I'm Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 17 minutes.

Quick hits.

1. President Donald Trump said he will levy a 100% tariff on Canadian imports if the country agrees to a trade deal with China. (The threat)
2. The Wall Street Journal reported that China’s top general, Zhang Youxia, is under investigation for allegedly sharing information about the country’s nuclear-weapons program with the United States and accepting bribes for official acts. The report comes amid a major crackdown within China on corruption in the armed forces. (The report)
3. Winter Storm Fern continues to impact large portions of the United States, with ice and snowfall extending from the weekend into Monday. President Trump approved emergency declarations for at least 12 states. (The storm)
4. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a U.S. security guarantees agreement for Ukraine is “100% ready” after two days of discussions with Russian and U.S. officials. (The comments)
5. Israel said its military recovered the remains of the final hostage held in Gaza, a police officer who was killed in Hamas’s October 7 terror attack. The recovery clears the way for the second phase of the Israel–Hamas ceasefire deal to begin. (The recovery)

Today’s topic.

The latest shooting in Minneapolis. On Saturday, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) shot and killed a 37-year-old man in Minneapolis, Minnesota, following an altercation with federal agents. Earlier this month, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed Renee Good, 37, in her vehicle in a Minneapolis neighborhood, setting off large-scale protests. The latest shooting led to renewed calls from state officials for President Donald Trump to pull federal immigration enforcement agents out of the state. 

Back up: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has deployed thousands of ICE agents to Minnesota as part of an immigration crackdown called “Operation Metro Surge.” Many Minnesotans have protested ICE’s presence in the state, organizing a general strike in Minneapolis on Friday. 

We covered the start of the Minnesota ICE operation and Good’s death here. 

The victim in Saturday’s shooting was identified as Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen who worked as a nurse in an intensive care unit. Video of the incident appears to show Pretti filming federal agents from the road, then stepping between them and another woman a CBP agent had shoved to the ground. The agent directs the spray at Pretti, who is then surrounded by several more agents and tackled. A gunshot sounds moments later, after which the officers back away from Pretti. At least two agents can be seen firing additional rounds at Pretti while he is lying on the ground. 

In the hours after the shooting, reports emerged that Pretti had been armed with a semi-automatic handgun. At a news conference, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Pretti was a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry a firearm in public. However, Trump administration officials have described the victim as a “domestic terrorist” who intended to harm officers. “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said. 

State and city officials have strongly refuted this characterization of the incident. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) said the Trump administration was “spinning stories” and “rushing to judgment,” vowing that the state would conduct its own investigation. In an interview on Sunday, President Trump said his administration is “reviewing everything” about the shooting and “will come out with a determination.”

Many Republicans have broken with the administration on its description of the incident and called for an impartial investigation involving state officials. Others expressed concern about DHS agents’ tactics and training. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said the shooting raises “serious questions within the administration about the adequacy of immigration-enforcement training and the instructions officers are given on carrying out their mission.” 

Senate Democrats said they will oppose legislation that includes funding for ICE unless it is amended to reform how the agency operates; ICE funding is part of a larger government-funding package covering multiple federal departments. If the legislation is not passed by the end of the day on Friday, most of the government will shut down. 

Today, we’ll cover the response to the latest shooting in Minneapolis, with views from the left and right. Then, Executive Editor Isaac Saul gives his take.

What the left is saying.

• The left is appalled by the shooting, and many call for DHS agents to be pulled out of Minnesota. 
• Some say the Trump administration’s justification of the officers’ actions runs counter to the Second Amendment.
• Others argue the administration is encouraging more chaos. 

The Minnesota Star Tribune editorial board said “an ICE pause is the only path to peace.”

“Minnesota is standing at a dangerous edge. After a third shooting involving federal immigration agents in less than three weeks, both the state and its largest city are trapped in a familiar and deeply corrosive moment. As of Saturday afternoon, key facts remain unsettled. That uncertainty is not incidental. It is destabilizing,” the board wrote. “The shooting death of 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti on Saturday morning cannot be reviewed behind federal walls alone. A joint investigation must be established immediately, with federal, state and local authorities granted equal access to evidence, witnesses, body camera footage and timelines.”

“An ICE pause would not represent abolition. It is governance. It is an acknowledgment that tactics producing sweeping disruption, mounting injury and now multiple civilian deaths are failing their own stated aims,” the board said. “Members of Minnesota’s Republican congressional delegation are needed now. So are business leaders and institutional voices with access to federal power. This surge will end eventually. The damage may not.”

In The Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper called the incident “a Second Amendment wake-up call.”

“Although the administration claims that its immigration-enforcement operations are meant to protect Americans from an ‘invasion’ of foreign-born gang members, federal officials have now killed two American citizens — specifically, white American citizens, the kind Donald Trump and Stephen Miller tacitly signal they care the most about — in less than a month,” Harper wrote. “It is plain that Operation Metro Surge and Operation Catch of the Day — yes, that’s what ICE actually calls its Maine operation — are not about protecting the good citizens of Minnesota and Maine.”

“Whether they lean right or left, are pro-immigration or have more restrictionist views, my fellow gun owners should understand the message that is being sent by this administration: If you exercise your constitutionally protected right to bear arms, masked federal agents can murder you in cold blood,” Harper said. “It is not yet clear what exactly Pretti’s own views were, or what motivated him to be on that Minneapolis street. But he knew what the Second Amendment is for: to affirm that Americans are a free people, and free people will not be cowed by masked federal agents. As this country’s gun enthusiasts have long known, freedom means little if you lack the means to keep it.”

In Jacobin, Ben Burgis wrote “Trump and ICE are driving the country off a cliff.”

“The DHS’s statement, never quite claiming he had drawn the gun but vaguely gesturing at a ‘violent’ struggle and the officer who shot him supposedly fearing for ‘his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers,’ is unlikely to be believed by anyone who watched any of those videos,” Burgis said. “Indeed, one of the most striking parts of all this is that these particular lies don’t exactly seem to be intended to be believed. Instead, it feels like the point is just to give the hardcore supporters of the current administration something to hang their hat on when a ‘libtard’ tries to give them a hard time about this.”

“Thus far, the restraint and unity shown by the overwhelming majority of the protesters in Minneapolis is remarkable. There have been mass demonstrations, an impromptu strike called by local organized labor, and an abundance of people filming ICE and the Border Patrol and letting them know that they aren’t welcome and that no one plans to make it easy for them to drag away their friends and neighbors,” Burgis wrote. “Even so, the more lawless and violent the behavior of masked and therefore totally unaccountable ICE agents become… the more likely it is that some misguided individuals will meet violence with violence.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed in their response, with many reaffirming their support for deportations. 
• Some say the incident raises nuanced Second Amendment issues. 
• Others criticize the Trump administration for its messaging about Pretti. 

On X, conservative commentator Greg Price shared a note for “my leftist friends.”

“I do not care that a leftist agitator got himself killed because he decided to arm himself with a gun and venture out to resist ICE, nor the other one who sped her car at an ICE agent while fleeing arrest, nor do I care about the little kid who was detained with his illegal alien father,” Price wrote. “And neither do you, because all you care about are turning people — whose deaths never would have happened if you people didn’t have a psychopathic opposition to lawful immigration enforcement — into martyrs who can be used to justify ending deportations.”

“I, along with 77 million other Americans, voted for a government that promised mass deportations. And that doesn’t mean just gang members and criminals. It means every single person who crossed the border illegally or has overstayed their visa,” Price said. “I simply do not care about any of the sob stories that you manufacture on a daily basis to emotionally manipulate people against lawful enforcement of our immigration laws. I don’t care if federal agents wearing masks triggers you, I don’t care about your tug-at-the-heartstrings propaganda.”

In Bearing Arms, Cam Edwards explored “2A groups respon[se]” to the shooting.

“[Kristi Noem] asserted that the incident ‘looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement,’ though video shows that Pretti never touched his firearm before he was killed,” Edwards wrote. “Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, drew widespread condemnation from gun owners (including myself), for a post on X several hours after the shooting took place where he asserted that ‘if you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.’”

“Was it a bad idea for Pretti to actively engage law enforcement while he was carrying? Yes, though from the video I’ve seen the only contact he made with a Border Patrol agent was a momentary hand on the agent’s shoulder after the agent had pushed another protester to the ground,” Edwards said. “Whether or not the shooting will be deemed justified depends on the totality of the circumstance and whether or not the agents who fired their weapons had reasonable cause to believe their lives and the lives of others were in danger. I’m personally leaning towards the ‘lawful but awful’ scenario given that Pretti’s gun appears to have discharged while it was in the hand of the agent who confiscated it and the shouts of ‘gun, gun.’”

In his Substack, Erick-Woods Erickson wrote about “another dead American.”

“Both Pretti and Good would be alive if Tim Walz and Jacob Frey would cooperate with the federal government like most other states do. Americans are not dying in other states. Minnesota is a major sanctuary state and cooperating with the federal government would get ICE and border patrol out of the state,” Erickson said. “Like the progressive left and Hamas, however, there is a well-coordinated PR campaign between the Left and press to make the federal government the bad guy. Frankly, the federal government has walked into the PR battle and is doing its very best to lose it. More dead Americans does not help.”

“What we have right now is the Trump Administration, led by the head of the Border Patrol and Kristi Noem, rushing to seed a narrative into the minds of people before all the facts are known and some of the facts they presented have already turned out not to be true,” Erickson wrote. “These are government officials. They have an obligation to be truthful and measured while so many facts are unknown. They also have an obligation to protect the President of the United States and his policies. Rushing out with a narrative that then must change because more facts have come out will destroy the Trump Administration’s credibility on this issue.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where we give ourselves space to share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• I feel like I’m screaming into the void, desperately hoping the right people will hear my pleas for de-escalation.
• Both the responses from the administration and some of its supporters are incredibly disorienting.
• The political tides are shifting, and an emerging majority is against DHS’s approach.

Executive Editor Isaac Saul: When I was a kid, I used to have a recurring nightmare where a roomful of friends and family were talking to me, and I was responding, but they’d all keep asking me why I wasn’t answering. At the end of the nightmare I’m yelling as loud as I can to get them to hear me, and they all just keep looking around at each other, wondering why I won’t talk. Then I’d wake up in my bed screaming.

This week, I’m reminded of that nightmare; for so many months, I’ve felt like I’ve been shouting and unable to get the people I want to hear me most to listen.

As I did after Renee Good was killed, I’ll start by describing the events as objectively as I can, based on the available video evidence. Alex Pretti is standing in the middle of a street recording DHS agents. A car approaches and he waves it past. One of the agents appears to approach a woman standing in front of Pretti, and you can hear him and the agent both yelling. Pretti then grabs the woman and walks her toward the sidewalk, away from the agent, who follows them. There, another woman approaches and yells something at the officer, who shoves her to the ground. Pretti steps between the officer and the second woman and lays a hand on the DHS agent before raising his other hand into the air.

The CBP officer sprays a substance into Pretti’s face, and Pretti turns away from him while keeping one hand in the air, filming with the other. He then tries to help pick the woman up off the ground. The CBP agent continues to spray him and the woman on the ground from behind. More agents then surround Pretti, who is clinging to the woman he was trying to help, and throw him to the ground. They begin spraying him, punching him, and trying to restrain his arms and legs. Pretti struggles. What happens next is difficult to parse, but one officer appears to see Pretti is carrying a firearm and pulls it out of its holster. Another screams “gun,” and then the shooting begins — 10 rounds in total, several after Pretti is lying motionless on the ground.

These were my first thoughts after watching the video: Recording law enforcement is legal, and carrying a legal firearm is a constitutional right. Pretti seemed to be trying to keep his distance from the CBP agents, and he only ever got close to them after one followed Pretti toward the sidewalk then violently shoved a woman who yelled at him. Pretti’s instinct to put himself between the agent and the woman seems totally normal — if not explicitly admirable — to me. He touched the CBP agent, which was his gravest error; but he did it in about the most conciliatory way possible, with one arm in the air as if to say “I’m not trying to start any trouble” with his body language. A screengrab from one angle of the shooting captures his demeanor well: