Bystander video shared with The New York Times shows Jeffrey Pretti holding his phone as he’s taken down by federal agents.
The New York Times has produced another visual analysis (gift link) of a fatal shooting in Minneapolis by federal agents.
As with Renee Good on Jan. 7, the killing of Alex Jeffrey Pretti appears to be entirely unjustified. Preliminary statements from government officials that Pretti was approaching agents with a gun were false. If they didn’t know what they were saying was untrue at the time, they knew shortly thereafter.
Based on what we’ve learned, Pretti, a registered nurse, was video-recording agents while walking toward them as they went about their business of terrorizing the populace. An agent pepper-sprayed a woman, and Pretti got between her and the agent in an attempt to shield her. He was holding up his phone with one hand; his other hand was empty.
Agents then pepper-sprayed him and took him to the pavement. At that point, an agent took Pretti’s handgun and walked away. In Minnesota it is legal to carry a gun in public, and Pretti had a valid license. Again, he had not touched his gun; rather, an agent saw it and removed it from him.
Then, with Pretti’s gun removed and down on the pavement, agents began shooting him, firing 10 shots. It has all the appearances of the deliberate execution of an unarmed man — an act of state-sponsored terrorism. By the time Stephen Miller took to Twitter/X on Saturday afternoon and posted, “An assassin tried to murder federal agents,” he knew he was lying.
If you’re looking to catch up, Heather Cox Richardson has pulled together all the various strands, including efforts by Minnesota state investigators to preserve the crime scene and a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz that can only be described as attempted extortion.
Minneapolis is under siege. And if you’re thinking, well, that’s just one city, I’ll close by paraphrasing a quote that is often attributed to the science-fiction writer William Gibson: Fascism has arrived — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.
Update: A little after 2:30 p.m., I changed the headline from “suggests that Alex Pretti was executed” to “shows that Alex Pretti was executed.” As the hours go by, the truth of what happened is becoming clearer. The Times itself is now asserting, “Videos directly contradict descriptions of the encounter by administration officials.”
Correction: Updated to correct Alex Pretti’s name.
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If you scan the top headlines, it might seem like the only stories in the news right now are ICE’s war against Minnesota and Donald Trump’s meltdown over Greenland. Venezuela is disappearing in the rearview mirror, but look out: here comes Snowmaggedon 2026.
But my media ethics students — yes, the same students who brought you their thoughts and suggestions earlier this week about practicing journalism in the AI era — have some different ideas. As I have in previous semesters, I asked them to identify stories that have been undercovered.
These stories have received some media attention or we wouldn’t know about them. But for one reason or another they haven’t broken through to the mainstream. Here is what they chose.
► Electoral unrest in Uganda, Reuters, Jan. 16. Amid accusations of election fraud, Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine was removed by the army from his house and taken to an unknown location, with President Yoweri Museveni claiming victory. The electoral campaign was marred by deadly violence, with the official count showing that Yoweri had been re-elected with nearly 74% of the vote, and Wine far behind at 23%.
► Data tallies ICE arrests in Boston, GBH News, Jan. 14. Reporter Sarah Betancourt found that at least 54 immigration-related arrests took place at Boston courthouses in 2025, with one so far in 2026. “We’re seeing ICE in the courthouses on an incredibly regular basis,” Jennifer Klein, director of the state’s Immigration Impact Unit told GBH News.
► How Florida is helping the feds, Tallahassee Democrat, Jan. 5. Using quickly thrown-together detention centers with names like Deportation Depot and Alligator Alcatraz, the state has detained about 20,000 people and turned them over to federal officials as part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ policy of assisting the Trump administration in its immigration crackdown.
► ACLU sues on behalf of federal arrestees, ACLU, Jan. 15. The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of three community members who are challenging “the administration’s policy of racially profiling, unlawfully seizing, and unlawfully arresting,people without a warrant and without probable cause.”
► Climate change’s non-virtuous circle, Environmental Defense Fund, Jan. 20. Global warming caused by humans is speeding the release of greenhouse gas emissions from natural ecosystems. “These greenhouse gasses are a result of manmade climate change — they are indirect human emissions,” said Brian Buma, senior climate scientist at EDF.
► ICE List Wiki. This interactive database “documents incidents, agencies, individuals, facilities, vehicles, and legal authorities involved in enforcement operations.” According to The Daily Beast, the list — created by Crust News — is based on a leak of information about some 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees, provided by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower following the shooting death of Renee Good in Minneapolis at the hands of ICE agent Jonathan Ross.
Now, I listed these stories in the order that I did deliberately. You’ll note that the first three come from mainstream news sources. The next two are press releases issued by respected advocacy organizations, the ACLU and the Environmental Defense Fund. The last isn’t a news story at all; rather, it’s a project put together by activists aimed at exposing the identities of federal agents involved in Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
Critics call this “doxxing,” but the ICE List doesn’t appear to contain any personal information beyond what you could look up about your local police department — whose officers, unlike ICE agents, do their jobs unmasked, with their badge numbers clearly displayed.
Essentially the first three are examples of traditional journalism while the last three are hybrids that combine advocacy with acts of journalism. I trust groups like the ACLU and the Environmental Defense Fund to offer accurate, truthful information, but it’s fair to wonder what relevant information they might have omitted.
As for Crust News and the ICE List Wiki, it’s an interesting idea, but it seems aimed more at news organizations that might make use of the data than it is at the general public. The site says that it “is designed for public use. Journalists, researchers, and advocacy groups use the data to track enforcement patterns, identify repeat agencies or jurisdictions, and contextualise individual incidents. Pages may be cited with attribution.”
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Click on image to review the Times’ video analysis.
I already posted this on social media, but I just want to make sure that Media Nation readers are able to take advantage of the gift link.
The New York Times has undertaken another video analysis of the killing of Renee Good at the hands of ICE agent Jonathan Ross. As you’ll see, it’s absolutely clear — as it was in earlier videos — that Good’s vehicle did not run over Ross (I mean, really?) and did not strike him. The most likely explanation was that she was trying, very slowly, to drive away, cutting her wheels away from Good and another agent.
It’s possible that Good’s vehicle brushed up against him, but that remains unclear. It appears that Ross slipped on the ice and braced himself by placing his hand on the roof of her vehicle. Oh, and there’s this: After the shooting, an ICE agent is heard describing Good as a “fucking bitch” as she, mortally wounded, careens down the street. The Times has determined that it was Ross himself who used those words to describe his victim.
Claims that Ross suffered internal bleeding are obviously a lie. You can see him casually strolling down the street after shooting Good four times. Federal authorities aren’t going to do anything, and they’re impeding an investigation by state and local officials.
ICE agents in South Minneapolis on Monday. Photo (cc) 2026 by Nicole Neri / Minnesota Reformer.
I posted this on Facebook earlier today, and it’s gotten a lot of interaction, with nearly 100 comments so far. Feel free to comment here, but if you’d like to join the conversation on Facebook, here’s the link.
I’ve seen a few people of good will argue that we should withhold judgment on ICE agent Jonathan Ross’ killing of Renee Good until the investigation is complete. I’m sorry, no. We know exactly what happened, from multiple angles. Every new video only makes Ross’ actions look more outrageous. And, of course, the feds are already impeding any legitimate investigation.
Public anger diminishes with every day that passes, and then we’re on to the next thing. (Invasion of Greenland, anyone?) There are no ambiguities. We know what happened. Ross should be arrested and charged with murder. Then there really will be an investigation, and we can let a jury of his peers decide his fate.
Larry Bushart under arrest. Photo by the Lexington, Tenn., police department via The Intercept.
Larry Bushart is free, but he didn’t win. It was the forces of oppression that won after Bushart spent a month in jail, held on $2 million bail, for publishing a provocative Facebook post about the late Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump that Tennessee authorities decided to conflate into the felony of recklessly threatening mass violence at a school.
Bushart was released from jail Wednesday after public pressure began to build, reports Rick Rojas in The New York Times. A retired law-enforcement officer who obsessively posts liberal memes, Bushart’s offense was to publish a photo of Trump following Kirk’s murder accompanied by the words “We have to get over it,” which was a statement Trump made in 2024 after a fatal school shooting in Iowa. A line under the photo read “Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after,” along with “This seems relevant today …”
J. Jonah Jameson of “Spider-Man” fame visits the San Diego Comic-Con in 2017. Photo (cc) by William Tung.
When does aggressive but acceptable behavior on the part of editors cross the line into workplace abuse? Back when I was covering the media for The Boston Phoenix, I heard some hair-raising stories emanating from the newsrooms at The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.
But though the targets of that abuse were shaken up, consequences for perpetrators were few. There was a sense at least among some folks that it went with the territory, and that if you didn’t like it, you should suck it up. I’ll hasten to add that I didn’t accept that line of thinking, and I’m fortunate to have never been yelled at by an editor — at least not one I worked for. (A few editors I’ve reported on let me have it, but that’s OK.)
FCC chair Brendan Carr. Photo (cc) by Gage Skidmore.
Donald Trump is unleashing so much chaos in service to his authoritarian agenda that it is literally impossible to keep up. So today let’s just look at how Trump is threatening the broadcast news media.
Trump’s tool in this battle is Brendan Carr, whom he appointed to the Federal Communications Commission in 2017 and then recently elevated to the chairmanship. There are currently four members of the FCC — two Republicans, two Democrats and one vacancy, which Trump will presumably fill in the near future.
Not that the current tie matters. Carr helped author Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a second Trump term that Trump said he knew nothing about during the campaign. Among other things, Carr wrote that the FCC chair has extra special powers that the other members of the commission lack. Thus Carr is large and in charge, at least until someone with power challenges him.
I want to share with you just three actions that Carr has taken during his brief time as chair, all of which represent a threat to the media’s ability to provide us with the news and information we need in a democratic society.
◘ First, he is helping Trump with his bogus $10 billion lawsuit against CBS. Trump is suing the network over an interview that “60 Minutes” conducted last fall with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, claiming that the program was edited to make Harris sound more coherent than she really was.
CBS responded that it edits all of its recorded interviews, and that there was nothing unusual about the way it handled its conversation with Harris. (And really? If you watched her debate Trump or listened to her long, unedited conversations with Howard Stern and Alexandra Cooper, you know she has no problem speaking extemporaneously.) Nevertheless, the network may be on the verge of settling the lawsuit, perhaps to ease the regulatory path for CBS’s parent company, Paramount, to merge with Skydance, as Alena Botros writes for Fortune.
Carr, for his part, placed the FCC’s heavy thumb on the scale by ordering CBS to turn over the raw footage and transcripts of the Harris interview, thus making use of a public agency’s regulatory authority to help Trump do his dirty work, as David Folkenflik reports for NPR. To be clear: Trump would likely have gotten those materials anyway in the course of pre-trial discovery. Carr’s actions serve the purpose of amplifying Trump’s fact-free claim that there was something corrupt about how the interview was edited.
“60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens has said he will not apologize as part of any settlement, according to Michael Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times. Which raises a question: Will he resign? And if he does, will others follow him out the door?
◘ Second, and speaking of NPR, Carr has announced that he’s investigating NPR and PBS to see whether the public broadcasters’ underwriting practices violate their noncommercial mandate.
According to Liam Reilly of CNN, Carr is “concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials,” adding: “In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements.”
Well, guess what? A lot of underwriting announcements on NPR and PBS do seem like commercials. They’re more restrained than what’s on commercial television and radio, and but when a cruise line pops up before or after the “PBS NewsHour,” or when a rug company’s sponsorship is heard on WBUR Radio, it’s because they want you to take a cruise or buy a rug.
Public broadcasters have to get their money from somebody, and it can’t all come from viewers (and listeners) like you. Very little in the way of tax revenues support PBS and NPR. The rest of it has to come from foundation grants and corporate underwriting. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the BNSF Railway notice that sometimes appears on the “NewsHour,” but that’s because I like trains.
What Carr’s doing is pure harassment.
◘ Third, Carr said last week that the FCC is investigating a San Francisco radio station for the offense of committing journalism. Garrett Leahy reports in The San Francisco Standard that KCBS revealed the location of agents from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and identified their unmarked vehicles in a place “known for violent gang activity.”
“We have sent a letter of inquiry, a formal investigation into that matter, and they have just a matter of days left to respond to that inquiry and explain how this could possibly be consistent with their public-interest obligations,” said Carr, who made his remarks during an appearance on — where else? — Fox News.
According to Leahy, KCBS declined to comment. But Juan Carlos Lara of public radio station KQED interviewed David Loy, legal director of the California-based First Amendment Coalition, who said:
Law enforcement operations, immigration or otherwise, are matters of public interest. People generally have the right to report this on social media and in print and so on. So it’s very troubling because it’s possible the FCC is potentially being weaponized to crack down on reporting that the administration simply just doesn’t like.
No doubt there will be much more to say about Carr in the months ahead. For now, it’s enough to observe that he is off to a predictably ominous start.
