INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN LERNER (Jacobin.com)

Consumer boycotts have a storied history in labor struggles like the United Farm Workers’ organizing campaigns in the 1970s. But they’re difficult to pull off. Veteran union organizer Stephen Lerner explains when a boycott can work for workers.

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RYAN COOPER INTERVIEW BY ERIC BLANC

While boycott campaigns generally have a mixed record at best, this tactic was used successfully in the recent unionization and first contract victories at Burgerville in Oregon as well as Spot Coffee in western New York, a campaign that set the stage for the subsequent Starbucks upsurge. Raising the slogan “No Contract, No Field Trips,” unionizing workers at Medieval Times in New Jersey and California are now working with K-12 teachers to boycott the company until it stops its alleged union busting. And just last week, after months of student organizing and protest, Cornell University agreed to stop selling and serving Starbucks on campus due to the company’s flagrant violation of federal labor law. This victory is spurring a push to boycott Starbucks at colleges across the country.

With workers and unions beginning to reconsider the potentialities and pitfalls of boycotts, it makes sense to take a look back at the famous boycott campaigns led by the United Farm Workers (UFW) from 1965 through 1975 to demand that agricultural companies recognize and bargain with their union.

To discuss the lessons of the victorious UFW boycotts, and the dynamics of this tactic generally, Jacobin’s Eric Blanc sat down with Stephen Lerner, whose long and celebrated organizing history began as a volunteer for the UFW in the early 1970s.

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ERIC BLANC

At the most general level, what do you see as the big lessons of the UFW boycott?

STEPHEN LERNER

First of all, you need a favorable context for a national boycott to work, a moment where lots of people care or could be convinced to care. In most conditions, boycotts don’t work; they’re usually called by unions when we know we’ve lost. But the UFW boycott wasn’t like that at all — it was part of a plan to win.

When an opening does exist, then you need to constantly be asking: How do we maximize disruption, and how do we maximize publicity? To achieve these two goals, you need a huge amount of on-the-ground organizing. You can’t just call a boycott and hope somehow customer pressure will bring companies to the table.

So you need to seize a favorable context and then need real organizing on multiple levels, both in terms of mass work to get the word out, but also directly to disrupt profits.

ERIC BLANC

Can you briefly describe the context of the UFW boycott?

STEPHEN LERNER

To give you a sense of the moment, I dropped out of high school to work on the boycott full-time. We really thought radical change was possible. So the boycott existed at a moment of time where there was a lot of activism, a lot of excitement — the whole thing was grounded in a much bigger movement.Successful boycotts require a combination of workers organizing and taking action that is then supported by a broader public campaign.

And the farmworkers’ struggle really captured people’s imagination. It wasn’t just about one specific struggle; it became a broader symbol for the rising of immigrants and, in broader ways, about the revival of labor.

ERIC BLANC

What did the movement do to raise publicity and disrupt things?

STEPHEN LERNER

A big part of doing mass work is answering the question: How do we let as many people know as possible?

We’d do a lot of leafleting and picketing in front of grocery stores. We did an enormous amount of human billboards — we’d have people at all the big subway stations or on freeway overpasses holding these giant signs saying “Boycott Lettuce and Grapes.”

We started giving out a leaflet called “God Called a Strike Once.” It was all about the story of Exodus. I had attended seders my whole life, but it was from Catholic farmworkers that I came to see the story of Exodus as a strike.

We’d do church meetings, we’d leaflet concerts, we did everything we could to bring publicity. And it worked: we built a level of support where some rabbis declared scab grapes and lettuce to be nonkosher.

We were attempting to do mass work, and lots and lots of people did get involved. We’d take volunteers through a progression of steps. Beyond leafleting and picketing and having people work on raising funds, there were all sorts of next steps they could take.

The key analysis was: Where do people get their food and Gallo wine? They get it from grocery stores and liquor stores. And then how do you put pressure directly on these businesses to stop buying products made in companies that were refusing to recognize the union?

We had our people go into stores and fill their shopping carts with food. We’d put a picket line up, and then all the folks in line would say, “Oh, there’s a picket line, I need to respect it” — and they would just leave their full carts.

In addition to the famous hunger strikes that Cesar Chavez led, we mirrored shorter hunger strikes in front of grocery stores. We also did big mass demonstrations at Hunts Point Market in the Bronx, where grapes and lettuce were sold wholesale. In California, people picketed the ports where longshoremen would honor the picket lines for as long as they legally could, delaying shipments of grapes and lettuce.

ERIC BLANC

What kind of organizing did it take to drive all this forward?

STEPHEN LERNER

It would be a big mistake to underestimate how much work it takes to make a boycott succeed. To pull this off at scale, you have to do real organizing on the ground — that’s the only way you can do sustained and escalating activity.

Support for the farmworkers was intensely organized in city after city, neighborhood after neighborhood, churches and synagogues. It wasn’t just a general call for a boycott. We focused on building self-sustaining committees of supporters that could drive the work locally — the pickets, the actions, all that. It was a massive operation around the country, with thousands of active supporters and hundreds of full-time volunteers working on this. We got five bucks a week to get by, and we lived in group houses, so we could spend all our time on organizing.

A big part of the effort was that striking farmworkers from California moved all around the country, to directly spread and lead the boycott. That was the first part of my introduction as a volunteer: I lived with a farmworker family that moved to New York City from White River Ranch in California, where they had been on strike. I lived with them and learned about their experiences as farmworkers and strikers, and why strikers faced with violence, jail, and injunctions needed the added leverage offered by the boycott.

We were all trained in how to organize consumers to support the boycott. I was trained by a series of incredible organizers, including Fred Ross Sr. We built out the boycott significantly through a house-meeting approach, where we’d build committees in cities and neighborhoods through house meetings in which we were all trained to tell the story of how farmworkers were treated. We’d recruit people and have them invite their friends to their homes, and each house meeting would lead to more house meetings.

We were trying to appeal for solidarity not just from other unions, but also from broader liberal and progressive layers, and from religious denominations — we got a lot of support there — to make them understand that this was a moral battle that they should care about.

ERIC BLANC

One limitation you already mentioned is that boycotts don’t work in most contexts. Are there other limitations worth highlighting here?

STEPHEN LERNER

The other thing that has to be said, and lots of others have made this point too, is that as the boycott eventually became the central focus in the UFW, there ended up being much less work on organizing workers in the fields. The balance got thrown way off. So one big lesson is that if a boycott is seen as a substitute for worker activity, it’s a death knell.As the boycott eventually became the central focus in the UFW, there ended up being much less work on organizing workers in the fields. The balance got thrown way off.

Part of that has to do with the fact that the company will always say that a boycott is hurting the very people it’s claiming to help. People would ask us: “Well, doesn’t a boycott mean that farmworkers will lose their jobs?” Companies will always say that a boycott will destroy the company and require mass layoffs. (They said the same thing later during the divestment movement to end apartheid in South Africa.) So you need a very strong worker core at the center of things to challenge that narrative.

That’s one of the reasons it was so important that farmworkers from California ended up traveling all across the country, giving the UFW campaign its moral center. Successful boycotts require a combination of workers organizing and taking action that is then supported by a broader public campaign.

ERIC BLANC

It’s exciting to see that Medieval Times workers are linking up with K-12 teachers and that Cornell students recently kicked Starbucks off campus. Can you speak about the strategic importance of schools and universities in boycott campaigns?

STEPHEN LERNER

I’m not in any position to comment on the advisability of this tactic for particular campaigns today, but speaking more generally, schools and universities in particular are a very promising site of struggle. On the one hand, it may not be a major driver of profits for a giant corporation like Starbucks. But it’s also where a whole generation of both potential workers and consumers are getting introduced to the company. And even if universities aren’t the central source of profits, a movement on campus can do a lot of damage to their brand, while training a new generation of young organizers and activists.

In most universities, you have a large, sympathetic grouping of students capable of winning clear demands through escalating campaigns and dramatic actions. You can start with people wearing the same color shirt one day to support the effort, and over time escalate to things like occupying admin buildings, doing encampments, shutting down campus by blocking the main entrances, you name it. There’s just so much fun, creative disruption that’s possible on campus.

So obviously in the universities that have a company you’re targeting, or that provide their product in dining halls or campus stores, you can demand to get rid of them. But folks can also find all the universities that don’t have that company, and they can demand the university pledge not to hire or buy from them until they start bargaining in good faith with the union.

Calling for kicking a company off campus could also become a bargaining issue for campus unions. When you can get both campus students and workers working together on demanding the university dump lawbreaking companies, that’s a sweet spot. You don’t need to call it a boycott; you are calling on the university to throw union-busting lawbreakers off campus.

The other thing about universities is the generally overlapping relationship between trustees and broader power structures. People on university boards are often business and political leaders. Those are great targets. A lot of times, you have universities and pension funds investing directly into companies, so another potential tactic is to demand divestment of pension plans from the corporation. You can campaign for the university to not only divest from union busters but also bring in union companies.

ERIC BLANC

Campus boycotts are also a structure test, right? If you can’t get a boycott to catch on in universities, there’s probably no world in which you can get it to catch on beyond. Conversely, if it does catch on in universities, then you have a demonstration effect and it could spread.

STEPHEN LERNER

I’ve seen over and over again how university organizing can build and sustain momentum for broader struggles. Many key victories in the Justice for Janitors campaign, like the monthslong University of Miami strike, were won at universities through strong student support.I’ve seen over and over again how university organizing can build and sustain momentum for broader struggles.

Part of that is raising publicity through dramatic actions, as well as making whatever financial impact you can have. But in universities, there is also the potential to build an army of people who are willing to get arrested to support the union.

For example, every time a unionizing worker is fired, do we have hundreds, then thousands of volunteers we can tap to respond? Say Mary Smith gets fired for unionizing — can we get five hundred students sitting in at these four stores and blocking the doors to bring Mary Smith back? What’s the escalating civil disobedience in response to the company’s most egregious union busting? Building a volunteer army can be a direct way to disrupt the company, to keep the public aware of their misdeeds, and to raise the cost on them for breaking the law.

Secondary boycott laws, injunctions, and other potential litigation limit what actions unions can call for and support. So it’s all about unleashing people’s militancy and creativity. Movements need to get to the crisis point where things are so out of control that companies wake up every day worrying what and where they will be hit next.

The story becomes: more and more people are getting involved, more and more places are directly confronting what the company is doing. When you get that dynamic going, you can unleash the creativity of a mass movement, especially one led by young people. If you can set that dynamic off, folks will have a ball and they will think of more and more creative things to do to maximize disruption and publicity. And that’s what you need to win.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Stephen Lerner is a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. He is also the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign.

Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He is the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics and Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917).

Photo courtesy of World Affairs Council Dallas-Fort Worth

“The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards.”

– Andrea Pitzer, American historian

Andrea Pitzer (born 1968) is an American journalist, known for her books One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps and The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov. Pitzer’s third book, Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World, was published in 2021. Wikipedia

January 25, 2026 (showbiz411.com)

By Roger Friedman

There will be no new episode of “60 Minutes” tonight.

Instead, the Emmy winning, venerated news program is showing three archived movie star profiles with no relevance to anything current.

The profiled actors are Timothee Chalamet from last year, Jamie Lee Curtis from May 2025, and Kate Winslet from 2024. Only one, Chalamet, is an Oscar nominee this year. But his interview isn’t for “Marty Supreme,” but for last year’s “A Complete Unknown.”

(I was actually assured some time ago that a new Chalamet piece about “Marty Supreme” was coming during this Oscar campaign. That may not be the case now.)

This comes as there’s been another ICE killing in Minnesota, riots and protests in Minneapolis, and a week when Donald Trump was mocked in Davos over his obsession with Greenland. Measles is spreading in South Carolina, as well. Any of these topics would have made for a scintillating new episode tonight.

Clearly, a show that was supposed to air tonight simply has been pulled. Under CBS news shill Bari Weiss and CBS owners David and Larry Ellison, “60 Minutes” is being destroyed, quickly, from within.

There is absolutely no reason why a new show wouldn’t be on tonight. It should be obvious that there is no promo for tonight’s show. (Promos are usually dropped on Thursday or Friday.) And nothing on the “60 Minutes” website page has been updated since last Sunday.

Last week, “60 Minutes” finally aired its censored piece by Sharyn Alfonsi on the CECOT prison in El Salvador. The whole show was up against the NFL, had no football lead in of its own, was disposed of a sop to critics and Alfonsi. The result was one of the lowest rated episodes in years.

Since then, Weiss has made it clear she wants to remove Alfonsi, Bill Whitaker, Scott Pelley, and any of the staff that comes from established and respected “60 Minutes.” As far as Weiss is concerned, they could be replaced by seals. Her goal, her mission, is to undermine the legacy of CBS News.

Weiss has been doing this for three weeks now at the CBS Evening News, which has turned into a circus under new host Tony Dokoupil.

Meanwhile, I’m curious to see what the CBS Sunday Morning piece is today on Shen Yun. I written extensively about this cult that’s tied to the Epoch Times. See below.

The acting CEO of The Epoch Times is on the board of the Kennedy Center under Donald Trump. Coincidence? Nope.

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Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com

Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn’t so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of “Only the Strong Survive,” a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

Pretti, a Minneapolis ICU nurse, is the second person to be shot to death by ICE in the past month.

By Emma Garcia

January 25, 2026 (48hills.org)

48 Hills and El Tecolote video reporter Emma Garcia was on the scene last night in downtown San Francisco, as dozens of people protested the murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Pretti is the second person to be shot to death by ICE in the past month. After gathering near the Embarcadero, protesters marched to SF’s ICE headquarters at 630 Sansome. Watch here, and follow us for more video reports.

Watch: Protest in SF after ICE kills Alex Pretti

US Politics

Russ Baker 

01/26/26 (whowhatwhy.org)

New perspectives — and investigative avenues — on the shootings

During the Vietnam War, “success” was measured primarily by the numbers of the enemy killed and wounded. Soldiers were under intense pressure to deliver impressive death statistics. Such pressure led to the infamous My Lai Massacre, where hundreds of unarmed villagers — almost all of them women, elderly men, children, and babies — were massacred.

Today, federal agents, too, are under top-down pressure to generate statistics. They must capture and deport large numbers of undocumented individuals. In the process, they’re racking up another statistic: dead Americans. 

It is the unrelenting pressure for numbers — combined with the reckless hiring of unqualified people lacking the requisite skills for crowd control at demonstrations — that is bringing this country to a breaking point. 

But let’s go deeper. 

TheTrump administration did not, after the Good killing, step back to reconsider this dynamic — they doubled down. Why? As my colleague Jonathan Simon pointed out to me, the answer is not unlike the answer to the question of why, after dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the US doubled down by also bombing Nagasaki. That “signal” was directed at the Soviet Union — a clear “keep your hands off Japan.” This signal is directed at the American people. It’s basically state-sponsored terrorism — a nonverbal proclamation of fascistic intent — we can do whatever we want wherever we want, laws, tradition, and the Constitution be damned.

Renee Good and Alex Pretti may not be the only names we come to memorialize.

One can argue about the extent to which Americans have the right to protest, up to and including impeding actions they deem immoral. But one cannot argue with the numbers and the toxic values demonstrated in Minneapolis — or with the ultimate cause of our national spiral into chaos. 

We know from experience that the immigration problem is complicated, and the process of identifying, adjudicating, and removing those who have no legal right to be in the country and may present a threat to the public good is a time-consuming and at times frustrating one for those who believe the country is being overwhelmed. 

But proceeding lawfully with due process is just the way it has to be in a democratic polity. Nothing is easy, and if the sense of the public is that this removal process must be continued, then it must be done responsibly, and humanely, over time. 

The pressure of quotas is, we now see, deadly. And the mindset behind it must be brought into the open and discussed if this ship of state is ever to sail upright again. 

ICED in Minneapolis… Again

One version of the January 24 killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by ICE agents comes from US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem: A man she labelled a “domestic terrorist” approached some Border Patrol officers with a handgun and violently resisted when they tried to disarm him. “Fearing for his life and for the lives of his fellow officers,” she said, an agent fired “defensive shots.” 

A different version, according to video analyses by The New York Times, CBS, NBC, CNN and others: Pretti approaches the agents holding up a cell phone. He tries to help a woman who was shoved to the ground by an ICE agent. That agent pepper-sprays both of them in the face. Several officers pile onto Pretti, beating him for several seconds, when someone (as yet unidentified) yells, “He’s got a gun!” 

Apparently in response, an officer reaches down and retrieves the newly discovered gun from Pretti’s waistband. Immediately after — at a time when he no longer has his gun and while he is still being beaten — an officer shoots him at least nine times. The victim, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse at a veterans hospital, had a gun permit.

Now that practically the whole world knows that the Trump administration’s claims are conspicuously false, how will they ever recover from being exposed as unambiguously lying about what amounts to state-sponsored murder of a US citizen who is clearly innocent of threatening law enforcement agents with deadly force?

I watched a disheartening display on Sunday: US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche responding to Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet The Press, as she tries in vain to get a straight answer out of him on, well, anything concerning the shooting.

She persistently asks him, does he not see that Pretti approached the ICE agents holding only a cell phone? That he was fatally shot after his legally permitted gun had been removed, when he was not possibly a threat?

Blanche’s performance is an embarrassment. He clumsily bobs and weaves, challenges her “perception,” changes the subject, claims no one knows what happened, no one can see anything, tries to distract with irrelevancies, and adopts one of the most abused concepts in the history of disputation — claiming NBC’s Welker was viewing the event “out of context.” 

***

One thing that may never be investigated: the extra ammunition Pretti allegedly carried.

In an apparent effort to make Pretti seem even more dangerous, Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino said, “The suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID. This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Pretti’s 9mm semiautomatic gun was the same kind carried by many ICE agents. 

With this in mind, as my colleague Milicent Cranor noted, and given all the other examples of deception in this case and wide-ranging cover-up in general, it’s not unreasonable to withhold trust on the matter of the claimed extra ammunition. 

This is especially so because of the incredibly high political stakes in a crucial election year — and the fact that DHS has shut out state and local authorities from the investigation of both fatalities. And blocked an investigation by the FBI. 

Any honest inquiry would take a look at something we brought up in our newish weekly series Saturday Hashtag: What ICE officer Jonathan Ross did just before shooting Renee Good — position himself in front of a moving vehicle — is actually a thing. 

The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF)’s “Use of Force Review” of 67 cases between 2010 and 2012 (released in 2013) focused on this tactic as an excuse to fire. In fact, The Nation magazine, to which I was an erstwhile contributor reported on this back in 2014. 

Now, one cannot be sure whether ICE agent Ross was doing that when he fatally shot Renee Good in the head through the open driver’s window. But certainly he was aware of the Border Patrol practice because he himself was with the Border Patrol in El Paso from 2007 to 2015 — the period during which CBP agents were employing the above-mentioned tactic. 

This seems like a very big deal but, aside from Raw Story and a few individuals posting about it on social media, it has gotten little of the attention it deserves. Legacy corporate media certainly hasn’t seized the opportunity to raise the matter. 

In fact, back in March of 2014 (soon after The Nation article), The New York Times published a story based on the PERF report — but look at the headline: 

Border Patrol Instructed to Show Restraint  

The article was all about handling oneself when assaulted with rocks, the dangers that agents face, etc., and at the end of a paragraph, where you’d almost miss it:

The memo also instructed them not to shoot at fleeing vehicles and reiterated a policy that forbids officers to place themselves in the path of moving vehicles — an apparent response to accusations that agents had stood in front of vehicles to justify firing their weapons.

In contrast, on February 27, 2024, The Los Angeles Times began with this:

WASHINGTON — Border Patrol agents have deliberately stepped in the path of cars apparently to justify shooting at the drivers and have fired in frustration at people throwing rocks from the Mexican side of the border, according to an independent review of 67 cases that resulted in 19 deaths.

According to that same Saturday Hashtag, some of these ICE tactics may have originated with Israel’s military, national police, and intelligence services, which have been training American law enforcement for years, much as Americans for decades provided training to other countries, notably those south of the border. 

Bloodying the Muddy Waters

This outstanding analysis of multiple, clear videos of the shooting of Renee Good make it abundantly clear that, after firing through the far left side of the windshield, the agent quickly moves to the driver’s window and fires more shots. Then he walks away. By no stretch of the imagination was he “run over” as claimed by Trump et al.

Now compare the above with right-wing podcaster Megyn Kelly’s analysis, “What Shooting Videos Really Show.” In Kelly’s version of the ABC video, agent Ross is a dark gray blob — in contrast to clearer objects around him. And it is impossible to see what happens with this blob. (Kelly also looks the viewer in the eye and says, with emphasis, the hole in the windshield is “in front.” Well, it is in the windshield, but so far to the left on the windshield glass, right next to the metal frame, that it can most reasonably be considered a side shot.)  

***

Now, back to our story. On January 14, not long after the media coverage of the Good shooting — coverage that paid scant attention to the PERF report — CBS News announced: 

ICE agent who shot Renee Good suffered internal bleeding, officials say

CBS staffers were skeptical of the claim, especially since the agent was seen walking around for several minutes after the incident before driving himself, not to a hospital, but to a federal building. We do not know exactly when he was taken to a hospital.

One CBS staffer anonymously told The Guardian, “It was viewed as a thinly veiled, anonymous leak to someone who’d carry it online.” Another said, “Felt to many here like we were carrying water for the admin’s justifying of the shooting to keep our access to our sources.”  

And, they implied, Bari Weiss, the recently appointed editor-in-chief of CBS, seemed to be pushing that ICE-friendly detail of the story; a CBS News spokesperson said the network “went through its rigorous editorial process and decided it was reportable based on the reporting, the reporters, and the sourcing.” 

Repeating flimsy, vague assertions from an administration universally known for nonstop lying is a “rigorous editorial process”? And when has that administration ever not instantly weaponized advantageous information, like unquestioningly reporting the (still not substantiated) claim that ICE agent Ross sustained internal injuries (a category which sounds bad but encompasses everything down to small bruises).

In light of which, my question is this: Why did “officials” wait seven days to make this claim?  

In any case, by making Ross seem like a bleeding victim, it would also seem that he had to shoot to protect himself. And it might distract from, if not neutralize, the PERF exposé.  

But how will they ever prove “internal bleeding”? If it was more than a bruise, why let him out of the hospital the same day? Will we see scans of this “internal” damage?

And now this: ICE has proposed cutting funding for bodycams — and House Republicans do not want to mandate that ICE officers even wear them. Now, why would it do that, do you suppose? 

Trump, F*** OFF

It’s worth keeping in mind the Trumpian tendency to lie and cover up potentially damaging material when we consider the interminable foot-dragging on the congressionally ordered release of the Epstein files. “Even” GOP representatives like Anna Paulina Luna and Lauren Boebert — who have been championed by some as seriously concerned with transparency — now say they don’t care that Trump failed to release 95 percent of the Epstein documents, or only care about seeing dirt on Bill Clinton. 

With his back to the wall, on Epstein or any other perceived threat, we know Trump’s longtime solution, as mandated by his mentor Roy Cohn: distract, distract, distract.  

Recruiting large numbers of unbalanced and unqualified people into ICE, then inviting them to wreak havoc, is another thuggish power play to command the news cycle. And it will create fear — as will his effort to roll back already ineffectual gun regulation, a dangerous signal to his heavily armed base, to whom he constantly dogwhistles about violence against his enemies. 

We do have reason to react with growing consternation. Especially when considering what may be yet to come. I keep hearing Franklin Roosevelt’s timeless line from his 1933 inaugural speech: “All we have to fear is fear itself.” 

Of course, fear itself is paralyzing, and generally makes everything worse. But let’s face it: The reality is that the threat of dictatorship, fascism, cruelty, unjustifiable punishment, total disaster — is terrifying. 

Here’s the thing, though: Facing a threat head-on can be empowering. That is, I think, what FDR meant.

Because courage often arises out of even temporarily conquered fear. And then the challenge is to sustain that courage. Fortunately, this sentiment seems to be spreading rapidly. Our fellow citizens — in Minneapolis and elsewhere — get it, and now, so do our friends abroad. 

In fact, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s bold challenge to Trump at Davos has Trump panicking and threatening Canada with 100-percent tariffs. He’s really starting to lose it and will begin to be overwhelmed if, as one hopes, more and more speak up. And they are — from religious leaders to a Danish member of the European parliament literally telling Trump to “F*** OFF.” 

It’s no longer unimaginable that Europe — perhaps with help from Canada and Mexico — might save the United States from Trump/MAGA, much as, in World War II, the US came to save Europe from the Nazis. 

There’s my glimmer of hope.

---

• Russ Baker Russ Baker is Editor-in-Chief of WhoWhatWhy. He is an award-winning investigative journalist who specializes in exploring power dynamics behind major events.

US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) speaks to the media on January 13, 2026.

 (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“My support for funding ICE remains the same,” said one Republican following the horrific killing of Alex Pretti.

Jake Johnson

Jan 26, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)

Republicans in the US Senate indicated Sunday that they planned to move ahead this week with government funding legislation that includes $10 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a federal agent gunned down intensive-care nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, a killing captured on video from multiple angles.

“My support for funding ICE remains the same,” declared Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), a sentiment echoed by other GOP lawmakers ahead of votes on a package of six government appropriations bills approved by the US House last week.

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“We’re not defunding ICE,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) after the horrific shooting of Pretti. “Live with it.”

An unnamed Senate Republican aide told Punchbowl that “government funding expires at the end of the week, and Republicans are determined to not have another government shutdown. We will move forward as planned and hope Democrats can find a path forward to join us.”

One of the bills up for consideration in the Senate this week would provide $64.4 billion in taxpayer money to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including $10 billion for ICE—an agency that is already more heavily funded than many national militaries. Last summer, congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump approved $170 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement, which ICE has used to massively jack up weapons spending.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reportedly has the votes from his caucus to block the DHS funding bill.

Senate Democrats have proposed separating the DHS legislation from the rest of the appropriations bills to avoid a looming January 30 shutdown and debate ICE reforms. The American Prospect‘s David Dayen reported late Sunday that Democrats are “going to ask for real investigations into the murders (including an end to impeding the state/local investigations)” as well as an end to arrest quotas and mask-wearing by ICE agents.

“Federal agents cannot murder people in broad daylight and face zero consequences,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Democrats’ top appropriator in the Senate. “I will NOT support the DHS bill as it stands. The DHS bill needs to be split off from the larger funding package before the Senate—Republicans must work with us to do that. I will continue fighting to rein in DHS and ICE.”

Murray also stressed that “blocking the DHS funding bill will not shut down ICE.”

“ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap, whether or not we pass a funding bill,” the senator added. “But we all saw another American shot and killed in broad daylight. There must be accountability, and we must keep pushing Republicans to work with us to rein in DHS.”

“The Senate must immediately take out any additional funding for the Department of Homeland Security in the current spending bill. Congressional Republicans must answer for these killings.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top Republican appropriator, did not mention ICE funding in her statement on Pretti’s killing, saying only that “this tragic shooting needs to be thoroughly and transparently investigated.”

Assuming unified support from their caucus, Senate Republicans need at least seven Democratic votes to pass the funding package with DHS appropriations included. Last week, seven House Democrats voted with Republicans to approve the DHS funding.

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement that “this federal enforcement agency is running rampant with an outrageous budget that dwarfs most countries’ militaries.”

“The Department of Homeland Security must get ICE off our streets now, and the Senate must immediately take out any additional funding for the Department of Homeland Security in the current spending bill,” said Gilbert. “Congressional Republicans must answer for these killings.”

Amy Fischer, Amnesty International USA’s director for refugee and migrant rights, asked, “How many more people must die before US leaders act?”

“The US Senate faces an urgent choice in the coming days: continue pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into a lawless agency that endangers lives with impunity, or take meaningful action to rein in ICE and stop funding its abuses,” said Fischer.

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Jake Johnson

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

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An image of Alex Pretti is seen at a makeshift memorial in the area where he was shot dead by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 24, 2026. 

(Photo by Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

“The American people didn’t vote for these scenes and you can’t continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes,” the New York Post editorial board wrote.

Brett Wilkins

Jan 26, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)

“The Trump administration spin on this simply isn’t believable.”

That’s what the editorial board of the right-wing Wall Street Journal wrote Sunday calling for a “pause” in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) anti-immigrant blitz following Saturday’s killing of 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Petti—who was disarmed before being shot by federal agents in Minneapolis—and top administration officials’ claims that the man who helped save US military veterans’ lives was a “domestic terrorist.”

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The Journal‘s editors called Pretti’s killing “the worst incident to date in what is becoming a moral and political debacle” for President Donald Trump and his administration.

The Journal wasn’t alone. Other right-wing outlets owned by the Murdoch media empire, including the New York Post, published editorials calling for a suspension of Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, during which dozens of people have died in ICE custody and federal enforcers have killed two Americans. Even staunchly pro-Trump Fox News challenged administration officials over the shooting.

“It’s time to de-escalate in Minneapolis, Mr. President,” the Post‘s editorial board wrote Sunday.

“Not because you’re wrong to enforce immigration law, nor to go after fraudsters who’ve stolen billions in federal funds—but because these enforcement tactics won’t turn the tide, and instead are backfiring,” the editors clarified. “Swing voters—Hispanics and independents who turned to you at the last election—see US citizens dying at federal agents’ hands, and recoil in horror.”

“The hasty and misleading rhetoric coming out of the administration needs to stop,” the Post said. “And while Pretti was horribly misguided, there is no evidence he was a ‘terrorist’ intent on a ‘massacre’ of law enforcement.”

https://x.com/moorehn/status/2015811427995382054?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2015811427995382054%7Ctwgr%5Efcef220dec6e33148ffe6e966207407d97ccdf7c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fconservative-pushback-alex-pretti

As they did with Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother and poet who was shot dead by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month, Trump and some of his senior officials accused Pretti of being a “domestic terrorist”—a move in line with the administration’s designation of left-wing activism as terrorism.

US Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said that it looked like Pretti—who eyewitnesses said died while trying to help a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by ICE—“wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller attempted to smear Pretti as an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Pretti of “domestic terrorism.”

As the Wall Street Journal‘s editors put it, “Alex Pretti made a mistake, but he wasn’t a ‘domestic terrorist.’”

“Videos of an event aren’t always definitive, but this is how it looks to us,” they wrote. “Pretti attempted, foolishly, to assist a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by agents. Multiple agents then tackled Pretti, and he had a phone in one hand as he lay on the ground. An agent discovered a concealed gun on Pretti, and disarmed him. An agent then shot Pretti, and multiple shots followed.”

The Post editors concluded, “Mr. President, the American people didn’t vote for these scenes, and you can’t continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes.”

Meanwhile, more than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies including Target, Best Buy, UnitedHealth, 3M, and General Mills published an open letter Sunday calling for “an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local, and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”

Gun rights groups including the National Rifle Association have called for a full investigation of Pretti’s killing. The NRA pushed back against arguments that Pretti should not have brought a gun—which he was legally carrying—to a protest, calling such assertions “dangerous and wrong.”

“Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens,” added the NRA, which was criticized for its initial silence following the killing of Philando Castile, a Black man who was legally carrying a gun when he was shot dead by police in front of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter during a 2016 traffic stop in suburban Minneapolis.

Even Republican lawmakers who support Trump have expressed their dismay over Pretti’s killing, with Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana calling the incident “incredibly disturbing.”

Chris Madel, an attorney who provided legal counsel to Jonathan Ross—the ICE agent who killed Good—was, until Monday, also a Republican candidate for Minnesota governor. However, Madel said that he dropped out of the race and implied that he would quit the GOP because he “cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state.”

“Nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so,” he said.

I am ending my campaign for Minnesota Governor. I describe why in the below video. Please watch until the end. (It is 10 minutes, 52 seconds.)

Thank you,
Chris pic.twitter.com/2nfyAyTzNZ

— Chris Madel (@CWMadel) January 26, 2026

“ United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear,” Madel continued. “United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong.”

“At the end of the day, I have to look my daughters in the eye and tell them I believe I did what is right,” he added. “I am doing that today.”

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Brett Wilkins

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

January 26, 2026 (actionnetwork.org)

On January 24, 2026, a Border Patrol officer killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, during Trump’s federal invasion of Minneapolis.¹ His murder comes just weeks after an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good.²

Congress is preparing to vote on the FY2026 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations bill. If passed, this bill would add $400 million more for ICE detention, $370 million more for enforcement operations, and expand funding without accountability or reforms.³

ICE and CBP are operating in American communities with increasing violence, secrecy, and impunity. Congress has already given these agencies historic funding increases, and this bill would reward their deadly violence with more money.

Take action now: Tell your Senators to vote “NO” on the FY2026 DHS funding bill and halt all funding to ICE and CBP.

Sources:

1. “The man killed by a US Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis was an ICU nurse, family says,” AP News, January 24, 2026.

2. “Mother of 3 who loved to sing and write poetry shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis,” CNN, January 9, 2026.

3. “Amidst ICE and CBP’s brutal violence, Congress is planning to give them even more money,” National Immigration Law Center, January 25, 2026.

Sponsored by

MPower Action Fund

New York, NY

1. Tell your senators to BLOCK more funding for ICE and Border Patrol. After the killing of Alex Pretti by CBP agents, Chuck Schumer announced that “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.” Now we have to ensure that Democrats hold the line. Demand that your senators vote against legislation that gives ICE and CBP more money while doing precious little to rein in their brutality. (More info here).
2. Then email your senators to underscore your point: Not another dime for ICE and Border Patrol. Use our email tool to demand that your senators reject any DHS budget that puts more money into Trump’s deadly deportation machine, and share with friends to ask them to do the same. 
   
3. Join tonight’s No Kings Coalition Mass Call: Eyes on ICE. Tonight at 8pm ET, the No Kings coalition is hosting a training on how to exercise your right to monitor ICE, CBP, and other law enforcement agencies as they terrorize our communities. Over 100,000 are already signed up to join us. We hope you’ll be there, too!
   
4. Plan an ICE Out action at your senators’ home offices. Our calls  and emails are critical, but it’s also very important that we turn up the pressure on senators publicly, in their home states. We encourage you to plan creative, nonviolent, and lawful actions that honor the lives taken and highlight our demand to rein in ICE.

P.S. Over the past few weeks, Indivisible helped lead the ICE Out For Good weekend of action and Friday’s national solidarity events with Minnesota. These major mobilizations are only possible because of grassroots donations, but because we’ve been focused on organizing these days of action and putting pressure on Congress, we’ve had something of a pause on fundraising. So: We’re asking everyone reading this — if you can, please consider chipping in to help us continue leading in these moments and organizing the ever-growing opposition to the Trump regime.

---

Stand with Minnesota

Despite constant teargassing, brutal detentions, and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Minnesotans have stood up against Trump’s invasion of their state in remarkable numbers and with tremendous courage. Braving frigid temperatures, they’ve been demanding Minnesota’s corporations stand with their customers and staff and demand that ICE and Border Patrol leave the state; yesterday, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce released an open letter that failed spectacularly to meet residents’ courage with anything like their own.

Minnesota organizers have asked that the rest of us help turn up the heat on the state’s biggest regime-friendly corporations. Call or email Target, Hilton, Enterprise, Home Depot, and Delta Airlines to demand they take action to get ICE out of our communities FOR GOOD.

Whether they’re actively cooperating or keeping quiet in the face of ICE and Border Patrol brutality, each of these corporations is standing by as armed, masked secret police terrorize the communities in which they operate. We need to make sure they know: It’s got to stop.

January 26, 2026 (newsletters@democracydocket.com)

‘All-out assault on democracy’: What to know about Bondi’s ‘blackmail’ letterHours after federal immigration officers killed a man in Minneapolis, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota, saying the state could “restore the rule of law” if it handed over its voter rolls to the federal government, among other steps.  State election officials and Democrats have condemned the demand as “blackmail and extortion.” One expert said it’s “laying the groundwork to try to interfere with the election.” Meanwhile, lawyers for Minnesota brought up the letter in a hearing for their lawsuit challenging the aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action in the state. They argued that Bondi’s “ransom note” undercuts the administration’s stated reasons for the ICE action.  Lies, violence and the American state “The lies are no longer about shadowy figures wielding great power and influence. They are now targeting everyday citizens — people standing in their own communities, in front of their homes, protecting their neighbors,” Marc writes.