This administration is demanding more words for appalling. I’m tired of typing the few adjectives we have for these atrocities. But then, there just aren’t words for what happened on Saturday. Our hearts are shattered.
If such a thing as cold murder in the streets can be said to have a positive effect, it’s that there is no more hiding behind uncertainty, however fabricated. This is as stark a truth as the universe is capable of producing. There is no more doubt that this White House is unhinged and unleashing absolute chaos on the world, and the victims are us. Any politician, particularly any Republican politician, who does not vocally condemn these acts and then act to end this, has sided with that chaos. And it’s time to let them know that their political career is over.
To that end… Here is a commentary piece I wrote for our local paper. I think it is applicable anywhere in the [barely] United States.
Within a few hours of the horrific murder of Alex Pretti as he tried to help a fellow peaceful protester up from the concrete where she had been shoved by armed and masked Border Control agents, US Attorney General, Pam Bondi, issued an ultimatum to Minnesota governor, Tim Walz. Among demands that Minnesota share sensitive data from Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and open Minnesota corrections facilities to ICE interrogation squads, Bondi repeated the Trump Administration’s order to hand over Minnesota voter rolls to “confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law,” a questionably legal request that Minnesota Secretary of State, Steve Simon, has flatly refused to consider.
She ended the ominous missive by saying “I am confident that these simple steps will help bring back law and order to Minnesota and improve the lives of Americans”.
The letter did not indicate that the occupation of Minneapolis by ICE and other Department of Homeland Security forces would necessarily end if the Administration’s demands were met. However, it does seem a tacit admission that those forces were deployed to achieve exactly these ends and for no other reason. If law and order can “be restored” by following these “simple steps”, then it follows that refusal is what is driving the illegal disorder being rained down on the people of Minneapolis — an armed invasion that has resulted in two highly visible and monstrous murders of US citizen-protesters in the streets, numerous hidden injuries up to and including death of detainees, property destruction, unlawful entering and seizure of property and citizens, and the incomprehensible detention of a toddler and a five-year-old reportedly to be used as bait.
This, as many commentators have noted, is no different from Mafia rule. Bondi’s letter is saying in no uncertain terms, “Gee, it sure is a shame your city’s having all this needless violence. Just hand over those little voter rolls, and I’m sure the violence will end”. Has there ever been a more repulsive and more obvious corruption of power!
This has never been about immigrants, legal or otherwise. This is not even about tax monies being spent on people who don’t meet the regime’s fascist standards on skin color and accents. This is about those voter rolls. This is about combing through those records for legal votes that could be misconstrued as improper in a certain slant of light. This is about disenfranchising thousands of legal voters. This is about rigging elections so that the Republican majorities are preserved in the House and Senate, in the face of massive public disapproval of those elected officials. And, ultimately, this is about doing away with elections altogether and setting up a dictatorship with a doddering figurehead at the helm.
Trump has made no secret of his aim to have a third — now, he’s saying, fourth — term. That he will not likely live to see the end of his second term is of no consequence. If the American election system is broken in 2026, then we will have a dictator, whether it be Trump or Vance or someone altogether scarier like Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Stephen Miller, who seems to be driving most of the vitriol. (It is believed that Trump is now too incapacitated for daily functioning and that much of what is delivered to Truth Social and other digital media outlets is actually Miller. Much of it matches Miller’s cadence, tone, and vocabulary better than Trump’s.)
I do not doubt that Minnesotan officials will continue to resist this mob rule. They have no political reason to comply and a state full of angry people actively supporting resistance with whistles, cell phone video and sheer neighborly sustenance. Do you know how the Mafia lost its stranglehold on Sicily? Yes, there were trials and reforms, but those were not the driving force, indeed, they would not have been possible without the people. People, ordinary Sicilians, refused, refused to pay extortion fees, refused to be silent, refused to comply or be complicit, especially in their minds. Ordinary people said no — and one of the most brutally efficient systems of organized terror was broken.
Something to keep in mind, friends. We have the power to say no. And we have the power to back our elected officials who are also saying no. And we most certainly have the power to remove those who are still complicit even if that complicity is silence. We have that power. It is what this country is built upon. Exercise it!
Call your officials. Write letters. Let them know unequivocally that they will never be in politics again if they fail in this, our country’s existential moment.
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 
I have watched these events unfold on the television news and am horrified.
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Dehumanization
In the time of monsters.
*******
They would like to dehumanize immigrants.
That makes it easier
to murder them in cold blood,
smash down the doors of their homes, kidnap their children. (1)
But it never stops there – just with immigrants.
Like the immigrants they tried to dehumanize
mothers, nurses, citizens, women, the elderly, caring men
all of nonviolence, to bear witness
to those caught up in their terror.
“Fuckin bitch” were his first words
after murdering a mother in ICE cold blood.
Her last words, “I’m not mad at you.”
They tried to dehumanize him too,
as he came to the aid of a woman just assaulted
His last words to her, “are you all right?”
Before he was held down and pummeled,
while 10 bullets were pumped into him
at point blank range,
in a gang-land ICE cold execution.
In their anger, hatred and misogyny
They could not realize that
you can’t dehumanize people,
only murder them
in ICE cold blood.
But, they too were once humans
who could only dehumanize themselves,
in the time of monsters.
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Thank you! I have lost track of how many people have reached out to me asking how they can help and when I respond that if they really want to help, they need to put pressure on their elected officials no matter who they are, they suddenly start making excuses–my elected is a Democrat so I don’t need to call, or mine is a no-good Republican who won’t listen to me. Doesn’t matter, call them anyway because they need to know. And the more people who make demands, especially of Republicans, to step up, the more likely they will be to listen. There are cracks, and the more folks who push into those cracks, the wider they get until even Republicans have to listen and do something.
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