"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Tuesday, January 27, 2026. Even Chump's realizing he's not getting away with the murder of Alex Pretti.
Jon Stewart takes on the lies and the stupidity of Kristi Noem and her Homeland Security team as they lie to avoid consequences for their murder of Alex Pretti.
"That's the facts." Remember, she dropped out of college and only finished because an institution was willing to give her class credit for serving in the US Congress. "That's the facts" is grammatically incorrect but maybe she spent K through 12 and on through college slutting around instead of learning. That's the facts is "That is the facts." Facts are plural. "Those are the facts" or "That is the fact" could be used as any fourth grader could tell you. But "That's the facts" is a statement made by a very stupid and uneducated person.
Ignorance is not an excuse but should she plead that when she finally faces a court, no one would disagree that she is a very ignorant person and deeply, deeply stupid.
THE NEW YORK TIMES blog notes that Killer Chump is in a panic:
President Trump said his border czar, Tom Homan, will direct ICE operations in Minnesota. Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official, is set to depart amid growing anger over a second fatal shooting by federal agents.
If Killer Chump was serious about reform, he wouldn't be meeting with Kristi Noem and her alleged paramour.
President Trump met Monday evening in the Oval Office with Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and Corey Lewandowski, her top aide, for nearly two hours, as his administration tries to shift its strategy after federal agents killed a second Minneapolis resident over the weekend, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
In fact, if he were really serious, he would've told her that she can't work as Corey's superior due to the years and years of rumors that the two are involved in an ongoing affair.
And if Killer Donald Chump was truly serious, NYT wouldn't be noting this:
The Trump administration appeared to acknowledge on Monday that its investigation into the killing of a Veterans Affairs nurse, Alex Pretti, by federal agents this weekend was limited to a “use of force” review meant to establish whether government employees had violated training standards.
Such a move, disclosed in court filings, would represent a much narrower inquiry focused on tactics and conduct than one that would examine whether federal agents should face criminal charges.
The killer's on the run, trying to rewrite facts, trying to look concerned. He's trying to hide his kills now. Not crowing about it like he did with Renee. Now he's trying to pretend like no one anticipated Alex's murder, like no one could have seen it coming, like he's not openly killing American citizens out in the open.
He's a murderer. His historical image was always going to be poor but now it's even worse. The Convicted Felon who murdered American citizens. That's his slug line.
WSWS notes the reactions of those who knew Alex:
Co-workers of Alex Pretti along with patients at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Minneapolis expressed sorrow and anger over the cold-blooded murder of the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was known for his compassion and care.
Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to healthcare workers outside of the VA center Monday afternoon, while co-workers inside the facility held a vigil for the well-loved nurse.
“I worked with him four years ago as a student,” said one worker. “He wasn’t my direct preceptor. I had another nurse who was my first doctor, but Alex was a delight on the unit, always cracking a joke, always had a smile. I didn’t know him as closely as his other ICU colleagues, but this was an absolute tragedy.
“Lots of my other co-workers were communicating that day and they were just truly very broken.” Responding to the Trump officials’ lying claims that Pretti was “brandishing a gun,” she said, “Frustration was everyone’s immediate reaction at this point. Yeah, he doesn’t deserve that.”
In a widely shared Facebook post, Jessica Hauser, who described herself as Pretti’s “last nursing student,” described working “shoulder to shoulder” with him over the last four months treating the “sickest of the sick.”
In her tribute, she wrote in part:
Alex carried patience, compassion and calm as a steady light within him. Even at the very end, that light was there. I recognized his familiar stillness and signature calm composure shining through during those unbearable final moments captured on camera.
It does not surprise me that his final words were, “Are you okay?” Caring for people was at the core of who he was. He was incapable of causing harm. He lived a life of healing, and he lived it well.
He spoke out for justice and peace whenever he could, not only out of obligation, but out of a belief that we are more connected than divided, and that communication would bring us together.
I want his family to know his legacy lives on. I am a better nurse because of the wisdom and skills he instilled in me. I carry his light with me into every room, letting it guide and steady my hands as I heal and care for those in need.
A medical student at the VA told WSWS reporters, “It’s pretty messed up what they did, and it was a violation of his basic civil rights, as outlined in the Bill of Rights. So clearly, they don’t care about that stuff anymore. And trying to flip the narrative as if he was doing something wrong, it’s blatant propaganda. It was obvious, if you look at the video.
“He worked here at the VA and was someone who cared about America’s veterans and was working every day to help the people who have dedicated their lives for this country. So, the fact that a bunch of thugs can just do that is a pretty big injustice.”
Asked what he thought about the working class preparing a general strike to demand the removal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from Minneapolis and other cities, he said, “It’s clear if the federal government doesn’t want to protect the people, they have to take matters into their own hands… Resistance like striking is a great way to go about doing that.”
Commenting on the strikes of nurses in New York City and nurses and healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Hawaii, he said, “I haven’t heard about that but that’s great to hear that people care about this. The American healthcare system is far from ideal. For profit, healthcare isn’t how it should be arranged. I’ve heard the Vienna VA is dealing with staffing problems and it makes it harder for veterans to access care.”
Another VA medical student said, “There’s a vigil today trying to support the community. Our reaction was like any person’s reaction. It was completely jaw-dropping that something happened to that degree and that violent. I just hope we can keep supporting our community and hold strong together.
“I don’t think the government should try to blame someone for peaceful protesting. It was obvious what happened. It’s harmful to say that’s someone’s fault when they are just enacting their First Amendment rights. It’s even worse when someone who is trying to give back to the community ended up being murdered.”
The student expressed support for the strikes of nurses and healthcare workers in New York City, California and Hawaii. “I support that as a nursing student. It’s inspirational to see that the community fighting for what’s right, especially with staffing ratios. It’s for patient safety and the nurses’ safety.”
Two veterans also spoke out forcefully about the murder of Pretti.
A veteran of the US war in Afghanistan said, “It’s complete unacceptable what happened to Alex Pretti. If there wasn’t already a line in the sand, there certainly is now, and the fact that this is what America has become is completely ridiculous. I’m a veteran myself. I spent 12 months in Afghanistan. Just got back here at the VA from the Whipple [ICE detention] building, where I ran into several other veterans from various areas of war, and all of us have the same opinion that this is completely unacceptable.
“It’s capitalism. These wars are all about money, and just whatever they can do to get more money and power.”
Asked about the conclusions that many of his generation were coming to, he said, “It’s almost like we’re all becoming socialists, which wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
He concluded by expressing support for a general strike throughout the US: “For it. I’m 100 percent for it.”
A Vietnam War veteran said, “I didn’t know Alex Pretti personally, but I’ve been going to the VA since 1974 and he served us vets. He was attacked for protecting a woman. He was disarmed. He was held down by five or six cops, and then they took out a gun and shot him in the back four or five times. If that is not deliberate murder, you explain to me what it is.
“Why ICE should be able to get away with murdering somebody in public for everybody to see is beyond my comprehension. I have been at the protests. I’ve been out there all day long in the cold, in my wheelchair. Everybody in this country is an immigrant. We all came from other countries to come here to be prosperous and, you know, be free. We all have rights.
“Even the immigrants that come here ‘illegally’ have rights. Okay, we’re all the same. Maybe they came here illegally, but they still have rights. You can’t kill people. You can’t handcuff people and throw them on a plane.
“When Trump says he hates Somalis and they need to all go back, let me tell you something. There’s a lot of good Somalis here that didn’t rip off a government, that don’t do wrong. This is coming from a president that is a felon, that is a crook.
We don't yet know the name of the shooter or shooters who plugged the bullets into Alex. But we do know that earlier this month, the shooter was Jonathan Ross. He killed Renee Nicole Gold. There's a development there. Alex Nguyen (MOTHER JONES) reports:
A Republican attorney in Minneapolis who gave legal counsel to the ICE agent who shot and killed Renée Good dropped out of the Minnesota governor’s race on Monday, saying he couldn’t win given the Trump administration’s violent campaign in the state.
Chris Madel stated in a Monday announcement video that, “national Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.” Despite dropping out, Madel claimed to still support Trump’s “originally stated goals” of going after the “worst of the worst,” meaning people convicted of serious crimes.”
Madel criticized the Trump administration’s justification for the cruelty. “Operation Metro Surge has expanded far beyond its stated focus on true public safety threats,” he said. “United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear. United States citizens are carrying their papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong.”
He continued: “I cannot support the national Republican stated ‘retribution’ on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”
It is an election year, other GOPers should be paying attention. Josh Marshall (TPM) observes:
Everywhere we’re seeing signs that ICE, the White House and its virtual army of influencers, agitators and generalized degenerates are losing control of the public narrative surrounding the murder of VA ICU nurse and activist Alex Pretti. These things don’t come in one coherent motion. You see it more in a kind of fragmentation, a general loss of a coherent and aggressive message. Individual players and factions start groping for their own climb down and then often at one sudden point run rapidly for the hills. The White House and ICE have over the last 48 hours simultaneously been claiming that Pretti was there for a mass shooting of ICE agents, so thank god they killed him, and, also, that Pretti’s death is a terrible tragedy and it’s all Governor Tim Walz’s fault because Minneapolis is a sanctuary city. Those two messages don’t really hold together.
[. . .]
The president himself seems to be moving to declaim any ownership of Pretti’s murder by sending Tom Homan to Minneapolis as his man who “has not been involved in that area” (i.e., isn’t the one who is doing all the killing) to get the situation under control and “report directly to me.” These moments of breakdown in the White House’s feral and, to date, overwhelmingly united propaganda campaign were matched by dozens of other MAGA influencers and other members of the GOP who could not quite manage to keep yelling that Pretti’s killing was anything other than murder.
[. . .]
But something else has been happening too. Over the last 24 hours a number of police chiefs have come forward not so much to attack the ICE occupation as to say what we’re seeing in this video and in ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis is not what we recognize as law enforcement. Obviously there are many horrible videos and incidents we’ve seen over recent years that are very much law enforcement. And there’s a real aspect of this which is simply a matter of getting out ahead of the backlash. But this is of a piece with a shift we’ve seen over the last couple weeks in which a lot of the population is not seeing ICE as another flavor of a metropolitan police department but something categorically different, which of course it is.
Another response caught my eye. This afternoon, General Tony Thomas, former head of the Special Operations Command, repeatedly responded to top administration officials (Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, et al.) with an image that appears to show Pretti being shot in the back of the head by a masked ICE agents. Thomas was the head of Special Operations Command from 2016 to 2019. It’s a powerful rejoinder to the weekend warriors and Palantir board members who imagine they’ve turned Minneapolis into some version of Anbar Province and that this is somehow a good thing.
The campaign of lies and distortion coming out of ICE, DHS and the White House more generally is often labeled propaganda. And it certainly is that. But it’s important to know who it is aimed at. If you looked at television and online news and commentary, you’d get the sense that there was a big debate between the left and the right over whether the shooting of Renée Good was justified. Polling and other data suggested this wasn’t really the case at all, that very few members of the public thought ICE agents acted appropriately or with justification. Often these fusillades of obfuscations and simple misstatements of fact aren’t meant to convince anyone but to give allies and reliable influencers something to say. As we’ve discussed in other contexts, often in a modern political argument it’s not really necessary to have a response that makes any sense. You just need to have a response. The one fatal thing is to leave your allies with no set of marching orders, with no clear party line, because you can’t leave people trying to think up a response on their own.
This morning on MEIDASTOUCH NEWS, Ben covers a lot.
As Trina noted last week in "Beans and Greens Soup in the Kitchen," she's a big Lucinda Williams fan. Lucinda's just released album WORLD GONE WRONG came out Friday.
Winding down, Senator Alex Padilla's office issued the following:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — With Congress set to consider legislation to further increase Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding and detention beds this week, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) announced the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act to end the use of private, for-profit detention facilities, prohibit the practice of detaining families, and ensure due process for detained individuals. It would also end mandatory detention and increase federal oversight, accountability, and transparency of the immigration detention system.
The bill announcement comes after Padilla and Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) conducted an oversight visit last week to the largest detention center in California, located in California City, to learn firsthand of the concerns surrounding the inhumane conditions detained individuals are facing at the private, for-profit facility. The Senators investigated reports of unsanitary and unsafe facility conditions, inadequate medical and mental health care, insufficient access to legal counsel, a severe lack of accommodations for people with disabilities, and the unnecessary use of solitary confinement.
During the visit, the Senators met with dozens of Californians and other detained individuals, many with no criminal record, whom ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have swept up indiscriminately amid the Trump Administration’s mass detention and deportation campaign. Over 70,000 immigrants are currently detained by ICE, reaching historically high numbers. After 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, the deadliest year since 2005, at least six individuals have already died in their custody this year.
“Last week, I saw firsthand in California City the appalling, inhumane conditions that detained individuals are facing at for-profit facilities as detentions reach record levels. I met with countless people who were injured while being detained or whose basic medical needs are not being met — including a mother who was denied access to her medication to manage her diabetes and received no treatment after ICE grabbed her by the neck,” said Senator Padilla. “As Republicans funnel tens of billions to ICE and CBP, we need to bring back oversight and accountability to the federal detention system, while restoring the right to legal counsel and due process, ending family detention, and raising detention standards. Our bill would finally stop private, for-profit detention centers from lining their pockets by advancing Donald Trump’s cruel mass deportation campaign at the expense of our communities and economy.”
“Delaney Hall, and every detention center like it, are a moral stain on our country. The conditions are an abdication of the federal government’s responsibility to care for those in its custody. GEO Group was awarded a 15-year, one billion dollar contract by the Department of Homeland Security to warehouse our immigrant neighbors. As taxpayers, we’re footing the bill for a system that is brutalizing those detained within it. Enough is enough,” said Senator Booker. “With the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, we can move away from this system of neglect and cruelty. We can strike a blow against the corrupt for-profit prison model of incarceration. We can guarantee due process for our immigrant neighbors and ban mandatory detentions. Doing this will safeguard our communities and it will bring us steps closer to achieving an immigration system built on dignity and justice that we know is possible.”
The Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act is proudly endorsed by a nationwide coalition of over 125 organizations. In addition to Senator Padilla, current cosponsors in the U.S. Senate include Senators Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in late 2025 by Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.-07) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.-09).
“Under the Trump Administration, we have seen a shocking surge in the detention of people who have committed no crimes, being locked up in increasingly horrifying conditions, and a dramatic increase in deaths in custody,” said Representative Jayapal. “People, including children, are being held in squalor, largely in private, for-profit detention facilities, all to pad the bottom lines of prison corporations that donate to Donald Trump and Republicans. As Trump has struck down legal pathways and made it nearly impossible to come to or stay in this country, even for those who have been here for decades, this will only continue to get worse. The Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act is a commonsense solution to protect the civil rights of every person in this country.”
“We are witnessing appalling conditions for immigration detention and a clear disregard for basic human rights,” said Representative Smith. “No one should be subjected to overcrowded cells, denied medical care, or held in facilities that profit off of human suffering. This legislation establishes the oversight and guardrails needed to end these abuses and ensure that people are treated with dignity.”
The Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act would bring much-needed justice and oversight to the immigration detention system. Specifically, the legislation would:
- Prohibit the detention of families and children in family detention;
- Phase out the use of private detention facilities and jails over a three-year period;
- Repeal mandatory detention and replace it with a system that requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to present evidence that the people in its detention centers are a threat to public safety or national security;
- Require DHS to establish civil detention standards that provide, at minimum, the level of protection in the American Bar Association’s Civil Immigration Detention Standards;
- Mandate the Inspector General of DHS to conduct unannounced inspections with meaningful penalties for failure to comply with standards; and
- End the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention.
Senator Padilla has been a leading voice in opposition to President Trump’s cruel and indiscriminate mass deportation agenda and denial of basic services for detained individuals. Last year, Padilla introduced the Access to Counsel Act to ensure that U.S. citizens, green card holders, and other individuals with legal status can consult with an attorney, relative, or other interested parties to seek assistance if they are detained by CBP for more than an hour at ports of entry, including airports. Padilla and Schiff also introduced the Restoring Access to Detainees Act, a bill to ensure the Department of Homeland Security allows detained noncitizens to contact legal counsel and their families. Last July, Padilla joined a Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee hearing to set the record straight on President Trump and Stephen Miller’s cruel mass deportation campaign, blasting the Administration for intentionally stoking fear and scapegoating immigrants.
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