The Dictatorship
The first case of Trump’s second term reaches the high court
It took less than a month for a case from Donald Trump’s second presidential term to reach the Supreme Court. The administration’s appeal stems from Trump’s attempt to fire a top government watchdog in a dispute that implicates long-standing precedent that protects independent federal agencies. How the justices handle it could give us the first glimpse of their thinking at this early stage of an already litigation-packed term.
The background here is that Trump sought to fire Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel. The OSC is an independent agency that protects federal employees and applicants from retaliation for whistleblowing and other protected practices (not to be confused with the Justice Department’s special counsels, like Jack Smithwho prosecuted Trump). A divided federal appeals court panel issued a ruling over the weekend that keeps Dellinger in his position for now, which prompted the administration to seek emergency relief from the high court.
Specifically, Trump’s acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, wants the court to undo a trial court judge’s temporary restraining order against the government — which is set to expire Feb. 26 — and to immediately pause the order while the justices consider the matter.
“This case involves an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers that warrants immediate relief,” Harris (a former Clarence Thomas clerk) wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency litigation from the District of Columbia. She cited the Roberts-authored immunity decision in Trump’s favor that touted the president’s power, as well as other recent rulings that enhanced presidential authority over federal agencies.
Harris cast Trump’s bid to remove Dellinger earlier this month as “uncontroversial,” while deeming the lower court reaction extraordinary. “Until now,” she wrote, “as far as we are aware, no court in American history has wielded an injunction to force the President to retain an agency head whom the President believes should not be entrusted with executive power and to prevent the President from relying on his preferred replacement.”
Absent emergency relief, Harris warned, lower courts would be “embolden[ed]” to grant restraining orders against the White House. “This Court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the President how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will,” she wrote.
The application comes as Harris recently wrote to Congress that the government is prepared to seek the reversal of a 1935 precedent called Humphrey’s Executorwhich has long protected agency independence.
Opposing the government’s high court bid, Dellinger’s lawyers wrote that the administration is trying to create an exception to the general rule that temporary restraining orders can’t be appealed. “To accept its theory and grant its request for relief would be to invite more of the same: a rocket docket straight to this Court, even as high-stakes emergency litigation proliferates across the country,” they wrote. They added that Humphrey’s Executor and other precedents cited by the government “all support the constitutionality of the OSC’s for-cause removal limitation.”
And they called it “an especially unfortunate moment at which to weaken the OSC, given the historic upheaval currently occurring within federal employment and the continued importance of ensuring that whistleblowers are guarded from reprisal.”
We could soon learn what Roberts and his colleagues make of all this. To be sure, they could issue a procedural-type ruling — such as lifting the restraining order for a brief period while they further consider the issue — that wouldn’t necessarily determine how the court will ultimately resolve the merits of the issue. And their eventual resolution as to the merits of Dellinger’s removal also won’t necessarily determine how they’ll deal with other agencies and lawsuits.
But whatever the court does decide will be scrutinized closely not only for what it means on this important issue but for any indications of how the court might treat Trump’s broader bid to consolidate power in his second term.
Subscribe to theDeadline: Legal Newsletterfor expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined BLN, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
The Dictatorship
Four statements made by DHS about Alex Pretti’s shooting — and what these videos show that contradict them
Statement #1: “An individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a news conference, adding that the suspect was “brandishing” a firearm.

Video shows Pretti had no visible firearm in his hands or on his body in the minutes before he interacted with immigration officers but was using a cell phone to record immigration raids in the area. This is allowable under the First Amendmentas long as it doesn’t interfere with law enforcement activity, such as an arrest.
The officers do not draw their firearms on Pretti, which would be standard training for how federal law enforcement should react if they see a suspect brandishing a gun.
The federal legal definition of “brandishing” is broad, stating that it doesn’t require the weapon to be directly visible, but that its presence is used to intimidate. There is no evidence from the video that Alex Pretti was using a gun for this purpose.
Statement #2: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement.”

One of the videos shows Pretti carrying a cell phone in his right hand and appearing to film immigration officers and agents in the area. It’s not yet known if he had had previous interactions with the officers or if this was the first encounter. The officers push him back by his chest to the curb; Pretti continues to keep his phone up, filming the interaction.
In another video, he is seen trying to help up a woman who is steps away and whom a masked officer has pushed down into the ice on a curb. Pretti immediately steps between the two, putting his left hand near the officer, who then pepper sprays him. Pretti raises his left arm and then lowers it as he turns around toward the woman who has been pushed down, the officer now behind him as he knocks Pretti to the ground, joined by several other agents.
Statement #3: “The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently.”

Pretti is seen struggling at first when at least three officers knock him to the ground, eventually joined by four more, but appears to be largely held down with his stomach to the ground and his arms in front of his body. Several moments into the officers’ effort to detail and control Pretti, an officer can be heard on video calling out “gun,” apparently to make fellow officers aware. Within a second or two, an agent fires the first shot. Pretti’s body crumples onto the ground.
A source close to the DHS probe told MS NOW that Pretti had a firearm in his holster, which agents retrieved at some point in the interaction. Minneapolis’ police chief said Pretti was a legal owner of a weapon with a permit to carry it.
Statement #4: “Fearing for his life and the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.”

Video shows Pretti’s hands pinned in front of him on the ground until he is shot, with no evidence he reached for a weapon. Some video clips appear to show another officer reaching towards Pretti’s waistband, retrieving something with his hand that looks like a gun, and stepping away. At roughly the same moment of the officer’s movement away from the suspect and has retrieved with his hand an object that appears to be a gun, someone can be heard saying “gun.”
The border patrol agent fires within a second or two of the officer retrieving this object. A total of ten shots were fired. In the aftermath of the shooting, however, video shows two officers desperately searching the dead man’s body and one yells emphatically, “Where’s the gun?” One officer over the body — and it’s not clear which — yells, “I need scissors. I need someone to cut this shit,” as he tugs at the dead man’s clothes.
Multiple seasoned law enforcement officers told MS NOW that they have been unable to see the justification for the shooting. Some said the video of the officers searching for a gun on Pretti’s dead body suggests to them that the agent who shot Pretti did so believing he had a weapon on his person that was an imminent threat when a fellow officer said “gun.”
If that is true, the officer may have wrongly believed Pretti posed an active threat to his life and the life of others. Earlier video of the fracas suggests instead that the firearm had been safely retrieved and the threat was removed.
Former FBI agent Rob D’Amico said that simply hearing the word “gun” does not authorize an officer in a scuffle to shoot to kill. “You have to see that gun be in a position for it to be used,” D’Amico said. “Many, many times I’ve been in situations like this, the gun has fallen on the ground and someone yelled ‘gun,’ and we didn’t just blindly shoot the person.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said in an interview on Face The Nation on Sunday that the videos make clear Pretti was simply engaging in his legal right to free speech, and did not start the confrontation with officers. He said the volume of shootings by “Operation Surge” officers makes plain that their protocols and methods are flawed and dangerous.
“The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone,” O’Hara said. “And now this is the second American citizen that has been killed. It’s the third shooting within three weeks.”
Additional reporting contributed by Ken Dilanian
Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.
The Dictatorship
NOT AGAIN: Federal officers shoot another person in Minneapolis… Developing…
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal immigration officer shot and killed a man Saturday in Minneapolis, drawing hundreds of protesters onto the frigid streets and ratcheting up tensions in a city already shaken by another fatal shooting weeks earlier.
Family members identified the man who was killed as Alex Prettia 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse who had protested President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in his city. After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and protesters clashed with federal immigration officers, who wielded batons and deployed flash bangs.
The Minnesota National Guard was assisting local police at the direction of Gov. Tim Walz, officials said. Guard troops were sent to both the shooting site and to a federal building where officials have squared off with protesters daily.
Information about what led up to the shooting was limited, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that federal officers were conducting an operation and fired “defensive shots” after a man with a handgun approached them and “violently resisted” when officers tried to disarm him.
In bystander videos of the shooting that emerged soon after, Pretti is seen with a phone in his hand but none appears to show him with a visible weapon.
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O’Hara said police believe the man was a “lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said during a news conference that Pretti had shown up to “impede a law enforcement operation.” She questioned why he was armed but did not offer detail about whether Pretti drew the weapon or brandished it at officers.
The officer who shot the man is an eight-year Border Patrol veteran, federal officials said.
Trump weighed in on social media by lashing out at Walz and the Minneapolis mayor.
Trump shared images of the gun that immigration officials said was recovered and said: “What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers?”
Trump, a Republican, said the Democratic governor and mayor are “are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric.”
Pretti was shot just over a mile from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good on Jan. 7, sparking widespread protests.
Pretti’s family released a statement Saturday evening saying they are “heartbroken but also very angry,” and calling him a kindhearted soul who wanted to make a difference in the world through his work as a nurse.
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed,” the family statement said. “Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
Video shows officers, man who was shot
In a bystander video of Saturday’s shooting obtained by The Associated Press, protesters can be heard blowing whistles and shouting profanities at federal officers on Nicollet Avenue.
The video shows an officer shoving a person who is wearing a brown jacket, skirt and black tights and carrying a water bottle. That person reaches out for a man and the two link up, embracing. The man, wearing a brown jacket and black hat, seems to be holding his phone up toward the officer.
The same officer shoves the man in his chest and the two, still embracing, fall back.
The video then shifts to a different part of the street and then comes back to the two individuals unlinking from each other. The video shifts focus again and then shows three officers surrounding the man.
Soon at least seven officers surround the man. One is on the man’s back and another who appears to have a canister in his hand strikes a blow to the man’s chest. Several officers try to bring the man’s arms behind his back as he appears to resist. As they pull his arms, his face is briefly visible on camera. The officer with the canister strikes the man near his head several times.
A shot rings out, but with officers surrounding the man, it’s not clear from where the shot came. Multiple officers back off the man after the shot. More shots are heard. Officers back away and the man lies motionless on the street.
The police chief appealed for calm, both from the public and from federal law enforcement.
“Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands,” the chief said. “We urge everyone to remain peaceful.”
Gregory Bovino of U.S. Border Patrol, who has commanded the Trump administration’s big-city immigration campaign, said the officer who shot the man had extensive training as a range safety officer and in using less-lethal force.
“This is only the latest attack on law enforcement. Across the country, the men and women of DHS have been attacked, shot at,” he said.
Walz said he had no confidence in federal officials and that the state would lead the investigation into the latest fatal shooting.
But Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said during a news conference that federal officers blocked his agency from the shooting scene even after it obtained a signed judicial warrant.
Amid the unrest, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats will not vote for a spending package that includes money for DHS. Schumer’s statement increases the possibility that the government could partially shut down on Jan. 30 when funding runs out.
Protests continue in Minneapolis
Protesters converged at the scene of the shooting despite dangerously cold weather.
At midday Saturday, the worst of an extreme cold wave was over, but the temperature was still -6 degrees (-21 Celsius).
After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home. One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo.” Agents elsewhere shoved a yelling protester into a car. Protesters dragged garbage dumpsters from alleyways to block the streets, and people who gathered chanted, “ICE out now” and “Observing ICE is not a crime.”
As dark fell, hundreds of people gathered quietly by a growing memorial at the site of the shooting. Some carried signs saying “Justice for Alex Pretti.” Others chanted Pretti’s and Good’s names. A doughnut shop and a clothing store nearby stayed open, offering protesters a warm place as well as water, coffee and snacks.
Caleb Spike said he came from a nearby suburb to show his support and his frustration. “It feels like every day something crazier happens,” he said. “What’s happening in our community is wrong, it’s sickening, it’s disgusting.”
___
The age of the man who was shot has been corrected to 37, per information from the police chief. The AP previously reported his age as 51 based on a hospital record.
___
Santana reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Giovanna Dell’Orto, Tim Sullivan and Sarah Raza in Minnesota, Jim Mustian in New York, Michael Catalini in New Jersey and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles also contributed.
The Dictatorship
Renée Fleming cancels Kennedy Center shows amid Trump-era changes
NEW YORK (AP) — Renée Fleming has withdrawn from two scheduled May appearances at the Kennedy Center, the latest in a wave of cancellations since President Donald Trump ousted the previous leadership and the new leadership’s announcement that the venue would be renamed the Trump Kennedy Center.
The Grammy-winning soprano was to have appeared with conductor James Gaffigan and the National Symphony Orchestra. Her decision is unsurprising; a year ago she resigned as “Artistic Advisor at Large,” citing the forced departures of Kennedy Center Chair David Rubenstein and its president, Deborah Rutter. The center itself referred to “a scheduling conflict” as the reason she dropped out of the May concerts.
“A new soloist and repertoire will be announced at a later date, and the remainder of the program remains unchanged,” reads a statement on the Kennedy Center web site that was posted this week. Fleming did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bela Fleck and Issa Rae are among the many other artists who have called off events at the Kennedy Center, which has been part of Trump’s broader attack on what he calls “woke” culture. Earlier this month, the Washington National Opera announced it was severing ties with the Kennedy Center, where it had performed since 1971.
The musical presenters Vocal Arts DC, who earlier this week called off three Kennedy Center concerts because of “financial circumstances,” announced Friday they had found new venues for such scheduled performers as tenor Benjamin Bernheim and pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson. Bernheim and Matheson will appear next month at George Washington University, where the Washington National Opera is staging two operas this spring.
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