Good morning. A winter storm wreaked havoc from Mississippi to Maine yesterday as the country grappled with the second fatal shooting by federal agents of a protester in Minneapolis. The victim’s name was Alex Pretti, and he was 37. I’m going to start there. Then we’ll turn to the storm.
A showdownState and federal authorities faced off in Minnesota yesterday, after Border Patrol agents killed a U.S. citizen on Saturday. The state wants to investigate the shooting, in which officials tackled Pretti, a registered nurse from the city’s Veterans Affairs hospital who had been filming them on his phone. Then they stripped him of a handgun, for which he had a permit, and shot him again and again. The federal government does not want that inquiry to happen. Agents have refused to give state investigators access to the crime scene, even though they had a search warrant. Late on Saturday night, a judge barred federal officials from destroying evidence in the case. Then, yesterday, the Trump administration pushed groundless accusations against the victim. Gregory Bovino, the official in charge of President Trump’s Border Patrol operations, told CNN that Pretti wanted to “perpetrate violence, obstruct, delay or obfuscate Border Patrol in the performance of their duties in an active crime scene.” The agents were the victims, he said. Videos analyzed by The Times contradict those claims. See the moments before Pretti’s death:
Brian O’Hara, the Minneapolis police chief, said on CBS that Pretti appeared to be “exercising his First Amendment rights to record law enforcement activity, and also exercising his Second Amendment rights to lawfully be armed in a public space in the city.” He described the city and his department as being at a breaking point. “People have had enough,” he said. No respiteResidents of Minneapolis, tens of thousands of whom have been protesting in the streets this month, are grieving together and experiencing “a profound sense of solidarity,” said Ernesto Londoño, a Minneapolis-based Times reporter with whom I spoke yesterday. With Minnesota officials powerless to push ICE out of the city, he said, “ordinary people are looking out for one another in every conceivable way.” Ernesto noted a strand of communal grief. “Minnesota is a state that has a lot of trauma from 2020 and its aftermath,” he told me, referring to the killing of George Floyd and the violent protests that followed it. Last June, two state legislators were shot, as were their spouses. One of the legislators died, as did her husband. In August, a mass shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis left two children dead. Federal agents killed Renee Good on Jan. 7. And then Pretti on Saturday.
The bond formed by residents was evident yesterday. It was cold in Minneapolis this past weekend, dangerously so, with lows in the negative teens. It’s painful to be outside for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Ernesto said he’d seen protesters handing out hand warmers and bundling up to cover as much of their skin as possible. Some lit fires for warmth. Local residents have opened their doors to others, giving them a respite from the punishing chill. Yesterday afternoon, members of the Minnesota National Guard, clad in yellow vests to differentiate them from federal agents, brought protesters coffee, hot chocolate and doughnuts. But that sense of fellowship comes at a cost. “We think of Minnesota as generally peaceful, filled with civic-minded and nice people,” Ernesto said. “But they have been put through the wringer. This has been hard on them personally.” The whole situation in Minneapolis, he said, “feels unsustainable.” More on Minneapolis
A massive winter storm has dumped snow across 17 states, and more than 85 million people are under an extreme-cold warning today. Record-breaking temperatures are expected to last for much of the week. Hundreds of thousands of people remain without power, and experts say more outages could come. You can follow updates here.
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