We Knew This Would Happen

But those warnings were ignored

Elliot Kirschner Jan 26

I am deeply appreciative that more and more people seem to be outraged by what is happening in Minnesota, across the country, and around the world.

I am glad that more people are willing to say out loud that ICE must be abolished.

That Democrats in Congress are beginning to stand more firmly as a bulwark against an unbounded authoritarian regime.

That more in the press are finally resisting the reflexive “both sides” framing.

That the word fascist is increasingly accepted as an accurate description for a militarized force used to terrorize the public in service of a despotic leader.

I am glad that some who voted for this tyrant are having second thoughts. Or have even begun, however haltingly, to speak.

I applaud those who have stood up and shown that courage is a successful strategy, from many in the federal courts to some universities, institutions, and businesses.

I am heartened that public opinion is shifting, as more Americans say clearly that this is not who they want to be.

But let’s be very clear. None of this is a surprise. None of it. Not the cruelty. Not the corruption. Not the recklessness.

Not the lawlessness, the scale of the terror, or the damage to the world order.

Not the attacks on science or civility, the rewriting of history, or the wrecking ball taken to our constitutional order.

We knew this would happen.

And by we, I don’t mean a handful of prophets or people blessed with special foresight. You knew it and said so. So did people you know and love. So did candidates for office, former presidents, and leaders across society. Tens of millions of voters cast their ballots fully aware of what was likely to come.

When the history of this age is written, there will be no shortage of evidence about what went wrong. There will be no plausible claim of ignorance.

Scholars looking for reasons for how we got here will analyze the media ecosystem, the long shadows of the pandemic, and decades of economic and social disruption. But as they catalogue the speeches, the court filings, and the protests, they will see time and again how clearly the danger was identified and documented in real time.

These future historians will have nearly infinite contemporary sources warning that the Supreme Court had been corrupted. That the violent insurrection of January 6 should have forced a lasting recalibration of American democracy. That the current president should have been barred from re-election. That science was under attack. That corruption was rampant. That this regime was beholden to tyrants abroad and intent on the destruction of democracy at home. And the list goes on.

Those voices were everywhere. And they still are. But that is only half the story.

Looking more closely, those who look back will find something else that demands explanation. They will see that the people who most clearly recognized the danger were often dismissed and ignored — not only by MAGA true believers, but by those in positions of power in media, politics, and business who congratulated themselves on being sober-minded and pragmatic. Too many who understood what was coming were labeled hysterical. Alarmist. Radical. Unserious. They were told to calm down. To respect norms that were already being shredded. They were chastised by a mushy mainstream that prized decorum over diagnosis and tone over truth.

Now, what comes next matters. It will not be enough to replace this regime with an administration that promises a return to the norms of the past. Those norms helped create the conditions that brought us here. Accountability is essential. But so is a reckoning with how we assess and share information, how we define what is responsible and mainstream, and whose voices are elevated or dismissed.

This work cannot wait. It must move alongside resistance and rebuilding, because all of it is of a piece if we are serious about saving our democracy.

We knew what was coming. We said so. We are fighting for our country now. And we welcome new allies.

But “never again” cannot apply only to this regime. It must also apply to those who had the power to stop this earlier. Those who dismissed the truth-tellers. Those who defied the warning signs when there was still time to act.

 

Was This a Murder Too Far?

The execution of Alex Pretti has made even some MAGA loyalists waver

Paul Krugman

Jan 26, 2026

In just a little over two weeks federal agents in Minneapolis have killed two innocent people in broad daylight. Contrary to the Trump administration’s lies, these were unjustified murders, pure and simple. But while both killings sickened and horrified many Americans, the killing of Alex Pretti is evoking a far stronger reaction than the killing of Renee Good.

When Good was killed on January 7th, the Trump administration circled the wagons, insisting that Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot her, was defending himself as she tried to run him down. A close look at the videos showed that this was a lie: Ross leaned into the car to shoot her at close range through the windshield, not something you would do if you thought a car was about to run you over. He then shot her twice more through the side window as the car rolled by in front of him, one of those shots being fatal.

But the MAGA faithful closed ranks, echoing the party line that she was a militant terrorist, albeit one with a dog in the back of the car, who smiled and said soothing words to her killer. Per usual, business remained silent as Good’s character was slandered. And so it looked as if the Trumpists would just bull through with impunity as they had many times before.

But this time, after the killing of Alex Pretti, feels different. Media coverage has been much clearer than the coverage after Good’s death. As I was writing this, the Wall Street Journal headline read “Videos Contradict U.S. Account of Minneapolis Shooting”. After some initial equivocation, the New York Times is calling out administration lies and featuring a chilling moment-by-moment analysis of videos showing what really happened.

Big corporations based in Minnesota, after staying completely silent, have finally said something, even if it’s just an anodyne call for “de-escalation of tensions.”

Centrist Democrats, who have spent weeks trying to ignore Minneapolis so they could talk about the price of eggs, are finally taking a stand and appear ready to vote against another round of DHS funding. And several Republicans are now speaking out.

The NRA and other gun groups are now calling for a full investigation of Pretti’s murder, angry that the DHS justifies the execution of Pretti because he was, entirely legally, in possession of a gun. Even Fox News’ s Maria Bartiromo, a tireless Trump cheerleader, sounded patently skeptical when questioning Kash Patel about DHS’s outlandish claims.

The first post-Pretti execution poll, from YouGov, shows that ICE’s brownshirt tactics are evoking a wave of anger, shame and revulsion across America. People who have seen videos of the shooting overwhelmingly say that it was unjustified. Calls to abolish ICE have gone from the fringe to the center, with a plurality of Americans supporting them.

Does this mark a tipping point? Or will the revulsion simply fade away, as it did after Good was killed? I think that this time is different, for several reasons.

First, views of the Pretti murder aren’t distorted by misogyny and anti-LGBTQ bigotry. I believe that a significant number of people brushed aside the murder of Renee Good because she was a woman — at a time when right-wingers are still dismissing opponents of fascism as “gangs of wine moms” — in a same-sex relationship.

Second, while the video evidence on Good’s killing was clear if examined closely, it did need close examination to reveal that she was simply murdered. The videos of Pretti’s killing don’t need close examination. That sound you heard Saturday was millions of Americans, myself included, crying out in horror as we watched agents repeatedly shoot a man who was already restrained. And the contrast between the damning videos and the blatant lies from Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller and Gregory Bovino was too much even for many people who were still, for some reason, inclined to trust this administration.

Finally, it matters that this was the second broad-daylight murder, and that it came after weeks of horror stories about kidnapped children, citizens pepper-sprayed in the face, and more. I already knew, and most readers of this newsletter probably also knew, that the people besieging Minneapolis were lying, brutal thugs. But most Americans don’t follow the news closely and tended until recently to give the government the benefit of the doubt.

The murder of Alex Pretti may be a tipping point, the moment at which skepticism about Trump’s attacks on immigrants and those who protect them turns into horror and disgust. But such a tipping point is only possible because Trump and his officials have spent a year betraying the public’s trust, again and again. This has taken a huge toll on Trump’s credibility, as Nate Silver points out:

Now, the bottom may be about to drop out. But that might not have happened if ICE had murdered Pretti a couple of months ago.

But if the American people turn overwhelmingly against ICE, DHS, and the Trump administration’s immigration policy, then what?

One thing I can safely predict is that Trump and his people won’t admit error. They won’t concede that Pretti was murdered, and that their initial claims about what happened were false. They won’t discipline the ICE agents responsible. They probably won’t call off the siege of Minneapolis, although they have silently backed down elsewhere, notably in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Why will the brutality continue? Because these people are malignant narcissists, whose lives are all about displaying dominance. The sheer horror of what they’ve already done makes it impossible for them to change course, because climbing down after you’ve murdered people and lied about it would be humiliating — and humiliation is their greatest fear.

The big question is what happens when the administration’s determination to keep terrorizing the American people collides with public outrage. One safe prediction is that Trump will try to subvert the November elections: in a clear example of a shakedown, Bondi has demanded that Governor Tim Waltz hand over the Minnesota voter rolls.

Many Americans are grieving over the murder of Alex Pretti, who was simply trying to defend a woman being assaulted by federal officers when he was executed. Beyond the horror of the moment, however, we’re at an existential fork in the road. Let us hope that this country wakes up to the full magnitude of what is happening before more martyrs are offered up as sacrifice.