Where Legitimacy Lives Now

ICE violence, democratic erosion, and the stubborn humanity holding the line in Minnesota

Good morning! The last few days have felt like an ultramarathon for language itself. Words like public safety, law enforcement, health, democracy are still being used, but increasingly they no longer mean what they’re supposed to. What’s left behind, in the widening gap between rhetoric and reality, is where this story lives.

In Minnesota, the removal of Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino was quickly presented as accountability. A reset, perhaps, or a signal that the White House had heard the outrage after two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed during federal immigration operations. But Bovino’s exit has nothing to do with reform; it’s all about optics, not architecture.

That becomes obvious when you look at who replaced him: Tom Homan. Same message, different messenger. Interior enforcement, arrest quotas, militarized posture, zero guardrails, and now, critically, zero credibility. Homan was previously the subject of a federal bribery investigation after undercover FBI agents reportedly handed him $50,000 in cash as part of a sting tied to promised contracts. That investigation was later shut down by the Trump administration. When senators asked Attorney General Pam Bondi what happened to the money, whether video evidence exists, and why the probe vanished, she refused to answer, choosing instead to snap, deflect, and attack the questioners personally. If this was meant to restore public trust, it did the opposite.

Bondi has made the administration’s posture unmistakably clear. Oversight is treated as insubordination, while compliance is demanded, or else. Nowhere was that clearer than in her weekend letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, sent as the state was reeling from Alex Pretti’s killing. In it, Bondi demanded access to Minnesota’s voter rolls, including sensitive personal data, along with information on public assistance recipients and the repeal of sanctuary policies. Voter rolls, it should be noted, have nothing to do with immigration enforcement. State attorneys called the letter what it was: a ransom note.

Election officials across the country saw it the same way. Experts described the demand as a shakedown, a thinly veiled attempt to centralize voter data ahead of the midterms. Federal judges have already dismissed similar Justice Department lawsuits in California and Georgia and are signaling the same in Oregon, warning that the rationale is pre-textual and that the chilling effect on voter participation threatens the cornerstone of American democracy. This is not about fraud, it is all about leverage.

What’s changed, and what makes this moment different, is that the cracks are now visible inside the Republican Party itself. This week, Chris Madel, a GOP candidate for governor in Minnesota and the defense attorney for the ICE agent who shot Renee Good, abruptly dropped out of the race. Madel is not a progressive dissenter or a liberal convert. He is a law-and-order trial lawyer, a defender of police, a Republican raised in a Republican household, and until very recently, a viable statewide candidate. Yet he walked away.

“I can’t look my daughters in the eye and say I’m running as a Republican,” Madel said, explaining that national Republicans had made it “nearly impossible” to win statewide, and morally impossible to defend what ICE has become. He described U.S. citizens of color carrying papers to prove their citizenship. He described law enforcement officers being stopped because of how they look. He described fear replacing legitimacy.

Madel isn’t a hero, but he is a canary. When even the lawyer defending the ICE shooter says the tactics have gone too far, the problem is no longer partisan disagreement; it’s institutional loss of consent. Republican strategists quietly admit it. You cannot win statewide elections in places like Minnesota when federal agents look like an occupying force.

You see the same erosion playing out elsewhere. Economically, millions of Americans are now discovering that health insurance costs more than their mortgage after expanded ACA subsidies were allowed to expire, not because they had to, but because Congress chose paralysis. Small business owners, early retirees, contractors: the very people political rhetoric calls “self-reliant” are dropping coverage and hoping they don’t get sick. This isn’t repeal by vote, It’s repeal by neglect.

Globally, the United States has now completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, abandoning disease surveillance, vaccine coordination, and decades of institutional trust, all while still owing hundreds of millions in unpaid dues. And this isn’t an isolated tantrum. The administration is withdrawing from sixty-six international organizations focused on climate science, democracy, labor, human rights, and the rule of law. Anything that requires cooperation, evidence, or accountability is being discarded in favor of unilateral control and strongman fantasy, a world governed by vibes, threats, and imaginary boards of peace.

Democratic decline isn’t a single dramatic rupture, but a thousand administrative decisions that normalize cruelty and render oversight optional. Which is why what’s happening on the ground in Minnesota matters so much, and why it lands as something more than an uplifting aside.

While federal officials speak the language of coercion, Minnesota has been speaking the language of care. Teri Leigh documents in her Substack how a beloved donut shop across the street from where Alex Pretti was killed became a warming house and medic center for protesters maintaining a memorial. A seventy-year-old independent bookstore owner walked through tear gas to express his grief, and saw his website crash under the weight of community support less than a day later. A small church cleaned pepper balls and tear gas canisters from a North Minneapolis neighborhood at dawn so families wouldn’t wake up to the reminders. One local journalist, injured so severely he lost a testicle, showed up two days later to walk with seventy-five thousand neighbors in sub-zero temperatures.

Pizza shops raised tens of thousands of dollars for families sheltering in place. Tow truck drivers donated labor to clean up the abandoned cars and damage ICE left behind. Social workers quietly took in children who came home from school to empty houses. Animal shelters rescued pets left alone after their humans disappeared. Mothers working full-time jobs donned reflective vests and stood watch at bus stops, parks, and grocery store parking lots in brutal cold, then went home to tuck their kids into bed. Faith leaders sat down with corporate power to demand accountability. Even the National Guard offered coffee and hot cocoa instead of confrontation.

This is what real public safety looks like.

As Max at UNFTR noted this week, history teaches us that when enforcement becomes anonymous, quota-driven, and shielded from consequence, the danger isn’t just abuse, it’s normalization. What Minnesota is showing us, in real time, is the antidote to that normalization is stubborn, unglamorous humanity. Mutual, defiant, deeply human community is still doing the work the state refuses to do. More than any press release or personnel shuffle, this is where legitimacy now lives.

Alex Pretti’s coworkers played Taps in his honor. Personally, I am unable to hear even that first note without dissolving into tears, and so my moonbeam vigil last night was especially emotional. Marz and I send love, not just to Alex’s family, friends, and colleagues, but to everyone who has stood up, shown up, and kept showing up in the face of such needless loss. He wanted to make a difference. In grieving, and honoring Alex and Renee Good, countless people are doing exactly that.