Minneapolis has become the left’s favorite noise machine—a city repeatedly turned into a stage to distract from the very real successes of the Trump Administration as the country heads toward a major election.

Getting criminals off the streets was one of President Trump’s core campaign promises. It’s what he ran on, what he delivered, and what more than 77 million Americans voted for. And for those of us not spending our days protesting ICE, the results are impossible to miss.

Homicide rates have dropped to their lowest level in 125 years, marking the largest single-year decline in recorded history. For the first time ever, all seven categories of violent crime fell below pre-pandemic levels last year.

So what headline did the New York Times choose to run? “What’s Behind the Staggering Drop in the Murder Rate? No One Knows for Sure.” Please. Deporting criminals leads to less crime. You don’t need a PhD to figure that out—just a willingness not to work for a paper that’s long since collapsed under its own bias.

Yet these statistics aren’t leading the nightly news. Instead, they’re being deliberately drowned out by coverage of protester deaths, cynically weaponized to wage political war against Trump. Alex Pretti is the latest name being used for this purpose, as we discussed yesterday.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed what many Americans feel: no one wants to see people die—regardless of politics. That includes Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But the answer to this chaos is not abolishing or defunding ICE, no matter how loudly Democrats demand it.

This crisis wasn’t created by the Trump Administration, ICE, or DHS. It was created—and is being sustained—by Democrats.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz openly encouraged residents to cause “good trouble” for ICE agents. Alex Pretti’s death is the result of that rhetoric, sanctuary policies, and political leaders willing to use their own citizens as pawns in a power struggle—one that conveniently distracts from massive fraud and billions in stolen taxpayer dollars.

Consider this: just nine counties account for two-thirds of all violent confrontations with ICE nationwide. Nine counties out of more than 3,100. A violent confrontation in those nine jurisdictions is 590 times more likely than in the rest of the country—and every single one is a sanctuary jurisdiction run by Democrats who actively resist immigration enforcement. That’s not opinion. That’s fact.

Minneapolis has become a breeding ground for these confrontations thanks to dishonest, incendiary messaging from leadership and the involvement of highly organized, well-funded resistance groups like ICE Watch. What’s happening there isn’t grassroots protest—it’s a coordinated operation with communications, logistics, and training.

We’ve seen the evidence.

Encrypted Signal groups now operate openly, complete with vetting procedures, timed deletions, and rotating memberships designed to bury evidence. Participants are assigned specific roles—chasing vehicles, checking license plates, logging data—all with the explicit goal of obstructing law enforcement as they attempt to remove criminals from the streets.

That’s the environment Alex Pretti got caught up in. He was part of a neighborhood ICE watch group whose purpose was to impede federal law enforcement. That is a crime. It becomes a far more serious one when you’re armed.

Pretti was licensed to carry, which is his right. But any concealed carry course will tell you the same thing: committing a crime while armed is never legal—it’s exponentially more dangerous and illegal.

Some online are claiming this is what the Second Amendment is for—resisting “tyranny.” That argument collapses under even minimal scrutiny. Blocking the enforcement of duly enacted federal immigration law is not resistance to tyranny. It’s opposition to laws passed through the democratic process and explicitly upheld by a president who campaigned on enforcing them.

Donald Trump ran on strict immigration enforcement. Disagreeing with that policy doesn’t invalidate the law. Federal statutes apply everywhere, regardless of whether Minneapolis likes them. Obstructing enforcement isn’t heroic—it’s defiance of the expressed will of the voters.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Under Barack Obama, ICE carried out millions of deportations. He was dubbed the “Deporter in Chief” by immigrant advocacy groups—despite never campaigning on it. Yet Minneapolis didn’t burn then. So why now?

Part of it is the reflexive “orange man bad” mentality. But it’s also about distraction. Governor Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey appear more than happy to let chaos dominate headlines while attention drifts from the fraud they’ve enabled. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said as much.

The violence escalated because Walz and Frey effectively gave agitators a green light, directing local law enforcement to refuse cooperation with ICE. Vice President JD Vance laid out the consequences plainly.

Vance described how off-duty ICE and CBP officers were doxed, surrounded at a restaurant, and left without help after local police refused to respond—following orders from city leadership. As he put it, this is what happens when officials refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement. They create chaos, then exploit tragedy to grandstand against border security.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shared similar accounts of Minnesota’s willful negligence.

This isn’t happening everywhere. ICE operates nationwide, yet we don’t see these kinds of confrontations in red states. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has pointed that out directly.

Condemning what’s happening in Minneapolis should be easy. Supporting the lawful work of ICE and DHS should be bipartisan. Instead, Democrats have returned to a familiar, failed slogan: defund law enforcement.

After triggering the longest government shutdown in U.S. history just months ago, Democrats are signaling they’re willing to do it again—this time over ICE funding. They once tried to distance themselves from “defund the police” because voters rejected it outright. Now, with Minneapolis dominating the airwaves, they’re rebranding the same bad idea as “defund ICE.”

It’s just as reckless now as it was then. And once again, it threatens to harm the American people through yet another government shutdown.

Trump isn’t backing down. And he shouldn’t. If ICE were forced to halt operations in Minneapolis, the left would treat it as a major victory—and immediately replicate the strategy nationwide. Chaos would become the new veto power. Laws would be enforced not by elected officials, but by whichever mob yells the loudest.

That’s not democracy. And it’s not something worth indulging.

I won’t take lectures on empathy or morality from people who cheered when my friend Charlie was shot in the neck in front of thousands of witnesses. And neither should you.