Man shot and killed by federal agents in south Minneapolis this morning
startribune.comSounds like ICE's official word right now is that the guy had a gun.
But the video clearly indicates that they all tackled him to the ground and were wrestling him maybe 4 vs 1, before they all shot him together. I'm not quite sure how a gun can have come out of this. Maybe the guy while struggling on the ground happened to reach in the direction of someone's gun while getting curbstomped, I dunno.
What I'm most worried about is that Pam Bondi / Department of Justice refuses to investigate these or properly prosecute these cases. IE: The Renee Good case has a ton of FBI agents resigning because they've been told to focus on Good's "misbehavior" rather than the ICE Agent's aggression.
It will be up to the Minnesota police and justice system to investigate. We cannot expect anything from the DoJ/FBI here. As such, the prosecution case will be gimped, and I fear we will have nothing resembling justice in this case (or Renee Good's case either).
> At a news conference, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the man who was shot was a 37-year-old white man with no serious criminal history and a record that showed some parking tickets. Law enforcement sources said Saturday their records show Pretti had no serious criminal history.
> O'Hara said the man was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit. Records show that Pretti attended the University of Minnesota. State records show Pretti was issued a nursing license in 2021, and it remains active through March 2026.
Minnesota permit-to-carry requirements: https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/public-services-bca/firearm...
> Q: Do I have to disclose to a peace officer that I am a permit holder and carrying a firearm?
> A: Yes, upon request of a peace officer, a permit holder must disclose to the officer whether or not the permit holder is currently carrying a firearm.
So a U.S. citizen who is a legal, permitted gun owner with no outstanding criminal charges, legally carrying in public, who complies with the law and informs a DHS officer that they are legally carrying, is effectively subject to summary execution without due process. (The penalty for permitted carrying without possessing the physical permit card is $25 for a first offense and forfeiture of the weapon; it would've been his first offense per Minneapolis police.)
If ever there was a 2A violation, it's a federal officer shooting and killing a legal gun owner solely for possessing a gun in their presence.
Possessing a fire arm and having an encounter with law enforcement in the united states has long been a death sentence. You can find a multitude of videos online of cops doing stuff like getting the wrong address and beating on someones door and when that person opens the door with a gun in their hand and then the cops open fire, happens all the time.
But this person did not even have a gun in his hand. He had a gun on him, concealed. In fact, the video shows another ICE agent walking up to him and digging it out and taking it away. The execution happened after all of that.
The most likely situation is that he actually voluntarily told them that he has a firearm because he is a lawful gun owner with a concealed carry permit. Most gun owners know that this is the best way to interact with law-enforcement, for example, when you get pulled over. But we will not know because these agents do not wear body cams on purpose.
>The most likely situation is that he actually voluntarily told them that he has a firearm because he is a lawful gun owner with a concealed carry permit. Most gun owners know that this is the best way to interact with law-enforcement, for example, when you get pulled over. But we will not know because these agents do not wear body cams on purpose.
People have differing opinions, however the opinion most persuasive to me is you only tell them if asked unless the law requires otherwise. Volunteering you have a gun when there is no requirement to do so in my opinion adds unnecessary tension to the situation. IDK about in Minnesota, but in my state there is no duty to inform the police and you can basically only downsides to doing so, since they will be asking before you get into any situation where they're going to be going into your waistband to find out.
In one of the states I lived in, IIRC they changed the law to remove duty to inform because their cops had a history of executing people that informed them.
Oh, I completely agree in addition to murdering this man they violated his second amendment rights and will continue to violate them in justifying his murder.
ICE is not law enforcement any more, they are terrorist killer commandos now.
They're Nazi death squads. I've been screaming for a decade that this would be coming and now it's here. Update your threat modeling accordingly.
The writing was on the wall with the Patriot Act. “When we say you’re a terrorist, you lose all rights and protections” is merely a gradual difference to what is happening now.
Could downvoters explain why this is incorrect?
To me, this looks very much like testing the waters. Stephen Miller said, "To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity." ICE has blocked state law enforcement from investigations into the killings. ICE has said they're done with their investigation of the last one, and those fuckers are still working.
Aside from scale, what's the difference?
[EDIT:15-minute chunk of] video that lays out the evidence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThhm1-g1a8
Killer Commandos loyal to DJT.
I seem to recall the Bundys having no trouble pointing guns directly at law enforcement. They became cause celebres for the right.
The bundies had a whole militia, and the last time federal LEO challenged a militia of his size (Waco) they had like 700+ casualties due to inspiring McVeigh (he was there). They basically lost 20:1 versus the Davidians.
Cliven Bundy is still grazing his cattle on that BLM land to this day.
The bargain with law enforcement has always been that ostensibly if you comply, they will take you in peacefully. For obvious reasons, this is highly advantageous to both parties.
It seems like a foolish choice for them to reneg on this. They are essentially signaling that you are a trapped rat with no way out.
It is not foolish if you consider they are looking for their Reichstag fire.
> They are essentially signaling that you are a trapped rat with no way out.
It makes sense if making you feel like a trapped rat is the goal.
That’s true if you want to keep the peace. The way to read their actions is that they’re trying to incite violence.
If Trump can incite violence then he can invoke the insurrection act, or perhaps declare some form of martial law to seize more power. Perhaps even parlay this into cancelling the midterm elections.
Or simply that the current ICE and Border Patrol agents are too poorly trained to act as law enforcement.
Which, given the statistic that a decent percentage of ICE applicants can't get a passing score on an open book test [0] doesn't surprise me.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ice-is-reportedly-hiring-p...
> peace officer
What’s it called when you name something the complete opposite of what it is?
Not an oxymoron, because that’s about the concepts in the words.
the link returns 404 now
> So a U.S. citizen who is a legal, permitted gun owner with no outstanding criminal charges, legally carrying in public, who complies with the law and informs a DHS officer that they are legally carrying, is effectively subject to summary execution without due process.... a federal officer shooting and killing a legal gun owner solely for possessing a gun in their presence.
This completely misrepresents what happened.
Another source (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/man-tackled-by-ice-in-chao...) gives another claim from the same police chief:
> "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming."
And then, from the DHS:
> ...when a federal agent feared for his life, "an agent fired defensive shots." ... Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino said that the officer involved in the shooting "has extensive training," and that "the situation is evolving." Bovino added that the incident would be investigated.
(TFA includes the claim of self-defense.)
"Summary execution" and "without due process" is emotionally manipulative phrasing. It falsely implies that LEO use of lethal force is about punishment. It is not about punishment. It is about responding to perceived threat.
All this stuff about permit cards, the victim's lack of criminal history, etc. is irrelevant. It is not connected to the motivation for the shooting. There is nothing to establish that the shooting was "solely for" that possession, and LEO denies that claim. There is no plausible universe in which the officer says "please show me the permit for that weapon", Pretti says "I don't have it", and the officer shoots. But that's the narrative you appear to be trying to push.
> Another source (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/man-tackled-by-ice-in-chao...) gives another claim from the same police chief:
>> "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming."
You've misread your link. The "violently resisted" quote is from a tweet by DHS, not local police: https://xcancel.com/DHSgov/status/2015115351797780500
Direct multiple-paragraph quote:
> The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted on X further details about what led up to the shooting. "DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, seen here," the post reads.
> O'Hara said that Pretti was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit.
> "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming."
> The DHS wrote that when a federal agent feared for his life, "an agent fired defensive shots." The post also noted that the "suspect" had "2 magazines and no ID."
By any ordinary reading of prose, the article is attributing the quote to O'Hara.
The statement you say was O'Hara was made by McLaughlin (DHS employee). If the article implies otherwise, it's incorrect.
Here's the facts as I see them: A protestor who had a gun he was legally allowed to carry got involved in an incident with ICE/Border Patrol. The protestor was interacting with the agents and other protestors, at which point BP or ICE pepper sprayed him and took him down to the ground. At least 4 different federal officers were physically holding him. at this point it appears they disarmed him (unclear) and then shortly after, shot him.
At no point did the protestor hold the gun in a threatening way while approaching, when he was taken down he did not have a gun in his hands, and while down, it's very unlikely he could access the gun and use it in a way that any reasonable officer would feel unsafe and be required to shoot the protestor.
Based on the videos I've watched, the protestor made some ill-advised choices getting physically involved, but there was no reason for him to be shot. I read various online conservative communities (to try to understand their reasoning) and nearly all the posts I see seem to think that ICE/BP truly made an error here, possibly due to poor training.
I understand your point about the use of emotional terms, I try to avoid them and instead focus on facts and known unknowns, but in this particular situation, it's pretty clear that ICE/BP made an egregious error in a way that is clearly obvious to everybody (even those who would normally support the federal officers) and in denying this, the federal leadership is undermining itself. This is a situation where they could de-escalate and not immediately blame the protestor, while focusing on increasing the training of the ICE/BP officers, rather than taking an aggresive posture.
> egregious error
This would imply it was an unintentional mistake which is far from obvious. If they recognized it was an egregious error the perpetrators would be prosecuted and they won’t be.
> training of the ICE/BP officers
What makes you think it’s something they want to avoid repeating in the future? (Not /s)
You have at least two videos to watch and see if it was a situation requiring an execution.
No need to read press releases, your own eyes and ears.
The problem is some are using only their ears to listen to what they are told happened by those responsible for and overseeing the officers involved and refusing you use their eyes and watch the videos. It seems some just want to believe (a lie) and not dig into know the truth.
Yes, some people are still deep in the denial phase of the grief cycle [of losing our country]. I have many friends like that.
A funny thing about the "stages of grief" is that they are a total myth and the originator of the hypothesis never intended them to be abused this way.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross did her research solely on people who were dying: people with terminal illnesses, and she studied how they coped with facing their own mortality. Not how other people did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_K%C3%BCbler-Ross
And of course, even for a dying person, this may be total bunk. It is not like some programmed flowchart that people go through five stages of emotional stuff. This is just, like, a framework for further therapy.
I'm actually studying this stuff right now. In the 1980s and 1990s, "The Five Stages of Grief" were basically a household phrase, and everybody talked about them like they were real and true and invariable. But everyone doing the talking had never actually studied the research or even knew who proposed it. They were just parroting headlines.
Sure, the article is not the clearest, but the "violently resisted" quote is taken verbatim from the DHS tweet.
Just visit the link I posted, this will take you two seconds to verify.
DHS lies as easily as they breathe. They have proven they cannot be believed.
A previous example:
You can watch the video for yourself of an ICE masked thug grabbing a man's carotid artery, when NOT facing a deadly threat, against DOJ rules. You can watch him seize and his eyes roll back. And you can choose to believe your eyes or DHS' lies. What do you think, zahlman?
See full context here: https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigratio...
> In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said.
I suspect it won't matter to you, but there's clear footage now of officers having removed the gun from the suspect long before he was shot. He was pinned and prone when he was executed. Claiming this was "defensive" is just a lie.
I've watched four videos but haven't seen any footage (clear or otherwise) of gun removal. Can you post a link to clear footage of the removal?
One video [1] shows someone walking away from the scene with a gun a fraction of a second before the shooting begins. But I can't see that the gun was removed from the protester.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qlvpbr/footage_of_the...
Thanks. The link is to a Bellingcat analysis. They did great work on the Renee Good shooting, but in this case, they're describing stills from videos, and I can't see what they're seeing in the photos. The photos are just too fuzzy---at least for me, and I suspect for most other viewers.
I don't mean to diminish the importance of the shooting, which is horrific no matter what one makes of the photos.
I think it's factually correct to say that none of the videos give a truly clear view of the order of events (specfically with regards to whether the protestor could possibly have wielded their gun while being restrained by agents, or whether he is disarmed by the gray-jacketed agent, or what caused the agents to fire when they did).
It might be clearer if the agents were wearing bodycam videos and that footage was released.
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I think you completely and totally misread my comment and incorrectly imputed my intent. I am in no way allied with ICE, what they are doing is abhorrent and wrong. I'm not sure why you're attacking me or assuming I have a position completely opposite of the one I have. I used caveat words- "I think it's factual". That's the way somebody states their subjective opinion of what they believe the facts are.
I have nothing to quibble with the video you linked (which I think must have been released since I made my comment, or I missed it), that makes the order of events a lot clearer, I can see the gun being taken now, and the timing of the shot.
This construction:
> whether the protestor could possibly have wielded their gun while being restrained by agents, or whether he is disarmed by the gray-jacketed agent, or what caused the agents to fire when they did
Is a list of excuses for the shooting (to wit: "maybe he wielded the gun", "maybe he wasn't disarmed", "maybe they had cause to fire"). It's all things that would have (arguably) made it justified. You'll have to forgive me if I took that for a clear indication of your opinion here.
Like, if you look at something and say "Well, it looks like X happened, but I don't know", it's neutral. If you say "It looks like X happened, but I don't know because it could have been Y or Z instead', you're pretty clearly constructing a sideways argument that "X did not happen". And thus, you'll end up being painted as an X denialist by people on the internet too lazy to find your comment history.
LEO are also individuals who get due process rights. The law will generally require considering whether Y or Z happened if there's reason to suppose that it might have.
More importantly, when X is phrased in a way that implies intent or motives not in evidence, or plays up the injustice of X in legally irrelevant ways, that's reason to push back in an open Internet discussion.
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I think you're completely off base and this entire side thread is just a negative contribution to the discussion.
> but by engaging in this kind of framing you're essentially saying that all [state] violence is excusable by default
I disagree that it has that effect. With the assumption of good faith, comments like GP aren't fishing around for an excuse; the point is to highlight what's legally relevant and where there is room to disagree with the interpretation of video.
I don't think it's plausible that defense for the agents would clutch for a straw like "maybe he had a second weapon". That seems sarcastic and not interested in engaging with the argument seriously.
I've seen a couple different videos now (not from any links ITT) and the most commonly shown one seems to have something obscuring the camera at a critical moment. Nevertheless, it seems highly probable that the man is indeed disarmed well before the first shot. But there will still be more that matters:
* Was the first shot fired by an officer who knew that the weapon had already been taken? In particular, could there have been any miscommunication between the officers?
* Did the victim know the weapon had been taken? I don't think it would be likely to succeed in court, but to my understanding the defense could raise the argument that one or more officers perceived that the victim still intended to draw and fire it.
Ultimately, it boils down to establishing whether there was a reasonable perception, on the part of any officer that fired (I can't tell from the video I've seen who fired or how many shots or anything like that), of a threat from the victim meeting the legal standard to respond with lethal force. This is based on "totality of the circumstances" (as in things the officers knew leading up to the moment of shooting), but specifically based on what a reasonable officer would have been able to deduce in the moment (a high-pressure situation), without the benefit of hindsight.
Most analyses I've seen thus far agree that there was not any solid defense here. Certainly it seems much more likely that someone is going to prison for this than in the Renee Good case. The DHS says they will be investigating.
> (I can't tell from the video I've seen who fired or how many shots or anything like that)
You can’t count the number of gunshots? Huh. And here I thought your handle meant zahl + man.
I can't hear or see them, no. The video footage available isn't high enough quality. There's too much chaos, people are using phones that they can't hold steady, etc.
The phone not being steady matters for sound recording? How?
people still insist it was a roman salute too
There was a lot of background noise, you know, with all the shouting and whistles and such.
I did later find video where the gunshots are much more clear.
> I don't know if this is your intent or not, but by engaging in this kind of framing you're essentially saying that all violence[1] is excusable by default. We're supposed to live in a society where the opposite is true, I thought.
> [1] All violence by your allied authority figures, that is. We both know you wouldn't grant the same grace and charity to the intentions of the protestors.
This is a disgraceful ad hominem attack. The previous poster's comment is entirely sensible, and it takes a great deal of intellectual dishonesty to portray it as a defense of ICE in any way.
> This is a disgraceful ad hominem attack.
An ad hominem argument is an argument constructed around characteristics of a person outside the bounds of what is being discussed. Inferring someone's opinion[1] about the subject under discussion from their text, and explicitly marking so in my text when doing so, is just "debate". Am I wrong? Say I'm wrong and cite why.
Don't call me "disgraceful". Why? Because THAT is an ad hominem attack. In fact the clear offense being taken makes it pretty clear to me that my point landed closer than maybe you're prepared to admit.
[1] You cleverly skipped the point where I even admitted I might be wrong!
> Don't call me "disgraceful". Why? Because THAT is an ad hominem attack.
You're right about that. I'm sorry.
No further comment from me in this thread.
So, yes, the second sentence in their [1] is a clear ad hominem but this is a pretty wild take:
> it takes a great deal of intellectual dishonesty to portray it as a defense of ICE in any way
Regardless of your opinion, I'll portray it as a defense of ICE, anyway.
> > So a U.S. citizen who is a legal, permitted gun owner with no outstanding criminal charges, legally carrying in public, who complies with the law and informs a DHS officer that they are legally carrying, is effectively subject to summary execution without due process.... a federal officer shooting and killing a legal gun owner solely for possessing a gun in their presence.
> This completely misrepresents what happened.
I don't strictly disagree with the idea that "solely for having a gun" is a misrepresentation, either (after all, the ICE agents had guns and they weren't executed), but it's not a "complete" misrepresentation. (The actual misrepresentation is that the victim was helping someone who was being abused by the agents and he had a gun.) Calling it a "complete misrepresentation" is seeking to emotionally prime the reader against the supposed illogic in the parent comment. That is indeed a defense of the ICE agents (and such defenses and excuses can be seen throughout their comment history, hence, I presume, the ad hominem).
Somehow, still, I doubt that's the framing zahlman would accept about the situation, especially given their (obvious) defense of ICE's actions in their initial comment. Yes, the ad hominem statement you refer to should not have been included. But it is surely not intellectually dishonest regardless of how inappropriate it is for this forum. Given the quote from their initial comment, it seems that said dishonesty cuts the other direction.
The ad hominem attack was addressed to dekhn, not me. So whether I defend ICE generally is irrelevant to assessing the accusation "We both know you wouldn't grant the same grace and charity to the intentions of the protestors."
But also, my defense is not about treating protestors uncharitably. Telling me "We both know you wouldn't grant the same grace and charity to the intentions of the protestors." would still be ad hominem, because my arguments do not rely upon protestors being malicious.
Except for the physical obstruction of justice aspect, which isn't in question. 1A doesn't give people the right to get in an LEO's way when that officer is actively trying to enforce law. Protestors shouldn't physically be in the path of on-duty law enforcement if they expect not to get arrested. Arrest is a natural consequence of "civil disobedience". For a more extreme example, "freedom of assembly" for me and my friends does not extend as far as "assembling" in a tight circle around you that denies your freedom of movement. (Note: I am neither an American citizen nor an American resident, but these principles are not difficult to understand, and not sufficiently different from Canadian law to matter for this discussion.)
But for example in the Good case, I don't believe she intended to run over the officer, but that doesn't matter to the officer's perception of threat. And in point of fact, he was struck (although NYT reported that he wasn't "run over", and then other outlets presented this as if he wasn't struck).
At no point did I claim not to be defending the ICE agents, so let's please not talk about intellectual dishonesty there.
----
Regarding the bit you quoted from me:
I responded prematurely to the situation based on my experience from every single previous discussion of ICE agents I found myself in. I don't see how there's a problem with offering a defense of ICE in general. You can't just say that one side of an argument is barred, if you're going to have a discussion at all. (And the reason HN permits political submissions like this is because they want people in tech to have discussions. The relationship of the story to tech is tangential at best.)
I said "completely misrepresents" because "solely for having a gun" is completely false, and because it should be rejected as absurd a priori. That's just not how entanglements with law enforcement play out, and ignores that probably many lawful gun owners were rightly ignored (given that MN allows concealed carry of handguns). People are seriously now arguing as if they believe that a Republican government is stripping away 2A rights by force. I don't understand how that could possibly pass anyone's sniff test.
But I also said it because it's part of a long string of loaded language — the stuff I went on to dissect. The victim's virtue is played up, seemingly to make the event seem more egregious, even though it's clearly irrelevant to the cause of action. Or else it's being played up to try to bolster the "solely for" case by denying other reasons for the shoot. Regardless of whether it was justified (I agree that it will likely not be found justified), the actual cause of action is clear.
(Having seen multiple videos now, I can't hear the part where Pretti supposedly "informs a DHS officer that he is legally carrying". The part where one of the officers is shouting about he has a gun, would seem to contradict that; because it comes across that the officer first saying it is surprised to see that he has a gun.)
Most importantly, "effectively subject to summary execution without due process" is an unreasonable way to characterize LEO use of lethal force, both in general and I believe in this specific instance. One or more people messed up and this guy shouldn't have gotten shot. But that is miles away from what it would actually take to justify that phrasing. That would require:
* everyone who shot could clearly see, from their own perspectives, that the gun had already been taken away;
* before firing, they took enough time to respond to that change in the situation;
* at the time of firing, they had the mens rea that the victim should die as punishment for what had happened up to that point.
These are simply things that you can't prove with video footage like this. I can't even tell who shot. It's a chaotic scramble recorded from distant third-person perspectives, with important parts of the action obscured from line of sight by other important parts of the action. Yes, there's enough to see the gun being taken away before gunshots (apparently) but that's a lucky break considering everything else. (When I first saw the footage from the angle on the street, I thought it was happening on the sidewalk rather than in front of the parked car; of course the other angle being from the sidewalk disproves that.)
Anyway, I simply can't fathom how you think that the term "complete misrepresentation" is "seeking to emotionally prime the reader". Like, what words could I possibly use instead that aren't supposedly emotionally manipulative, given that I actually did sincerely consider the statement a complete misrepresentation?
For that matter, I think your characterization "helping someone who was being abused by the agents and he had a gun." is still misrepresentative. He was obstructing and resisting. And, yes, he had a gun, which is dangerous any time one gets in a physical altercation with any kind of LEO. People with CC permits should understand that.
How is this relevant regardless? Concealed carry is not illegal and even in places where it might be its usually not grounds for a summary execution.
> "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming."
This has already been proven to be a lie thanks to the five different videos of the incident in question. They shot him after removing his legal weapon for concealed carry that he was permitted to have on his person.
Show me one of them. Show me how you think it demonstrates such a thing. Make sure it is something that starts well before the actual apprehension.
In this video you can see the agent in the gray coat and baseball cap remove the gun from Pretti's waistband: https://files.catbox.moe/sp296e.mp4
Here is a stabilized version: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qlyj9h/i_did_...
After that agent takes the gun, the agent standing immediately to the left draws and fires into Pretti's back.
https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qlvpbr/footage_of_the...
Prediction: no answer
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You say that as if there were something inherently wrong with offering such a defense. That is simply not so.
It is, in fact, possible for shootings by LEO to be justified. And the federal ICE agents are, in fact, law enforcement. Walz and/or Frey are factually incorrect when they assert otherwise, it's trivially looked up, relevant legal statues like 8 U.S. Code § 1357 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357) are quite clear about the agents' powers (which as an objective matter of fact do include situations where they may arrest US citizens without a warrant), and Walz and Frey have no real excuse for their false assertions.
You don't have to like laws that entitle law enforcement to use lethal force in limited circumstances (which seem to be only slightly broader than those extended to ordinary citizens), but the US does in fact have such laws, at both state and federal level. And the consequence of not having them, practically speaking, is that criminals kill officers and/or go free.
And as it happens, there's a clear defense in the Good case. I've already pointed at actual lawyers saying the same and explaining it in detail. And my submission of that (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46596055) got flagged for no good reason.
Thanks. I watched the videos. It's a horrific event. But I can't see that either of the videos shows a gun being removed from a protester. At the end of [2], someone does seem to walk away from the scene holding a gun, just a fraction of a second before the shooting begins. But I can't see any point at which a gun is removed from a protester.
> Frankly if you don't change your opinion after this, then I'm going to either assume you're a federal agent attempting to maintain the propaganda line or so absolutely psychotic that you belong well and away from proper society.
I am not watching your videos just because you said this. I approached the situation with a respectful disagreeing opinion and the information available to me. Everyone else here is being unreasonable and completely in violation of commenting guidelines.
Not OP, and not going to call you a fed or psychotic, but I recommend watching the videos if you'd like to form an educated opinion on this situation.
Although I normally avoid these videos I did sit through all the ones I could find, and I strongly recommend watching them.
> I am not watching your videos
Oooph. Just watch it.
When everyone else is incorrect, perhaps it is time to reevaluate your understanding.
"It is not about punishment."
I’m not sure how you can possibly make that assertion. They disarmed him and then they shot him.
> They disarmed him and then they shot him.
So you're saying you can show me a video where it's clear that the gun is in an LEO's physical possession, everyone involved clearly has time to update on this information, and someone makes an evidently conscious decision to shoot him anyway, despite him clearly no longer posing a physical threat?
Really?
Because otherwise, it is not about punishment.
It couldn't be any clearer, that is the weapon from the photos of the victim's gun. This changed my mind, the man was shot AFTER he was disarmed.
Bellingcat: https://bsky.app/profile/bellingcat.com/post/3md7banbjks2x
These investigators are not amateurs, and that’s putting it lightly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingcat
> conscious
Depends on how you define the word. But yes?
Their decision to escalate the situation in the first place is a clear indication of that.
> no longer posing a physical threat?
Can you show a video of the gun leaving its holster before that then? Or are you saying that merely possessing a firearm regardless of circumstances is grounds for an immediate execution?
It’s murder. They murdered him mate.
These are not the people who deserve benefit of the doubt. They have already amply demonstrated what they are capable of. Indeed, they even openly boast of it.
Really. That is exactly what happened.
> "Summary execution" and "without due process" is emotionally manipulative phrasing.
It's exactly what this was, though. He was disarmed before being shoved to the ground and beaten with a gas grenade. There is another video which shows that his hands are on the ground or in front of his face, the entire time he's down, long before he's shot.
Watch the fucking videos.
> This completely misrepresents what happened.
Didn't age so well. You took the narrative very easily. Might consider "Why".
DHS has yet to release a factually accurate statement about any ICE-involved violence, you really think this time they're telling the truth?
You know you can watch the videos yourself
Honestly, man, there is no other answer to this than this: you are a nazi sympathizer.
Someone captured the beginning of the shooting victim’s interaction with ICE. It certainly doesn’t look as though the person is aggressive or brandishing a weapon.
The DHS public statement that the victim was going to “do maximize damage and massacre law enforcement” is outrageous…
ICE has regularly attacked protesters and bystanders who are simply recording, walking away and so on.
Even people just driving through their neighborhood have been dragged out of their vehicles and apprehended. Citizen or otherwise doesn’t seem to matter.
They aren’t professionals and operate with neither the training, nor the will to obey the law.
Much of the time they seem to believe trying to bait folks into an encounter
https://www.reddit.com/r/ICE_Raids/comments/1q7u4kz/ice_agen...
https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1q7y43s/cbp_poin...
In my area all the non white folks don’t come to the bus stop anymore to pickup their kids. Their kids are instructed to race home after school. The schools now have lockdown protocols for ICE. Family businesses opened for decades closed because employees are afraid to come to work.
> Much of the time they seem to be trying to bait folks into an encounter
Those are kids playing to be cops. If the PS5 was affordable to people with such a low level of education they'd be playing CoD at home.
It is so strange seeing local cops deal with crowds vs ICE. ICE is just looks like a mob milling about. Some taking time to argue with protesters, others wandering alone aimlessly.
Local cops dealing with protesters are organized, rarely trying to bait anyone into anything.
I sure hope they're not pretending to be police considering they kill about ~1,200 people/year in the US (compared to about two in the UK).
These numbers are hard to compare. It seems that ICE's killing rate in kills per serving man hour is outrageously high, but I don't have numbers on this.
> They aren’t professionals and operate with neither the training, nor the will to obey the law.
Many of them are experienced and trained. The man who shot Renee Good served in Iraq, worked for Border Patrol for two decades and was literally a firearms instructor[1].
This is just what cops, reactionaries and psychopaths will do when they know that they have carte blanche to do anything they want, including murder.
No amount of "training" will fix this. It isn't an accident, it isn't incompetence, it is deliberate and wanton.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good#Jon...
Yes. Stepping in front of cars to give reason to shoot occupants was a repeated pattern in the Border Patrol, while against standard practice for most law enforcement.
So assuming it's random lack of training when he does it again seem far too charitable.
Citation for anyone interested[1].
He also has a history of doing exactly this before. It's the second time he was "struck" by a moving vehicle after purposely putting himself in his purported harms way. Who knows how many times he's practiced for this murder before.
If the video somehow didn't do it, the "fucking bitch" not even seconds after pulling the trigger would put any one of us away for murder.
[1] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/us-border-agents-i...
>>The schools now have lockdown protocols for ICE<<
if the day ever came for ICE to breach a locked down school, and extract minors, that could be a tipping point.
They've already breached churches and hospitals to extract people. And they've already arrested 5-year-old minors. Its only a matter of time before they move to schools.
'They are circling our schools,' superintendent says after 5-year-old detained by ICE - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/they-are-circling-our-scho... - January 23rd, 2026
They raided a preschool in Chicago and kidnapped a preschooler in Minneapolis
> ICE has regularly attacked protesters and bystanders who are simply recording, walking away and so on.
> Even people just driving through their neighborhood have been dragged out of their vehicles and apprehended. Citizen or otherwise doesn’t seem to matter.
I have seen many claims of this sort, but every single time there's been video available of the incident, it's become clear to me that nothing of the sort is going on. The people "being dragged out of vehicles" have been refusing lawful orders and then being arrested for it. The people "simply recording" are physically interfering with ICE going where they need to go to do what they're there to do. "Walking away" doesn't remotely describe anything I've seen.
As for the race issue, the ICE officers I've seen have been considerably more racially diverse than the protesters.
But no, being a citizen does not, in fact, matter if you are breaking federal law in the presence of a federal agent, and that law includes obstruction of federal justice. All of this is extremely clear in law. Please have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NosECXHMGFU.
----
This comment, like many others I've made on the topic, has been completely illegitimately flagged. I'm getting rather tired of that. There's nothing objectionable or counter to guidelines in the above, and all of it reflects my true thoughts based on my actual experience of the discourse, the evidence available to me, the legal code I've researched, etc.
It perhaps just doesn't agree with your point of view.
You're being flagged for good reason, you're not a victim here.
You refuse to watch the videos, but you're still defending the regime. Why?
I question the moral integrity of anyone who would defend this administration without all the available info.
I'm glad you're being flagged, because I've been disappointed with how folks here have been surprisingly flaccid when it comes to condemning this regime. The day that I come here and find posts like yours in the majority will be the last day I visit.
I've been here since 2016. I have never, not even once, downvoted any comment on HN. Today I downvoted every single of that person's comment in this thread. That discourse does not deserve to be heard, much less to occupy attention and debate.
Including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 , which also was flagged?
Can you please explain to me how it violates HN guidelines in any way? Or how any of it is untrue? For example, do you disagree that 8 U.S. Code § 1357, as cited, empowers ICE to arrest US citizens without a warrant in specific circumstances, specifically relating to obstructing them from doing their original job? Do you disagree that ICE are, contra the public claims of Walz and Frey, LEO? Did you see my submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46596055, and can you articulate a problem with it?
Including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46749406 , in which I explicitly acknowledged that I do not think this particular shooting was justified?
I already explained repeatedly: I responded hastily based on priors, and then responded poorly to someone who insulted me.
When I initially said:
> All this stuff about permit cards, the victim's lack of criminal history, etc. is irrelevant. It is not connected to the motivation for the shooting. There is nothing to establish that the shooting was "solely for" that possession, and LEO denies that claim. There is no plausible universe in which the officer says "please show me the permit for that weapon", Pretti says "I don't have it", and the officer shoots. But that's the narrative you appear to be trying to push.
Do you think any of that is incorrect? Which part specifically, and why?
And, to be clear, you were okay with me being called a "nazi sympathizer" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46754655)?
I just vouched for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748563 , which was flagged and killed. Do you think it violates HN guidelines? How exactly? Because I legitimately don't understand.
ICE shot a woman 5 times while she was alone in her car. Body cam confirmed she did not resist, federal investigation failed to produce charges.
But yeah, it's just not happening, you couldn't possibly just be unaware
Edit: you literally said "i will not watch the videos" - you are admittedly willfully ignorant on the subject, your posts are therefore irrelevant
> The people "being dragged out of vehicles" have been refusing lawful orders and then being arrested for it.
"Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" — Martin Luther King Jr.
> But no, being a citizen does not, in fact, matter if you are breaking federal law in the presence of a federal agent, and that law includes obstruction of federal justice.
“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” — Henry David Thoreau
> All of this is extremely clear in law.
“Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” — Henry David Thoreau
Amongst other stuff you just said.. not everything a law enforcement officer says is a lawful order by definition. If they are running around harassing, assaulting and arresting people with a due cause that’s still illegal.
> I have seen many claims of this sort, but every single time there's been video available of the incident, it's become clear to me that nothing of the sort is going on.
Have you considered the potential bias that people are dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video? Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity. That seems an obvious assumption. Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning?
> This comment, like many others I've made on the topic, has been completely illegitimately flagged. I'm getting rather tired of that.
> It perhaps just doesn't agree with your point of view.
I don't really agree with the flags but this casual dismissal of "you just don't like it" is not helping you to understand the actual reasons others may have to flag (and downvote, which I do agree with). For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling regardless of said someone's self-perception of their commentary. You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all.
> Have you considered the potential bias that people are dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video?
All such video has been third-person perspective, so no.
> Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity.
In the cases where video shows events prior to the arrest, it shows justification for the arrest. Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification. So why would I take claims at face value about the existence of unjustified arrests where nobody started recording before the arrest?
> Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning?
The repeated prior experience of seeing people make reports, look them up, and find that they've been misrepresented, yes.
> For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling
I disagree that this is a legitimate reason to flag a comment, according to my reading of the guidelines.
"The videos" doesn't refer to a specific set of videos. I'm talking here about cases where people claimed that something (not the incident that OP is about) had happened in a specific way, and I had already seen video that disproved the narrative. If they saw a different video, or a clip of the video, or a social media rumour, and their emotions are running high because they can't imagine a justification, that isn't my fault.
(For example, a sibling comment is pushing the "kidnapping and arresting" narrative for the child taken directly back to his home. We already saw during Trump's first term that the activists will raise hue and cry about "families being separated" by ICE; now they can't put the family together either.)
And I'm talking about cases where people bring up some other random thing that they totally know happened, that I haven't heard of at all, and they don't proactively bring evidence but how dare I not know about it. Always described with a flurry of emotionally charged language. My priors are that all of this will evaporate under scrutiny, because of what I have experienced before when trying to look into things. This extends generally to protests of this nature before the current administration's use of ICE, too.
And I'm talking about cases where people seem to have entirely wrong ideas about what the law actually permits. I get flagged, for example, when I make posts that consist of nothing but the evidenced truth about ICE's legal powers and what is or isn't a legitimate protest action. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452.
It's hard for me not to perceive that I get flagged for no reason other than being on "the wrong side" of a contentious political issue, because people can't fathom that an honest person who tries to research claims could possibly disagree with them so starkly in good faith.
But I do research these claims (although there's only so much time I'm willing to put into them).
I did research this story.
And I already previously reported back (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750401) that I now generally agree that this specific shooting looks unjustified (certainly it at least requires an investigation, which I would have said anyway, like for any high-profile LEO use of lethal force).
I'm just not going to continue a direct chain of replies with people who openly insult me. I'm still human.
Meanwhile, comments where people just openly go "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi", "fascist, fascist, fascist", spewing outrage without substance, stay visible incognito.
> You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all.
This is effectively intimidation.
> See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452.
I see why your post was flagged. You argued that the Good shooting was justified by referencing a video in which "laywer" (who has links to paypal and patreon, I guess his law career is going great) among other things called her in his words "motorist who was blocking traffic" (ignoring that some other SUV easily drove past Good's car in the same video a few seconds before) and where he said the officer was "trying to get from in front of the car" while the officer clearly was trying to block the car's path while approaching the car. If the officer was trying to unblock the road he would not block the car. If the officer was trying to stop the car he could shoot the tires. It's clear he wanted to kill the driver. And that's not a justification
> Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification.
Don't forget ANY video you see on social media has incentives for something or something else.
> I see why your post was flagged. You argued...
Your objection to this boils down to a simple disagreement with the findings, and unjustified ad hominem. (There is no good reason to doubt that Nate the Lawyer is in fact a lawyer: he asserts so and makes appropriate disclaimers on his channel, he clearly shows reasoned legal arguments, he's been interviewed by others who accept the claim, he is accepted by all the other well-known lawyers on Youtube, etc.) I could have posted different analyses by other lawyers; most of what I've seen has been rather more strident and more at risk of offending those who think the shooting unjustified. In fact, as far as I can tell, LegalEagle is the only prominent lawyer on Youtube who disagrees that the Good shooting was justified, repeating a common pattern. Whereas many other Youtube lawyers concur that the Pretti shooting is at least problematic.
I hope you'll pardon me for not hiring a lawyer and paying just to get an opinion and copy-paste it to HN.
Flags cause posts to be hidden from logged-out public view. They warrant, therefore, that a comment violates guidelines and needs to be censored rather than simply being disputed.
Consequently, "you argued [something I disagree with]" doesn't become a reason to flag a post in itself.
----
As for the substance of your disagreement: I'm not going to get into my disagreements on things I've already repeatedly rehashed, but this argument is new to me:
> If the officer was trying to unblock the road he would not block the car. If the officer was trying to stop the car he could shoot the tires.
First off, no, the point is that he was responding to a reasonably perceived threat of death or serious injury. It has nothing to do with either of those things.
Second, now that she has blocked the road and repeatedly refused to leave (including the interaction with Ross before the other officers arrive), she is being detained, and probably under arrest. That is a response to the obstruction, which is a federal crime (because they are LEO being obstructed) committed in the federal officers' presence, giving them the right (as LEO) to perform an arrest under https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357 (a)(5). That's what was going on before she initiated the 2-point turn. The agents' presumed desire to have a clear road does not obligate them to take actions that would lead to a clear road; and it especially does not obligate them to let someone go free after committing a crime.
Third, it would have been quite impossible from his vantage point as the car starts moving forward, because the hood of the car would be in the way. He could only possibly shoot at the tires once he is will clear of the vehicle to its side; even then, he was struck and knocked off balance which would have made it quite difficult to aim with that intent.
Fourth, the law admits the possibility (which I agree with Nate is likely to hold up in court) of justifying shooting at Good specifically because of a self-defense argument. That argument could not apply if Ross managed to get out of the way and then started firing after that point. (It does cover shooting multiple times, including from the side, because human reflexes and police training to fire multiple shots come into play; the shots can easily be argued, with abundant precedent, to represent a single decision to fire the weapon.) And it certainly could not apply to shooting the tires of the vehicle. In general, LEO don't shoot at tires, for many good reasons that are easily looked up (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=can+officers+shoot+tires).
> All such video has been third-person perspective, so no.
Do you think it is not worth considering?
> This is effectively intimidation.
I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word). Again, you're not going to get anywhere with complaints about the responses to your comments.
> Do you think it is not worth considering?
Because it is third-person video, "dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video?" is moot. There is nothing preventing the third person from starting the recording earlier, and indeed they have done so in many cases.
> I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word).
I read it just fine. You speak of more "thoughtful" posting, but I can find no charitable way to interpret this, because I am not violating HN guidelines but I am getting flagged anyway. I notice that you ignored the point about other people flagrantly violating guidelines without consequence because they have the approved opinions. I also notice that you did not try to defend the flagging of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 . Instead, you argue that it is my responsibility to not let other people perceive my strong disagreement as inherently trolling, or else not post at all.
The net effect of this is to suppress strongly dissenting opinions, under threat of further community action ("flags and downvotes... will keep coming (on this topic) until..."). Hence, intimidation.
You're being downvoted because you're being wilfully obtuse, not because you're a bootlicker.
Tell me what legal rationale ICE had to detain and kidnap a 5 year old US citizen.
Tell me the legal rationale for ICE abducting an employee from a Target beating him up and dropping him off bruised and covered in blood at Walmart at miles away.
ICE has been turned into a paramilitary political mafia to harass and harm the administrations political opponents and racial outgroups.
They've repeatedly been found in federal court to have violated the constitutional rights of citizens and non-citizens alike but Congress has shown no spine to reign in the executive which has willfully spurned these rulings.
Turn the blind eye to this at your own peril. History has shown that fascism does not stop acting only against people that you disagree with
* * *
Pam Bondi's Department of Justice will be worse. They're the ones who are in charge of investigating this. I expect the FBI under her to support ICE and defend them with all their might.
The checks and balances at the federal level are all captured. Support Minnesota in this troubling time.
No one will be held to account as long as Trump or his collaborators are in power.
If anyone views the current situation as a problem, there is no viable solution that doesn’t involve removing MAGA from power.
The very first thing Trump administration did after assuming office was fire almost all the Inspectors General. Seems obvious, foreboding and foreshadowing, it was to sweep away any independent oversight and accountability.
Oh boy the hand waving away at the time. Now the other shoe is dropping.
Yeah but you shoulda seen the look on his face after the government killed him and edited the image!
> What I'm most worried about is that Pam Bondi / Department of Justice refuses to investigate these or properly prosecute these cases.
Law enforcement above accountability is a hallmark sign of “too far gone”.
Law enforcement is one thing but when Washington sends war-fighters into a state against the will of the state's leadership, somebody has got to be prepared to take some casualties if there is any resistance.
The greater the force and amount of armament, the worse it can end up becoming.
It wasn't good when it happened in the 19th century either.
War-fighter is a generous description given the preparedness of the agents they’re sending. This is how they’re behaving against disorganized whistle-blowing confrontational citizens, not e.g. an ideologically-motivated separatist militia.
I know what you mean when the lack of training and integrity stands out.
What I see is that some of them seem to display even more of a killer attitude than professional soldiers, and bring a whole additional supply of firepower to each scene when they arrive that was not in the equation before.
With that level of highly-armed government-initiated risk introduced, it looks like in almost any neighborhood where there is normally about zero yearly risk of someone being killed, when the "troops" are sent in the risk skyrockets.
On a daily basis too which is too frequent to ignore and a virtually incalculable increase, but you don't need numbers to see how bad it is.
> What I'm most worried about is that Pam Bondi / Department of Justice refuses to investigate these or properly prosecute these cases.
There’s a lot to be worried here, but I’m surprised that’s what you are more worried about
There is no doubt in my mind that the the current DOJ won’t lift a finger against any of the agents involved
Hmm... well maybe I need to explain my fear better.
Because Pam Bondi/DoJ refuses to prosecute these cases, this will _keep happening_ for the foreseeable future. There's no reason for ICE to stop this behavior.
Its not today's crime that scares me most. Its the easily predicted future where this gets worse by next month.
The converse is the rise of the far-left. We're already seeing Black Panther patrol with long-guns rise up in these times in response to this. I expect more guns and more deadly force, and no one is doing anything to put a stop to it.
--------
The left is losing faith in strictly peaceful protest. At least some of them (ie: the Black Panthers forming patrol militia).
The right refuses to prosecute murders. This is the worse problem.
Where does this lead? Is it too late to stop? Its easily stopped if Pam Bondi simply did an investigation into the use of deadly force. That's the saddest part of all of this.
The [white] Heritage Foundation has many binders on how to mitigate/quash peaceful protests.
We don't live in the time of Ghandi anymore.
the DOJ won't and that's why it happened again only a few days after Renee Good, and will continue to happen.
It's not just that the DOJ won't investigate. It's actively preventing the state from investigating either.
if this continues, it's going to explode, and I think that's part of the plan, to provide cover for invoking the Insurrection Act and imposing martial law
It's always been strange to me that Americans are allowed to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights...until they get killed by police. Then they should've known not to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.
Everything makes much more sense when you realize that the conservative project is not about universal application of rights. It is a system of hierarchies. They have rights. We do not. They can carry firearms. We are violent maniacs trying to massacre cops (according to Bovino) and deserve what's coming.
The 2nd amendment was more about suppressing slave revolts than liberating slaves.
Yeah, it's almost like people walking around with guns is a bad idea.
Yeah, somebody should do something about that. Masked men with guns and unlimited immunity aren't good to have around in your community.
Oh, wait, you meant the victim.
Por qué no los dos?
(To borrow a meme.)
You might as well imagine no religion while you're at it. It's easy if you try... but it's not going to happen.
So we might as well stop arguing that the government should have a monopoly on tools of violence. These people should be afraid of us, and not the other way around.
>"Yeah, it's almost like people walking around with guns is a bad idea."
When those people are ICE it definitely is. I think those motherfuckers should be wearing straightjackets
Same goes for law enforcement, but it's a Constitutional right that the right does not want to amend.
The group of Americans who are the loudest at cheering for the 2nd Amendment rights are cheering for ICE these days. To them, "the security of a free State" means that it has a caste system with the "good guys" at the top, and when ICE goons execute Minnesotans, they see brave armed citizens fighting back against the tyranny of wokeness.
The truth of this hurts my soul
What I've observed is that Americans like to put themselves higher than other cultures due to their second amendment rights (and first, but that's neither here nor there), but when push comes to shove there's actually no real positive outcomes that come from having a country with it's citizens armed to the extent that Americans are.
And we've seen what allowing people to promote hate speech with no restraint does to a nation.
When it's over, and it will be, Americans need to start from scratch, iterate and write a new constitution, create new institutions and build a new system.
We've also seen what very rigid hate speech policing does to a nation in Germany... and AfD seems to be doing pretty well.
It's almost as if those laws are mostly just performative bullshit that doesn't actually prevent the spread of violent ideologies when the environment is conductive to them.
Fair, but we need to account for the influence of the 1st-amendment-propelled far right discourse in the US on German politics to know how (in)effective German speech laws are.
>> Sounds like ICE's official word right now is that the guy had a gun.
Look at the gray agent taking the victim weapon, that had just been pepper sprayed. He was disarmed before being killed.
"Footage of the grey coat officer retrieving the gun" - https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qlvpbr/footage_of_the...
What's important to understand is you can do everything lawful, and they will still lie about you and kill you.
If the Right does end up defending this, I don't see how they are compatible with the USA that I was taught to believe in my whole life.
That ship has sailed so long ago it's beyond the horizon at this point. Of course the right is going to defend this. We know exactly how this will play out. They will respond just like they have to every other assault and murder committed by ICE in the past year.
The top people in govt all the way down will completely lie about the victim and situation, despite plenty of video evidence that shows them as liars. Absolutely nothing will happen to these scumbag murderers, and another murder just like this will happen again soon.
Many people will be horrified but conservatives will continue cheering this on. This is the country we live in now.
Ironically, all the major gun rights orgs have registered disapproval.
The NRA didn't.
I believe this[0] is the tweet being referenced.
Isn't it obvious? You were taught a lie.
All the blathering about "freedom", "democracy", and "constitutional rights" is just propaganda you've been spoon-fed since you were a child. The USA has spent the last 80 years riding the wave of contributing to the victory in WWII and therefore being the "Good Guys", and most of the Western world happily played along as their political goals aligned with it.
Meanwhile the USA hasn't addressed its deeply-rooted internal issues which have been festering for well over a century, and the results are now obvious to everyone. It only took Trump a year to make the US an international laughing stock, start a bunch of wars, get rid of the free press, and begin rounding up people he doesn't like.
If the USA you were taught to believe in truly existed, the current situation would not have been possible.
Nah. I was taught by the actions of neighbors. I was taught by my school becoming less segregated in California and becoming majority latino and no one caring. I was taught by my grandfather, what he did in his life, and how he lived.
I was 'taught' through experiencing something good becoming more good. Get out of here with your doomerism toxicity. You talk like the non-political Russians talk about their country. The USA is not irredeemable.
I just want to thank you for taking the time to reply so thoughtfully to someone who is so intent on letting it all go to shit just so they can think themselves enlightened by predicting it.
I have the same response to people who ask me why I don’t leave the country since things are going so bad: fuck that, this is my home. I will always love this country. It is never beyond saving. We have been through worse (the civil war at the very most obvious, but there are plenty of other low points.) We can get through this. We can make it better, we can learn to love our neighbor again, we can learn to trust each other again. We can learn to avoid these tendencies towards hatred. We can’t give up.
No conflict there. You can have been a taught a lie, and you could still make it better.
Here’s a post analyzing each part of the video and showing the evidence:
https://xcancel.com/adamscochran/status/2015119306086900170
They had him pinned on the ground, then someone takes a gun away from him, and AFTER THAT they put him on his knees and executed him.
Additionally, there are many other videos of the agents, taking phones away from the nearby witnesses who recorded all of this.
But the most disturbing thing is that the claims made by DHS, Trump, and Noem about what happened were completely made up. They are simply inventing a story and getting it out there as quickly as possible to refute any other competing story. It does not matter to them that this is a lie. The idea is to muddy the waters.
It’s like that old Bill Hicks routine, except the US is now doing it to itself instead of (only) other countries.
“You all saw him, he had a gun”.
It won’t be up to the Minnesota police to investigate. A Minnesota judge gave them a warrant and feds still denied them access.
Well it looks like it's time to say bye-bye to the 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms in the US, right? NRA and all that notwithstanding it seems if you're bearing arms you will be shot. Interesting times.
It's hard to argue the guy was even bearing arms. He just kneeled and stoically accepted his execution. And then the people surrounding him asked the feds to please not do that.
The Whiskey Rebellion, was bearing arms.
Even if they guy had a gun, it's left to see what actually transpired here. Whether the guy owned the gun, had firearm permit and even if he had a public and/or concealed gun permit.
That's already been revealed by Minnesota Police (thank goodness we at least have some degree of independent investigations going on right now).
1. Only had parking tickets on his criminal record. No other criminal activity.
2. Owned a gun with firearms permit.
3. 36 Years Old, male. EDIT: I misremembered. Its apparently 37 year old male.
Minnesota Police only have jurisdiction inside of Minnesota however. So those four+ ICE shooters just need to leave the state and they're safe. The FBI is required to pursue across state lines.
From a purely theoretical standpoint, what should the family victims do then, in a country where rule of law is not being applied anymore? If these deaths will go unpunished - and Alex Pretti's is already well documented and clear EXECUTION - what are the direct consequence as a society with a 2nd amendment?
Regarding just the headline, at this point it's not really about immigration, this has evolved into a soft civil conflict being waged for political reasons. The two people who have been killed so far were themselves citizens and at best were political dissidents. They were not themselves subject to detainment due to immigration status.
> this has evolved into a soft civil conflict being waged for political reasons.
The more quickly Americans come to terms with this reality, the better. I’m not in Minneapolis, but from what I’ve been reading and hearing, people there already understand that their city is being occupied by a hostile force and that this is indeed a civil conflict. Everyone else needs to catch up now.
I don’t think it’s ever about what Trump claims. It’s just one crisis after another where they hope to distract and divide people to get themselves power / support and anyone killed along the way, they don’t care.
Some of trumps big donors have been caught hiring large number of illegal folks by design and they don’t care.
Alternative angle from the lady in pink
NSFW
https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qlux63/altern...
Edit mirror
That's the most clear murder I've ever seen, zero question about intent or anything else. After the four agents have thrown the guy to the ground and are pinning him down you can see the fed on the left pull out his gun and shoot the defenseless man in the back, and then the others jump back and join in.
This is truly unreal. Even more unreal that we know nobody will get prosecuted for this murder and we'll see another one just like it within a few days.
But the MAGA cult will find yet another explanation that this man magically hurt the 4 ICE agents and they all ended up in a hospital somehow, or that carrying weapons with a permit is unacceptable if you vote democrat
> "Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene," DHS said. "The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."
https://www.foxnews.com/us/border-patrol-involved-shooting-r...
we can never trust a word coming out of DHS ever again
Were the mag dumping into the lifeless body also "protective shots"? Holy crap they're lying straight to your faces with video evidence against them. How come they can do this without consequence?
Actually the folks at /r/conservative are more-or-less agreeing with the left-leaning majority opinion at the moment. https://archive.ph/nYEXh
> more-or-less
After reading the thread, pretty sure it’s “less”. The most common and fervent “disagreement” in that thread is “this should be investigated”. People who believe there’s any chance of that happening (without a regime change), have to be so embarrassingly naive that they could be tortured themselves and would still defend the torturers.
That happens every time. A few hours later the talking points get decided on and it’s suddenly crickets. (Plus a few bans.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1qlzhb3/ice...
The narrative has officially shifted to, "ICE subdued an armed supremest with gang ties."
That is legitimately scary. That's narrative control tracked live. Any comment critical of 5 ice officers shooting one guy they gave disarmed and face down in the street were deleted by the mods. I can understand this for the last ICE shooting where it's possible the officer legitimately feared for his life. Not so for this shooting.
I'm divided on if the r/Conservative mods are deliberate foreign agitprop actors, Trump admin employees, or MAGA true believers.
Meanwhile on AR15.com most comments are along the lines of, "good, they should be shooting more commies".
That it's a cult needs to be better recognized by the mainstream in the USA.
This podcast gave me more insight than I wanted into the Trump cult being well and truly a cult: https://open.spotify.com/show/3hkMl04iMcdayIhxFbL9WT
It's two libbed up people talking with their fully steeped Trumpian parents, trying and failing to find common ground. Horrifyingly the parents recently said they would support Trump even if he ordered federal agents to kill everyone indiscriminately in a random mall in LA, and their adult kids were murdered as a result.
In 2016 I watched not only tax-exempt churches on the airwaves in MS campaigning for Trump but Trump appearing in an ad saying “I’ll make every dream you ever dreamed come true.” It was so blatant I actually filled out the complaint form to the IRS or FEC (I can’t remember which) all the way but didn’t send it.
This isn't really trump anymore. It's all project 2025/federalist society. They're enacting trump's revenge which happens to have some overlap with their own goals. It will likely continue after trump unless the spell is broken and there's a general strike and military coup.
[original video](https://files.catbox.moe/i14o7q.mp4)
[mirror](https://imgur.com/a/bohAwpX)
[reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qlpzu8/anothe...)
[pink coat ladys video](https://files.catbox.moe/v3iwkl.mp4)
[Mirror](https://imgur.com/a/XiY904L)
I do not comprehend why all these platforms act as if they are doing a favor with the censorship.
They're doing a favour to the regime
This angle is even worse than the prior videos and makes it absolutely, 100% clear that this was an execution. The individual in question was a US citizen, lawfully carrying a firearm and was a registered nurse. Every single ICE agent involved should be locked away for life at bare minimum.
Well, that’s an execution. Good lord.
Here's a multi angle link that's being updated regularly as new video comes in.
https://eyesupapp.com/video/89d854e9-424c-47ea-a585-f3c72351...
They deleted it. Have a mirror? Thank you!
If Minneapolis and the rest of the US can't understand what's happening.
The Last Jew in Vinnitsa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Jew_in_Vinnitsa https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Th...
Who shoot exactly ? i don't understand anything (not sarcasm, i'm in the airport and can't make sense of the vid)
The guy was filming ice, they started pushing some other person so he got in between them. They threw him to the ground, where three men pinned his hands down. Another pulled out his pepper spray can, then started beating the victim in the face repeatedly.
At the same time, a fifth agent pats him down. He finds a gun (legally purchased and the MN police have said he was permitted to carry). They remove the firearm and walk away.
Then one of the officers yells "he has a gun" and shoots him point blank. Then another officer fires, which looks to kill him and he drops face-down and the officers back away. Finally, one more pulls out his firearm and puts 9 into the back of the victim's corpse - guaranteeing he can't be saved
very valuable video but it’s been deleted
This links to a synchronized amalgamation of multiple video angles: https://streamable.com/udofq5
It clearly shows that Alex Pretti never drew a weapon, and his (legally owned and carried) CCW was removed by one of the agents from its holster seconds prior to other agents shooting Alex in the back. Agents are visibly using pepper spray, pistol whipping his head, and even though it’s 5+ vs one, don’t even appear to be attempting to handcuff or properly restrain.
Another video from a VFX editor showing position of hands during the incident: https://www.reddit.com/user/AriFeblowitzVFX/comments/1qmf89x...
No longer available.
Video of a federal agent disarming the victim before the others shot him: https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qlvpbr/footage_of_the...
The lead up also does NOT show the victim threatening these agents in any way, with the gun or otherwise. Instead, they pushed a woman down and this guy tries to shield her and that's when they target him.
EDIT: another angle showing the run up: https://www.reddit.com/r/Leakednews/comments/1qlvt7t/video_f...
It looks to me like the guy who disarmed him ND'd[] (or maybe another officer, but I see the disarmer jolt his arm in an axis parallel to the barrel at time of shot) and they all started shooting.
This has happened before. Once one shot goes off they all shoot at the suspect.
There is another angle from that side of the street now. A single agent unholstered and started unloading into the guy with first show square in his back. This is while the other agents where right there holding him and they all looked quite shocked. Looks like this one individual went off the reservation and sparked all the shooting.
Americans, where will you realize that the longer you wait, the worse it will get ? The whole country should be in the streets now. You guys are fast tracking your way into a dictatorship, and unfortunately you may drag the entire Western world with you.
The videos from this are numerous and very clear about what happened. And yet, all the officials are telling that a guy is a domestic terrorist and approached ICE officers with a gun, with intent to kill them. How crazy is that ? And if they do this in cases where everything is filmed, you can only imagine what's happening behind the scenes.
The unfortunate truth I think is that no matter how many people might be with this idea of just "rising up" and taking back the country, america is is fucking massive and many cities and towns there is no noticeable ice or border patrol presence. So even if you can get people out and protesting at some common meaningless locations its going to be symbolic at best.
If you want out-of-band change in the U.S. it will at minimum take some combination of three things:
- sustained weeks or months long protests in D.C.
- extreme social pressure on congress representatives no matter where they may be.
- state governments in rebellion or threatening it against the federal government.
I don't think we're particular close on any of these.
Otherwise tough luck, wait for the probably manipulated elections.
Street protests are useless because they don't actually hurt. They only work if they can shame the other side, but the other side isn't actually ashamed of what they are doing.
The kind of protest that is needed is the kind that is actually disruptive. Nationwide strikes, for instance.
Economic protests, by contrast, are extremely effective, e.g., Jimmy Kimmel.
Money is the most important thing the corrupt establishment and its masters care about. (Rich people hedged their bets, so both D and R have their shares of corruption.)
A labor strike is an economic protest, and it is by far the most effective economic protest if it can be fully pulled off. It targets the root of economic activity, which is the production of goods and services. A boycott, while helpful, targets the economic endpoint, which is consumption. The longterm effects of a labor strike, which disrupts the production of goods and services, are more profound than those of a boycott.
A protest that is actually disruptive is called terrorism, and is off-topic on Hacker News.
In Minnesota they've striked recently and it sounds like they're being successful. If lots of people across the country striked maybe it would matter (fat chance in the USA I know but it's something)
All the towns where there's nothing happening don't need to be rising up though, surely, it only needs to happen in the major population centres.
More excuses.
I'm not sure you what you expect a single commenter on HN to do. They're not making excuses, they're stating a reality. The commenter could protest, but it won't make someone protest in a city that is insulated from all of this .
I have voted in every election and have not voted for any in this administration. The wife and I have been to the protests in Omaha. Every one. When there was a walk-out day, the wife and I stayed home, did not shop.
Yeah, it feels to me that our actions have had zero effect but I am at a loss as to what else to do that is legal.
Look at history when other fascist regimes moved in and ask yourself what a single, ordinary person at the time could have done to have prevented it.
I suspect (like history has shown), it's going to take as long as it takes until enough of us can collectively shut the shit down. In the mean time my gestures will, sadly, have nearly zero impact.
I can't help but think there is some kind of agenda here...
Trouble is they elected this lot. Trump ran saying he'd deport millions. Maybe in subsequent elections that will change?
See this from 2024 "Trump explains his militaristic plan to deport 15-20 million people" https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/trump-immigratio...
There are voting anomalies in electronic voting records in key states. There's an org looking into this, filing lawsuits for more records from counties and states. The trend is, "the more voters that voted in a polling place, the more that polling place's machine-counted votes skewed towards Trump." These trends are not present in the hand counts.
They have a YouTube channel too. If the charts in isolation don't make sense to you (they don't to me), watch any of their interviews on the channel to get a walk-through of the charts and their meanings.
Their findings for Minnesota: https://electiontruthalliance.org/analysis/minnesota-hand-ve...
Roughly half of us did.
That's right. What you don't understand is that we must and can only move in resonance with our understanding and with the mass and momentum we are capable of. It's painfully slow, I know. Please be encouraging. We are being harassed by the "commander" of the (formerly) most powerful military in the world. He is a psychopath nobody can deny.
We MUST find our power and our power is NOT violence. But our power is MORE POWERFUL THAN VIOLENCE.
And when as you find it I hope you will see it in you and your people and realize that you too had it all along.
This was an execution, plain and simple. There is no way around it. There are videos from multiple angles and there was an eyewitness (the lady in the pink jacket) literally two feet away.
I am hoping against hope that people regardless of political association, will demand accountability. America, our democracy and the rule of the law will be on trial in the coming days. Let's see how we fare.
You realize that anyone can see your comment history and quickly see that you’re an Indian supporting Hamas, right?
This is probably a good day to take time away from social media. Doom scrolling won’t do anything
Instead there’s DHS funding going through Congress which could give Congress leverage to restrict ICE. To be clear ICE will still operate past the funding deadline. But Congress can create limits like mandating allowing states to investigate these crimes. Restrict who can carry firearms.
Write your senators and ask them to block DHS funding
I completely forgot about the potential government shutdown this week, and how this killing would affect it....
How about no masks. If you are a police officer, of the state, wear your face with pride.
They should definitely not be allowed to wear masks.
They passed the DHS funding. The day ICE executes a man in broad daylight by blowing his brains out from point-blank, they get an extra $10,000,000,000 in funding.
America is a failed nation.
Did the Senate pass it? I think just the House did.
It's a simple majority and Republicans have 53 votes without defects. Every single Republican voted for it in Congress, so clearly today changes nothing at all. And 7 democrats even voted alongside them.
No, this bill would be subject to the filibuster (since it's not a reconciliation bill under the Budget Act), so it's not a simple majority.
The title calling it an “immigration crackdown” is propaganda.
Texas and Florida have WAY more illegals than Minnesota [1], why are ICE not terrorizing citizens there?
This federal violence and murder is not about illegals. Anyone that thinks it is is not paying attention.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1l8o8mu/percentage...
IANAA: what legal powers does the city/state have to expel ICE agents? Especially as they are operating in, at best, increasingly shady legality.
I always understood that the USA is built on a delicate balance of power between the federal and state governments. But here the federal government is sending thugs who, masked or unmasked, are brazenly killing people in bizzare circumstances. And the best the state can do is PTFO?
> what legal powers does the city/state have to expel ICE agents?
What makes you believe ICE is going to follow a judge's orders? They are already routinely violating it when it comes to deporting people.
Or, if you want to be even more pessimistic: what makes you believe the current Supreme Court is going to rule based on law, instead of based on political affiliation?
The USA's balance of power is horribly broken. To give just one simple example related to the previous: having the Supreme Court be nominated by the President and confirmed by a simple majority in the Senate? That's just asking for trouble. It'd be far better to have judges nominated by a politically-independent organisation (like the currently-sitting judges, or a national bar association) and confirmed by a two-thirds majority in the House/Senate (preventing anyone controversial, so you get boring, professional, and by-the-book judges - like they are supposed to be).
Regardless of judicial rulings of any sort, who will enforce them? Seemingly all of the enforcement apparatus in the US has been co-opted.
The individual state governments aren't meaningfully resisting. Their law enforcement isn't arresting "federal agents" to put them through state legal system. These perps should be jailed and forced to appeal before a judge for a bail hearing, possibly held without bail as they are clearly threats, and then put on trial in a state court.
Without this, where is the enforcement?
The classic question: who watches the watchmen? Right now, no one.
Truth is, most cops wouldn't confront ICE even if explicitly ordered to do so. The majority of them are supporting all this.
Does an ICE officer have any more rights than any other random non-ICE murderer? Can the police put them in prison for murdering?
> Can the police put them in prison for murdering?
Of course they can, but the governor and mayor know that ordering the police to do this means they completely lose what little control they have over the police, since the police support ICE and will believe it to be their patriotic duty to refuse the order.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us. For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury
>IANAA: what legal powers does the city/state have to expel ICE agents? Especially as they are operating in, at best, increasingly shady legality.
If ICE weren't acting like brown shirts, not much. It'd be Federal tasking happening according to due process;probably after the State informed the Feds they would not delegate local LEO to their task.
Now, seeing as ICE are acting like brown shirts; things are kinda complicated. Technically, charges can be brought against specific agents breaking the laws of the State. If those agents happen to be Minnesotan, it may be something that stays internal to the States courts. However, if they are from out-of-state, things get complicated, because then you start dealing with nasty things like Federal jurisdiction, and the fact the Federal government isn't going to be terribly motivated to do anything other than paper over things in the most convenient way they can.
Now as to whether Minnesota could just outright expel ICE; it'd be something that hasn't been tested since the Civil War. Typically, when you start doing things like that, the Feds escalate quickly. This type of thing has previously been avoided through attempts at maintaining some degree of professional conduct amongst Federal agents, and getting buy-in from the locals.
We are now firmly in interesting times.
> things are kinda complicated. Technically, charges can be brought against specific agents breaking the laws of the State
Yes, and the complicated part is federal supremacy[0]. The federal government can "convert" the case against the agent into a federal one and essentially just turn a blind eye which means no justice. No doubt that this administration would protect agents executing citizens by saying it was "part of their duty" to be there and doing that.
Make it illegal to enable any commercial transactions within the state supporting federal agents. No food sales, no fuel sales, no hotel stays, no medical care, no rental cars. Make them drag their supply chain in like the Middle East.
In state economic deplatforming.
Crazy I never thought the Third Amendment would be needed in my lifetime but I think you nailed it with this.
I knew a guy at DOJ who always said the Third is the most important one
IANAL but has the 3rd been tested in this way? The very narrow interpretation is that you can’t be forced to let a soldier sleep on your bed. A more metaphorical interpretation would be that federal agents don’t have the constitutional authority to indefinitely occupy a locale even a state.
Make it illegal to enable any commercial transactions within the state supporting federal agents. No food sales, no fuel sales, no hotel stays, no medical care, no rental cars. Make them drag their supply chain in like the Middle East.
In state economic deplatforming.
You're gonna prosecute Minnesotans for accepting cash?
No, its prosecution for supporting terrorists.
Some guy comes into your restaurant and eats a meal. Pays cash. Leaves. He was ICE. You're now subject to charges from the state of Minnesota?
That sounds like maybe not entirely the best idea.
Some guy comes into your restaurant and eats a meal. Pays cash. Leaves. He was a sanctioned Russian. You're now subject to charges from the state of Minnesota?
Yes, you appear to see the point I am making.
It's not a real point. It's only illegal to support a sanctioned person if you know or should have known they were sanctioned.
Yeah you aren't getting the point. I'm not saying that the proprietor would be at risk for unfair prosecution, I'm saying the policy would be useless because it is easy to avoid if you don't take it to an absurd extreme.
I guess I should have spelled it out in the initial comment.
There's already a law against helping a criminal flee a crime scene, but the criminal may still buy a train ticket and the train company isn't liable unless he told them he was a criminal, but anyone who knew he was a criminal and helped him anyway goes to jail. This is nothing new.
No, I mean that it wouldn't hamper ICE all that much unless you took it to an extreme. An onerous policy inflicted on the people of Minnesota that accomplished little in the way of disrupting federal operations.
I think it would. They crashed out over a single cancelled hotel reservation. These aren't hardened troops that can set up a bivouac in a random clearing, they're accustomed to all the niceties of modern life. If all hotels refused to serve them, if they couldn't buy groceries because their cards were declined, if the state blockaded their detention centers, they'd find their job much harder.
If only the courts has some experience arbitrating intent and negligence.
You've truly found a loophole.
My point is that the OPs goal of preventing transactions with federal employees is impractical, so I'm not sure what you want me to say here.
You could talk about the goal of drastically diminishing transactions with federal employees.
Was the customer wearing a mask of the style the violent invaders use to hide their faces from legal accountability? If so, then yes it sounds like the restaurant owner should have suspected they were one of the gang and not served them.
If they removed their mask before getting to the restaurant, and the restaurant owner had no other reason to suspect them, then the restaurant owner is in the clear. But hopefully someone took a picture of their face so they can be on the early admission list for Nuremberg 2.
It's not illegal to support someone who's a terrorist if you don't know they're a terrorist.
> You're gonna prosecute Minnesotans for accepting cash?
If supporting domestic terrorism for economic gains, yes. How you provide the support is irrelevant. State charges cannot be pardoned. Based on the general strike this week, good luck finding a favorable jury for aiding and abetting.
"You can just do things." If the federal government files suit, ignore them and keep going while you tie it up in court and run out the clock on this administration. It is easy to forget that supporters of this admin and these actions are in a minority.
Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions - https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal...
So know your customer regulations at the gas station then?
Sure, whatever it takes. You somehow think it’s incredulous when Pornhub was deplatformed from credit card rails easily, and is still age gated in 23 states through statute. This is far worse, and laws can be made to do whatever the target outcome is.
I get it, your mental model differs, and that’s fine. The tools exist and can be used. They could start by blacklisting the BIN of any federal government payment card, and tighten further iteratively based on continuous monitoring and ground truth acquisition. If aggressors have to start carrying large quantities of cash around to operate, sounds like that’s going to be an operational risk.
Federal supremacy is based on respect of their authority and providing them material support in state through economic exchange. Revoke both and they are powerless on the ground, and are at the mercy of the locals.
You are proposing that every customer identify themself for every transaction, and that every store verifies that identity against a state maintained list.
"Stop their payment cards" just makes things a little inconvenient for the bad guys. What you are proposing makes everything very inconvenient for everyone. Mental models differ indeed.
That's not what I'm proposing at all.
Are you and toomuchtodo the same person?
Blue states fund red states, they are the economic engines of the country. California has the forth largest economy in the world. The federal government has more to lose. Red states are poor. Blue states can simply withhold federal support, keep federal tax revenue in state and let the federal government try to sue for it.
Would you prefer if an app was provided to the public to enable facial recognition of federal agents against a database?
Even in the absolute best case scenario where this just works, the bare minimum retaliation is withholding of federal funds, and I guarantee you any state or state populace in that scenario will blink first.
Blue states fund red states, they are the economic engines of the country. California has the forth largest economy in the world. The federal government has more to lose. Red states are poor. Blue states can simply withhold federal support, keep federal tax revenue in state and let the federal government try to sue for it.
I encourage the federal government to try to support itself off of red states.
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-mo...
I understand that, but you're assuming they also stop paying federal tax altogether? Your initial point was to just not allow federal employees to transact, but now we're quickly entering secession territory. The red states mostly grow the food, anyway. Is Manhattan prepared to starve? Feds may block imports to such a rogue state.
If your point is that states should essentially secede to prevent federal agents from doing anything within, that's possible, but I don't think most citizens of even the bluest state want to secede.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_secession
> The major power lever that could be used in soft secession is if a state normally giving more in taxes to the federal government than it receives back would cease to send tax revenue to the federal government. These states, which generally are blue states governed by a Democratic Party majority, could leverage finances to exert influence over the federal administration, i.e. a Republican administration seen as hostile to their interests.
Interestingly, if done strategically, you could cause the US government to default on treasuries through a loss of federal revenue (a component of which is used to service US debt), forcing a debt spiral. This would enable the states with economic power to "wag the dog" in partnership with the bond market, because the federal government cannot operate if they lose the power of funding via issuing debt while also losing revenue from these states. Net contributor states could issue muni debt directly into the bond market, avoiding the need for federal dollars.
Blue states can force the federal government into default, if they have the will.
US can’t default on its debts (unless it wants to) as it can by definition print US dollars.
That is factually inaccurate.
It can choose to default. It's defaulted before. Many republicans have been clamoring for a default.
“secession territory”
Honest question: what territory do you think we are in now that is better than “secession territory?”
Honest to god question. Federal agents are executing citizens in the streets!
You're being downvoted, I think unfairly, because this is a completely valid rebuttal.
Without going into a diatribe about how governments necessitate coercion and violence, enforcing such a "law" would indeed be counterproductive and hard to enforce, like you're indicating.
That said, mutual agreement by businesses and citizenry to make efforts to identify federal agents, then refuse to conduct business seems like it should already be entering discussions (if it isn't). Additional coercion by the local government doesn't need to enter the equation of civil disobedience.
Legal eagle has more in-depth analysis of this. But in summary, there's basically no recourse.
They have the same recourse the colonists had to eject King George's men. And the same duty.
As much as I agree with this sentiment and think it's poignant, civil conflict in the modern era would be unthinkably terrifying, so I wouldn't take this position lightly. Or at the very least I wouldn't compare a modern conflict as being functionally similar to the Revolutionary War.
They can prosecute federal agents but the bar is VERY high from what I understand.
I’ve cut my NYT consumption down to maybe 5 minutes a week, and somehow today it still managed to wreck my headspace. I’m not a historian, but my memory reached into that rarely-used middle school history drawer and pulled up this:
Also this idea too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
Why is this being hidden off of the main HN pages? There are clearly enough points for it to be significantly up weighted. I don’t understand the censorship.
As I understand it, HN has a controversial submission detection system of sorts. The exact details elude me, but if a submission gets a lot of comments quickly relative to upvotes, it'll fall off the main page.
Best indicator I've seen is if comments/points ~> 0.9 or so.
It's my understanding mods can undo this "controversial" flag, so that select threads get back onto the main page.
The censorship is cranked up on every site now, presumably due to fear of retaliation from this admin.
They are hyper online, and threaten any companies business deals if they feel slighted.
Its why you can get banned on reddit now for quoting the president.
Yep, I got a three day ban from Reddit for directly quoting JFK (and nothing else) in my comment.
I even attributed it.
This site has always been easy to co-opt to fascism with their supposedly apolitical outlook. Flagging from unknown accounts easily kills stories of importance, even where they have relation to the supposed interests of the site. Such as the AI altered image being posted by the White House this week.
The idea we have to treat arguments in good faith like the other user in this story excusing fascist death squads show how well this moderation approach aligns with the Thiel-ite sympathies.
Curtis Yarvin spent a lot of time posting here, after all.
Because many HN readers flag anything that they deem to be “politics”
I would say "wrong politics". Atrocities committed by other regimes have no problems staying on top page.
Unless that regime is Israel.
Unless it has computer!
Sometimes even with computer! Don’t want to get uncomfy that the code you’re writing is enabling terrible things.
In the eyes of some in leadership, tech workers should be apolitical worker drones. Weighing in on politics is for people like David Sacks, Marc Andreesen, Elon Musk.
It is at the top of best stories here.
Some naive people here, still think the HN page listing is based on points and comments...
You are downvoting what is the evidence in front of your eyes. Downvoting the observation does not change the ranking anomaly. If you want trust, you can’t run the front page like this.
You’re being downvoted by bots. HN is rigged and completely compromised. We all need start flagging any non-political content and refuse to discuss anything but ICE. Business cannot continue as normal.
That's a summary execution in broad daylight. I have no words.
We still have space for discussions about the specific flaws of Microsoft's BitLocker implementation on the front page when the much-more salient "wrench attack" ( https://xkcd.com/538/ ) is stronger very day.
This execution has more significant implications than the combined heft of the chipper clip, or of EARN IT, SOPA, or the myriad of other bad bills introduced to the US Congress over the years.
Tech libertarianism was a frontier for the means to the ends of our personal liberties, and not a goal in itself. I refuse to believe the people on this site don't see that it's all connected.
(edit: clarification; "this" refers to the execution, not the Bitlocker thing.)
You are exactly right. People on this site complaining how these topics are not tech related are absolute fools.
Well, or at least extreme incompetence across the board. Systematic failure from POTUS downwards.
It's a statistical game. Arm people, don't train them well enough, give them a mission. Given enough altercations, some will turn out like this.
Try these words: Broken arrow.
Question is, now that the most dangerous apparatus in the world has been coopted, what are people feeling like doing about it?
You know how the second amendment is about protecting Americans from tyrannical governments, and how a few dozen schools being shot ip each year is a small price to pay?
Funny how it doesn’t work in reality.
2A is a historical relic of the settler colonial era when communities had to create their own security forces. It's strongest proponents today are those who want to create their own laws and have private militias to enforce it, in obvious contravention of state and federal laws which are decided through a democratic process with checks and balances (elections, legislatures and independent judiciaries).
The present federal government has co-opted the militia strategy and filled its ranks with the 2A absolutists, and given them a budget that rivals most countries' militaries.
Even more of a relic: those militias weren't just bands of yeoman farmers. They were veterans of the recent French-and-Indian war. Often who had served with the commanders of the British forces arrayed against them. George Howe brother of William who ultimately became CiC of British forces in America died in the arms of Israel Putnam, one of the continental army's first generals at the battle of Ticonderoga. They thought so highly of him, the Massachusetts assembly allocated funds for a memorial to Howe at Westminster. George Howe (unlike ICE, lol) often had a hard time bringing ultimate force to bear as he didn't really see the colonials as "enemy".
I'd submit it's a violation of the 2A to allow the Nat Guard (essentially the continuation of those militias) to be forcibly nationalized (it took quite a bit of negotiating to get them all to join the fledgling continental army)
Anyhoo, tl;dr, for sure, 2A is an anachronism
The video is horrifying: https://old.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qlpzu8/anothe...
That's all I'll say.
I looked at the video and have no words. Why, just why?
ICE thugs have been recruited largely from white nationalist rallies and forums. Literally, not as some kind of metaphor. DHS executives post white nationalist propaganda hourly on Twitter. Stephen Miller, an out-of-the-closet Nazi, is the acting president of the United States. Their goal is to start a race war that they believe they can win by murdering 100 million Americans.
Just in case anyone thinks you are exaggerating: https://x.com/DHSgov/status/2006472108222853298
For those who can't access the link, this is the United States DHS with the quote
> The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.
featuring an illustration of an oldsmobile at a tropical sunny beach with the text "America After 100 Million Deportations".
The implication is that a white ethnostate will be paradise.
Notably, 100M is not the number of non-citizens in the United States, it's roughly the number of non-White people (90M, per https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045224)
« According to the New York Times, the president told a campaign meeting last year that if it was up to Miller, there would only be 100 million people living in the US – and all of them would look like Miller. »
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/15/trump-immigr...
"This image was stolen and is actually a piece of art by the Japanese artist Hiroshi Nagai.
47 million of the United States’ 340 million population is foreign-born, the majority of those being legal immigrants. To do 100 million deportations they’d have to deport citizens. "
Nothing this administration has done — like when they deported citizens — has convinced me that deporting citizens is off the table.
They have already deported USA citizens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths%2C_detentions_and_depor...
Many such cases:
The federal government really has become nothing more than a bunch of social media influencers.
Yup, just "social media influencers". Nothing much to see here.
Nazis. The federal government has become nothing more than actual, honest-to-God Nazis.
The other day, the official DHS presser had them prominently displaying a direct Nazi slogan: "One of ours, All of yours".
This, of course, referenced how that day one of their ICE agents murdered an innocent US citizen.
Lots of Department of Corrections officers have been recruited as well. There's going to be so many lawsuits after these guys go back to running the Federal prisons with this new attitude.
Yeah, the fact that Democratic state and local governments have tolerated the decades-long slide of sheriffs and prison guards and in some cases even the local police into white nationalist gangs will be looked upon as a strategic mistake.
They haven't just tolerated it. They've decided that cops are deserving of nearly unlimited reverence and they've actively supported the increased funding and militarization of cops. Police unions have become right wing political agitators from within the state apparatus.
Cops are doing what they were doing in the jim crow era: enforcing a strict caste system with violence.
I don't think we can just blame white people for this. A lot of the ICE agents are non-white and many non-whites voted for Trump. In fact, most of the pro-immigrant people I meet are white!
Nobody is blaming white people. They're pointing out, correctly, that the United States is lead by a white nationalist regime.
You're correct that it would be wrong to just blame white people for this, but I don't think anyone is doing that. No one is claiming that all white people support ICE, or that all ICE agents are white, or that all white people are anti-immigrant.
However, it is the case that American culture is and historically has been built upon white supremacist principles and that the default identity in the US politically and culturally is white, and that therefore white people generally enjoy a status of privilege and political power that other groups do not, and thus a responsibility that others do not. And the links between the Trump administration, alt-right movements and white supremacist groups in the US are well known and documented, even though minority groups voted for him as well.
So it would be just as wrong to dismiss the premise that "white people" are to blame due to pedantry as it would be to blame all white people. "White people" do carry the lion's share of the blame as a community and culture even if not literally every white person does. That's the nature of systemic racism.
What good is blame going to do right now?
Let's stop the bleeding before bike shedding over who done it.
Is it the first video of American law enforcement shooting someone that triggered this reaction?
This is from 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUUx0jUKxc.
Extreme violence has been normalized among American LEOs for a long time now.
Look up "killology" for some more on this. If you're in US, check if your local PD or sheriff's office signed up its agents for a Dave Grossman seminar or training course; you might be unpleasantly surprised.
And now that ICE job ads are essentially an open invitation to come be violent for a "righteous cause", it's exactly those types of people that end up there in even larger concentrations. But make no mistake, none of this is new in any way other than the sheer scale of it.
There was an interesting take from Garry Kasparov. Excerpts:
>what’s happening in Minnesota is method, not madness. Trump wants violence, to radicalize & divide, to create pretext for crackdowns.
>...Having lived through a similar, nationwide version of this in Trump's model, Putin's Russia, it’s not easy to fight against (https://x.com/Kasparov63/status/2015126502845587957)
I'm not American and not saying it's right or wrong but maybe?
Kasparov as usually exaggerates. As a Russian, I can think of only 2 cases he may refer to: 2002 riot after world cup match, when a crowd watched Russia team lose to Japan, then went to destroy displays and cars in Moscow center. It was followed by wrenching the mass rallies laws. Some publicists later, in the '10s, suggested it was orchestrated, but the whole theory forgets that Russian team could have won. You don't create a plan where your pretexts may not take place at all.
The other case he may think of is May 2012 protest, where a bottleneck created stampede, and a fight with police ensued. Random protesters got persecuted for whatever reasons. But the crackdown was already under way with the new state Duma passing ever tougher law amendments.
Sociologically, it's nonsense to make a pretext by attacking the other side, because you don't know what how they react: maybe the opponents just hide, or go around. To make a crackdown, you stage the attack on yourself, and then react, and crack down. E.g. Hitler staged the opposition putting Reichstag on fire, and then reacted. In Trumps case, brutal attacks are a step too far, because people may react differently -- what if nothing happens? or if republicans change their mind and impeach him?
Putin made a crackdown on media and civic liberties in a soft and gradual way: the media was taken down by stakeholders loyal to him, or maybe by a made-up bankruptcy case. Mass protests were made very hard to do, and needed a permission. But if any happened, the police wouldn't start a street fight, but would instead arrest and charge the organizers next day.
What Kasparov usually writes is a big exaggeration. In 2015 he wrote a comment on social media, that Russia needs a pro-democratic dictatorship to fix it. I think this is exactly what technocrats and oligarchs thought when they supported Putin coming in 1999 -- that he was authoritarian, but would lead Russia away from communistic revenge.
Is Gessen exaggerating too?
Sure. She's very resentful and puts labels on everything and everyone. Her discourse, from what I remember was like "in Russia, there's no this, no that, no life, etc." Just no point to seriously discuss what she says.
I lived in Moscow in the '10s, and was at some meetings of liberal crowd, saw where these political activists were formed. By the time many of them already couldn't be in real politics, i.e. be elected, so many were just in these salon meetings (because youtube wasn't yet the default place to present), competing in cool and juicy takes.
Folks, the videos of this incident are being taken down rapidly. Please do what you can to preserve them.
Wikipedia has a page already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alex_Pretti
Man, I hate that they "both sides" this. "DHS says he approached with a handgun, NYT says the video shows a phone" makes it seem like just an unlucky misunderstanding. But the DHS quote clearly is a straight up lie based on video evidence, and this doesn't convey how it was a straight up execution and that all the escalation was done by the officers.
It's a current event, so things will change fast.
At the same time, the Wikipedia page for ICE itself sounds a lot like a propaganda piece, with criticism as a footnote.
From my reading of the evidence so far it seems there was a misunderstanding. Looks like one of the ICE guys said he has a gun, took the gun but the others didn't realise the gun had been taken.
Nah, "he has a gun" doesn't mean he poses a threat, especially not when maced, with 4 guys on top and hands placed on the ground. And it definitely doesn't explain why they kept firing at him even when laying dead on the ground.
The thugs created the situation, escalated the situation, and then showed their true colors. Nothing in this can be explained away by a mere misunderstanding.
And I recommend watching the videos, not just "reading the evidence". The statements made are blatant lies and you should put no stock in them.
ICE working as intended. US citizens need to fear ICE, how else could it be used to deter voting? Certainly ICE will be placed strategically come the next elections
From a semi-corrupt country, ie being somewhere between Africa and the developed world, I can only suggest to fellow USians courage and patience three more years. Times will come good again. A corrupt leader is very difficult to change and things seem grim because he has captured all three forms of power.
A civilised country can not be destroyed by one king, nor saved by a new leader.
America has checks and balances, and they have failed. There’s no “wait 3 years”, that’s over, as America will always be one election away from anarchy or worse.
The only way out is the Republican Party impeaching him and spending the next 10 years undoing the damage at the top and next 40 year rebuilding civil society.
> America has checks and balances, and they have failed.
America pretended to have checks and balances. Everyone just turned a blind eye to the massive holes in them and pretended things were going to be fiiiiine.
Our own "founding fathers" knew that no system could stop someone determined enough to destroy it from inside.
"The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people, and every blessing of society depend so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both..."
— John Adams
And our government doesn't have that necessary firebreak. Justice is part of the Executive.
Source: https://www.mass.gov/guides/john-adams-architect-of-american...
Benjamin Franklin literally stated it was "good enough for now" (where "now" == hundreds of years past) despite lacking sufficient checks and balances, and would need constant attendance and amending over time until the likes of the Federalists found themselves a Trump to white ant the US from the inside out.
~ https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a7s3.htmlI agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.That speech is bone-chilling. It's so incredibly obvious -- at the risk of going against Franklin's own advice to avoid falling prey to a sense of infallibility -- that the future time he referred to has now come.
also Ben Franklin: "A republic...if you can keep it"
(elipsis mine)
The Justice Department isn't the same as the judicial branch. The Justice Department is (among several other things) the lawyers who represent the government in front of (judicial branch) courts.
I believe Canada's prime minister gave an interesting speech about this at Davos.
Never in the past an irreversible decline of a hundred long empire has started in one year. Abrupt crisis end abruptly. Never any political party has impeached it's winning leader. Nowadays the country needs a Dem President, whoever they are. The new billionaires will have different priorities, again not friendly but more peaceful. You just have to wait, as we do in my country every now and then.
This hasn’t started in one year, it’s been going over a decade, probably since the GFC and rise of the tea party.
It’s not about Trump, it’s the 85m that voted for Trump.
Arguably several decades. A lot of the current politics is derived from the destruction of the education system and from general economic frustration, which have been building for decades.
Why do you think things will change in 3 years? All indications are that this is just the way the country is trending and, at any rate, it's prone to making 180 degree turns every 4 years anyway.
The current situation is enforced by a temporary coup and is incompatible with the average American citizen base. Although a sizable share idiotically supports the crimes, the rest awaits its turn. We experience that back and forth in Greece for two hundred years.
A different party, in that case the Democrats, if it is elected, will immediately deactivate the core of the current governing billionaires, starting from Musk and Thiel, and replace them with new ones, most probably from Wall Street and Academia. Do you think Jamie Dimon will do the same?
> The current situation is enforced by a temporary coup and is incompatible with the average American citizen base.
They won the election though? And enough other elections to control the other wings of government as well.
A plurality of Americans want this. They voted for it, knowing what was coming. There's no reason to believe they won't do so again.
> An I.C.U. nurse shot by federal agents was an American citizen with no criminal record, the city police chief said. A New York Times video analysis shows he was holding a phone, not a gun.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/us/minneapolis-shooting-ic...
Video of the incident in question [1]. This thread will likely be flag-killed instantly.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qlpzu8/anothe...
edit: Additional video [2] of the victim prior to the shooting. They were a lawful observer confronted by ICE due to observing and recording them.
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qlt6s2/video_showing_...
Look at them, they'#re even skipping putting them in jail first so they can be suicided.
They must have been at extreme danger of some harsh words before killing them
> this video will likely be glad just instantly
Again.
Anyway, the video shows that we've unequivocally entered open-air brownshirt executions.
This person was pinned to the ground by three people while another was just wailing against their head from above. Hard to tell what object they're using as a cudgel to their face.
Then the subsequent mag dumping just to be extra sure they're dead.
We really need that lady in the back to release her video.
For anyone wondering why this is relevant to HackerNews:
- There are tech companies and workers in companies outside California,
- A government deploying a militarized police force to execute people in the streets is bad for the economy,
- That government is the United States, and so this is bad for the world economy,
- A lot of the people in our industry are immigrants from outside the United States,
- If you're a HackerNews user in the United States, you can be shot and killed just like this.
Also, that this kind of state violence and collapse of democracy is underway in the country that also happens to be the center of the global tech industry is something that all HNers should care about.
- most of this has been helped by big tech. By algorithms polarizing people, rich people buying social media to further their agenda, etc
Another reason: individual liberty is and has been an important value in the tech community since the 1960s.
Has it? The original hacker movement surely had it, but is that still the tech community? I feel that since about 2012 the tech community has been money seekers — people who want to own the next AirBNB and Uber — and they don't care about individual liberty.
It's absolutely inexcusable, even moreso than the murder of Renee Good. Though I fully expect the usual suspects to show up and claim it was justified because he was resisting arrest, which seems to be the popular modus operandi for justifying execution by the state.
I don't know how you think this is worse than Renee Good's murder. She was shot in the temple through the driver side window while being directed by an Ice agent to drive away. She was then denied medical care at the scene, and local police were denied access to investigate while the shooter was shepherded out of state as quickly as possible
Well they tried to deny local police access here too, but the local police wasn't having it this time
I think they're both inexcusable. Both are entire worlds that have been removed from the earth, because some insecure men were given guns and power by Trump
"We haven't quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape."
Why don't you guys have cool news like "man with punisher t-shirt downs 10 ICE agents and threatens the organization on camera"?
That gives them the martial law and unlimited terms they're looking for.
What unlimited terms? It seems like they can kill whoever they want whenever they want. And I don't think there are enough of them to fight a civil war.
I mean unlimited presidential terms without having anything like elections to get in the way.
Is there any mechanism already where a war or active civil unrest causes a delay in elections in America? I've read that America has no such provision in our election laws to delay/cancel an election like that.
Do you think it's necessary?
The allowing of cancelling or delaying elections due to war or civil unrest? No.
An extant mechanism. You asked if there's a mechanism. Do you think they need one?
What? I just said no. Let me put it more plainly: I do not think there should be a mechanism for the federal government to cancel or delay elections due to war or civil unrest.
Why are you ignoring my question, asking another one, then ignoring my answer and asking it again?
Why are you asking if there is a mechanism?
The command structures are coopted at this point. It might be enough to hold on to power when direct confrontation happens. Things happening in the US now are insane and the most insane part to me is how clear that this is the direction the Trump train was taking it. And people would just not stop going down this road.
Welcome to the new world. It will suck for a long time from now on.
So if you exercise your second amendment right and ICE goons harass you they'll freak out that you're "armed" and execute you.
And arrest the witnesses of their crime
2A only gives you the right to buy the gun, not actually use it for its intended purposes
a much higher authority imbues the right to defend ones self.
the right to defend ones own person in the face of death or debilitation is not given by any form of government, thus it can not be withdrawn by such.
DC v Heller?
It says "bear".
The right to bear arms. Bear legs, heads, torsos, and pelts are off-limits.
Nah if you are somebody like the Bundys you can point guns at cops all day and conservatives will praise you.
Always been that way.
"I was afraid for my life!"
Things are really getting ugly there. So sad to witness it happening in “real time.”
Live feed from status coup news : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASr1zVuQlX4
Status coup & BG On The Scene are both streaming on YouTube
Status coup: https://www.youtube.com/live/ASr1zVuQlX4?si=jZzKn8DSGcIuKZ2N
BG: https://www.youtube.com/live/xYPGiIt4dDY?si=gx-kqx8jgavIsMBI
Bellingcat analysis: https://bsky.app/profile/bellingcat.com/post/3md6vleoxks2t
"A video of the shooting appears to show that a gun was taken from the man BEFORE THE FIRST shot was fired."
"At least 10 shots being heard in total. Most of them are fired after a brief delay, when the man is already lying motionless on the ground."
Based on seeing the video, it seems an officer standing in front of the decedent is the one who drew/disarmed the weapon from the decedent's holster. This was under the arching body of another agent who was holding the decedent down. The man who shot him was standing behind him.
Despite all the outraged rhetoric on here, it does not seem reasonable to assume that the officer simply decided to murder the man out of anger, spite, bloodlust, and perceived immunity.
Rather, a dispassionate analysis of the scenario might suggest that the shooter only saw the weapon be drawn by an unknown hand, and not discerning that it was one of his fellow officers disarming the struggling man, instead believed that the struggling man had managed to draw his own weapon and was preparing to fire.
Given the facing of the struggling man and the shooting officer, it seems unlikely that his first fear was for his own life but rather for the lives of his comrades, and so he fired his weapon to remove the perceived threat to his fellow officers lives.
This explains exactly why he fired almost immediately after he saw the gun drawn. Not an extrajudicial execution as some are recklessly calling it, but a tragic example of having to make life and death decisions with an imperfect view of the ... battlefield for lack of a better term ... and the foolishness of getting in the way of armed men.
I tell my kids they have the right of way at the crosswalk but right of way is not going to save their life if the car doesn't see them, so look both ways and make sure cars are slowing down.
The same sense of caution should be used when deciding to get in the way of men, even good and lawful men, with guns.
It made sense to protest the Vietnam war or Iraq or Afghanistan in America, not in the war zone.
We have freedom of speech and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, but do that from the sidewalk, in court, or before Congress, not in the line of fire of a police action. And I don't believe we have the right to block roads, scream in the faces of law enforcement or military personnel, or impede them in the fulfillment of their lawful duties which these immigration enforcement actions are.
He wasn’t impeding. He was filming which until recently was a 1A right in America.
The officer walked up to him and the woman with the backpack and started an altercation.
Using your right of way analogy the officer drove up on the sidewalk to take out your kids, no crosswalk involved.
If you’re going to defend this with a “well look at what she was wearing” type defense then you’re just ok with government agents executing citizens whenever they feel like it.
Can you imagine if other people hadn't been around filming what happened here and the murder of Renee Good? The Gov would completely cover it up, make the victims look like domestic terrorists, and we'd never be able to show the truth.
That's why Good and Pretti doing what they were doing -- observing and filming -- is so damn important, and why ICE will literally murder people, with the full backing of the Trump Administration, to stop it.
At the rate things are going, I wonder if America can hold together until the midterm. The Trump regime is acting like it wants a civil war.
If anyone told me in 2024 that America may see its own Tiananmen, I'd have laughed, but I'm not so sure now. I can totally see something similar at a smaller scale, and millions of Americans defending it with "it was necessary to keep law and order."
They're acting like they'll never be out of power or face consequences.
Presidential pardon power is unlimited. One blanket pardon erases all accountability.
and SCOTUS has ruled presidents have immunity for any actions while in office
Genuine question: is this not a civil war? If this isn't a civil war, what is the difference between this and a civil war?
In the U.S. Civil War several states joined together to break from the nation. I'm not seeing anything like that here.
I am seeing a cold civil war with Pacific states banding together for health initiatives. And states gerrymandering their districts prompting other states to then gerrymander theirs in response. That kind of cold civil war.
Minnesota now calling up their state's national guard is the first sign I see of the cold civil war warming up.
The US Civil War was along territorial lines, of course, and "Electric Boogaloo" will defy those clear delineations.
I believe we are seeing more of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partisan_(military) type situation.
In rural areas, it may be the case that small towns and regions could be "on one side" or another, but obviously we see that in major urban centers, all different sides are mixed together, territorially speaking, and so the conflicts and "front lines" just sort of spill into the streets without a lot of uniforms or phalanxes or "us vs. them" delineation.
Today, when Trump's goons kill a man you see it on the news.
When it becomes a war, your side will drop bombs, burn houses, and kill people every day. And you will cheer them on. Because the alternative is defeat and death.
War is a terrible thing, and Trump is steering America toward it.
it is
it has been one since we, collectively, failed to make trump pay the price for his insurrection attempt
You should have read project 2025 in 2024 then.
To quote the main author: the revolution will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”
>The Trump regime is acting like it wants a civil war.
it's not out of the question that incitement to invoke insurrection act and then cancel the midterms is the strategy
the guy in charge isn't thinking straight, and he saw that Ukraine had no elections during the war, and he saw that Russia had rigged elections during the war, and I don't know what other countries, but he might think America can skip elections during a war, if he starts enough wars, and he might be right.
Why is the focus on Minneapolis? Is it really the training ground for ICE?
Edit: "Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the US, according to NBC. The community has been subject to widespread criticism from Mr Trump, who has called them "garbage"."
Retribution. There are millions of undocumented immigrants in Texas and Florida, but notice aggressive ICE activities primarily in blue states.
It is an attempt to demonstrate unchecked force against their political opponents under the guise of immigration enforcement. Self defense (when warranted) is the only remaining option, because a bully will only escalate to see how far they can go. Restraint by aggressors will not be forthcoming.
It’s also to get access to voter rolls.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/24/us/pam-bondi-... | https://archive.today/kYumW
> Why is the focus on Minneapolis? Is it really the training ground for ICE?
Somalis and Ilhan Omar.
Was talking to a Unitarian Universalist minister recently. He says his life is pretty much dealing with immigration issues for the past year.
He said there is considerable 'chatter' that the next significant target will be Maine because there is a large-ish Somali community there.
I have no idea how reliable that chatter is, so take it as a piece of gossip on the internet.
> the next significant target will be Maine because there is a large-ish Somali community there.
That started a few days ago.
Operation "Catch of the Day"
I'm not kidding
Also still angry about George Floyd.
They believe that an urban area containing significant immigrant communities but surrounded on all sides by ultra-right-wing exurban and rural people, 99% of whom are white, will be easy to subjugate.
could be that Trump didn't like how Walz openly mocked him during the election
It's full of enemies - well off white liberals and black immigrants.
Governor was VP candidate
Just brings the shit to his people
Watch this at the 5 secod mark[].
It looks like the agent that picked up the disarmed gun had his finger on it and ND'd the initial shot. He jolts his arm right as the first shot goes off. Then all the other officer panic and fire.
Edit: ND = negligent discharge
This doesn't hold to scrutiny. The ICE agent that was first to shoot was the same agent to fire the most shots, I'm led to believe he was the ONLY one that fired shots.
Just say it as it is, they executed a US citizen.
Executed yet _another_ US citizen.
This is going to keep happening.
Over, and over, and over again, until ICE is disbanded and those involved are held accountable. When that happens (and how high the casualty number gets) is up to the American people.
After pistol whipping him and holding him down with five guys.
His crime? Filming them.
In a few short years some of these ICE workers will be brought up on charges and sentences for their crimes. Just because no one has the gaul to arrest them today doesn't mean they won't in the future. No statute of limitations here.
I would like to believe this, but I think we need new leadership in dem leadership to make this happen.
Trump staged a coup to invalidate an election and install himself as president. Dem leadership thought that slow rolling his prosecution was the right idea. I believe that there is serious risk that the dems just say "well, let's try to put all that behind us" if they win in 2026 and 2028.
If there are elections in 2026 or 2028.
You are terribly optimistic. I think they will face no consequences and the violence will escalate even more. I _could_ be overreacting, but I'm afraid we're on the cusp of something horrible.
So then project past the horribleness.
There will be an accounting. Seems like in history that's more often the case.
Personal gun ownership scares me for this reason. The potential for an incorrect assumption of one of the parties who also has a gun. I’d like to see the people who pull the trigger “accidentally” prosecuted in most cases.
It's the playbook already seen in Argentina, the Middle East and many other countries. But especially Argentina.
The military always has in the back of their mind the idea that they are above people, and this goes from the most deviant and incompetent soldier who still has a 6pack and fighting abilities and thinks all the guys in his small town are wussies all the way up to the highest ranked general who begrudgingly has to meet Senators and Representatives but still think they are nothing but wussies.
A common thread is that they think that society doesn't reward them with enough power for their valuable skills and instead it gives such power to undeserving people and their undeserving skills, for example a mayor who is able to cry on command to empathize with the population when some tragedy happens or the same mayor who got elected by being able to identify people's worries and lie that they'll fix them just to get power.
And if even the smallest doubt begins to enter the mind of the population , the doubt that yes maybe it could be better if the military ran things, the cold execution, the lack of emotion would bring us efficiency....it's already over.... the military dictatorship in effect already in place as there is no way to stop it after the seed of the doubt begins to emerge in the collective minds of the population.
If a malignant actor can convince the military that he can deliver the status in society that they really deserve they'll be willing to kill for that man. And if that malignant actor can also plant a small seed in the collective minds of the population....well get ready to kneel before your new dictator America
This isn't the military. It's worth pointing out our military is very different than those militaries.
Really? Why they accepted to execute the kidnapping of Maduro then? Or the droning made famous by Snowden, or Abu Graib or all the grim stuff that happened in the Middle East ever since 2001?
The Military thinks it's better than everyone and as a personality type they want to be involved in unprecedented stuff to 'leave their mark on the world'
A bad actor can seize such sentiment in a whim
Yes, really, and in a very important way specifically but in numerous ways.
You can never tell the breaking point of fascism but this certainly looks like it. I'm happy I don't work for a US company because I no longer think it's ethical to do so.
Most people I know, including some on the right disagree with these tactics which seem designed more to intimidate and silence opposition. Of course you’re free to work with whomever you choose but it seems like a pretty empty virtue signal to avoid all companies in a huge, diverse country
The leader of that huge, diverse country controls the most powerful military in the world and is threatening to invade my country and is showing maps where it’s part of the US.
I have a 2 year old daughter.
With every fibre of my being I’m not spending a cent on any US business, person, company.
It might be empty but if enough people do this and put pressure on the US economy it might make a difference. It's unfortunate but many people won't care until it starts effecting them personally.
If choosing your place of employment to align with your values is a “virtue signal,” then maybe we should all be signaling our virtues a lot more.
A country that elected Trump twice in spite of his obvious character flaws.
Also using the term "virtue signal" marks you as an idiot.
The term really is being abused.
"Oh, you are donating your time and money to charitable programs to the poor? What virtue signaling." It has just become a cliche to say that doing anything based on your values whatsoever is bad.
Like in the South Park episode from 28 years ago, ICE/MAGA can justify any violence by crying "It's coming right for us!".
Statement from Michael and Susan Pretti Parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti "We are heartbroken but also very angry. Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the 'hero' term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. 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 had 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. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank You.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alex-pretti-fatally-sho...
Another angle of the encounter:
https://np.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qlvpgy/better_...
Can ICE agents be prosecuted three years later if the party in Federal power changes?
Any chance to see the other side ? I regularly read the opposite side press, their points are basically this:
- get rid of all immigrants (illegal alients)
- get rid of everyone who is against ICE
- take Canada, Greenland, Mexico and Colombia
Thus seriously, any minimal possibility to justify actions of ICE? Scared, non trained, a very stupid agent, whatever ?
ICE is just US IRGC at point.
I feel like open armed conflict between anti-fascist groups and these federal goons is inevitable at this point. When it happens it will be used as pretext for a wider more brutal occupation and will be used as extenuating circumstances to 'bend the rules' come election time.
The winning move here is continued nonviolent opposition, but it only takes one spark to start a fire then who knows what happens
First they came for the illegal immigrants and I did not speak out, because I was not an illegal immigrant.
Then they came for the legal immigrants they didn't like and I did not speak out, because I was not a legal immigrant.
Then they came for their political enemies and I did not speak up, because I was not their political enemy.
Then they came for me, and there was nobody left to speak out for me.
I don't know why people are still wasting time with protests and filming. The murderous Nazis won't learn until the people of Minneapolis deal with them the way Afghans dealt with imperialist invaders in Afghanistan. There is another three-letter acronym starting with I that comes to mind.
Think about why the administration and its backers lie so frequently: they know they’re lying, and they know that evidence will come out showing that they’re lying, but they’re gambling on a lot of people being busy and not following the story closely enough to realize how misleading the initial claims were.
They do that because their policies are unpopular and they would lose power if most people voted. That’s why these videos matter: it’s probably not going to convince the MAGA diehards to recant but they’re shocking enough that anyone more patriotic than that might realize that this is far more than normal politics.
Trump-voting but not dedicated-to-evil relatives I know (I have others who are dedicated to evil, they're beyond hope—incidentally, this is a whole thing in Republican circles, folks who haven't been around actual red-state Republicans since the '90s or so have no idea how common some really shocking views about the validity of state violence on people who annoy or politically oppose them are, they outright like this stuff and there are minimum 50 million people like that in this country) are mostly doing the "well both sides say different things and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle" thing about all of this stuff, and refusing to watch the videos that would quickly show them that no, only one side is saying anything at all connected to the truth.
The validity of state violence in the minds of a lot of rural people went through a phase change after Covid.
The folks I know who were previously sympathetic the constraints on government overreach watched state and federal governments impose policies that made no sense for their communities and were actively detrimental to their livelihoods and enforce those policies with fines and even jail time in some instances.
These people would have been against the tactics ICE is using in 2019. Today they’re ambivalent. The attitude is “what comes around goes around.”
If it's helpful the BBC have an edited video that shows the time around the shooting without the actual shooting. It makes it pretty clear that the official narrative is bullshit without having to watch someone get killed.
Yeah, I know a few people like that too. In a way it’s good that the administration went with the bold “he had a gun so we were justified in executing him” claim because that went so hard against decades of 2A claims that it got people to actually do more than skim the headline.
People are not busy; they're willfully blind to the truth. These people hang out on Facebook which will never surface the truth to them, only misinformation.
Some people are willfully blind but there are a ton of people who are comfortable enough that they can just tune out. This kind of extreme stuff, things like the tariffs, etc. are getting through to them but it has to get shockingly bad for things to penetrate.
For how long can we keep ignoring this?
Right up until it knocks on our own door.
Maybe if Trump goes after cryptocurrency or AI they'll start to care.
Who’s ignoring it?
Everyone who flagged this submission, and now everyone that can’t see it.
there's another submission with nearly 4x the comments that isn't flagged - this one is at least in part flagged bc it's a dupe
Republican senators?
I wouldn’t say they’re ignoring it’s so much as cheering it on, and falling over each other to voice their support for it. It’s liberals getting killed after all, and they’re not Americans like republicans are Americans.
No, there’s people that love what ICE is doing, people that hate it, people who try and stop it, and the rest of us who look on in horror at the trainwreck and collapse happening in front of us…
But I can’t think of a single group of people who are ignoring it. Other than maybe for a lack of perceived other options and to keep from going insane.
Myself? I’m basically a coward. I have two young children. I don’t want to go protest ICE and get killed by one of these wannabe gestapos. I’m in a real state of fear for my children and the world they’re going to grow up in, but I literally don’t know what else I can do. Maybe I’ll help join the campaign if a democratic candidate this year and help them get elected.
But I’m not ignoring it. I can’t think of anyone who is.
If you're not doing anything about this, you're ignoring it. I don't say this as an insult. I say it as a wakeup call. I'm right there with you, only maybe a few degrees closer to not ignoring it. I have been to protests. I have been tear-gassed and seen people within a few yards of me bloodied up by the authorities, but in comparison to this man that is now dead, I have been ignoring this. For those of us that see that this is wrong, we all need to do more, for your children and mine.
For however long flagging on HN has no downsides.
Until someone comes for them.
It is basically equivalent to "First They Came".
First they came for the Immigrants And I did not speak out Because they were not Immigrants (hell they were stealing jobs so fck them)
Then they came for the US citizens who were Socialist/Leftists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist/Leftists (hell they dare protest the government so fck them)
so and so forth..
You can never tell the breaking point of fascism but this certainly looks like it. I'm happy I don't work for a US company because I no longer think it's ethical to do so.
quick reminder that out of the 8 author of the seminal paper that arguably started the whole LLM thing (attention is all you need) only one is American. all the other are foreign born, studied and worked abroad and only then were recruited by US FAANGs.
Trump's death squads execute another dissident
If not now, when?
So fucking sad and preventable.
I hate to say it, but once again, Trump wins. All of my MAGA family is talking about what's going on in Minneapolis, with pretty predictable reactions. But guess what they're not talking about: Jeffrey Epstein - that's old news, time to move on, Dems are the only ones bringing it up, etc.
@dang Why is this flagged and removed from the front page in seconds.
It Turkey a current popular meme is an old tweet that says “I'm so fed up with politics that I say, 'Let me just focus on this instead,' and whatever that is, they'll come and fuck that up too. You won't even be able to breathe”.
That’s what you will get by not talking politics. US is on the fast track to be like Turkey.
Some of those ICE agents will kill some AI engineer’s father or mother who has the wrong accents, wrong color or doesn’t speak “American”, it will go viral in India or China and US companies will start paying warzone premiums to hire any talent.
> > That’s what you will get by not talking politics. US is on the fast track to be like Turkey.
On the contrary, if everybody is so focused on the National Politics contests as we've been ever since 2015 , it's only natural that the winner of that popularity contest becomes a demi God with unlimited powers (on top of what were already granted him by the very generous Constitution).
It's only logic, the more followed the contest, the more popular/emboldened will the winner of the contest be.
It's true for beauty paegents, boxing matches, movie and music prizes and yes even Presidential elections.
The answer is in local politics , attention there because that's where stuff has to be applied on the territory.
following politics is half of the job, You also have to act on the issues that you care about. The problem with the Turks is that they just follow.
Tagging users like that is not a site function. If you want to get in touch with the moderators, send email with the contact link in the page footer.
"flagged" always means that users flagged it, not moderator action.
And there are a lot of readers who will flag all submissions about US politics, no matter the polarity of the article.
> "flagged" always means that users flagged it, not moderator action. And there are a lot of readers who will flag all submissions about US politics, no matter the polarity of the article.
The thing is that dang has generally not unflagged any posts about topics like these in the past, so there's little reason to think the flagging is only a result of temporary inaction by the moderation team. Rather it is a consistent pattern permitted to exist by said team.
If you're really curious, something more effective and productive than hypothesizing into the void is emailing hn@ycombinator.com. Dang et. al. have always replied and been helpful and forthcoming in answering my questions and concerns.
I have sent an email linking to this discussion, but I think it would be more constructive if the helpful and forthcoming answers happened in public rather than in sent in private email threads to everyone wondering.
Calling discussing something on HN "hypothesizing into the void" is a strange choice of words, either meant to be patronizing toward me specifically or toward all HN users.
> I think it would be more constructive if the helpful and forthcoming answers happened in public
You're in luck, because there are thousands of public answers and you can search them easily: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang&type=comment&dateRange... (by dang), https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (by tomhow). The answers we give by email are no different from the ones we give in public.
Whether they are helpful or forthcoming you'll have to decide. They are repetitive (and are even more tedious to write than they are to read) but here are some places to start:
stories with political overlap - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
not a current affairs site - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
consistency in moderation is impossible - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
flags and turning off flags - https://hn.algolia.com/?query=flags%20off%20turn%20by%3Adang...
repetitiveness makes a story and a discussion less interesting in HN's sense - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306 - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
If you take a look at some of those answers and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. But it would be good to familiarize yourself with the standard explanations, because they're nearly always adequate to explain what you're seeing, although they will probably leave you frustrated if you feel strongly about the politics of a story.
FWIW, here's a short version: users flag things for various reasons; we turn off flags on a few such stories, but not more; that's because HN isn't a political or current affairs site; which stories get flags turned off is never going to satisfy anyone's political priorities, because the community is in deep disagreement with itself and because moderation consistency is impossible.
People dislike it when a story whose politics they agree with doesn't get to stay on the frontpage, but since it's impossible for all such stories to be on HN's frontpage, this frustration is unavoidable.
> FWIW, here's a short version: users flag things for various reasons; we turn off flags on a few such stories, but not more; that's because HN isn't a political or current affairs site;
I think you have misunderstood the request. The request was not to clarify the general moderation policy, but rather clarify the reasoning why this specific story was not considered as one of the few stories where such action was taken.
I have already clarified my specific concerns regarding flagging and this specific story in another post in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46745562
People are curious to hear the reasoning for keeping the flag on this specific post, since thought has obviously been put to it and a decision to keep it was made after thoughtful consideration. I.e. which of the several different policies you highlighted had the most weight in this decision, and which mitigating circumstances were considered as reasons for bypassing this policy and removing the flag (even if they were discarded in the end).
It is precisely because consistent moderation is not possible that this is needed (otherwise it would be easy to just refer to the consistent guidelines). The quality of the moderation depends on the judgement and reasoning of the moderators, and the only way for the users to form their own picture (good or bad) of this judgement is to ask to hear how it is applied to specific scenarios where it is ambiguous.
I am very sympathetic to the fact that it must be tedious and sometimes repetitive, but if the decision is controversial I think it is an important part of moderation and important for the community as a whole.
> but rather clarify the reasoning why this specific story was not considered as one of the few stories where such action was taken.
i think if you read more past discussions around moderation (including one dang directly linked) the reason for this would be obvious. read the search results for flags being turned off.
moderators try, as they said, to let the community moderate itself. they try to impress very little bias into the system. but they do try to promote constructive and interesting conversation, and the more things deviate from that mission, the less likely it is to be actively encouraged to be on HN
the likelihood of the conversation around this news post is very unlikely to be interesting and constructive. people have very entrenched beliefs and no one's mind is going to get changed from emotionally loaded comments on this post
additionally, this is now also the third post of this nature to be on HN in the past weeks, and there's unlikely to be anything new to the conversation added this time that wasn't covered by the previous thousands of comments on previous submissions
they are not actively reducing the visibility of this post. they're just declining to artificially inflate its visibility above the same criteria 99% of submissions also have
My post contains all the information you need to answer that question. The current story is obviously a flamewar topic, a political battle topic, and a repetitive topic. I'm not saying it isn't important—of course it's important, far more important than most things on HN's front page*. The issue is that HN's frontpage is not optimized for importance but for something else (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Optimizing for importance would make this a current affairs site, which is not its mandate. Actually we have to expend a lot of energy preventing that outcome, because the default pressures point in that direction, and are quite strong. One can really see that at moments when passions are heated, as they are in this thread.
* If you look at some of the old links I dug up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46747388, you'll find that this point has also been around a long time. Specifically these:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23380817 (June 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20453883 (July 2019)
I think the unease many people feel here is that this strict bureaucracy taken to its extreme conclusion would become something akin to a tragicomical farce: "No posts about the controversial nukes raining over Europe allowed, such flamewars would destroy our valuable forum for discussing the really interesting and intellectual political topics".
Clearly there must be a line somewhere. It was not here and today, but when and where is it? Trying desperately to cling onto normality at every cost when the actual reality is far from normal becomes a destructive endeavour in the end.
I have been a regular visitor on this site for 14 years, and have have never spoken up about this before. In fact I have always stood by the moderation policy and appreciated it. But I have a line where avoiding "inflammatory discussions" simply becomes obstinate and clueless, and harmful in the way that it gives convenient cover for the actors committing the real inflammatory acts, counting on people not caring enough to give them grief for it. And for me, that line has been crossed.
I'm curious: Have you not noticed any increase in people saying "this time it's different", or that different kinds of people are saying it now? Is it really just the same old people repeating the same old phrase to you?
> a repetitive topic
Small note: It has never been a repetitive topic, since all discussions about ICE performing extrajudicial killings have been quickly flagged of the front page and never (as a topic) discussed by the wider community.
Bureaucracy? ouch!
Yes, when you bring up extreme scenarios such as nuclear war (or civil war, as slg did - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746817), that's a way of saying that we're fiddling-while-rome-burns, burying-head-in-sand, etc. The problem is that you're assuming your conclusion by invoking those scenarios. That doesn't make the argument stronger.
I agree that the probability of such scenarios is not zero, and no I would not like to end up in the same bucket as the schmucks in Dr Strangelove or (more tragically) the last person in the "first they came for" meme. But none of us knows the future, and there's another scenario with nonzero probability as well. That is the scenario in which HN goes through swings and fluctuations (conditioned by macro trends), sticks to its mandate, and emerges intact.
As far as probability goes, that second scenario has the advantage of having happened many times already. Each time it's happened, I've ended up feeling that we made the right call. Does that prove it's the right call this time? Nope—we don't know the future, like I said. But at least there are close historical precedents supporting it, as well as the core principles of HN supporting it.
There's another argument too, although I quake a bit at bringing it up. Suppose the truly extreme, end-of-world scenario really is coming to pass. What contribution do we make by jettisoning HN's mandate, going to war and turning the site into a battlefield, sooner rather than later? How do more posts of angry denunciations and screaming at each other move the needle on the end of the world? That is the step in the argument, like the ??? of the underpants gnomes or the "then a miracle occurs" in that physics cartoon, which no one ever spells out.
I don't think anyone who has been inhaling the profoundly pointless triviality of the internet message board genre for as long as we have really believes that there's some unrealized potential to help society via shriller and more sarcastic flamewars. I assume also that anyone who genuinely believes that we're already in an extreme scenario has more important things to do than post angry comments on the internet. It seems clear that this is not about effecting change or effective opposition—it's about expressing feelings. I'm all in favor of feelings, but that's not the conversation that people say they're having when they have these conversations. (I'm not talking about you here! just so that's clear.)
> Have you not noticed any increase in people saying "this time it's different", or that different kinds for people are saying it now? Is it really just the same old people repeating the same old phrase
I don't think it's all the same people (though some!) but to me it's the same dynamic. But I hear you, and yes I might be wrong and live to regret it. I'm not speaking from a place of certainty.
> Small note: It has never been a repetitive topic, since all discussions about ICE performing extrajudicial killings have been quickly flagged of the front page and never (as a topic) discussed by the wider community.
Well, I was thinking of this thread: Minneapolis driver shot and killed by ICE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46531702 - Jan 2026 (351 comments), although you're right that that one wasn't on the front page (I thought it had been, because we turned off the flags on it, but apparently not.) But there have been major threads on this topic (or topic cluster): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu..., some have been on the frontpage, and that's of course only a slice of the political stories that appear here.
First of all I want to thank you for the thoughtful and candid reply. It has increased my faith in the moderation some, not because you have convinced me or I agree with you, but because it shows you are thinking in nuanced ways about this and engaging with the actual issues (and not just adhering without question to some written mandate).
I actually also agree fully with your analysis of the fundamentals here, just not your wider perspective.
Yes, I fully agree there is a risk of changing HN to the worse for no reason. But doing the right thing in uncertain times always carries a risk. As seen in this very story we are discussing: Alex Pretti risked his life filming the violent ICE agents, for very uncertain gain, and ultimately paid the price. I still think he did the right thing. Compared to the price Alex paid, "a worse HN" seems like a risk worth taking.
And no, I don't think allowing more controversial topics on HN will make a major difference in the context of world politics (or prevent the apocalypse). But when it comes to things like these everyone will always feel too "small" to matter, and the end result if we listen to that feeling will be that no one does anything instead of everyone doing something to improve the situation.
I'm not spending my time arguing here because I think it will change the course of history, that my posts will actually change the moderation policies of HN, or because I think that by doing so I would save the world. I'm doing it because it's a minor line in the sand I could draw in a community I am active in, and it's better to try to do what we can (however minor) than just giving up. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something, etc etc.
I don't think we will reach any agreement regarding the wider perspective today, but I do feel like I have gotten the nuanced answer I requested regarding the moderation policy of HN in the context of the current mayhem going on (beyond just avoiding flamewars). So, again, thank you for that.
>There's another argument too, although I quake a bit at bringing it up. Suppose the truly extreme, end-of-world scenario really is coming to pass. What contribution do we make by jettisoning HN's mandate, going to war and turning the site into a battlefield, sooner rather than later? How do more posts of angry denunciations and screaming at each other move the needle on the end of the world?
This is spoken like a mere observer. The benefit of "jettisoning HN's mandate" is to prevent the worst case scenario that you depict. You and HN have power. Some of the richest and most powerful people in this country and on this planet look at this website. These stories being on the front page and people reading the comments can actually lead to change which could decrease the odds of true disaster.
People need to stop pretending that the internet isn't real. This ordeal in Minnesota is in large part because a Youtuber showed up at preschools demanding to see children because he believed some conspiracy he saw on the internet. The stuff said on the internet does have real world ramifications and I'm frankly shocked how someone in your position that has seen the world change to the degree that is has in your time as the moderator here is still falling back to the "profoundly pointless triviality of the internet message board".
That's helpful in that it clarifies a difference in assumptions. I don't believe that HN, or its admins, have anything like the power you're attributing to it/us. We're basically janitors.
That's not a criticism. I understand how a perception like what you're expressing can arise, but it can only arise from afar.
Alex Pretti was a nurse. What power did he have? I'm not attributing ultimate power over the fate of the nation to you or HN. You are a tiny cog in a huge machine, but you're still a bigger cog than me. So I'm asking you to consider when you will use the power you do have. Current events should have us all considering that question
It's a mistake to think that deep pocket YC investors will suddenly become aware of current events that otherwise escaped their notice if only current event stories made it to "the front page of HN".
Another mistake would be to think that [flagged] and down weighted submissions do not get many many eyeballs and that C-suits of large SV and other tech companies don't take part.
Every reminder that powerful people see that the status quo is unacceptable has value. It's also obvious that a post being flagged reduces the number of people who will see that post, that's the whole purpose of flagging.
If it's really true that "some of the richest and most powerful people in this country and on this planet look at this website", what do we want them to see here? Do we want them to see enraged people saying the same things that they keep hearing over and over and thus dismiss as background noise? Or do we want them to see intelligent, thoughtful people having sophisticated discussions and making new points that might give them pause and provoke them to think about things in a different way?
We were discussing post level moderation and not comment level moderation. I'm suggesting the site allow more politics, I'm not condoning abandoning all the site’s rules. I don't think the level of discourse in the comments is being improved by the current level of post level moderation. The most noticeable impact is simply prompting tangents into the post level moderation itself like it did here which arguably lowers the level of discourse.
Let's be honest: you're doing much more than "suggesting".
The whole reason we can't have these posts on the front page is that the comments in the threads so frequently break the guidelines and turn the site into a place that repels people who want to have thoughtful discussions. So there is no yet-known way to have our cake and eat it; the presence of these stories on the front page means abandoning the site's rules, because so many commenters are unable discuss them in a way that respects the site's rules. And the outcome of this is that it pushes HN towards being irrelevant, precisely because these discussions offer so little that powerful people would find persuasive.
I would love it if HN could be the very best place for discussing difficult topics and be a place where we really could push politics in the right direction. That can't happen if the discussions about the most important topics rapidly devolve into easily-ignored background noise.
The discussion on this thread has actually been fine, apart from one account that has been all over the place repeating absolute nonsense (consistent with their overall recent post history on political topics). Most of their posts have already been flagged, and much of the resulting noise could have been avoided by rate limiting them. So I’m not sure that this particular discussion really proves your point (though it is only one example). You could easily find more contentious discussions about Rust or Apple.
Provocative political articles about the UK seem more likely to escape flagging, which has the strange consequence that HN sometimes seems to spend more energy decrying the current state of the UK than that of the US, despite the relative imbalance in user numbers.
> HN sometimes seems to spend more energy decrying the current state of the UK than that of the US, despite the relative imbalance in user numbers.
I have to assume this perception has mostly to do with the time of day you're normally looking at HN. As someone who is looking at the threads for hours each day, there's certainly far more politics-related discussion about the U.S. than any other country.
There's more overall discussion of US politics for sure, but it tends to occur tangentially (as articles about US politics are pretty reliably flagged). To give a concrete example, the following article was not flagged and got quite a lot of discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46600194 I do not think an article on an obscure website with a similarly 'provocative' headline relating to current US politics would escape flagging.
Single instances and hypotheticals don't tell us much. That particular topic spent only four hours on the front page, and it was times that are peak for the U.K. and off-peak for the U.S. Plenty of stories related to U.S. politics spend at least that amount of time on the front page. People often remember the stories that are flagged that they strongly felt should have been given front page time, but forget about the stories that did get plenty of exposure.
I doubt you can point me to a recent story about US politics that spent four hours on the front page and had a similarly inflammatory headline. It would be as if this discussion were occurring under the headline "ICE thugs murder second US citizen" and linked to the website of a left-wing political organisation with an anonymous byline.
Unless peak US times are very late in the day, I'm pretty sure I do look at HN quite often during peak US hours. I'm only 5 hours ahead of the East Coast here. Gemini (ha!) tells me that
>...peak engagement hours generally align with US workday hours, particularly in Pacific (PT) and Eastern Time (ET). The highest activity typically occurs between 11 AM – 4 PM UTC (roughly 6 AM – 11 AM ET / 3 AM – 8 AM PT).
The story you're talking about was on the front page mostly between about 1pm and 3pm U.K. time, then hovered around the bottom of the front page and dropped off as most of the U.S. came online. And you're talking about one article but asserting a trend or pattern.
Here are recent stories about U.S. politics with inflammatory titles that spent multiple hours (over 22, in one case) on the front page.
The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46633378 - Jan 2026 (858 comments - 2 hours)
Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355548 - Dec 2025 (471 comments - 22 hours)
A Developer Accidentally Found CSAM in AI Data. Google Banned Him for It - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46233067 - Dec 2025 (93 comments - 2 hours)
You can't refuse to be scanned by ICE's facial recognition app, DHS document say - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45780228 - Nov 2025 (509 comments - 7 hours)
Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45505103 - Oct 2025 (163 comments - 3 hours)
We could debate what counts as "recent" or "inflammatory," but I don't think that would be productive.
You're really comparing these to the following headline?
> The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management
All of your examples focus on specific events and factual claims, not sweeping doom and gloom claims about the state of the US. I'll leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.
By the way, we're both making claims here based on what we've seen of HN, not some kind of objective scientific analysis. I asserted a trend and gave an example of the trend that I was talking about. It's silly to complain about that when you are doing the exact same thing.
You've cited one example and claimed it to be evidence of a trend. But you haven't shown evidence of a trend. One-offs happen all the time on HN for all kinds of reasons – randomness as much as anything else. I've provided five examples I could find quickly. I'm not getting further into a debate about the definition of “inflammatory”. When discussions turn into debates about definitions of inherently subjective terms it's definitely time to stop.
The point is that we are both basing our point of view on our accumulated experience of reading HN and then looking for examples to illustrate that point of view. It's a misreading of the discourse to complain that these examples aren't strong 'evidence' for the points of view in question. Of course they are not; they are merely illustrative examples. And realistically, you don't even really want me to send you a 100 page evidence dossier, do you?
Your specific examples are not very convincing, but as I said, anyone reading can compare the headlines and judge for themselves on that point.
>Let's be honest: you're doing much more than "suggesting".
Lol, I don't know what that is supposed to mean. I'll admit to including an undercurrent of shaming with that suggestion to hopefully cause some introspection, but it's still just a suggestion.
Beyond that, I just fundamentally disagree with the point you seem to be making People can't be trusted to talk nicely so they won't get any place to talk at all just doesn't feel like the right principle for the moment.
Regardless, my original point stands. Everyone's unique role in life grants them a certain amount of power. Now is the time to consider what it will take before you use your power to exert whatever positive influence you can.
With the direction we're headed, there's a non-zero chance that some day soon I'll click on over to https://news.ycombinator.com/active and see "[flagged][dead] US Erupts in Civil War" and I'll click on the comments to see a copied and pasted comment from dang with a link to a dozen other comments explaining why this political story doesn't belong on HN.
"Politics" doesn't care about your apolitical spaces. It's coming for everything and you'll have to draw the line somewhere.
People have been making a version of this argument for as long as I've been doing this job. There is always a feeling of this-time-is-different, how-can-you-not urgency. I'm not saying that's wrong, but there's a counterargument. The counterargument is that political flames have a way of consuming everything they touch and that if we had listened to this argument in the past, HN would have ceased to exist years ago.
I believe that the bulk of this community favors the counterargument, and that it would be a big mistake to let political passions dominate how the site is operated, since that would be the end of HN qua HN. We think a website that's not overwhelmed by politics and political battle—that clears space for other things that gratify curiosity—has a right to exist. I believe most HN readers agree with that and are grateful that we haven't pulled the plug at moments of pressure.
I'm not saying anything radical here - this is the standard way that HN has always operated, and I'm repeating what I've always said:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26253103 (Feb 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785791 (Jan 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23380817 (June 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20453883 (July 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16968668 (May 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16581518 (March 2018)
You seem to be a little sidetracked from my original point so let me reiterate it, "It's coming for everything and you'll have to draw the line somewhere."
I understand you can dismiss that with "There is always a feeling of this-time-is-different", but what happens when it's truly different? Have you set a line for yourself of when it will be different or are you the frog telling everyone else that the water's not that hot? Or are you claiming there is no line and even if there is an all out civil war you won’t want any discussion of it on this site?
Asking people where the final line is with a nuclear option is a classic question with no satisfying answer, and the classical answer is that there is no line for when the button will be pressed.
I didn't ask where the line was, I asked if it existed. "The line" is a rhetorical device meant to encourage the reader to consider whether their previously held opinions should be held in perpetuity or whether they need to be reevaluated.
I don't see any sidetrack. That's the same argument, and I can only repeat the same counterargument.
I'm not saying that your argument is wrong—I would have to know the future in order to say that, which I don't. All I can do is give the reasons why the counterargument holds more sway from an HN-admin point of view. (Which, btw, is not some sort of disagreement about the politics of this story or other stories.)
Well then, thanks for explaining why that the hyperbolic example in my first comment was in fact not hyperbolic.
but fighting against a tyrannical, oppressive, illegitimate government is exactly what a hacker would do?
if you want an apolitical forum, don't call it hacker news, it's false advertisement.
maybe call it ostrich news or something.
Yes, it's what many hackers would do, and have done, and HN has had, and does have, many threads about that kind of thing.
I realize these distinctions get lost when people are feeling heated, but HN has never been an apolitical site and we don't describe it that way. There are more options than just (1) being apolitical and (2) being completely aflame. Not that they're easy squares to occupy.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Hacker News is from YC, which is a US organization with some power. As a US organization, it must limit discussion to things that are legal in the US. If you want to plan terrorism, you need to go elsewhere.
But reading all those old threads, I got three interpretations of "on topic":
1. Trivial intellectual trinkets,
2. Important topics that happen to overlap with intellectual interest,
3. Important topics that we somehow manage to have a thoughtful discussion about.
Is "off-topic" really about the standard of discussion and not about the topic?
There's a lot of mysterious influences in the dynamics between topic type, community culture, and standard of discussion. I mean to say that allowing thoughtful discussions of controversial topics is not a pipe dream, but it only happens occasionally and we're not really capable of sustained flight, so to speak. It seems like the interesting (worthy, important) adventures into inflammatory topics are parasitic on the comfortable trivial intellectual fluff, which keeps the forum-wide inflammation level down.
There is always a feeling of this-time-is-different
I don't know, Dan. This does feel different. Innocent people are being killed on the street, under color of law and sanctioned at the very highest levels of government.
When's the last time something like this happened? Kent State? This incident and the Renee Good killing seem worse than Kent State, somehow. Maybe because they were so up-close-and-personal, because they were recorded in real time, and because of the executive branch's overt, sustained gaslighting about what happened. Lies easily debunked by the recordings, yet still accepted as truth by a terrifying, unreachable chunk of our population.
My fear is that the flames being lit now will consume everything they touch. That seems to be Trump's intention, and he almost always gets what he wants somehow, doesn't he?
I think that's what sig was suggesting. There will be no refuge in neutrality. We will all be forced to stand on one side of the line or the other, and use whatever resources are at our disposal to hold that line.
[flagged]
I feel fairly confident that the bulk of this community would not want us to operate HN based on feelings like this, regardless of how right you are, or feel you are, on the issues.
Thanks for the reply Dan.
That’s not the question I asked.
unless you alays have your email open on your device, its a tiny PITA to fire it up, login, remember your issue, and compose a proper message.
so when you [@user] tag a user rather than email its kinda like a rhetorical question, your not expecting a reply, but if someone just happens to pass by and notice your tag, they might answer.
also @user might mean wasted desire to some, but other users here might see a previously agreed upon heuristic is in play, and act in that context.
for example if someone from a very small subset of usernames that i recognize, were to @rolph me, i might SMS them at a previously agreed mobile number, if i see the signal in a reasonable time.
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
> "interesting new phenomenon"
Pardon me, but summary executions in the United States taking place in broad daylight, with seeming impunity, is very much a new and novel phenomenon, and incredibly interesting to many of us.
These are events of historic significance.
I guess the novel part is that it happens to white people now. Used to happen a lot to black people, less so after mobile phone cameras but still happened.
I hate to break it to you - but officers killing people in the US is not new.
It seems you are purposefully removing all the specific context to be willfully indifferent.
You would need to actually grapple with the specific context to be convincing. Otherwise you could just as well respond to a police officer smuggling an automatic weapon into the senate chamber and unloading the magazine into the lawmakers with "hate to break it to you - but officers killing people in the US is not new".
I second this question, @dang. I would like some explanation of the moderation policy here to at least understand the reasoning.
With posts such as "Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S." and "Trump wins presidency for second time" being allowed (just to pick the top two Trump submissions), there is a clear precedent that big events in American politics are considered suitable for the front page.
I can see only two stances justifying removal here
(1) someone winning the presidency is considered an important event, but that same president then organizing a paramilitary force of lackeys to unlawfully execute protesters in "enemy states" without any repercussion is not considered as an important event but simply normal politics (which is not an apolitical position but rather a radical and controversial political opinion enforced by the moderation team)
(2) the topic is expected to cause anger, and only well-mannered and jovial discussions are suitable for the front page. This completely disregards that sometimes the rational and constructive response to these kinds of developments are anger, and a discussion about how to direct and act on such anger within the tech community should happen.
Everything is politics. And enforcing (or not correcting) mandatory silence on certain political topics is a political decision by the moderation team, colored by their priorities and their word view.
I also want to re-iterate and highlight the excellent summary made by lynndotpy:
> For anyone wondering why this is relevant to HackerNews: > - There are tech companies and workers in companies outside California, > - A government deploying a militarized police force to execute people in the streets is bad for the economy, > - That government is the United States, and so this is bad for the world economy, > - A lot of the people in our industry are immigrants from outside the United States, > - If you're a HackerNews user in the United States, you can be shot and killed just like this.
People say there are users who don't want politics on their frontpage, but I think it's just simpler: we have a nontrivial minority of users who are pro-MAGA and like what's going on, so they downvote anything that makes Trump's action look bad. :/
And some HN users are being paid a lot of money to write software that facilitates the actions of this administration and/or further destabilizes democracy.
A reminder that /active is the actual frontpage to HN. The landing page is just what the censors allow you to see.
It should be the reverse. The fontpage ought to be "active"—add a "filtered" link the to header/banner for people that hate seeing politics.
Show dead is also your friend.
Thanks for the link to https://news.ycombinator.com/active; didn't know that one.
As for the existence of "censors" that don't "allow" you to see anything. That's not how this site works, and your lack of carefulness stating that leads me to downvote that.
As much as I hate that anything regarding the rise of fascism in the US get's insta-flagged (by a community, not a "censor"), it's still very easy to find such posts, for example on an aggregator [1] and on the /active subpage you just mentioned.
It will also be broadly shared on regular (social) media, which is an oft stated reason this kind of stories get flagged by the community, although I think there are many other reasons.
"…didn't know that one."
Yeah, that's a problem. Not even a link in the header/banner to active.
Because people flagged it?