will reconsider their approach and start finding ways to work constructively with Governor Walz and Mayor Frey as well as state and local police to avert more chaos and achieve legitimate law enforcement goals.

In the meantime, every American should support and draw inspiration from the wave of peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other parts of the country. They are a timely reminder that ultimately it's up to each of us as citizens to speak out against injustice, protect our basic freedoms, and hold our government accountable.

"Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs"

 

On a street in Minneapolis, at least seven federal agents tackled and then shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse for the local VA hospital.   

Video from the scene shows Pretti directing traffic on a street out of an area with agents around, then trying to help another person get up after she had been pushed to the ground by the agents. The agents then surround Pretti and shoot pepper spray into his face, then pull him to the ground from behind and hit him as he appears to be trying to keep his head off the ground. 

An agent appears to take a gun out of Pretti’s waistband during the struggle, then turns and leaves with it. A shot then stops Pretti’s movements, appearing to kill him, before nine more shots ring out, apparently as agents continued to fire into his body.

It looked like an execution. After he was dead, the agents walked away, apparently making no effort to preserve the crime scene, which people on the street later tried to secure by walling it off with trash bins.

As journalist Philip Bump noted, administration officials didn’t even pretend to wait for more information before jumping straight to “the opponent of the state deserved it.”

Mitch Smith of the New York Times reported that federal agents have blocked state investigators from the scene. Drew Evans of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a statewide investigations team that specializes in police shootings, told reporters his agency had obtained a search warrant—a rare step—but the federal government still refused them access.

In a lawsuit against Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials, Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison asked a judge for a temporary restraining order to prevent DHS agents from destroying evidence related to the shooting. 

The suit noted the “astonishing” departure from normal investigations, seemingly trying not to preserve evidence but to destroy it. A judge, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, immediately granted the restraining order, barring the administration from “destroying or altering evidence” concerning the killing.

Ernesto Londoño of the New York Times reported that federal officials also “have refused to disclose the identities of federal agents involved in Saturday’s shooting, as well as the names of federal agents who have shot people in recent days.”

Minnesota police have refused to obey the federal officers, though. Local law enforcement has been talking to witnesses and finding videos of the shooting. Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference: “Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity, and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands. We urge everyone to remain peaceful.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that it, rather than the FBI, will investigate the shooting. But, as Alex Witt of MS NOW noted, DHS had already issued a statement about the shooting, which falsely asserted that Pretti had “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and that he “violently resisted” as “officers attempted to disarm” him. The statement continued that “an agent fired defensive shots” and added that Pretti “also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

“So,” Witt noted, “they’re gonna be investigating that which they’ve already issued a summary about…. It would seem that it’s a closed book?”

After repeatedly being exposed as liars over previous accusations against those they have shot, the Department of Homeland Security has so little credibility that Witt is not the only journalist calling out the federal agents for lying. Devon Lum of the New York Times wrote: “Videos on social media that were verified by The New York Times contradict the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the fatal shooting of a man by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.

“The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and they tried to disarm him. But footage from the scene shows the man was holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him.”

But lying to the American people is the only option for the administration when we can, once again, all see what happened with our own eyes. Pretti did have a permit for a concealed handgun and appeared to have carried the gun with him, although witnesses say he never reached for it. Noem doubled down on the lie, saying again: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”

When the Democratic Party’s social media account posted: “ICE agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis this morning. Get ICE out of Minnesota NOW,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller replied: “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.” The Democrats’ social media account responded: “You’re a f*cking liar with blood on your hands.”

Miller continued to bang that drum. When Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said that “ICE must leave Minneapolis” and that “Congress should not fund this version of ICE—this is seeking confirmation, chaos, and dystopia,” Miller responded: “An assassin tried to murder federal agents, and this is your response.” When Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar similarly decried the killing, Miller responded: “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement, and this is your response? You and the state’s entire Democrat leadership team have been flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country.”

Miller is a white nationalist, who has recommended others read a dystopian novel in which people of color “invade” Europe and destroy “Western civilization.” Those who support immigration are, in the book’s telling, enemies who are abetting an “invasion”—a word Miller relies on—that is destroying the culture of white countries. They are working for the “enemy.”

In the wake of Pretti’s shooting, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota governor Tim Walz to suggest he could “bring back law and order to Minnesota” if he handed over the state’s voter rolls to the Department of Justice. As Jacob Knutson of Democracy Docket noted, she explicitly tied the administration’s violence in the state to its determination to get its hands on voters’ personal data before the 2026 election. Minnesota has voted for the Democratic candidate running against Trump in the past three presidential elections, but he insists that he really has won the state each time.

As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers wrote: Republicans could stop this at any time they wanted to. “All it would take to end the murder of American citizens by an untrained government goon squad is 16 Republicans in Congress voting with Dem[ocrat]s to defund ICE (or 23 to impeach and remove Trump—3 in House & 20 in Senate). That’s it. 23 Americans can vote for the public and end all of this.”

Morris also pointed out that in December, Trump’s approval rating was negative in 40 states, including 10 he won in 2024. That covers 30 seats currently held by Republicans. Pretti’s shooting will likely erode Trump’s support further. Tonight, even right-wing podcaster Tim Pool reacted to Pretti’s killing by noting that it looked as if the agent had disarmed Pretti before the other agents shot him. “I don’t see Trump winning this one,” Pool commented.

The funding bill for DHS is effectively dead in the Senate, as Democrats have said they will not support any more funding for DHS. Tonight, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters: “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.” But the July law the Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured nearly $191 billion into DHS through September 30, 2029, with almost $75 billion going to ICE and $67 billion going to Customs and Border Protection (FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, got just $2.9 billion).

Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) had more to say: “​​What we just saw this morning on the streets of Minneapolis is another outright murder by federal officials. And let me just be clear, those federal ICE officers are absolute cowards. I am a Marine veteran standing here telling you to your face they are unprofessional, pathetic cowards. Because if a Marine, an 18-year-old Marine, did that in Iraq in the middle of a war zone, he would be court martialed because it is murder. And you pathetic little cowards who have to wear face masks because you’re so damn scared, couldn’t even effectively wrestle a guy [to] the ground, so you needed to shoot him? 

This is why ICE needs to be prosecuted. Yeah, I voted to defund it, but ICE, you need to be prosecuted, and Director [Todd] Lyons, who’s running ICE right now, I hope you’re hearing this from this Marine to you. You guys are criminal thugs. You need to be held accountable to law if you think you can enforce it, and you need to be prosecuted right now.”

Just hours after the killing of Alex Pretti, agents pinned U.S. citizen Matthew James Allen to the street while he screamed: “I have done nothing at all. My name is Matthew James…Allen. I’m a United States citizen…. You’re gonna kill me! Is that what you want? You want to kill me? You want to kill me on the street? You’re going to have to f*cking kill me! I have done nothing wrong.” Nearby, his sobbing wife screamed: “Stop please! Stop!! Please!! We were just running away from the gas. That’s all we were doing.”

“We all know the poem,” Blue Missouri executive director Jess Piper wrote, “and there is no shade of white that will save you from this murderous regime.” 

Susan and Michael Pretti, the parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, issued a statement:

“We are heartbroken but also very angry,” they said.

“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.”

“I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand, and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.”

“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”

—Heather Cox Richardson

 

In Solidarity

 

Since we sent the below email yesterday, federal agents have killed another person in Minneapolis. The video of them tackling 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti to the ground before opening fire is absolutely horrific. Everything about ICE and Border Patrol’s brutal invasion of our communities is horrific.  It is increasingly clear that stripping the Department of Homeland Security down to the studs -- ICE, Border Patrol, all of it -- is the minimum we must do when we regain power. But we can’t afford to wait that long to rein in these agencies. Senators have a choice next week to vote for a DHS funding bill that gives ICE and Border Patrol more money to brutalize our neighbors or to say ENOUGH. We must demand our senators -- especially our Democratic senators -- refuse to give ICE and Border Patrol one more penny of taxpayer money or vote for any funding bill that doesn’t get these thugs the &$*# out of our cities.  Since senate offices are closed today, we’re asking you to email your senators and demand they use their vote this week to rein in ICE and CBP death squads. Then make a call. If your senators’ voicemails are full, call back on Monday. We can’t go on like this. It’s time for our leaders to step up and protect their constituents. And if they won’t, we’re going to elect new leaders.  In mourning and solidarity,  Indivisible Team ---- ORIGINAL MESSAGE ---- ICE is terrorizing our communities, violating our constitutional rights, and killing innocent people -- and the House just voted to give them more money. Yesterday, the House passed a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding for ICE. That increase comes with no meaningful restrictions or accountability measures to rein in ICE and Border Patrol. We’re demanding Congress use the appropriations process to end ICE and Border Patrol’s lawlessness. This bill doesn’t just fall short -- it increases the funding for their brutality. But this fight isn’t over.  The Senate will vote on the DHS appropriations bill next week -- and it cannot pass without Democratic votes. If you’re ready to take action, call your senators and demand they vote no on increased funding for ICE and Border Patrol. Call Your Senators >>   Everything wrong with the DHS funding bill ❌ The bill increases funding for ICE. If this bill passes, ICE will receive $400 million more for detention and $370 million more for its enforcement budget compared to last year. That’s on top of the $170 billion allocated by Trump’s Big Ugly Bill for his mass deportation machine. ICE is using taxpayer dollars to kill people, invade homes without warrants, and threaten peaceful protestors. The last thing we should be doing is giving them more money to enable their cruelty.  ❌ The reforms included in the bill are completely inadequate. The bill allocates funding for body cameras, officer training, and the DHS Inspector General’s Office, but these measures fall far short of what we need to actually protect our communities. We’ve already seen what ICE thugs are willing to do on camera -- one filmed the killing of Renee Good on his own cellphone. And there’s no reason to think that giving the Trump regime more money to investigate itself will stop the violence unfolding in our streets.  ❌ Actual restrictions on ICE were left out. Congress can end Border Patrol deployments to our cities; restrict ICE and Border Patrol’s dragnet operations, racial profiling, and mass surveillance; and prevent these agencies from stealing funds from other programs to run their mass deportation machine. All of these provisions would have real impact on the ground, but none of them were included in this bill.  There’s still time to act The DHS funding bill will move to the Senate where we expect a vote next week. Reminder: the bill needs 60 votes to pass, which means Democrats have real leverage here. But they won’t use it unless we force them to.  Atrociously, 7 House Democrats already voted yes on this bill (list here), and Chuck Schumer is not publicly whipping Senate Democrats to unify in opposition. With a vote on this bill coming next week, we need to act fast and be loud:  1️⃣ Call your senators today and demand they vote no on the DHS funding bill. After you call, share our script with your family and friends and encourage them to call too.  2️⃣ Email your senators in opposition to more ICE funding. Calls are more effective than emails, but if you are unable to call or want to call and email, we make it easy to reach your senators instantly.  In solidarity, Indivisible Team

Execution in Minneapolis: The ugly face of fascism cannot be ignored any longer

Line of federal agents on Nicollet Avenue (Source: Chad Davis) The contrast between, on one hand, federal shock troops’ brutal, unjustified execution in Minneapolis on Saturday of Alex Pretti, a thirty-seven-year-old ICU nurse for the VA, and, on the other, Friday’s closures and a massive, peaceful demonstration and rally, where “Tens of thousands gather[ed] in downtown Minneapolis for ‘ICE Out’ day” (reportedly the largest union action in state history) — attended by union members, business people, clergy, and community activists in -20 degree weather — sums up the battle between tyranny and democracy. The struggle between facts we all see and regime lies we all know to be preposterous plays out as well. As is their standard knee-jerk response, Donald Trump and his regime lied about the victim and the circumstances of the killing, despite the tragedy being captured on video from multiple angles. As the New York Times reported: Videos analyzed by The New York Times contradict the accounts of Homeland Security officials, who said that the man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and the intent to “massacre” them. Footage of the encounter shows the man was holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him. Other video angles seem to show Pretti’s gun was taken before he was repeatedly shot dead. Eyewitnesses’ declarations confirmed the gruesome details and utter lack of provocation. Alex Pretti (Source: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) After the killings of Renee Good (whose autopsy shows she was killed by the third shot when the ICE agent was not in the vehicle’s path) and Pretti, the Trump regime tried to exclude state investigators and predetermine the details and outcome before any factual inquiry. That has led to a slew of resignations, the latest of which was reported Friday, by the New York Times: “[FBI] agent, Tracee Mergen, left her job as a supervisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office after bureau leadership in Washington pressured her to discontinue a civil rights inquiry into the immigration officer, Jonathan Ross.” In the case of Pretti, state and local officials held their ground and vowed to investigate and hold the killer(s) responsible. Even more outrageous, late Saturday Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, telling him ICE would pull out if he met a list of unrelated demands, including the release of voting files. Any shred of doubt that this had nothing to do with immigration or safety vanished in this shameful act of what amounts to extortion. The latest murder has seemed to rouse at least Democrats on the Hill — eliciting vows to cut off DHS funding from Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, (D-NY) issued a statement yesterday, declaring that “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.” The actions also received a full-throated condemnation from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): Masked and lawless DHS agents have brutally killed another American citizen in Minneapolis. Donald Trump’s extremists have unleashed this carnage on the streets of America. They must all be held criminally accountable to the full extent of the law. Even before Pretti’s killing, it beggared belief that any lawmaker could vote to continue to fund the murderous ICE operation without serious restraints. And yet seven House Democrats joined in voting to fund Department of Homeland Security with only token restrictions. That may have been the worse vote of their careers. Yet, as confirmed by Schumer’s statement, Senate Democrats now seem poised to reject the House bill, denying Republicans the 60 votes required for passage. They will need to formulate demands and then try to induce some Republicans to join them. Vulnerable Senate Republicans might be stirred. Take the case of perpetually “concerned” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). With thousands of shock troops still in Minnesota, the ICE onslaught struck in Maine last week. As we have come to expect from frenzied and incompetent agents, ICE arrested a Black corrections officer (a citizen), to the horror of the local sheriff, who now opposes the “bush league” operation from coming to his state. Mainers are angry; Gov. Janet Mills explicitly denounced their actions. Collins issued a mealy mouthed statement avoiding criticism of ICE and cheering deportation of undocumented immigrants — again demonstrating her uselessness when it matters most. She has said she would rubber stamp the DHS funding measure. Does she still intend to do so? Now is the time to apply pressure on House and Senate members facing the voters (including the feckless Collins) in their home states and districts as well as in sustained speeches on the Senate floor. Peaceful protests at campaign appearances or outside district offices, letters to local newspapers, and statements denouncing Beltway laggards at public hearings or gatherings can turn up the heat on Republicans — and force Democrats to cut off funds to lawless street thugs. State and local officials appear serious and well-positioned to control the situation and pursue justice, despite Trump’s lies and obstruction. The rest of us need to internalize Minneapolis’s heroic defense of democracy and do our part to rise to the defense of all Americans. The Contrarian is reader-supported. To receive new posts, support independent journalism, help with litigation efforts against lawlessness, and keep the opposition movement engaged, please join the fight by becoming a paid subscriber.

The footage of the fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, said one journalist, "shows that the final act of his life was trying to help a woman who was being physically assaulted by the masked agents who would then kill him"

In the original video of the shooting of a man in Minneapolis, identified by the Minneapolis Star Tribune at 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a woman in a pink coat was seen in the background filming the incident with her phone.

Drop Site News obtained footage that appeared “to come from the direction of the woman in pink filming from the sidewalk” and showed the shooting at a closer distance than the footage taken from inside Glam Doll Donuts.

In the video, the shooting victim, dressed in a brown coat and pants, is seen filming a federal agent with his phone. He’s then seen guiding another person toward the sidewalk as the agent forcefully shoves a third person to the ground.

The agent appears to pepper-spray Pretti and pull him away from the other person as a group of several other officers' approach and surround him.

They wrestle him to the ground and struggle with him for several seconds before he appears to try to get up. Roughly 10-gun shots ring out and Pretti falls to the ground.

“What the fuck did you do? What the fuck did you do?” yells the woman behind the camera repeatedly. “Cowards,” said US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) in response to the footage.

The video, said journalist Susan Glasser, “shows that the final act of his life was trying to help a woman who was being physically assaulted by the masked agents who would then kill him.”

The video contradicted the Department of Homeland Security’s claim that Pretti had approached immigration officers with a gun.

In a press conference, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino doubled down on the assertion and claimed Pretti had aimed to “massacre” Border Patrol agents while they conducted operations but then did not explain when the victim had threatened the officers with his gun.

“Why did... Commander Bovino only take two questions, then abruptly shut down the press conference?” asked US Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif). “Because he knows he can’t defend cold-blooded murder.”

-Julia Conley, Common Dreams

"We are in the middle of an unraveling" by David Brooks

Last week Minneapolis’s police chief, Brian O’Hara, said the thing he fears most is the “moment where it all explodes.” I share his worry. If you follow the trajectory of events, it’s pretty clear that we’re headed toward some kind of crackup.

We are in the middle of at least four unraveling: The unraveling of the postwar international order. The unraveling of domestic tranquility wherever Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents bring down their jackboots. The further unraveling of the democratic order, with attacks on Fed independence and — excuse the pun — trumped-up prosecutions of political opponents. Finally, the unraveling of President Trump’s mind.

Of these four, the unraveling of Trump’s mind is the primary one, leading to all the others. Narcissists sometimes get worse with age, as their remaining inhibitions fall away. The effect is bound to be profound when the narcissist happens to be president of the United States.

Every president I’ve ever covered gets more full of himself the longer he remains in office, and when you start out with Trump-level self-regard, the effect is grandiosity, entitlement, lack of empathy and ferocious overreaction to perceived slights.

Furthermore, over the past year, Trump has been quicker and quicker to resort to violence. In 2025 the U.S. carried out or contributed to 622 overseas bombing missions, killing people in places ranging from Venezuela to Iran, Nigeria and Somalia — not to mention Minneapolis.

The arc of tyranny bends toward degradation. Tyrants generally get drunk on their own power, which progressively reduces restraint, increases entitlement and self-focus and amps up risk taking and overconfidence while escalating social isolation, corruption and defensive paranoia.

I have found it useful these days to go back to the historians of ancient Rome, starting with the originals like Sallust and Tacitus. Those fellows had a front-row look at tyranny, with case studies strewed before them — Nero, Caligula, Commodus, Domitian, Tiberius. They understood the intimate connection between private morals and public order and that when there is a decay of the former, there will be a collapse of the latter.

“Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude,” Edward Gibbon wrote in his 1776 classic, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” He continued: “In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries and the fear of future dangers all contribute to inflame the mind and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.”

The 18th-century English historian Edward Wortley Montagu distinguished between ambition and the lust for domination. Ambition can be a laudable trait, since it can drive people to serve the community in order to win public admiration. The lust for domination, he wrote, is a different passion, a form of selfishness that causes us to “draw everything to center in ourselves, which we think will enable us to gratify every other passion.”

The insatiable lust for domination, he continues, “banishes all the social virtues.” The selfish tyrant attaches himself to only those others who share his selfishness, who are eager to wear the mask of perpetual lying. “His friendship and his enmity will be alike unreal, and easily convertible, if the change will serve his interest.”

Those historians were impressed by how much personal force the old tyrants could generate. The man lusting for power is always active, the center of the show, relentless, vigilant, distrustful, restless when anything stands in his way. Tacitus was especially good at describing the effect the tyrant has on the people around him. 

When the tyrant first takes power, there is a “rush into servitude” as great swarms of sycophants suck up to the great man. The flattery must forever escalate and grow more fawning, until every follower’s dignity is shorn away.  Then comes what you might call the disappearance of the good, as morally healthy people lie low in order to survive. Meanwhile, the whole society tends to be anesthetized. The relentless flow of appalling events eventually overloads the nervous system; the rising tide of brutality, which once seemed shocking, comes to seem unremarkable.

As the disease of tyranny progresses, citizens may eventually lose the habits of democracy — the art of persuasion and compromise, interpersonal trust, an intolerance for corruption, the spirit of freedom, the ethic of moderation. “It is easier to crush men’s spirits and their enthusiasm than to revive them,” Tacitus wrote. “Indeed, there comes over us an attachment to the very enforced inactivity, and the idleness hated at first is finally loved.”

I don’t have enough imagination to know where the next crackup will come — through perhaps some domestic, criminal or foreign crisis? Though I was struck by a sentence Robert Kagan wrote in an essay on the effects of Trump’s foreign policy in The Atlantic: “Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II, one that will make the Cold War look like child’s play and the post-Cold War world like paradise.”

And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.

But I do know that events are being propelled by one man’s damaged psyche. History does not record many cases in which a power-mad leader careening toward tyranny suddenly regained his senses and became more moderate. On the contrary, the normal course of the disease is toward ever-accelerating deterioration and debauchery.

And I do understand why America’s founding fathers spent so much time reading historians like Tacitus and Sallust. Thomas Jefferson called Tacitus “the first writer in the world, without a single exception.” They understood that the lust for power is a primal human impulse and that even all the safeguards they built into the Constitution are no match for this lust when it is not restrained ethically from within.

As John Adams put it in a letter in 1798, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”

-David Brooks, NY Times

 

"He destroyed 80 years of eager European cooperation with America"

 

In Boiling Frogs on Thursday, Nick Catoggio focused on the damage that Trump had done to NATO and the broader post-World War II legacy of cooperation between the U.S. and Europe.

He destroyed 80 years of eager European cooperation with America. For nothing. Worse than nothing, actually. He’s incentivized Western powers to form a sort of “neighborhood watch” aimed at preventing future muggings by the United States. I thought a casino would be the most profitable thing Trump would ever bankrupt, but bankrupting global trust in the world’s dominant power since 1945 in the span of a year is a catastrophe that warrants “Great Man of History” treatment. When scholars write about America’s decline, they’ll cite this episode as a hinge point. It’s genuinely one of the stupidest, self-defeating things a U.S. president has ever done.

Touching on a similar theme, Benn Steil wrote that Trump’s actions exposed a vulnerability that had always existed within the international rules-based order. Steil pointed to the various institutions established after World War II—the United Nations, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, etc.:

As extensive as this legal latticework was, it could neither cover all exigencies nor resolve contradictions. In practice, it relied on the United States to initiate action as a kind of Aristotelian uncaused cause, godlike from outside the system, while generally forgoing the type of nakedly self-interested behavior that would openly deny the order’s authority. By historical standards, the project was astoundingly successful—not in that all nations conformed, since the United States itself at times strayed willfully and radically, but in that virtually all nations felt compelled to align themselves with it, to argue for alternative understandings of it, or to justify their deviations from it.

Meanwhile, Scott Lincicome in Capitalism explored how Trump’s (revoked) tariff threat highlights a bigger problem on the home front: We have an “emergency” emergency. Trump has cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify unilateral tariffs throughout the first year of his second term, and Scott notes “there’s simply no plausible case for the situation in the Arctic to constitute a ‘national emergency.’” He predicts that the threats over Greenland will motivate countries to seek trade opportunities with nations besides the U.S. Thank you for reading. If you are in the path of the huge winter storm that is supposed to hit this weekend, stay safe and watch out for exploding trees.    -Dispatch Weekly