When Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight

A 37-year-old ICU nurse named Alex Pretti was filming ICE agents in Minneapolis when he intervened to stop them from assaulting a woman. The agents grabbed him, beat him, and shot him dead. The whole thing was caught on camera from multiple angles.

The footage looks disturbingly familiar — like scenes from Syria or Iran, where citizens rising against authoritarian regimes are silenced by baton and bullet. What makes it even more chilling is how the Trump administration responded.

The Lie Machine Kicks In

Within hours, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement claiming Pretti was "violently resisting" arrest and that the officer "fired defensive shots." Stephen Miller went further, calling Pretti "a domestic terrorist [who] tried to assassinate federal law enforcement."

These are verifiable lies. While Pretti was legally carrying a gun (he had a permit), he never drew it. Independent analysis of the footage confirmed that federal agents had secured his weapon before opening fire. Throughout the incident, he's holding nothing but his cell phone.

It's the same playbook they used when federal agents killed Renee Good: smear the victim, lionize the killer, and hope the public buys it.

Two Roads to Authoritarianism

There are essentially two ways to transform a democracy into an authoritarian state. The first is Viktor Orbán's Hungarian model: subtle legal manipulation that gradually concentrates power while maintaining democratic appearances. The second is Stalin's Soviet approach: brutal, overt suspension of rights paired with violent repression of dissent.

The first strategy depends on subtlety — hiding authoritarian intent behind legal veneers to avoid widespread public outrage. The second depends on being nakedly violent, making bloody examples of dissenters to show that challenging the state carries deadly consequences.

These approaches are fundamentally in tension. It's hard to maintain democratic legitimacy when your security forces are engaging in overt brutality. Yet the Trump administration has tried both simultaneously — sometimes employing Orbánist tactics like nationwide gerrymandering, sometimes abducting lawful residents to be tortured in El Salvador.

Saturday's killing marks a potentially decisive shift toward the latter approach.

The Strategic Miscalculation

Ironically, Trump's most effective power consolidation moves have followed Orbán's playbook. Using regulatory power to help the billionaire Ellison family control growing chunks of American media, for instance. These subtle maneuvers actually work.

The thuggish ICE deployments, by contrast, have done little to suppress dissent and much to inflame public sentiment. This is true not just in Minneapolis, but in Los Angeles, Chicago, DC, and other major cities where organizational infrastructure to oppose the crackdown has emerged that didn't exist a year ago.

And the activists were already winning before Saturday. Trump's poll numbers have been plummeting, even on his formerly strong issue of immigration. Saturday's events are all but certain to accelerate this dynamic.

We're already seeing cracks in the ruling coalition. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, called the killing "incredibly disturbing" and demanded a "full joint federal and state investigation." Gun rights activists are criticizing attempts to blame Pretti's weapon for his death. Meanwhile, Democrats are on the brink of shutting down the government over ICE killings.

The Bloody Path Forward

Controlling this level of public resistance by force is unthinkable in the United States. Historical evidence shows that once mobilized, mass publics don't retreat in the face of isolated violence. It takes overwhelming force — something like Iran's recent crackdown, where state security forces killed thousands of protesters to subdue a mass uprising.

Barring such butchery, which even hardened authoritarian regimes struggle to pull off, the Trump administration won't be able to force Americans to accept their rule through violence alone.

But their attempts to impose their will by force already have a body count of at least two in Minneapolis. If they double down on unrestrained ICE occupations, refusing to give ground in the face of nonviolent public defiance, scenes like Saturday's will repeat.

As political scientist Paul Musgrave writes: "Extrajudicial killings are not the sign of a strong regime. But they may be the portent of a bloody one."

The Trump administration appears to have lost patience with establishing control through subtle means and is increasingly turning to violent ones. The question isn't whether this approach will succeed — it won't. The question is how much blood will be spilled before they realize it.