The recent fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, by U.S. Border Patrol agents has left many Americans—including many who identify as conservative—grappling with deep unease. On January 24, 2026, amid escalating protests against Federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis, Pretti was executed while trying to protect a woman from Federal agents who had just knocked her down. Multiple eyewitness videos, verified by major outlets like The New York Times and NBC News, show Pretti holding a phone—not a gun—while attempting to assist a woman who had been shoved to the ground. Federal officials initially claimed self-defense, alleging he approached with a weapon, but sworn witness testimonies and footage contradict this, describing him as non-resistant and focused on helping others.
Pretti was a dedicated healthcare worker who cared for veterans, an avid outdoorsman, and a U.S. citizen with no criminal record beyond minor traffic issues. He had a valid firearms permit, was legally carrying at the time of the confrontation, but evidence indicates no firearm was brandished. His family has condemned the official narrative as “sickening lies,” and protests erupted almost immediately, with Minnesota officials like Gov. Tim Walz calling the incident “sickening” and demanding an end to what they describe as a federal “occupation.” It marks the second fatal shooting of a US citizen by Federal agents in Minneapolis this month, following Renee Good’s death on January 7.
What disturbs me most is the reaction from the MAGA right-wing. Pretti has been quickly labeled as a “Communist” or “domestic terrorist” online, often solely based on his presence at the protests against immigration raids or the unverified social media claims. Yet reliable reports portray him as apolitical in daily life—as kind, service-oriented, and uninterested in partisan drama. His friends and colleagues emphasize his true commitment to saving lives, not disrupting them. Celebrating or dismissing his death, dehumanizing him with labels, because he fits a convenient ideological enemy is profoundly wrong. Rights violations don’t depend on politics. No, due process and presumption of innocence apply to everyone, even (or especially) those we disagree with.
This selective outrage highlights a deeper issue not being addressed: this is political retribution disguised as enforcement. Minnesota has a very small illegal immigrant population compared to other states, around 95,000–130,000 (per recent Pew Research and state analyses), nothing like Texas (2.1 million) or Florida (1.6 million)—red states with far larger numbers. And yet Federal resources, including thousands of ICE, Border Patrol, and DHS agents deployed since late 2025, have disproportionately targeted blue Minnesota with sanctuary-like policies. Freezing billions in Federal funds to the state and overriding local law enforcement appears to be punitive, aimed at breaking political resistance rather than uniform honest immigration control.
This echoes historical patterns of a central power crushing regional autonomy, and most starkly in Joseph Stalin’s use of starvation against Ukraine during the Holodomor of 1932–1933. Stalin had deliberately engineered a man-made famine to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and resistance to Soviet collectivization, killing millions through grain seizures, border blockades, and denial of aid—this framed as necessary for national unity and ideological purity, but was clearly intended to crush a semi-autonomous region’s defiance. Here, the heavy-handed federal deployment in Minnesota—targeting a state resisting central directives—clearly mirrors that authoritarian tactic: punish non-compliance under the guise of security, erode local sovereignty, and break any “resistance” to the regime’s aims.
The US Constitution originally designed states as semi-sovereign entities—much like small nations —with the Federal government focused on their defense and on interstate affairs. Expansions of Federal authority—starting as an unfortunate byproduct of Lincoln’s Civil War centralization of power and those Reconstruction-era impositions, shifted the balance. Today’s actions—militarized deployments without state consent, the killings during protests, and limited (or non-existent) cooperation in investigations—violate the 10th Amendment’s spirit. A Federal judge has already issued a restraining order on DHS crowd-control tactics, and multiple states have since joined legal challenges calling them “militarized and illegal.”
George Orwell diagnosed this in 1984: regimes manufacture perpetual enemies to justify control—using propaganda to invert reality. Fear of “outsiders” or “internal threats” (protesters, or sanctuary cities) is stoked to excuse force, while media—dominated by a few billionaire-aligned outlets—amplifies narratives that dumb down discourse. Some cheer Federal agents after these killings, seeing them as heroes against an illegal “invasion,” yet ignore contradictions like inaction in red states with bigger populations. People who just a couple years ago decried Covid mandates and the slaying of Ashli Babbitt now seem to see FAFO as a moral argument. It’s always the same playbook: dehumanize, divide, and centralize the decision making power.
The right-wing is just as collectivist and dumb as those who they derided as being leftist, Socialist or Communist. They couldn’t articulate a logical consistent argument in defense of their irrational smorgasbord approach to ethics and morality, it is just whatever is expedient in the moment and on the whim of their Big Brother stand in (DJT) as the billionaires technocrats decide how they will manage us unruly human cattle.
Orwell didn’t foresee AI and mass surveillance tools like Palantir, but the parallels are eerie. During COVID, many on the right had decried overreach in the name of liberty; now, similar authoritarian capabilities are embraced when aimed at perceived enemies. They fail to see the machine they’re building will also be turned on them. They reveal themselves as tools rather than moral thinkers. This hypocrisy reveals how various systems of control operate identically—whether they’re labeled Socialist, authoritarian, woke or otherwise—they erode rights selectively until they target anyone dissenting.
Pretti’s death isn’t about immigration politics alone; it’s about the erosion of constitutional norms, the weaponization of federal power against states, and the willingness to overlook violations when the victim is painted as “the other.” True conservatism should defend limited government, state sovereignty, and individual rights always—not cheer when Federal agents kill citizens in the street (then clap in celebration) over disputed enforcement actions. If we accept this for “Communists” today, tomorrow it could be anyone labeled an enemy. When a regime is given permission to abuse Nazis then everyone is a Nazi if they stand up to the regime. That’s how this works and smart people aren’t a party to it.
We need accountability, especially at the top, in a time when our President’s wealth has doubled as he continues to protect pedophile predator elites, we need to ask why release of the Epstein files is being and unlawfully slow walked. We need to have independent investigations of these killings, transparency on bodycam footage, and an end to punitive Federal overreach. Lives like that of Alex Pretti’s—of ordinary Americans trying to help in chaotic moments imposed by officials who only double down rather than deescalate—deserve better than propaganda-fueled dismissal. We do not want to wait until two becomes two million—we either stand together now against a budding authoritarian regime or we fall separately.
Irregular Ideation 