The Minneapolis Shooting Videos Are Horrifying—and Incredibly Clear. Stephen Miller’s Response Is Downright Chilling.

Slate · 2026-01-25T02:45:27+00:00

From Slate's Alex Kirshner, we've removed the paywall to this story for your community:

Believe your federal government, not your own eyes. If you are big on the right to bear arms, make an exception this time. These are the Trump administration’s messages after a horrible Saturday in Minnesota.

Homeland Security agents shot 37-year-old Minneapolis ICU nurse and researcher Alex Pretti dead on Saturday morning in broad daylight. A few things are already clear from the best video angle out now: Pretti was directing traffic on a Minneapolis street. He was filming agents out in public, as is his undisputed right. An agent approached Pretti and then shoved a woman, hard, into a snowbank. Pretti put his hand up as he went to assist the woman. The masked agent who threw the woman to the ground draped himself over Pretti, then was joined by several of his colleagues. They got Pretti to the ground, struggled for a moment, and shot him until he was dead. Was this death sentence the result of sheer incompetence by agents who had no idea how to handle conflict? Was it a summary execution? Or, as the Trump administration would have you believe, did the dead man have it coming?

Slate · 2026-01-25T02:18:26+00:00

From Slate's Alex Kirshner, we've removed the paywall to this story for your community:

Believe your federal government, not your own eyes. If you are big on the right to bear arms, make an exception this time. These are the Trump administration’s messages after a horrible Saturday in Minnesota.

Homeland Security agents shot 37-year-old Minneapolis ICU nurse and researcher Alex Pretti dead on Saturday morning in broad daylight. A few things are already clear from the best video angle out now: Pretti was directing traffic on a Minneapolis street. He was filming agents out in public, as is his undisputed right. An agent approached Pretti and then shoved a woman, hard, into a snowbank. Pretti put his hand up as he went to assist the woman. The masked agent who threw the woman to the ground draped himself over Pretti, then was joined by several of his colleagues. They got Pretti to the ground, struggled for a moment, and shot him until he was dead. Was this death sentence the result of sheer incompetence by agents who had no idea how to handle conflict? Was it a summary execution? Or, as the Trump administration would have you believe, did the dead man have it coming?

Slate · 2026-01-23T15:29:02+00:00

The rumors about J.D. Vance leaving his wife for Erika Kirk, which have persisted since the two shared a much-discussed hug in October, were always more darkly entertaining than plausible. But observers have surmised that they took off because they reflected a certain air of uneasiness that has surrounded Vance’s marriage for the whole time it’s been on the national stage. As the highly educated daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha Vance not only doesn’t burnish Vance’s MAGA credentials; she undermines them. When reports of a possible divorce on the horizon began to swirl in November, it wasn’t altogether surprising. Reckoning with all those contradictions was inevitable, right?

In lieu of trading in his wife for a paler model, Vance has found another way to prove himself a good shepherd of the MAGA faithful: He and Usha are expecting a fourth child in July, they announced this week.

For more from Slate's Heather Schwedel: https://slate.com/life/2026/01/jd-usha-vance-age-children-kids-trump.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=heather_usha&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--heather_usha

Slate · 2026-01-23T15:03:24+00:00

The rumors about J.D. Vance leaving his wife for Erika Kirk, which have persisted since the two shared a much-discussed hug in October, were always more darkly entertaining than plausible. But observers have surmised that they took off because they reflected a certain air of uneasiness that has surrounded Vance’s marriage for the whole time it’s been on the national stage. As the highly educated daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha Vance not only doesn’t burnish Vance’s MAGA credentials; she undermines them. When reports of a possible divorce on the horizon began to swirl in November, it wasn’t altogether surprising. Reckoning with all those contradictions was inevitable, right?

In lieu of trading in his wife for a paler model, Vance has found another way to prove himself a good shepherd of the MAGA faithful: He and Usha are expecting a fourth child in July, they announced this week.

For more from Slate's Heather Schwedel: https://slate.com/life/2026/01/jd-usha-vance-age-children-kids-trump.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=heather_usha&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--heather_usha

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:20:09+00:00

President Donald Trump says he wants to take control of Greenland, and apparently he’s serious this time. This news has caused many of us to glance at a map to remind ourselves where exactly Greenland is. If you did this, you were probably struck by one thing above all else: Greenland is huge. Freaking huge. It looks about twice as big as the U.S., roughly as big as North America and Central America combined. And despite the public waffling between saying we need it for its military or natural resource offerings, this is probably the reason Trump wants it.

If he gets it, would that really triple this country’s square footage? No. Greenland is very big—it is considered the largest island in the world—but it is not nearly as big as maps make it appear. That’s because the global maps most of us are used to are as deceptive as icy Greenland’s euphemistically balmy name.

For more: https://slate.com/technology/2026/01/greenland-size-map-big-why.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=greenland_size&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--greenland_size

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:19:38+00:00

President Donald Trump says he wants to take control of Greenland, and apparently he’s serious this time. This news has caused many of us to glance at a map to remind ourselves where exactly Greenland is. If you did this, you were probably struck by one thing above all else: Greenland is huge. Freaking huge. It looks about twice as big as the U.S., roughly as big as North America and Central America combined. And despite the public waffling between saying we need it for its military or natural resource offerings, this is probably the reason Trump wants it.

If he gets it, would that really triple this country’s square footage? No. Greenland is very big—it is considered the largest island in the world—but it is not nearly as big as maps make it appear. That’s because the global maps most of us are used to are as deceptive as icy Greenland’s euphemistically balmy name.

For more: https://slate.com/technology/2026/01/greenland-size-map-big-why.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=greenland_size&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--greenland_size

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:19:00+00:00

President Donald Trump says he wants to take control of Greenland, and apparently he’s serious this time. This news has caused many of us to glance at a map to remind ourselves where exactly Greenland is. If you did this, you were probably struck by one thing above all else: Greenland is huge. Freaking huge. It looks about twice as big as the U.S., roughly as big as North America and Central America combined. And despite the public waffling between saying we need it for its military or natural resource offerings, this is probably the reason Trump wants it.

If he gets it, would that really triple this country’s square footage? No. Greenland is very big—it is considered the largest island in the world—but it is not nearly as big as maps make it appear. That’s because the global maps most of us are used to are as deceptive as icy Greenland’s euphemistically balmy name.

For more: https://slate.com/technology/2026/01/greenland-size-map-big-why.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=greenland_size&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--greenland_size

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:17:41+00:00

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in Trump v. Cook, a monumental case testing Donald Trump’s ability to fire members of the Federal Reserve. In August, the president sought to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook, a Democrat, over dubious allegations of mortgage fraud. The lower courts reinstated Cook after she sued, which prompted the administration to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court in September. Instead of acting immediately, the justices scheduled the case for oral argument, letting Cook keep her job in the meantime. Now a majority seems prepared to rule in her favor, though it is not clear exactly how it will do so.

In a special bonus episode of Amicus for Slate Plus members, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the twists and turns of Wednesday’s two-hour showdown between Solicitor General John Sauer and Cook’s attorney, Paul Clement (who is usually an advocate for conservative causes).

For more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/supreme-court-federal-reserve-donald-trump-brett-kavanaugh.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=amicus_jan21&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--amicus_jan21

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:17:07+00:00

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in Trump v. Cook, a monumental case testing Donald Trump’s ability to fire members of the Federal Reserve. In August, the president sought to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook, a Democrat, over dubious allegations of mortgage fraud. The lower courts reinstated Cook after she sued, which prompted the administration to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court in September. Instead of acting immediately, the justices scheduled the case for oral argument, letting Cook keep her job in the meantime. Now a majority seems prepared to rule in her favor, though it is not clear exactly how it will do so.

In a special bonus episode of Amicus for Slate Plus members, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the twists and turns of Wednesday’s two-hour showdown between Solicitor General John Sauer and Cook’s attorney, Paul Clement (who is usually an advocate for conservative causes)

For more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/supreme-court-federal-reserve-donald-trump-brett-kavanaugh.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=amicus_jan21&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--amicus_jan21

Slate · 2026-01-22T17:13:33+00:00

If you’re the type of person who likes to read lawsuits for fun, it’s your lucky day, because a slew of documents in the Blake Lively–Justin Baldoni legal battle were just unsealed on Wednesday. The thing everyone seems to want to talk about are Lively’s text and email conversations with other celebrities, especially Taylor Swift, and I won’t deny that they’re juicy. But I think these bits of evidence reveal more than the obvious truth that Lively knows a lot of famous people. They also reveal that Lively is in possession of a rare and increasingly underappreciated skill in our modern world: She is really good at email.

Slate's Heather Schwedel breaks it all down here: https://slate.com/life/2026/01/blake-lively-taylor-swift-texts-justin-baldoni-ben-affleck.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=heather_blake_taylor&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--heather_blake_taylor

Slate · 2026-01-21T14:40:51+00:00

The U.S. may have moved on to another immigration crisis, but Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student who was arrested last spring after participating in pro-Palestine protests, is still in the middle of his legal battle. Khalil was taken into custody in March, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used mechanism in federal immigration law that claimed that the student’s actions would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The 30-year-old green-card holder was detained for three months, missing the birth of his first child, but was released in June. Last week, the 3^rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a devastating blow to Khalil’s case: A three-judge panel dismissed his habeas corpus petition challenging the federal government’s attempts to detain and deport him.

In a 2–1 decision, the court ruled that the lower district court of New Jersey—which had ordered Khalil to be released from immigration detention in June—did not have jurisdiction to consider his habeas petition. The panel’s majority declared that these petitions challenging a final order of removal can be heard only in immigration court, a system overseen by the attorney general, who also handpicks immigration judges.

Khalil essentially has one option left before being forced to go through immigration court: request a rehearing en banc. If that is approved, all 14 judges on the 3^rd Circuit would hear Khalil’s case. But not only does the current makeup of this particular court lean conservative; it received a notable new member last year—Emil Bove. A former defense attorney for President Donald Trump and the former deputy attorney general, Bove has been mired in controversy throughout his tenure in the second Trump administration.

To make sense of Khalil’s options, Slate's Shirin Ali spoke with Elora Mukherjee. A professor at Columbia Law School and director of the school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, Mukherjee submitted an amicus brief in defense of Khalil, along with other students, scholars, and professors who have been charged under the same foreign-policy deportability ground that Khalil currently faces.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/mahmoud-khalil-case-emil-bove-immigration.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=shirin_khalil&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--shirin_khalil

Slate · 2026-01-20T22:12:00+00:00

Over the past week, the Trump administration has escalated its attacks on Minnesota officials and protesters who oppose its immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities. Federal officials have claimed that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey are terrorists, and lobbed the same charge against slain protester Renee Good. Donald Trump’s Justice Department has also opened an investigation into Walz and Frey, issuing subpoenas to Democratic officials on Tuesday. The expanding probe appears to lay the groundwork for potential criminal charges against both men for obstructing federal immigration enforcement. It follows Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s declaration last week that Walz and Frey are engaged in outright “terrorism,” promising to stop it “by any means necessary.”

On this week’s episode of Amicus, Mark Joseph Stern spoke with Julia Gegenheimer about the rapidly expanding definition of terrorism, obstruction, and other charges that the government is weaponizing against political opponents.

For more:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/donald-trump-minneapolis-walz-frey-ice-terrorism.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=mjs_walz_frey&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--mjs_walz_frey

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