This weekend, Americans and even some in Donald Trump’s party began to signal they’d had enough.
Five congressional Republicans sought an investigation into the shooting in Minneapolis of intensive-care nurse Alex Pretti, the second US citizen to be shot dead by masked federal agents this month.
Republican calls for a probe may sound minimal unless one considers how in lockstep with the president they’ve been throughout his second term.
The GOP now is staring down a second government shutdown. That’s after indicating that they’d oppose Democrats’ demands to strip funding from the immigration agencies at the center of public protests following their deployment to cities including Minneapolis.
With midterm elections looming, suspending government business again is a risk for either party.
While the weakening resolve is far from a full break with Trump, it signals growing unease. The CEOs of 60 Minnesota-based companies, including giants like 3M, Target and Hormel, published a letter seeking de-escalation.
Trump seems to have sensed it. Where some loyalists quickly labeled Pretti a “domestic terrorist,” the president told the Wall Street Journal that his administration was “reviewing” the shooting and that “at some point” the thousands of enforcement officers would leave.
Last week, Trump’s bluster over Greenland ran into widespread opposition and market turmoil, and he eventually backed down. His dismissal of NATO allies’ sacrifices in Afghanistan looks like another example of overreach.
It’s too early to say whether domestic pressure will inspire Trump to end the federal law-enforcement effort in Minnesota.
Graphic video footage posted online of Pretti’s shooting hit a raw nerve in Minneapolis, a city traumatized by the 2020 police murder of George Floyd which resulted in mass protests and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz suggested a similar moment may have been reached.
“This is an inflection point in America,” he said. — Wendy Benjaminson