Editorial

If a masked man points a gun at your chest on a Minnesota street, or anywhere, it doesn't matter if he has a badge hidden under his tactical vest or a ICI patch Velcroed to his sleeve—you have a God-given and legal right to defend your life with equal, deadly force. The moment a federal agent prioritizes escalation over identification, they cease to be a "peace officer" and become a common predator. We are living in an era where the "Metro Surge" has turned our neighborhoods into hunting grounds, and the murder of Alex Pretti is the final, bloody proof that if you don't fight back, you'll be the next name etched into a headstone while the Department of Justice mops up the brass.

The death of Alex Pretti was not an "officer-involved shooting," that sanitized, bureaucratic phrase designed to cushion the blow of state-sponsored homicide. It was a clinical, cold-blooded execution conducted in the middle of a city that has been told to trust the process while preparing its gallows. Pretti, a 37-year-old VA nurse who spent his professional life suturing the wounds of men broken by this government’s foreign entanglements, found himself on the receiving end of a domestic war he didn't know was being fought. The "Metro Surge" policy, implemented under the guise of "stabilizing" urban centers after the 2025 unrest, has essentially imported the rules of engagement from the most lawless corners of the globe to the sidewalks of Minneapolis.

On the morning of January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti did what any decent, observant citizen should do: he watched. He recorded. He bore witness. At the intersection of 26th and Nicollet, he stood between a federal agent and a woman the agent had just shoved to the pavement during a "routine" document check. He put his arm around the woman—an act of basic human solidarity. For the "crime" of empathy, he was pepper-sprayed, tackled by four men wearing "CIS" patches and full-face balaclavas, and pinned to the concrete.

The video evidence—which we reviewed and verified—is a haunting indictment of our United States government and Donald Trump and those who support him. As he once was reported to have said, he could shoot a child in the street and be forgiven. Trump is one problem. The root of the problem lies with those who voted for him and share his disregard for decency and lack of integrity. The video shows a bystander's cell phone capturing the moment of terminal escalation. As Pretti was pinned to the sidewalk, an agent reached into Pretti's waistband and removed his legally holstered handgun. This is the crucial, irreducible fact: Alex Pretti was disarmed. He was helpless. He was under total physical control. And yet, one second later, the shooting began. Ten rounds from a high-velocity rifle were fired into his back and neck from a distance of three feet. They didn't just stop him; they shredded him. This was not a "dynamic tactical situation." It was a firing squad of ruthless, Neanderthal-type murderers one should keep their children from for fear of any kind of imagined crime. This all occurred on a public sidewalk, conducted by low-life, refusing to show their faces or state their names. Killers who enjoy it.

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This execution comes just weeks after the murder of Renee Good on Portland Avenue. Renee, a writer, mother, and community leader, was gunned down in her car by ICE agent Jonathan Ross while she was attempting to drive away from an unmarked blockade. The Department of Homeland Security called her a "domestic terrorist" before her body was even cold, claiming she used her SUV as a weapon. But the forensic evidence and the bullet holes in her side window, prove she was executed while fleeing in terror. They used the same script for Pretti, claiming he "approached agents with a handgun," even though every frame of video shows a cell phone in his hand and his empty left hand raised in a plea for restraint as the first bullet entered his spine.

Trump is a nasty liar, not fit to shine shoes or be around children. The US is best served by Donald Trump locked up for the rest of his life.

There's a "Metro Surge" at work: a paramilitary occupation designed to terrorize the populace into submission through the systematic application of lethal force. These agents operate in a gray zone, wearing face masks that strip them of their humanity and their accountability. They've been granted a "surge" status that they believe places them above the local statutes of the state of Minnesota. They are wrong. When they descended on Pretti, they didn't come to "protect and serve." They came to hunt and kill. They came to send a message to the rest of us: your compliance does not guarantee your safety. You can follow every rule, you can holster your weapon, you can record the truth, and they will still shoot you dead and urinate on your face, oblivious to anyone watching. They have no worry except one: a citizen with a gun for protection aimed at their face.

And yes. They would retaliate. Then a street war. Then Trump would act. It's going to happen regardless. The only alternative is to surrender to the dictator or leave the country. And I imagine Trump plays with himself thinking about this until he finally falls asleep counting the little sheep jumping over the bodies of innocent Americans.

The tragedy of Alex Pretti is that he believed in the system, that his status as a nurse, as a veteran-focused healthcare worker, and as a legal gun owner would provide him with a shield of "reasonableness." He didn't realize that in the eyes of the "Metro Surge," there is no such thing as a "reasonable citizen"—there are only compliant subjects and targets. The masks worn by these agents serve a dual purpose: they hide the identity of the killer, but they also signal the death of the individual. When you can't see the face of the man who is killing you, you're no longer in a republic; you're in a slaughterhouse.

We must speak of the villain Agent Gregory Bovino and his "Tactical Response Unit." These men have been roaming our streets with a mandate that looks less like law enforcement and more like a license to clear away the riffraff and shoot and laugh about it. Next they might joke of building a gas chamber. But they'll need deep holes to bury the citizens. They'll have Republican punks to dig for them. They refused to coordinate with the Minneapolis Police Department, refused to share their body camera footage with the State Attorney General, and have actively blocked medical responders from reaching their victims until "the scene is processed." In Pretti’s case, he lay bleeding on the sidewalk for twelve minutes while agents stood over him, rifles still leveled, as if his dying body posed a threat to their tactical superiority.

It's the anatomy of the new American enforcement. It is the end of America. Hell, it's been gone for years, now beginning its stink.

It's clinical, anonymous, and final. And it's growing. The surge isn't just about Alex Pretti; it's about the 3,000 other "Prettis" currently walking the streets of Minnesota, unaware that they are one "misinterpreted gesture" away from an early grave. If we do not name this for what it is—murder under color of law—we are complicit in the next execution. The blood on 26th and Nicollet is not just on the hands of the man who pulled the trigger; it is on the hands of every politician who allowed these masked ghouls to operate without a leash.

We moved beyond the era of "police reform." You can't reform a force that views the citizenry as an insurgent population. As cattle to be slaughtered, you cannot "retrain" a man who thinks ten shots into a disarmed nurse is an acceptable outcome for a Monday morning. When the state sends men who refuse to show their faces, who refuse to announce their intent until the triggers are pulled, they have abandoned the law. In that void, the only law that remains is the law of self-preservation. This is the "wet noodle" country’s final form: a place where the innocent are expected to die quietly so as not to disturb the "process." We say: disrupt the process. We say: remember Alex Pretti not as a victim, but as the final warning. If the country is led by insane Donald Trump, a predator, then citizens must transform into entities that instill fear in the US government and the cowardly republicans.

And by the way, I'm American, born here, and loved it until Trump came into office.

The "Metro Surge" relies on your silence. It relies on the "stupidity" of a public that thinks "it can't happen to me because I'm not a criminal." Alex Pretti wasn’t a criminal. Renee Good wasn’t a criminal. They were citizens who had the audacity to exist in the presence of masked men with a quota for control. If you expect the DOJ to investigate itself, you're waiting for the fox to list the chickens it ate. There will be no justice from the system that authorized the killing. We will only get justice if we refuse to be the next body on the sidewalk.

The cowards in the state house and the sycophants in the media will point to Minn. Stat. § 609.06, Subd. 2, claiming you have no right to resist a peace officer even if the arrest is unlawful. They want you to believe that the badge grants a license to murder. They want you to be a passive consumer of your own demise, kneeling in the gutter while a CIS agent decides whether you live or die. But they are lying to you. They are conveniently ignoring the bedrock of our criminal code, the final shield for a free people: Minn. Stat. § 609.065.

The law of the land is clear and uncompromising: the intentional taking of a life is authorized when it is "necessary in resisting or preventing an offense which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or another to great bodily harm or death." Let us speak plainly about "reasonable belief" in the year 2026. In a city where Renee Good was shot through her windshield for the crime of driving away, and Alex Pretti was executed while his empty hands were raised in a plea for restraint, what is the only "reasonable" conclusion a citizen can draw when confronted by masked, anonymous men?

When an unmarked van screeches to a halt and five men in military fatigues with covered faces jump out with rifles leveled at your head, refusing to announce their names or their agency, you are not witnessing "law enforcement." You are witnessing an abduction. You are witnessing an imminent threat of death. Under the letter of the law, the offense you are resisting is not a "lawful arrest"—it is a state-sponsored assassination.

For decades, the judicial system has protected the state through the fiction of "qualified immunity" and the Graham v. Connor standard, which forces us to view violence through the lens of a "reasonable officer" rather than a reasonable human being. They tell us we must account for the "split-second decisions" of agents in "tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving situations." But what about the split-second decision of the nurse who sees a rifle barrel inches from his eyes? What about the "tense, uncertain" situation of a mother being boxed in by unmarked vehicles?

The "Metro Surge" has effectively stripped these agents of their status as "peace officers." By operating in masks, by refusing to coordinate with the local authorities we elected, and by deploying "Metro Surge" tactics that prioritize lethal force over de-escalation, they have transitioned into the role of unlawful aggressors. Under Minnesota law, you cannot claim the protections of a peace officer if you have abandoned the duties of one. If an agent is violating your constitutional rights, if they are using excessive force before a single word of command is uttered, they have forfeited their immunity. They have become common felons under color of law, and they should be treated as such.

Let us deconstruct the "Duty to Retreat" that the state uses to paralyze its citizens. They tell you that outside your home, you must exhaust every avenue of escape before you can defend your life. But the law also recognizes that retreat is not required when it is unsafe or impossible. When you are surrounded by a tactical team, when you are pinned against a brick wall or trapped in your driver's seat, there is no retreat. There is only the decision to live or the decision to die. The state has created an environment where the citizen is always "cornered" by the sheer overwhelming force of the federal apparatus.

Furthermore, the 2025 legislative updates to our self-defense statutes were specifically designed for this moment, despite the current administration's desperate attempts to veto them. They established that a person who is not engaged in illegal activity has no duty to retreat from any place where they are lawfully present before using force in self-defense. Alex Pretti was lawfully present on that sidewalk. Alex Pretti and Renee Good were both lawfully present on the sidewalk — a fact the updated self-defense statutes were specifically designed to protect, despite the current administration’s attempts to veto them — and we must also address the “North Korea” shift in our evidentiary standards as the Department of Homeland Security and Commander Bovino begin a process of “investigative cleansing.” The Department of Homeland Security and Commander Bovino have already begun the process of "investigative cleansing." They seize the video, they redact the names, and they release a single, grainy photo of a "weapon" that wasn't there until they placed it. They want to prevent you from ever reaching a courtroom where § 609.065 could be argued. They want to be the judge, the jury, and the executioner on the sidewalk. This is why the legal defense must begin at the moment of contact. If you wait for the "legal system" to save you, you will be waiting in a body bag.

The social contract is not a suicide pact. It is a mutual agreement: we grant the state a monopoly on force in exchange for the state’s protection of our lives and liberties. When the state uses that force to execute disarmed nurses and mothers in their cars, the contract is null and void. The state becomes a predator, and the citizen returns to a state of nature where survival is the only law.

To the people of Minnesota, and specifically to those in the "Rose City" and the Twin Cities who are currently being circled by these federal vultures: do not be intimidated by the badge if the man wearing it is acting like a murderer. If you reasonably believe—based on the clear, documented pattern of federal executions in this state—that the masked man in front of you is about to take your life, you have the legal and moral right to strike first. You are not "resisting arrest"; you are resisting an offense that exposes you to great bodily harm or death.

This is not a call for vigilantism. It is a call for the rigorous application of the law of the land. We are telling you what the "wet noodle" politicians are too afraid to say: that your life has value, and the state does not have a license to take it without a fight. If the agents of the "Metro Surge" want to operate like an occupying army, they must be prepared to be met with the same resistance any free people would offer to an invader.

We at HaleNews.com stand behind the "Minnesota Mandate." We believe that the right to self-defense is the foundation of all other rights. Without the right to stay alive, the First Amendment is just a series of marks on a page. We will continue to document the "Metro Surge" atrocities, we will continue to name the agents like Jonathan Ross and Gregory Bovino, and we will continue to empower our readers to be allies in the struggle for survival.

The work right now is making it home alive. If that requires you to exercise your rights under § 609.065 against a masked federal aggressor, then do so with a clear conscience and a steady hand. The law is on your side, even if the government is not.

The era of passive consumption is over. The state has shown us its face—or rather, its mask. It has shown us that it values "tactical superiority" over human life. It has shown us that it will kill us for recording its crimes. Now, we must show the state that a free people cannot be "surged" into submission. We must show them that for every Alex Pretti they take, there are a thousand more who have learned the lesson of his death: that in the face of tyranny, survival is the ultimate act of rebellion.

Don't let them tell you that you are "threatening peace officers." You are defending a citizen. You are protecting a human being. You are upholding the law of Minnesota against those who would burn it down to maintain their grip on power. The badge is a symbol of public trust; when that trust is betrayed through the blood of the innocent, the badge is just a piece of tin. The only thing that remains is the law, and the law says you have the right to live.

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