Good morning. The country’s winter storm has walloped the South, encasing it in dangerous ice. It’s one of the region’s worst storms in a generation. Tensions over the killing of Alex Pretti by immigration agents in Minneapolis continued to reverberate. We have a new frame-by-frame assessment of what happened. And there are signs the Trump administration is responding to the backlash: The president held a two-hour meeting with Kristi Noem, his homeland security secretary, yesterday. I’ll start there.
The nation’s moodRage and grief pulsate alongside each other in Minneapolis, tied together in images from the weekend’s protests and the killing of a U.S. citizen. “The images conveyed the unmistakable sense of consequence, of a watershed moment, prompting reflections about what the nation stands for, and where it is heading. Minneapolis seemed close, no matter where one lived,” our reporter Dan Barry wrote. Dan is one of The Times’s best chroniclers of the human condition. With help from reporters in many states, he tried to make sense of the nation’s current mood, for those who live in Minnesota and for those who live far from it — in coastal cities, in the Deep South, along the salt-sprayed shores of the Pacific Northwest. Here’s some of what he found: In Georgia, a high school teacher anticipated the questions his students would ask about the latest shooting death. In Indiana, broadcasts of the violence dampened a 97th birthday celebration. In Iowa, a married couple, on an outing with their autistic son, disagreed about what had happened, while in Wisconsin, a supporter of President Trump marveled at what she considered the stupidity of some protesters. And in Rhode Island, a snowbound student at Brown University cried when he saw the video from Saturday of immigration officers pepper-spraying Alex Pretti, a 37- year-old registered nurse, wrestling him to the cold Minneapolis ground, and shooting him to death. “I didn’t get any sleep last night,” the student, Jack DiPrimio, 23, said on Sunday. “The video was just replaying over and over again in my head.” Read the rest of Dan’s account of what some Americans are feeling. The aftermathIn Washington yesterday, Trump seemed open to de-escalation. He sent his border czar, Tom Homan, to take over immigration operations in Minnesota amid a rising cry of criticism over the administration’s tactics there. He also said that he and the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, had “a very good call” and “seemed to be on a similar wavelength.” That was a pivot from Trump’s weekend attacks on the governor and other Minnesota Democrats. He had previously blamed them for the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal agents. Had he lost confidence in Noem, his homeland security secretary? She and her Border Patrol lieutenant, Greg Bovino, have been the most visible leaders of the Minneapolis operation. At a press conference yesterday, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Trump had not, but hours later administration officials said they were planning to move Bovino out of the city. Leavitt’s posture was not, overall, as conciliatory as Trump’s. Pretti’s killing, she said, “occurred as a result of a deliberate and hostile resistance by Democrat leaders.” She added that Minnesota state law enforcement officials “were spreading lies about federal law enforcement officers who are risking their lives daily.” Senate Democrats have committed to stripping funding for ICE out of the coming spending bills, even if that means shutting down the government again. Some Republican lawmakers worried about a backlash to the draconian enforcement efforts in Minneapolis. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, called for a “full joint federal and state investigation” into Pretti’s death. Courts have begun to examine legal filings about the operation. In one hearing, lawyers for the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul urged a federal judge to halt the crackdown entirely. It’s not clear when she’ll rule, but she acknowledged the urgency. “If I had a burner in front of the front burner, this would be on it,” she said yesterday afternoon. In another hearing, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which investigates law enforcement shootings in the state, petitioned for access to evidence related to Pretti’s killing. Federal officials don’t want to share it. They say the Department of Homeland Security will lead the inquiry. Iconography of a shooting
Two centuries ago, Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, where this image was captured by our photographer David Guttenfelder, was a military route. Events over the weekend called back that history. After federal agents killed Pretti there on Saturday morning, protesters guarded a vigil in his memory. The street is quiet now. But the city is nervously poised for the next battle. See David talk about the aftermath of the shooting here:
More on Minnesota
After the weekend’s snow, millions of Americans are facing perilous temperatures and widespread power outages. Forecasters warn those conditions could last for days. Officials linked at least 22 deaths to the storm, including some from hypothermia. Many people are still stuck indoors. Extreme-cold warnings: A surge of Arctic air means it’ll be frigid for much of the week. Warnings will be in effect from Texas and northward into the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. Blackouts: Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were without power yesterday, particularly in the South. Snow piled onto electrical equipment and ice dangled from branches and power lines, causing them to snap. Snarled travel: The storm canceled more than 11,000 flights. Delays and cancellations persisted yesterday, and airports in the Northeast were hit the hardest. Climate change: As the atmosphere warms, it has the potential to hold more moisture in any season, which can lead to more extreme snowfall.
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