Just weeks after a masked ICE agent killed Renée Good, second person has been killed by our government. You would think Renée’s killing would have caused Trump to end his occupation of Minneapolis. You would think it would have been a sign to stop the madness.

I’m somehow both shocked this has not ended and unsurprised given the brutality of this president.

Paul Kafasis:

I, Too, Am Heartbroken and Very Angry. We all should be.

Alex Pretti lived a life of service. He was an ICU nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs. His last act was helping a woman up after she’d been assaulted.

Now, Alex Pretti is dead, gunned down by poorly trained ICE thugs. It’s the second horrific killing in Minnesota this month, and I fear it won’t be the last. I don’t know what it will take to end this madness. But at the very least, let us refuse to accept the despicable smear campaigns being attempted by craven officials and bootlicking apologists.

Hank Green, in a post on YouTube:

Another person, Alex Pretti, was killed by ICE agents today. Stephen Miller says he was a “terrorist” and an “assassin.” The Department of Homeland Security said that he approached ICE agents with a 9mm handgun and he wanted to “massacre law enforcement”.

Videos from three angles show Alex, a 37 year old ICU nurse, holding his phone and his other hand empty. He may have been armed, which is legal in Minnesota, but his gun is never visible. An ICE agent shoves a woman to the ground. Alex tries to help her up but is pepper sprayed. He is pulled to the ground by three ICE agents and hit repeatedly with a pepper spray canister. More officers approach, some with guns drawn. An agent appears to be moving away from the scrum with a gun, possibly Alex’s.

And then a shot is fired and then around ten more shots are fired by two officers.

Again, I ask people who disagree with me on the politics of these things not whether you think the officers were justified or made an understandable mistake or should have been trained better. I ask you only whether you think it is acceptable for the leaders of our country to tell us careful, intentional, and obvious lies about people killed by ICE.

And, if so, why?

Louie Mantia, in a post on Mastodon:

News outlets really gotta stop qualifying people who get killed by the state.

“No criminal record” is irrelevant, because the state shouldn’t be killing anyone. Specifying this indicates that the writer—and to the reader—that this detail makes a difference. It does not.