Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast for Monday, January 26th. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.
And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
And we also have with us Minnesota Public Radio's Clay Masters. Hi, Clay.
Hello there.
And today on the show, federal agents shot and killed another American in Minneapolis over the weekend. 37-year-old Alex Preddy was an intensive care unit nurse at a VA hospital. He was using his phone to film ICE agents. When the situation rapidly escalated within seconds, half a dozen masked agents were pinning him to the ground face down, and then he was shot in the back multiple times.
Clay, we know this because there was video, a lot of it. What more can you tell us about what happened?
So the video shows Alex Preddy in this neighborhood in Minneapolis, a little after nine in the morning. There was a person who was shoved to the ground. Preddy appears to be trying to support this person who was shoved to the ground. And during that, you see a swarm of federal agents approach him. He has his phone out and then it escalates very quickly.
Federal officials have said that Preti approached agents in a threatening manner with a gun before he was shot and killed by an officer.
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Chapter 2: What incident escalated tensions surrounding the Trump administration's immigration policies?
But it's very important to note here that video and eyewitness testimony from NPR News dispute that account.
Federal officials, including the Homeland Security Secretary, say that he brandished it, that he brought it. aiming to do maximum harm. What the video seems to show is that he wasn't brandishing, he was holding his phone, and he was disarmed before he was shot, just like a second before he was shot. Clay, how are state and local officials responding to these events?
And what has it been like there in Minnesota?
I want to come at this a couple of ways. Number one, I think it's important just for context. On Friday, a producer and myself went out to some of these neighborhoods when there was this general strike that was happening where a lot of businesses had closed their doors.
Some of those businesses remained open to provide community support, to provide coffee to some of these witnesses, these ICE observers, as we've been seeing pop up in the Twin Cities, people who are keeping their eye on the streets and then alerting people. When immigration customs enforcement agents are in the area.
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Chapter 3: What details are known about Alex Pretti's shooting?
I talked with people who were at these different businesses who were talking about the fear that they have the concern that they have, but also just the community coming together to look after their neighbors. I mean, there's a very strong sense of that, especially in the neighborhoods in Minneapolis where I was.
You know, even driving down the street, you would see there was a median where, you know, this is very, very cold temperatures outside. People had a fire going in the middle of this median. They had whistles. There's very much this neighborhood watch feel of throughout many of these neighborhoods. And so, you know.
Alex Pretti, as he was out that morning, was like so many people in the community that have been keeping an alert eye on what is happening in their neighborhoods. I just think that that perspective is important to have here. There is a community strength that we are seeing throughout the Twin Cities right now. The reaction that we're seeing locally here...
I mean, the governor, Tim Walz of Minnesota, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Fry, have regularly been calling on the Trump administration to back off. On Sunday, there was a press conference that Governor Walz and the attorney general, Keith Ellison, also a Democrat, held. They talked about the fact that when...
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the local law enforcement for the state, arrived on site for this fatal shooting. They were refused access, and then they obtained a judicial warrant and were refused access as well. Again, we are seeing something similar play out that happened after the killing of Renee Macklin Good, where the state is being shut out of the investigation.
So there's a lot of frustration there. And there is a lot of effort that's been going on through the courts to try to at least temporarily halt the immigration crackdown in the state that's been ramped up since the beginning of December.
Domenico, after the shooting of Renee Macklin Good, there was a pretty quick retreat into partisan corners. People looked at that video of her in her vehicle being shot and saw different things. This feels different. I'm seeing more Republicans say, no, a thorough investigation is needed. Do you think the politics are different this time?
Yeah, I think that there is a difference here. I mean, we may be at a political tipping point because not only did we have this other shooting of Renee Macklin Goode, as you mentioned earlier, Not long ago, but now the second shooting and you have somebody on video. He was on the ground. He was not pointing a gun at anyone. He had a gun on him that was taken off of him.
According to the video, he was shot in the back. And I think that a lot of people had already been saying in the run up to all of this, that ISIS tactics had been too harsh, that the Trump administration had been acting too in ways that they disagree with on deportations.
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Chapter 4: How are local officials responding to the shooting in Minneapolis?
So just a quick snapshot on 2026 in Minnesota. There is a gubernatorial race. Governor Tim Walz is not going to be running for that third term that he originally had said he would. We're all waiting to see if and when Senator Amy Klobuchar gets into the race. She has already filed paperwork on the Democratic side. But on the Republican side, there's a pretty healthy contest that is taking shape.
And the surprise today was that Chris Maddell has dropped his bid for Minnesota governor. He's a Republican. He ended his campaign over the fallout from recent federal immigration actions. So this is a Minneapolis attorney. He launched his bid just in December, and he attributes it to the ongoing ice crackdown in Minnesota that has led to the deaths of these two citizen observers.
He says the operation has gone too far and people are living in fear. He calls it an unmitigated disaster. There's even a video that Mattel says he can't support what he calls retribution against Minnesota. And I do want to note, too, that Mattel's firm has represented police officers in prior shooting cases, and he has provided legal support to Jonathan Ross.
That is the ICE officer who fired the fatal shots at Renee Macklin Good back on January 7th in Minneapolis.
I mean, I think that it's important to note that when we think about Minneapolis, of course, It's a very liberal city. But when you think about Minnesota writ large, yes, it's gone blue in multiple elections, but it's been very close in a few elections in the Trump era here.
And Republicans, moderate Republicans could have seen something of a surge coming on the heels of the fraud investigation in Minneapolis that the Trump administration was also pushing. But these ICE tactics, I mean, you see what's happened here in these last couple of shootings and killings. You suddenly have the Republican candidate saying yes. You know what? Republican can't win.
And I think it's important, too, to Domenico's point about the makeup of the state of Minnesota. Just look at the Minnesota legislature. It is tied between Republicans and Democrats in the Minnesota House of Representatives. And in the Senate, Democrats have a one seat edge.
And I should note, too, that the Republican speaker of the House, Lisa Damuth, she is actually running for the governor's race on the Republican side. So very interesting when you think about just how close this state is at the state level.
All right. Well, we are going to take a quick break and we will have more in a moment. And we're back. And we've been discussing the aftermath of what happened this weekend in Minneapolis when federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Preddy. Clay, we have seen the Trump administration use similar tactics for immigration enforcement operations in other places.
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Chapter 5: What has been the community's reaction to the immigration enforcement in Minneapolis?
Well, I mean when you talk about voters, we have to talk about which voters, right? Because Republican-based voters, those who identify as MAGA, Trump voters, they're not likely to be swayed over anything, right? I mean this is a group that is core, that is strong to Trump. I remember a Republican strategist telling me.
In the 2016 election that most people have a slice of the pie, his slice of the pie is made of titanium. OK, so you could cast that aside. But when you're looking at moderates and especially Republicans who are running in these districts that are swing districts where moderates are going to decide those elections.
And when you think about Democratic moderates who would have been all for funding homeland security in general, you're seeing a lot of that middle sort of coalesce to say, you know, this isn't right. This is going too far and they want de-escalation and a tamping down of the rhetoric at the very least.
And I promise we will talk about this more in a future podcast. But Clay and Domenico, we have a government funding deadline in just a few days here at the federal level. And all of a sudden, what's happening in Minnesota is getting wrapped up in that funding legislation that in theory could have avoided a government shutdown.
But now you have Democrats saying they don't think that they can support funding for these kinds of actions.
Yeah, it's quite viable. We could see a partial government shutdown by the end of this week because Democrats now are saying there's no way that they're voting for more DHS funding based on these kinds of tactics.
And they're trying to say they're going to do that, but then point the finger at Republicans and say if they want to include DHS funding in this spending package to keep the government open, then it's on Republicans. So again, like we saw toward the end of the year last year, We're seeing fingers pointed in either direction for who would be to blame here.
And Democrats feel like now they have the politics on their side because of what we're seeing here.
Over the weekend, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota on Meet the Press said that she didn't plan to vote for the DHS funding. That's something she had not committed to in previous interviews that I've had with her the last couple of weeks.
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