A turning point in Minnesota

The central paradox of our time is that the single most important issue on the table — Donald Trump’s authoritarian aspirations and the conservative movement’s indulgence of those aspirations — is by almost all accounts a political loser.

Even as progressive and moderate Democrats have argued ferociously about almost everything for years, we have come to something of a consensus on that, at least.

When Democrats’ rhetoric has turned toward democracy, it’s often not been from a position of strength, but out of a sense of desperation. Joe Biden’s “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” speech in September 2022 and Kamala Harris’s closing argument from the Ellipse in October 2024 both came when they were down in the polls and desperate to shore up support. But everyone agreed after the November 2024 elections that, going forward, winning would require a strong focus on affordability, whether that sounded like Zohran Mamdani or like Abigail Spanberger.

But obviously the emotional heart of opposition to Trump is not actually about high nominal prices.

It’s impossible to know what the future will hold, but I think Alex Pretti’s death over the weekend forces the argument in a new way, one that is perhaps more persuasive than what we’ve seen in the past.

Coming hot on the heels of Renee Good’s death, it showed an administration that is committed at its core to reckless, violent, deadly behavior. I don’t want to say that the video footage speaks for itself, because if we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that footage never does. But it appears to be plainly inconsistent with the version of events that top officials described on social media and on official platforms.

In both cases, high-ranking government officials in Washington, D.C., have responded immediately by smearing dead civilians as terrorists and, in Pretti’s case, by lying about the sequence of events.

I think the more sensible brand of conservative, like Rich Lowry here, is frustrated that the Minneapolis activist community has tactically out-dueled ICE and the Border Patrol, and has turned the page from a first-order question of immigration enforcement to a third-order question of Donald Trump’s conduct and fitness for office.

But outsmarting your opponents with disciplined behavior is a move that you are allowed to make in politics. It’s Donald Trump and JD Vance