The Trump Administration Is Lying About Gun Rights and the Death of Alex Pretti; Reason, January 25, 2026

ROBBY SOAVE, Reason; The Trump Administration Is Lying About Gun Rights and the Death of Alex Pretti

"As with the killing of Renee Good two weeks ago, the legal threshold at which lethal force can be justified is whether the officer who killed Pretti reasonably feared for his own safety. Only a careful, impartial investigation can determine that. The Justice Department has declined to conduct such an investigation into Good's death, instead seeking to investigate the victim's family.

Video footage of Pretti's death shows federal agents using pepper spray on protesters. Pretti appears to be recording the altercation with his cell phone. After an agent shoves one of the protesters to the ground, Pretti moves to assist her. Several CBP agents then decide to bring Pretti down.

It's conceivable that the agent who shot Pretti had the impression that he was reaching for his weapon—though the first shot clearly went off after another agent disarmed the protester. It's also possible that the killer didn't have even that much justification. Yet federal authorities have all but ruled out that possibility, and are making abjectly false statements in support of their mendacious posture.

Noem has repeatedly claimed it as a fact that Pretti intended to harm officers. "This individual showed up to a law enforcement operation with a weapon and dozens of rounds of ammunition," she told reporters. "He wasn't there to peacefully protest. He was there to perpetuate violence." Miller flatly asserted that Pretti was a "domestic terrorist" who "tried to assassinate federal law enforcement."

These are lies. They have no evidence that Pretti wanted to kill anyone. Even if evidence were unexpectedly to come out tomorrow that he was secretly a would-be assassin, it would still be wrong for officials to state as fact that Pretti intended to kill. There are no known facts that establish murder as his motivation. This is a man who was watching officers interact with protesters and recording it on his phone. Contrary to what the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X, he did not approach law enforcement, let alone with a gun drawn."

The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act.; The New York Times, January 25, 2026

The Editorial Board, The New York Times; The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act.

"The federal government owes Americans a thorough investigation and a truthful accounting of the Saturday morning shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti on a Minneapolis street. When the government kills, it has an obligation to demonstrate that it has acted in the public interest. Instead, the Trump administration is once again engaged in a perversion of justice.

Mere hours after Mr. Pretti died, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, declared without offering evidence that Mr. Pretti had “committed an act of domestic terrorism.” Gregory Bovino, a border patrol official, offered his own assessment: “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

These unfounded and inflammatory judgments pre-empt the outcome of an investigation, which the Department of Homeland Security has promised. They also appear wholly inconsistent with several videos recorded at the scene.

Those videos showed that Mr. Pretti had nothing but a phone in his hands when he was tackled by border patrol agents, and that he never drew the gun he was carrying (and reportedly had a license to carry). Indeed, the videos seem to show that one federal agent took the gun from Mr. Pretti moments before a different agent shot him from behind. Separate analyses by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, CBS News and otherorganizations all concluded that the videos contradict the Trump administration’s description of the killing.

The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power...

It is premature to reach conclusions about what exactly happened on that Minneapolis street. The Trump administration should not have done so, and we will not do so. What is clear, however, is that the federal government needs to re-establish public faith in the agencies and officers who are carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration. If the administration is allowed to act with impunity and avoid even the most basic accountability, the result will be more violence."

What images of a detained five-year-old boy reveal about Trump’s draconian ICE crackdown; The Guardian, January 22, 2026

Robert Tait, The Guardian; What images of a detained five-year-old boy reveal about Trump’s draconian ICE crackdown

"One recent image shows the innocent figure of Liam Ramos, a five-year-old preschooler wearing a blue bobbled winter hat, standing next to a black vehicle with a dark-clad adult figure standing behind him, whose hand is proprietorially placed on his backpack.

A second picture depicts the same child at the door of a house, with what appears to be a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent standing behind him.

The exact circumstances of the photos – or their provenance – remains unclear. The homeland security department has insisted that Liam was being held for protective purposes after his father absconded when agents tried to detain him.

Yet officials from the Columbia Heights public school district, which circulated both pictures, say the latter conjures a dark and disturbing reality – of an unsuspecting Liam being exploited as bait to lure adults in his family home to open the door so ICE agents can arrest them."

ICE Detained a 5-Year-Old Minnesota Boy and Used Him As “Bait”; Mother Jones, January 22, 2026

 KATIE HERCHENROEDER, Mother Jones; ICE Detained a 5-Year-Old Minnesota Boy and Used Him As “Bait”

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained a 5-year-old on his way home from school on Tuesday and used him as “bait” to knock on his front door to see if anyone was home, according to school officials in Minnesota. 

Liam Conejo Ramos, a preschooler, is one of at least four children from the Columbia Heights Public Schools district in suburban Minneapolis who have been detained this month, Zena Stenvik, the superintendent for the district, said in a press conference Wednesday."

Recruiters Use A.I. to Scan Résumés. Applicants Are Trying to Trick It.; The New York Times, October 7, 2025

Evan Gorelick , The New York Times; Recruiters Use A.I. to Scan Résumés. Applicants Are Trying to Trick It.

"“Some managers think it’s a stroke of genius showing an out-of-the-box thinker. Others believe it’s deceitful.”"