Pretti’s Death Creates a Chance for Sanity

Alex Pretti may not have died in vain.

While the videos of Renee Good’s death were open to interpretation, Pretti’s killing looks like a flat out murder. It was so clear that even MAGA and Republican-leaning news outlets, like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, are decrying it and calling for a real investigation as opposed to the thinly veiled cover-up taking place in Good’s death.

And Republican politicians are following suit. According to an AP story, a GOP candidate for governor in Minnesota, Chris Madel, announced he was dropping out of the race there because he could not support or belong to a political party that supports “stated retribution” on Minnesota residents. Madel also said the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts in the Twin Cities had gone too far and accused agents of violating the Constitution by raiding homes with a civil warrant rather than a judicial one.

And Madel is no member of the resistance. He offered pro bono legal representation to Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Good earlier this month.

In the days since Pretti was killed, a growing number of Republicans have called for an investigation into the shooting. On Sunday, Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Democratic Maryland Governor Wes Moore, the chair and vice chair of the National Governors Association, called for “a reset of strategy toward a unified vision for immigration enforcement.”

“Scenes of violence and chaos on our streets are unacceptable and do not reflect who we are,” the governors said.

In fact, the political winds are blowing so hard now that even Trump can feel them beneath his trench coat. In the last couple of days he’s softened his tone and even taken calls from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frye. Both reported that they had had productive discussions with him. And Trump moved to replace border patrol commander Gregory Bovino with border czar Tom Homan on the ground in Minneapolis. Casting a guy like Homan as the voice of reason tells you something about Bovino.

In polling, about half of Americans now support going so far as to abolish ICE compared to only 27% who said they supported that back in June. On this Democrats need to be cautious. Two of the most liberal candidates running for Wisconsin governor, Madison’s Kelda Roys and Francesca Hong, rushed to embrace that position, but I have a sense that public support for it won’t last. Better to call for broader reforms as Stitt and Moore have.

Much like the days after the killing of George Floyd, we have an opening here to drive positive change. But the Floyd opening was quickly shut down when the hard-left went much too far. Calls to defund the police and violent protests squandered the opportunity. While calls to abolish ICE may not be quite like that, Democrats have to carefully calibrate their response to stay just a little behind the public, not too far out ahead of it. Let mainstream public opinion lead the way.

It’s sickening that two people had to lose their lives to shift the political winds. But now that that seems to be happening, let’s not waste their lives a second time by going too far too fast.