FILE: President Donald Trump (right) speaks to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a dinner in the White House, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington. Meta’s social media platforms have hosted many ads for the Department of Homeland Security.Alex Brandon/AP
Several prominent Bay Area tech CEOs spent the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term buddying up with the administration. But the violence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis this month is prompting a backlash from workers inside the industry — and CEOs are a primary target.
Even before federal officers killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti on video in Minneapolis on Saturday, current and former tech workers were circulating a petition protesting ICE and demanding that tech CEOs use their clout against the agency. As of Monday morning, more than 400 had signed the petition, including workers from the likes of Google, Meta, OpenAI, Intel, Salesforce, Adobe and Amazon.
The petition asks CEOs to cancel any contracts with ICE, speak out against the agency’s violence and demand that the Trump administration pull officers from cities. Drafted by AnnE Diemer, a consultant and former Stripe employee in San Francisco, the petition also points to Trump’s calling off a “surge” of officers to San Francisco in October after speaking with Mayor Daniel Lurie, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
“We know the tech industry can make a difference,” the petition reads. “When Trump threatened to send the national guard to San Francisco in October, tech industry leaders called the White House. It worked: Trump backed down.”
The petition continues: “We want to be proud to work in tech. We want to be proud of the companies we work for. We can and must use our leverage to end this violence.”
Pretti’s death was the second instance of federal officers gunning down a protester this month in Minneapolis, where thousands of ICE officers and Border Patrol agents were deployed for anti-immigrant raids. Trump officials attempted to justify Pretti’s killing — White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement” — even as video debunked their statements about the shooting and a wave of widespread outrage amassed online.
Tech leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook — who have met with Trump in Washington this year, donated to his inauguration fund and expressed appreciation for his work — stayed characteristically silent about the administration’s more controversial actions on social media. But though the worker petition represents a tiny fraction of the tech community, it and statements from other industry figures show that pressure is mounting on executives to use their sway for good.
Chris Olah, an Anthropic co-founder, wrote on X that he tries not to talk about politics, but Pretti’s killing had cleared his high bar: “Recent events – a federal agent killing an ICU nurse for seemingly no reason and with no provocation – shock the conscience.” Jeff Dean, the chief scientist of the artificial intelligence team Google Deepmind, called the killing “absolutely shameful,” and added, “Every person regardless of political affiliation should be denouncing this.” Dean also praised an open letter from Minnesota CEOs asking for a de-escalation.
The shooting has also prompted some disagreements within companies. Ethan Choi, a partner at the Menlo Park investing firm Khosla Ventures, pushed back on a colleague’s defense of ICE, writing, “I want to make it clear that Keith [Rabois, a director,] doesn’t represent everyone’s views here at @khoslaventures, at least not mine. What happened in Minnesota is plain wrong.” Founder Vinod Khosla backed up Choi.
Huang and Benioff, when they called Trump to dissuade the San Francisco surge, showed a willingness to counter ICE’s sweeping incursions on American cities. The workers’ petition asks for many more such calls from top execs. The ask for an end to ICE contracts has a narrower focus; the software company Palantir is working closely with the agency, but other companies and executives have dodged the work. Still, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services each contracted with ICE in the past, Meta hosts pro-ICE ads from the Department of Homeland Security, and Salesforce pitched the agency on its products last year.
The petition ends with a request for more ideas: “What else can tech employees do to push back against fascism in the U.S.? We want to help make it happen.”
Work at a Bay Area tech company and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
Stephen Council is the tech reporter at SFGATE. He has covered technology and business for The Information, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and CalMatters, where his reporting won a San Francisco Press Club award.
Hundreds of protesters attended an anti-ICE rally in San Francisco following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, 2026. Photo by Béatrice Vallières.
Pretti, an American citizen who worked as an intensive care nurse, was shot by a Border Patrol agent in an incident that was filmed and posted to social media. The shooting happened amidst widespread protests in the Twin Cities following the killing of Renee Nicole Good, who was shot in her car by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Jan. 7.
A protestor holds a sign reading “R.I.P Alex Pretti”, in reference to the man killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, 2026. Photo by Béatrice Vallières.
Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter below.Sign up
“Today, the violence of this fascist administration is rearing its ugly head, attacking our communities, and we must stand up,” an organizer told the crowd during the rally. The protest was called earlier Saturday by Bay Resistance and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, among other organizations.
Eleanor Brown, who attended the demonstration, said she’s been “glued to her TV” since seeing a video of Pretti’s shooting on Instagram this morning. “All day I’ve been wishing I could do something,” she said.
Lorrene Ritchie (left) and Eleanor Brown (right) attended the anti-ICE protest at the Embarcadero Plaza on Jan. 24, 2026. Photo by Béatrice Vallières.
“I think no place is safe. And if we let it happen in Minneapolis, it’ll happen here and happen anywhere,” Lorrene Ritchie, another protester, said. “So it’s incumbent upon all of us as U.S. citizens to fight for the rights of everyone, even if we’re not directly involved.”
Ritchie, an emeritus faculty member in nutrition at U.C. Agriculture and Natural Resources, added she was also protesting against President Donald Trump’s broader policies, including cutting funding for scientific research and moving away from evidence-based nutritional guidelines.
A protestor holds a sign reading “When will you be kidnapped?” at the anti-ICE protest at the Embarcadero Plaza on Jan. 24, 2026. Photo by Béatrice Vallières.
The rally featured speeches from organizers with several groups, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Palestinian Youth Movement. Organizers called for the abolition of ICE and urged community members to join local ICE response networks.
Protesters then marched downtown, chanting slogans like “ICE is not welcome here” and “Donald Trump has got to go.”
A crowd of San Franciscans gathered at the Embarcadero plaza to protest against ICE on Jan. 24, 2026. Photo by Béatrice Vallières.
The American Journalism Project has invested $1.5 million in Mission Local — our largest gift to date.
It’s a powerful vote of faith from one of the largest journalism funders in the country, and will fuel our expansion across San Francisco. Already, we’re reporting from half a dozen neighborhoods and, with AJP’s support, we’ll add half a dozen more in the coming years.
But we can’t do it alone. We need local donors and supporters to keep Mission Local free, forever. Join us today!
Béatrice is a reporting intern covering immigration and the Tenderloin. She studied linguistics at McGill University before turning to journalism and getting a master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School.More by Béatrice Vallières
Use the Location bar to share exact details (intersections, addresses, or landmarks).
When
Submit reports as soon as it’s safe for you to do so.
Privacy
All reports are completely anonymous.
Emergency Contacts
Keeping important contacts accessible can help you and your loved ones stay safe in unexpected situations.
Legal aid Hotlines
Keep the phone numbers for reliable immigration legal aid organizations handy. They can explain your rights, connect you with attorneys, and guide you through ICE encounters.
Rapid Response Networks
Identify local immigrant or rapid-response groups that can assist if someone is detained. They may provide on-the-ground support, advocacy, and connections to bail or legal resources.
Trusted Contacts
Make sure at least one friend, family member, or trusted person knows your location and can check in if needed.
Store these numbers in your phone, in a wallet, or on a “Know Your Rights” card. Consider keeping a small paper list as backup in case your phone is lost or confiscated.
Candles are lit outside the US Embassy in London in memory of Renee Nicole Good, who was shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the United States.
(Photo by Lab Ky Mo/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The FBI has focused its investigation on Good’s ties to activist groups as ICE agents have increasingly threatened people for filming and observing their operations.
A supervisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office became the latest official to resign over the federal law enforcement agency’s handling of the investigation into an immigration agent’s fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month.
As the New York Timesreported Friday, FBI agent Tracee Mergen, acting supervisor of the office’s Public Corruption Squad, resigned after senior FBI officials in Washington pushed her to end a civil rights probe into the killing. The agency is focusing on investigating Good and her wife, who were legally observing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, instead of determining whether ICE agent Jonathan Ross used excessive force.
An FBI source toldCBS News that Mergen “would not bow to pressure” from the agency’s leaders.
Starting immediately after Good was shot three times at close range by Ross, who was one of several agents who had approached her vehicle and, according to eyewitnesses, shouted conflicting orders at her, Trump administration officials have described Good and her wife as “domestic terrorists.” They have accused her of trying to run over Ross, a claim that has not been supported by detailed analysis of footage of the killing.
Federal prosecutors have refused to allow authorities in Minnesota to conduct a probe into the killing, and Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump administration’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced days after Good was killed that the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division would not be investigating—which would ordinarily be a standard step in a shooting involving a federal law enforcement agent. That decision led four top officials in Dhillon’s office to resign in protest.
Six federal prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in Minnesota also stepped down after the DOJ made clear that Becca and Renee Good—not Ross—would be the focus of an investigation.
As NBC Newsreported Friday, the DOJ also directed the US attorney’s office and FBI agents to investigate whether Good could have been criminally liable in her own death. Agents had drafted a search warrant to obtain her car, but they were told by aides to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to redraft the warrant to search the car for evidence of an attack on Ross. A federal judge rejected the warrant.
Like many residents of Minneapolis, Chicago, and Charlotte, North Carolina have in recent months as thousands of ICE agents have descended on US cities and detained immigrants and citizens alike, the Goods were observing and filming ICE operations on January 7 when Renee Good was shot.
Filming ICE is legal as long as doing so does not interfere with agents’ operations. Yet officers have increasingly threatened people for observing them and claimed that doing so is an act of domestic terrorism.
One agent in Portland, Maine on Friday told an observer she would be included in a “nice little database” and “considered a domestic terrorist,” after she filmed ICE operations.
Volunteers for neighborhood ICE watches in Maine told the Portland Press Herald that ICE agents have shown up at their houses and issued warnings not to follow them.
The threats, and the FBI’s insistence on investigating Good’s alleged ties to what it calls “activist groups,” come months after Attorney General Pam Bondi signed a memo expanding the DOJ’s definition of domestic terrorism to include “impeding” law enforcement officers or “doxxing” them.
That memo followed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, a document signed by President Donald Trump shortly after the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, which mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.” The memo exclusively focuses on “anti-fascist” or left-wing activities.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include details about the DOJ push to investigate Good for criminal liability after her death.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
As Minnesota residents and people across the US were reeling from the killing of protester Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents on Saturday—the second fatal shooting by federal immigration agents in the city in less than three weeks—US Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz, telling him it is in his power to “restore the rule of law” in his state.
One suggestion the attorney general gave amounted to a “shakedown,” said US Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and had nothing to do with the Trump administration’s persistent claims that immigrants have caused a crisis in Minnesota. Bondi demanded the Democratic governor turn over voter rolls for the state, as she has called on all 50 states and Washington, DC to do, prompting legal challenges from voting rights groups and voters.
Bondi wrote that Walz must allow the Department of Justice (DOJ) to access voter rolls to “confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law.”
“Fulfilling this commonsense request will better guarantee free and fair elections and boost confidence in the rule of law,” she wrote.
Gallego accused the DOJ of “using fear to get their hands on voter information.”
The Trump administration filed a federal lawsuit last September against Minnesota and several other Democrat-governed states to demand personal information for all voters, including driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
Considering President Donald Trump’s persistent, debunked claims of so-called “voter fraud” in the 2020 election, including the baseless claim that noncitizens are permitted by Democratic governors to vote in federal elections, advocates have said the DOJ’s demands for voter rolls are aimed at further spreading lies and misinformation.
In the letter, Bondi also denounced Minnesota officials for speaking out against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the wake of an ICE agent’s fatal shooting of Renee Good earlier this month, saying a “national tragedy” has resulted from the “anti-law enforcement rhetoric.”
The “tragedy” the attorney general was referring to wasn’t the killings of Good and Pretti, but a rise in “violence against ICE officers and agents” that the Trump administration has cited frequently. She didn’t provide examples of violent attacks in the letter.
She also demanded that Walz turn over records on Medicaid and food assistance programs and “repeal sanctuary policies that have led to so much crime and violence in your state”—also providing no evidence of such a rise. According to data from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Minneapolis Police Department, crime has gone down in recent years.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said Bondi’s letter suggested that Minnesota can expect more violence from federal immigration officers unless Walz turns over his constituents’ sensitive data.
This isn’t leadership. This is blackmail.
The Department of Justice has now told Minnesota officials that they will remove ICE if they hand over their voter rolls – this is not how the law works. pic.twitter.com/V9udMnJgPn
“They’re not entitled to that data,” said Fontes. “This is blackmail. This is the way organized crime works. They move into your neighborhood, they start beating everybody up, and then they extort what they want. This is not how America is supposed to work, and I’m embarrassed that the administration is pushing in this direction.”
Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, noted that Bondi’s demand came days after the DOJ acknowledged that a group aimed at challenging election results reached out to two Department of Government Efficiency Employees who were working at the Social Security Administration and requested they analyze state voter rolls.
“This is not a coincidence,” said D’Arrigo. “Authoritarians crave legitimacy, and manipulated election results can provide that.”
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Michael John Parenti was an American political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic who wrote on scholarly and popular subjects. He taught at universities and also ran for political office. Parenti was well known for his Marxist writings and lectures, and was an intellectual of the American Left. Wikipedia
Michael Parenti comes back to this idea a lot, usually to puncture the myth that capitalism is “peaceful” or that violence only happens when ideology gets too radical.
The core Parenti point: Capitalists routinely kill other capitalists—not by accident, and not as a moral failure of individuals, but because competition, empire, and profit make violence structural.
Here’s how he frames it ????
1. Capitalism isn’t just markets — it’s power
Parenti argues that capitalism doesn’t operate through polite competition alone. When profits, resources, or markets are threatened, capital turns to:
coups
wars
sanctions
assassinations
proxy conflicts
And the victims are often other capitalist elites who are on the “wrong” side of a power struggle.
It’s not labor vs. capital only — it’s capital vs. capital, backed by states and armies.
2. Wars are often capitalist-on-capitalist conflicts
Parenti points out that many wars sold as “ideological,” “humanitarian,” or “defensive” are really:
one bloc of capital trying to dominate another
rival business classes fighting over territory, labor, oil, trade routes, or finance
Examples he frequently gestures toward:
World Wars I & II (imperial capitalist powers clashing)
Cold War proxy wars (U.S.-aligned vs. Soviet-aligned ruling classes)
U.S.-backed coups against national bourgeoisies that threatened foreign capital
In these cases, capitalists die, lose power, or get eliminated—not because they opposed capitalism, but because they backed the wrong version of it.
3. The state is the hired gun
A classic Parenti line of thought is that capitalists rarely kill each other personally — they outsource it.
The state provides:
armies
police
intelligence agencies
economic warfare
So when one capitalist faction destroys another, it looks like “foreign policy” or “national security,” not murder — but the effect is the same.
4. Capitalism is violent even toward its own
Parenti loves flipping the usual narrative:
If capitalism were peaceful, it wouldn’t need:
endless war budgets
repression
prisons
secret services
propaganda
The fact that it devours rival capitalists shows that violence isn’t a bug — it’s a feature.
5. Why he emphasizes this
He’s pushing back against the idea that:
socialism = violence
capitalism = freedom + peace
Parenti’s response is basically:
Capitalism kills workers and capitalists. It just kills workers quietly and capitalists strategically.
The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution squads for decades. It would not come as a shock to any of the students I teach in prison. Militarized police in poor urban neighborhoods kick down doors without warrants and kill with the same impunity and lack of accountability. What the rest of us are facing now, is what Aimé Césaire called imperial boomerang. Empires, when they decay, employ the savage forms of control on those they subjugate abroad, or those demonized by the wider society in the name of law and order, on the homeland. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, Thucydides noted, it finally, with the collapse of Athenian democracy, imposed on itself. But before we became the victims of state terror, we were accomplices. Before we expressed moral outrage at the indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, and often celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics, as long as they were directed at those who lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of color. We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind. The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.
Residents near the scene of a shooting by a federal law enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, 2026. Photo: Jaida Grey Eagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Alain Stephens is an investigative reporter covering gun violence, arms trafficking, and federal law enforcement.
Border Patrol agents on Saturday shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen. Pretti was an ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital and legally carrying a Sig Sauer pistol. Bystander video shows him filming agents with a phone before being tackled and pinned facedown on the pavement as more than six officers swarm him. According to video of the shooting, at least one officer can be heard shouting “he’s got a gun,” and an agent appears to take Pretti’s weapon and begin to walk away before at least 10 shots ring out. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said in a press conference that Pretti was “a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.” Federal officials initially defended the shooting as self-defense, insisting Pretti had resisted disarmament and threatened agents. But open-source analysis by Bellingcat concluded the gun had already been taken from Pretti by the time the shots were fired.
Already, much has been made by the administration over the fact that Pretti was armed, a startling legal shift for officials who publicly espouse their love of the Second Amendment.
The Trump Justice Department has now formally embraced the idea that a citizen carrying a legal firearm who approaches federal officers can be shot on sight. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli — a Trump appointee — put this new doctrine bluntly: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.” In effect, the president who demanded absolute loyalty from gun rights voters is sanctioning deadly force against those voters whenever they come near a line of federal officers. This pronouncement came just hours after Pretti’s killing, turning a local tragedy into a national declaration of policy. The gap between Second Amendment rhetoric and the on-the-ground reality of federal law enforcement has never been more obvious.
Essayli’s declaration sent shockwaves through America’s gun community, and leaders of pro-gun groups immediately distanced themselves from the White House line. (On Truth Social, Trump posted a photo of the gun, writing, “This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go – What is that all about?” Less than 24 hours later, Trump had seemingly moved on, posting about construction on the White House ballroom.) Dana Loesch, a former spokesperson for the National Rifle Association and a conservative radio host, questioned the administration’s contention that Pretti had two loaded magazines as evidence he intended to harm immigration agents: “What he has or didn’t have isn’t the issue. What he was doing, with or without it, is the issue.”
By the end of the day, the NRA — historically among Trump’s biggest backers — had finally issued a lukewarm call for calm and due process and called Essayli’s remarks “dangerous and wrong,” but only after its social media followers lambasted the group for inexplicably staying silent at first. Remember: the NRA funneled some $25 million into Trump’s campaigns. For gun owners who gave Trump everything, the silence was deafening.
For gun owners who gave Trump everything, the silence was deafening.
The conservative advocacy group Gun Owners of America called for a “complete, transparent, and prompt investigation” and flatly rejected the idea that federal agents can justifiably shoot and kill legal gun owners. In a statement responding to Essayli, GOA warned “agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm.”
On the ground in Minnesota, gun rights advocates were outraged. The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus demanded evidence that Pretti posed any real threat, and insisted that every lawful citizen has the right to carry arms — even in a protest. Its general counsel, Rob Doar, told local news station KSTP that officers “have to have been in reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm” to use deadly force and his read based on the video is “that at the time that the shots were fired he had been disarmed seconds before.” Rick Hodsdon, an expert on permit to carry laws in the state, put an even finer point on the issue: The idea that any citizen approaching armed agents with a legal gun should be shot is “absurd.”
Other vocal critics rebuked Border Patrol statements implying that Pretti was armed to the teeth, and aiming, as official Greg Bovino claimed, to do “maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Veteran gun rights commentator Stephen Gutowski reminded followers that carrying extra magazines is common for permit holders. Others pointed out that this new paradigm risks transforming routine encounters with public safety officials into moments of terror for lawful gun owners. Kostas Moros, director of legal research and education for the Second Amendment Foundation, told The Reload, “People should not fear interacting with police officers simply because they are lawfully carrying a firearm.”
For many Second Amendment stalwarts, the Trump administration’s new stance is the ultimate betrayal. The man who vowed never to infringe on gun rights is now sanctioning lethal force against his own voters.
Thou Shalt Infringe
The Pretti killing and its official defense expose a wider hypocrisy in Trump’s approach to gun rights, despite his rhetoric. While Trump once praised Kyle Rittenhouse — the armed teenager who killed two people at a protest in Wisconsin — as “really a nice young man” who never deserved to go to trial, he has, throughout his career, quietly supported more gun safety measures than he admits.
During his first term, he casually let it slip that he was fine with taking guns without due process before backtracking. During his first administration, he also famously signed a rule banning bump-fire stocks (devices that simulated fully automatic fire) after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, a rule that was later struck down by the Supreme Court. Just last year, that same court — which is dominated by Trump appointees — upheld a sweeping new Joe Biden-era rule restricting untraceable “ghost guns,” rejecting challenges by gun rights groups.
Meanwhile, Trump has increasingly deployed federal forces into jurisdictions with some of the strictest gun-control laws in the country, using federal authority to lean into those regulations — despite promising to protect gun owners from government overreach. In August 2025, federal agents embedded with local police in Washington, D.C., and seized 111 firearms as part of Trump’s federal surge in the district to combat “crime.” For gun rights advocates, the operation exposed the quiet inversion underway: Federal agents can now treat gun ownership as a novel way to target, harass, and enforce their authority in ways that have little to do with any actual crime. Luis Valdes, a spokesperson for Gun Owners of America, said at the time that these seizures amounted to low-hanging fruit. “Charging [citizens] only for possession of a firearm means they couldn’t even establish reasonable suspicion or probable cause for any other crime,” he said. “We’re not against law enforcement going out there and going after real criminals. We’re just against law enforcement resources being mis-utilized, and having those resources used to violate people’s due process and Second Amendment rights.”
From Chicago to Los Angeles, these federal “surges” have meant heavily armed federal agents roaming neighborhoods looking to scoop up American firearms along the way — hardly a symbol of Second Amendment liberation. At the same time, the Justice Department has quietly pursued policies that make life harder for gun owners, not easier. While Trump’s February 2025 executive order on firearms directed the DOJ to review Biden-era regulations, many of his more expansive campaign promises remain outstanding, leaving little evidence that his administration has meaningfully expanded ordinary Americans’ access to firearms.
Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” for instance, made it cheaper to purchase suppressors and short-barreled weapons but not easier — keeping buyers locked behind the same federal regulatory regime his campaign promised to dismantle. In response, major gun rights groups have moved to mount new legal challenges against Trump’s ATF to eliminate outstanding red tape. And despite early promises to enact national concealed-carry reciprocity — a policy that would require every state to recognize gun permits issued by other states, much like driver’s licenses — that reform has yet to materialize.
Under Trump, gun rights have increasingly been filtered through federal power, not individual freedom.
It is also worth noting who Trump is in this equation: a gun-violence survivor, raised in one of the most restrictive gun safety environments in the country, who publicly champions the gun industry but now governs a far more heavily armed nation from behind layers of federal security. In Trump’s America, the question is no longer whether guns should exist, but whether the government still views the people who legally carry them as legitimate.
The bottom line is harder to ignore: Under Trump, gun rights have increasingly been filtered through federal power, not individual freedom. Now, after a second fatal shooting by federal immigration authorities in Minneapolis in as many weeks, his administration is crystallizing this shift as de facto policy: If an American simply owns a gun in front of feds, the use of “deadly force” is not just permitted but justified. And now that the feds are everywhere, the implications for an armed citizenry are chilling.
All of this flies in the face of Trump’s campaign promises of a Second Amendment utopia. The millions the NRA and pro-gun political action committees funneled into electing him have bought little more than cold comfort. Gun rights groups can protest and litigate but the precedent is now set: Under this administration, trained federal officers can, on executive authority alone, treat legally armed citizens — protesters or otherwise — as legitimate targets. The president who promised not to take away Americans’ guns has effectively signed off on taking away any safety those guns once provided. If this shift endures, it points toward a country with more federal deployments, more armed encounters, and a Second Amendment that exists in theory but not in practice.
I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
When Charles Sumner was asked, “What do we need now?” He replied, “Backbone, backbone and more backbone.”
Google AI Overview
Charles Sumner, a staunch abolitionist U.S. Senator from Massachusetts (1851–1874), embodied “backbone” through his uncompromising, Radical Republican stance against slavery and for civil rights
. His 1856 “Crime Against Kansas” speech, which targeted the slavery oligarchy, demonstrated his fortitude despite the threat of violence.
The “Backbone” Incident: Following his fiery two-day speech, Sumner was brutally assaulted with a cane by Rep. Preston Brooks on the Senate floor in May 1856.
Physical and Political Courage: Despite severe, long-lasting injuries from the beating, Sumner returned to the Senate three years later to continue fighting for equal rights, demonstrating immense personal and political courage.
Legacy: Known as the “conscience of a nation,” he was a steadfast proponent of the Thirteenth Amendment and the first civil rights bills.
Sumner’s “backbone” represents his refusal to be intimidated by the violent defense of slavery by Southern proponents.
Help Outreach Working Group lift the fog of corporate media. Donate to help us maintain this website and distribute literature on the street.
This Sunday’s Town Hall: Announcing This Week’s Progressive Town Hall: Every Sunday at 4pm ET/1pm PT RSVP HERE Join PDA activists online from across the country to discuss the importance of progressives reclaiming the American story from the MAGA right, an issue of heightened importance as we’re now within one... Continue reading →
We protest Heritage Foundation EVERY MONDAY (Join us!!!!) By admin | September 2, 2025 | Uncategorized Cliff Cash Comedy Premiered Jul 26, 2025 Every Monday at The Heritage Foundation 214 Massachusetts Ave. Washington D.C. 4pm protest 6pm pizza Every Friday at Fox News D.C. 400 N. Capitol St. Washington D.C. 4pm protest 6pm pizza We are... Continue reading →
Milk Club Trans Caucus Meeting Date: Tuesday, April 28 Time: 5-7 PM Location and Zoom Link: Meeting info available to members of the Milk Club Trans Caucus. Please reach out to trans@milkclub.org if you would like to join the Milk Club Trans Caucus.
San Francisco Young Democrats meet with SFDems Chair Nancy Tung Wednesday, April 29th | 2pm Location: SC T-160 (third floor of Student Center) Register The San Francisco Young Democrats at SF State are teaming up with SFDems to make sure their voices are heard. Want to get more plugged into San Francisco... Continue reading →
One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism Virtual Event · Hosted by No Kings Time Wednesdays 8 – 9:30pm EDT Location Virtual event Join from anywhere About this event Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations,... Continue reading →
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2023 AT 2 AM – 4 AM PDT How to create trust in a group? Details Event by Extinction Rebellion Empathy Circles online EMPATHY CAFE Duration: 2 hr Public · Anyone on or off Facebook How to create trust in a group? This is the question that arose in our... Continue reading →
by 
