The Dictatorship
ICE wants to make Minneapolis cower in fear. The opposite is happening.
MINNEAPOLIS — It is a tender moment in Minnesota, where the Twin Cities have been forever marked by twin tragedies: killings by law enforcement officials not quite six blocks and six years apart.
The working-class neighborhood where both Renee Nicole Good and George Floyd were killed has experienced more than its fair share of anguish. I was raised about a mile south of both scenes. In recent days, I have found myself reporting on another incident of police violence in my hometown close to the same streets and alleys I used to ride my bike up and down as a kid.
The Twin Cities have been forever marked by twin tragedies.
The killing of Renee Good happened on a stretch of Portland Avenue — a major thoroughfare where residents are known for their community ties. There are block parties and puppet shows and extravagant yard decor. At least three homes have massive dinosaurs replicas in their front yards.
For residents of this stretch of south Minneapolis, this latest killing added to deep-seated trauma that has not healed, though the lawsuit state and local officials announced Monday to block the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation may help.
The Twin Cities were ravaged by riots, rage and looting after Floyd’s death. The Third District police precinct was set ablaze. The acrid sting of smoke and tear gas lingered in the air for days. People in this area still talk about the protesters who used backyards as bathrooms and porches as impromptu havens while residents had to decide whether to approach strangers or remain safely huddled inside. Their houses and apartments were close enough to the unrest to see the sky glow orange.
These residents struggled to move on after the trial and conviction of Derek Chauvin played out on national television. Faded Black Lives Matter signs are still in windows, many now sitting next to vivid “De-Ice Minnesota” or “ICE-OUT” placards (a play on words with particular sentiment here not only about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge but also because so many locals keep canisters of de-icer spray handy for frozen windshield wipers and car locks during frigid winters).
“How much can one neighborhood take?” said Nikesha Lust, who works with a group that is trying to deescalate tensions. “This is something nobody wants, or nobody asked for, but it’s here. There are people who come here just for that reason, to cause problems and go home, and then we are stuck with no gas stations to go to. No grocery stores. And everybody is just mad. We finally got to a point where we were getting back on our feet here.”
George Floyd’s death is never really in the rearview mirror for Minneapolis, especially for a particular stretch of the near southside.
George Floyd’s death is never really in the rearview mirror for Minneapolis, especially for a particular stretch of the near southside. Property values are down since 2020. There are visible reminders in the graffiti, the murals and the mountain of stuffed animals and dried flowers still standing as a makeshift monument. Residents see it in the neighborhood businesses that clawed their way back to viability and the ones that never recovered. They deal with it in their daily egress around the busy intersection at 38th and Chicago, where cars, buses and bicycles must navigate the memorials and tourists. Yes, tourists: People from around the world still arrive to take photos where Floyd was killed and leave mementos.
A few blocks away, makeshift memorials have been amassing to the more recent high-profile victim. Flowers, candles, stuffed animals and crowds have accumulated to honor Good and protest aggressive immigration enforcement. Amid bonfires and stacks of pizza delivered several times a day, people sing and chant and leaders with bullhorns make speeches. For residents near 34th and Portland, there is now another monument to pain right outside their front doors.
There are deep worries about anger spilling over into unrest, infused with concern about the aggressive militarized law enforcement tactics not seen before on Minneapolis streets.
It’s not lost on people here that Floyd’s killing ignited a national debate about police reform and restraint. And the irony that the hundreds of immigration officers who have descended on Minnesota wearing masks and military gear are operating in a manner that appears blind to the hard-won reforms that followed the Floyd tragedy.
In essential ways, the tensions gripping the Twin Cities revolve around tolerance. Minnesota has historically prided itself on tolerance. The state is known for its progressive politics and its open-armed approach to diversity and immigration.
Those values have been tested somewhat in recent years as large waves of immigration strained the state’s welfare system, and by a political scandal that involved hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud perpetrated by a small circle of scammers. A renewed focus on a years-old fraud case and its Somali offenders helped escalate the immigration sweeps roiling neighborhoods.
Minnesotans have responded with a robust effort to monitor and document ICE activity. Networks of citizen patrols use whistles, kazoos and car horns to warn immigrants and neighbors about sweeps. The organization behind that effort runs deep. A constellation of ICE monitoring groups has sprung up all over the state but is especially prevalent in the Twin Cities. They send out communications on how to mobilize and monitor activity. They track geographic positions and license plates on vehicles used by immigration agents. “Heat maps” show where sweeps have been carried out. Not only are there trainings on how to conduct this work, but they have also set up legal hotlines. Instructions have been vetted by lawyers to help ensure that ICE monitors do not cross lines.
“They said they are going after the worst of the worst but are the worst of the worst mothers dropping their kids off at school?” asked Andrew Fahlstrom, a leader with a citizen monitoring group called Defend the 612. (The name draws on the original area code for Minneapolis.)
“When it’s really bad in our neighborhoods, it looks like from 5 a.m. until about 7 p.m., packs of cars roaming the streets trying to grab anyone they can. It looks like cultural malls — Somali malls, Latino markets — being targeted. People being grabbed left and right,” Fahlstrom told me. “It looks like bus stops on Lake Street where three cars pull over, armed agents with masks on, who don’t identify themselves, taking a human being and throwing them into a car.”
Fahlstrom said he thinks the raids are meant to instill fear. But instead of driving people underground, residents continue to sign up as monitors. As of Saturday, more than 4,000 had volunteered.
“Renee Good could have been any one of us. She wasn’t doing anything different than what thousands of people on the street were doing. People are committed. People are showing up. People are taking to the streets to protect each other. I’m not afraid. I’m here to make sure that we protect each other. And that’s what we’ll do every day as long as we can,” Fahlstrom said.
State political leaders have said they think that Minnesota is being used as a proving ground for what Americans everywhere will accept from a law enforcement agency that operates without clear identification and using military-type uniforms and tactics.
“This is in essence a federal invasion of the Twin Cities, and it must stop,” Attorney General Keith Ellison said Monday, announcing the lawsuit to end the ICE presence in the state. “This surge has made us less safe.”
The Trump administration calls the immigration sweep in Minnesota “Operation Metro Surge.” Although residents are traumatized, they are resilient. Some have taken to calling the immigration patrols the Ice Storm — and noting that Minnesotans are used to dealing with those.
Michele Norris is a senior contributing editor for MS NOW.
Rep. Julia Letlow won Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary runoff Saturday, defeating former Rep. John Fleming.
Her win comes as a victory for President Donald Trump, who has endorsed her repeatedly throughout the race — including before she was even officially running.
Letlow made history in 2021 when she became the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in Congress. In that special election, she won the seat that her late husband, Luke Letlow, had won prior to dying of complications related to Covid-19 in December 2020.
Letlow had no political experience prior to running for her late husband’s seat. She holds a doctorate in communication from the University of South Florida and worked as an administrator for Tulane University and the University of Louisiana, according to her LinkedIn page. Nonetheless, she won the special election House race with nearly 65% of the vote.
In Congress, she has served on the appropriations and education committees, and has been a reliably MAGA Republican.
Letlow’s win also comes as a rebuke to Fleming, who loaned himself more than $11 million, according to the Federal Election Commission, and tried running for the same seat in 2016 only to finish in fifth place in the nonpartisan primary. (Letlow did not loan her campaign any money, and took in more than $5.35 million compared to Fleming’s more than $12.1 million, FEC filings show.)
Trump has played a key role in the race. In addition to backing Letlow early on, the president also helped tank Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy’s re-election campaign in last month’s primary, based on the senator’s record of bucking his party and voting in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. In the primaryLetlow earned nearly 45% of the vote, giving her a healthy lead over both Fleming, who received about 28% of the vote, and Cassidy, who earned nearly 25%.
Ahead of Saturday’s runoff, polling showed Letlow and Fleming in a close race, with Letlow retaining a small lead in several polls.
Letlow will now proceed to the November general election to face off against the Democratic nominee, farmer Jamie Davis, who came out on top in tonight’s Democratic primary runoff.
The state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, when Mary Landrieu won her last term in office.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligencehas stirred fear by choosing as his chief of staff a GOP election lawyer who oversaw a poll watching program that included Jack Posobiec and other conservative conspiracy theorists. The lawyer, Christina Norton, also appears to have no experience working in the intelligence community.
“It is horrifying,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW Saturday. “Not only does Norton have absolutely no background, experience or expertise in national security or intelligence, but her principal qualifications appear to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of absurd election-interference conspiracies.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has been a vocal critic of Pulte, also raised concerns about election integrity on Sunday while taking shots at the director of national intelligence and the office itself.
“We should eliminate the DNI, and we should eliminate Pulte from the DNI until that happens,” he said on BLN, adding, “I am concerned that we’re gonna continue to cast doubt on elections in November and erode what has been a 250-year tradition of a peaceful transition of power.”
Pulte’s choice of Norton is also likely to increase concerns among Democrats that President Donald Trump intends to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to interfere in the midterm elections. Pulte, a loyalist with no intelligence experience, has used his current position as head of federal mortgage agencies to refer political rivals of the president for federal criminal prosecution.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told MS NOW on Sunday that the choice “just confirms” that the “only job qualification is absolute political loyalty and devotion to Donald Trump.” But he expressed faith in the judicial system during an appearance on “The Weekend,” noting that “right now we have federal courts across the land that are rejecting their various attempts to take over the election process. Nine different federal courts have rejected the claim that the president, by executive order, can compel the states in the union to turn over all of their voter lists to Donald Trump and to the White House.”
The New York Times first reported Norton’s appointment.
The former senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation, told MS NOW the choice also “signals as clearly as could be that Pulte has been put at ODNI to misuse the awesome power of the U.S. intelligence community to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections.”
Norton, reached by MS NOW by telephone, declined to comment and referred questions to an ODNI spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to comment on Norton but defended Pulte’s tenure.
“Acting Director Pulte and his team are focused on carrying out President Trump’s national security priorities while faithfully executing ODNI’s statutory mission,” the spokesperson told MS NOW. “We are leading the Intelligence Community to provide President Trump with elite, apolitical intelligence that keeps America safe.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, said his objection to Pulte is “that he used personal information to target a political enemy of the president,” a reference to New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“You should not be using the force of government to crash upon somebody just because the person in charge does not like them or finds them inconvenient. The fact that Bill did that is disqualifying for someone to be the director of national intelligence,” Cassidy said.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday that Congress would ensure that the ODNI under Pulte will “report on legitimate foreign threats to elections, not Donald Trump’s imaginary ones.”
Himes warned that, “Trump was explicit when he appointed Bill Pulte to a job he had no qualifications for that he had elections in mind.”
Trump has said in interviews with the news media that he would like to see Pulte shrink the size of the ODNI and investigate election fraud. Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, participated in investigations in Georgia and Puerto Rico to find proof of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Democrats and some former intelligence officials say they worry that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates in the midterms.
Pulte could falsely claim foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines, they say, and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats during the midterms. Or Trump could instruct Pulte to be present if FBI agents seize ballots and election records in November as they did earlier this year in Fulton County, Georgia.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned in a statement on Friday that Pulte should not use his position to spread Trump’s false election conspiracy theories.
“The mission of ODNI is to identify and counter foreign threats, not to import election denialism into the Intelligence Community,” Warner said. “Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
Having lived with Donald Trump’s infamous and baseless insult against them — “they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats” — Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are bracing for a far bigger injury.
More than 10,000 Haitians across Ohio and hundreds of thousands more around the country who had Temporary Protected Status now face the imminent prospect of deportation. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can halt those legal protections for Haitians and Syrians and resume forcing them to leave.
Justice Samuel Alito’s opinionfor the court’s Republican-appointed majority curbed the power of courts to review government decisions to terminate protections under the TPS program.
“They side with him on everything that he says or everything that he does, which means there is no check and balance,” said Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian TPS holder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, a town Trump catapulted into a maelstrom of misinformation about immigrants when he was running to retake the White House in 2024.
“The president has that freeway in front of him to do whatever he wants to do, unfortunately, and most of the time to a minority group of people,” added Dorsainvil, who has lived in the United States since 2020.
In a country rife with political and economic instability, Haitians returning from the U.S. are in danger of being killed or kidnapped, said Dorsainvil’s colleague at the Haitian Support Center, Rose Thamar Joseph.
“There is this perception in Haiti that if you are living here in the United States, you have money, so you are living your good life, so sending people back to Haiti will put them in real danger,” Joseph said.
Staying in the U.S. without legal status creates a different crisis.
“We received calls this morning from people saying that, unfortunately, starting on July 1, they won’t be able to go to work anymore,” Joseph said Friday.
Joseph predicted that families would be separated during the deportation process.
“We know that there will be separation,” she said. “A lot of those parents with TPS … they have kids who were born in the United States, so we know that it will happen, not for everybody, not for all the families, but it will happen,” she said.
The oncoming nightmare for the Haitian community in Springfield was, in many ways, predictable after Trump notoriously targeted them on the debate stage against then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the fall of 2024.
“They are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said without a shred of evidence, greatly amplifying an unfounded rumor that had been confined to smaller corners of social media.
That rhetoric continued Trump’s track record of racist languageparticularly when it comes to immigration, including during his first White House stint when he referred during his first to Haiti and other majority non-white nations as “shithole” countries.
Dorsainvil argued that the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday proved his beliefs are institutionalized, calling it “a validation of all those bad rhetorics of the president against us.”
Asked by MS NOW if those with TPS should expect to be deported, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, “Well, of course. If you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported.”
Miller, the architect of the administration’s immigration policy, went on to single out the Haitian population by name.
But the outcry against the court’s ruling blurs party lines in Ohio.
“Changing the immigration status of these individuals is not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio,” Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said.
Springfield’s Republican mayorRob Rue, has denounced Trump’s misinformation about his community as dangerous from the start.
“Many of the individuals affected by this decision are our neighbors, coworkers, business owners, taxpayers, and parents,” Rue said in a statement after the ruling came down. “They contribute to our local economy, support our schools, strengthen our neighborhoods, and have become part of the fabric of Springfield.”
Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.
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