Why the constant, often blatant lying?

How do we stop this madness? Maybe someone who's studied the Third Reich methodology would help.

How did the minority party of Hitler and Goebbels take over and break the will of the German people so thoroughly that they would allow and participate in mass murder?

Hannah Arendt looked closely at the regimes of Hitler and Stalin and their functionaries, at the ideology of scientific racism, and at the mechanism of propaganda in fostering “a curiously varying mixture of gullibility and cynicism with which each member… is expected to react to the changing lying statements of the leaders.” So she wrote in her 1951 Origins of Totalitarianism, going on to elaborate that this “mixture of gullibility and cynicism… is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements”:

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true… The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

Why the constant, often blatant lying? For one thing, it functioned as a means of fully dominating subordinates, who would have to cast aside all their integrity to repeat outrageous falsehoods and would then be bound to the leader by shame and complicity. “The great analysts of truth and language in politics”—writes McGill University political philosophy professor Jacob T. Levy—including “George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Vaclav Havel—can help us recognize this kind of lie for what it is.… Saying something obviously untrue, and making your subordinates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a particularly startling display of power over them. It’s something that was endemic to totalitarianism.”

Arendt and others recognized, writes Levy, that “being made to repeat an obvious lie makes it clear that you’re powerless.” She also recognized the function of an avalanche of lies to render a populace powerless to resist, the phenomenon we now refer to as “gaslighting”:

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.

The epistemological ground thus pulled out from under them, most would depend on whatever the leader said, no matter its relation to truth. “The essential conviction shared by all ranks,” Arendt concluded, “from fellow traveler to leader, is that politics is a game of cheating and that the ‘first commandment’ of the movement: ‘The Fuehrer is always right,’ is as necessary for the purposes of world politics, i.e., world-wide cheating, as the rules of military discipline are for the purposes of war.”

Arendt wrote Origins of Totalitarianism from research and observations gathered during the 1940s, a very specific historical period. Nonetheless the book, Jeffrey Isaacs remarks at The Washington Post, “raises a set of fundamental questions about how tyranny can arise and the dangerous forms of inhumanity to which it can lead.” Arendt’s analysis of propaganda and the function of lies seems particularly relevant at this moment. The kinds of blatant lies she wrote of might become so commonplace as to become banal. We might begin to think they are an irrelevant sideshow. This, she suggests, would be a mistake.

Thanks Open Culture newsletter.

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...complete fabrication.

The President is always right.

Evening news on Monday Jan. 26, 2026 on NBC had a lead story about the Minneapolis ICE killing of Alex Pretti...with all the slow motion versions of the videos! Finally the national news has succumbed to popular interest and gone against the goon-editors to show the truth.  Now this makes more than the millions with internet access to include those who just have TVs. I was astonished.

Statement following the Trump/Biden debate.

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January 27, 2026 is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It's all connected.

Non-storm Fern in my neck of the woods

First  thing Sunday there’s a coat of ice on everything. Not going anywhere. That’s my car with the laundry room behind it.

All the salt which had been spread on Friday before the maintenance man went home has melted away.

A bit of snow may have fallen sometime but by 4 pm it had turned to light rain.

Made a stew of beans, left overs and spices- delighting in having elec.

At 4:30 there was only rain falling and no ice on walks, so I went to car where more ice was forming on top of old ice. I just cleared the keyhole and was grateful to start engine and run defroster a while.

Windshield view at 4:30 

Windshield view at 4:50. I remembered that time to raise the wipers.

Sunset with temps still above freezing and puddles around, but no ice except on cars.

 Forecast said about 10% chance of snow or sleet through the night.

Monday morning the sun came out and all is dry here but won't be above freezing for most of several days straight. There were a few flurries mid-afternoon Monday, while the blue sky was above and sun shining. Some clouds continue to slide over the southern ridge of the valley, we'll see what happens next!

Meanwhile the Walk for Peace continues east of Raleigh NC.

I finally found this photo, which I knew I'd saved! Governor Josh Stein, of NC, gave some recognition to the Venerable Monks.

A prayer shared by the Unitarian Universalists

Maybe the Angry Women - 8

Moonlit Dance by Sheryl Luxenburg

 Today's goddess:

MACHA

From Girl God Books FB 2024

Art by Lucy Pierce

"The Great Mother Goddess Macha vanished from the stage of Irish history following her downfall at the hands of the king and his warriors. The disappearance of Macha symbolized the elimination of the possibility of any woman-centered social system, philosophy, or religion. The Male Word, rather than Female Womb, would take responsibility for ensuring the continuation of the social order, albeit that this Word was reinforced and sustained by a discourse on, and the threat of, death rather than life...

The Triple Goddess would be replaced by the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a Trinity created by means of will, and obedience no longer dependent upon the fertility of womanhood to fulfill its designs. As Christianity took hold in Ireland, it would make alliances and compromises with the warriors and provide alternative occupations for the old male religious leadership. But women and the energies they represented were a fundamental threat to the new religious consciousness...

Remember in the Macha story we heard her final cry, 'A mother bore each one of you.' To a matricentered society this would have been the ultimate plea...this plea recalled people to their responsibilities toward their creator and their common origins through the Great Mother."

~ Mary Condren, "The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland"

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I ask for justice.

Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed a US citizen, Renee Nicole Good, Jan 7, 2026. There is not enough  legal effort going  on to examine his actions still!

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Last week, on Jan. 22, was the anniversary of passage of the Supreme Court's

... landmark Roe v. Wade ruling (1973). The plaintiff was “Jane Roe,” a woman who was forbidden to seek an abortion in Texas, but couldn’t afford to travel to a neighboring state. The defendant, Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, argued that life begins at conception and therefore the state had a compelling interest in protecting that life.

Justice Harry Blackmun, who had once served as counsel to the Mayo Clinic, wrote the decision. He wrote: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” Therefore, the court based its decision on the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments and the right to privacy, and ruled seven to two in favor of Jane Roe.

The decision forbade states from outlawing abortions in the first trimester and set limits on regulation of abortion in the second and third trimesters. The court also required that exceptions to any regulations be made when the health of the mother was at stake.

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The Walk for Peace continues

In Charlotte NC

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Grateful eyes look at each thing as if they had never seen it before and caress it as if they would never see it again.

BR. DAVID STEINDL-RAST ---------------------- "Please join me and many others in making the six compassionate vows of: environmental sustainability, gender equality, socioeconomic justice, participatory governance, cultural tolerance, and nonviolence and peace." Barb Rogers (Thanks, Robertson Work for stating this first.)

Minneapolis doings

"As the strength of the resistance continues to grow, we may well face more violence and cruelty in response. That doesn’t mean we are failing. No, it means that Trump and his MAGA enablers understand they are losing, and they are desperate to consolidate power while they can. Like wounded animals, they are lashing out. It is vital that we contest every inch of ground, and do all that we can to take power away from them. We need to meet their violence, as people have been doing in spite of intense provocation, with strong, nonviolent actions—nonviolent because violence is their turf, and if we fight on that ground, we will be outgunned. But if we fight on moral grounds, if we refuse consent to their bullying and stand up clearly for the values of basic human decency, our movement will continue to grow. The bullies will lose all semblance of legitimacy, and in the end, we will gain the power we need to rebuild the world around true values of caring, compassion, of human rights and dignity, of liberty and justice for all. "

Starhawk, on Substack "Basic Decency - In the Wake of Yet Another Ice Assassination"

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I've posted about the murders. Renee Nicole Good, Alex Jeffrey Pretti.

There was a Union strike walk-out on Friday, Jan 23. But also clergy-people from all over the nation were called to support the people of Minneapolis.

Note, the bundled up people were dealing with -20 degree F weather. The yellow shawl with the heart is a Unitarian Universalist minister.

Police arrested 100 interfaith clergy at the Minneapolis -St Paul airport.

Here's  a video of clergy-members in Minneapolis singing a beautiful hymn as they knelt in protest in -20 degree weather on Friday.  I like the introduction which speaks to conservative Christians, who might indeed want to know what clergy-members were singing.

Over 40,000 of us marched yesterday in -20° - probably clergy and Unions and those who walked out of schools and jobs...Friday Jan. 23, 2026

Meanwhile in North Carolina, the Walk for Peace continues on its way to  Washington DC.

This is the message which has been passed along by the marchers. They do have talks usually at the lunch stop, and in the evenings. Yesterday (Jan 24) they were at the capitol of North Carolina and greeted by the governor. 

Today they are walking on ice and snow  for their next leg of the journey. This is leaving Raleigh, and they didn't publicize their route, so it's the first shot I've seen without the crowds to greet them.

While in Greenland people let their feelings toward tRump be known as well.

Alex Jeffrey Pretti murdered by ICE

On Sunday morning (Jan. 25) Jenifer Rubin of The Contrarian sums up Minneapolis' Friday and Saturday's activities thus:

The contrast between, on one hand, federal shock troops’ brutal, unjustified execution in Minneapolis on Saturday of Alex Pretti, a thirty-seven-year-old ICU nurse for the VA, and, on the other, Friday’s closures and a massive, peaceful demonstration and rally, where “Tens of thousands gather[ed] in downtown Minneapolis for ‘ICE Out’ day” (reportedly the largest union action in state history) — attended by union members, business people, clergy, and community activists in -20 degree weather — sums up the battle between tyranny and democracy.

The struggle between facts we all see and regime lies we all know to be preposterous plays out as well. As is their standard knee-jerk response, Donald Trump and his regime lied about the victim and the circumstances of the killing, despite the tragedy being captured on video from multiple angles.

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These are posts from FaceBook which I'm documenting, because the news is so skewed and I want to be sure to have accurate information archived. The photos are interspersed, but not published by those authors.

From Occupy Democrats: Jan 24, 1:30 pm

BREAKING: The man brutally murdered by ICE in Minneapolis today FOR NO REASON has been identified as 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and American CITIZEN Alex Jeffrey Pretti.

Alex was a registered nurse with NO CRIMINAL RECORD and only a few parking tickets to his name. He was an athlete and avid outdoorsman. He was a brother and a son. He worked for the VA, where he cared for veterans' health. He was an ICE observer who was legally filming the ICE agents’ actions when he was stopped, detained, DISARMED, and THEN shot several times by ICE agents.

Alex had a legal permit to carry a firearm and multiple videos of the killing clearly show that he did not draw his weapon or brandish it at ICE agents. Apparently, the Second Amendment only applies to Republicans.

He was ONLY filming when they approached him, and was ONLY holding his camera.

ICE agents had taken his weapon from its holster BEFORE they shot him.

He was being pinned down and brutally beaten by a mob of ICE agents when they shot him FOR NO REASON.

It was MURDER.

It's worth highlighting the fact that Pretti is a legal citizen and has an address listed in South Minneapolis. The Trump administration has flooded our streets with undertrained, overweight, bloodthirsty, masked enforcers under the pretext of rounding up violent undocumented migrants. In practice, they're targeting and executing innocent Americans.

It's absolutely paramount that we spread the truth about Pretti far and wide because Homeland Security is already rushing to falsely smear him as an attempted mass shooter. The official DHS account on X wrote that he "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." They're absolutely shameless with their lies. We won't fall for it.

Rest in power, Alex.

Please like and share to spread the word!

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AND:

The killing of Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis looks less like law enforcement and more like an execution carried out in broad daylight on a city street. Multiple videos show the 37 year old nurse with his phone out, stepping toward a chaotic ICE arrest where agents had slammed a woman to the pavement and were pinning her as she screamed. What you see is not a threat advancing on officers, but a neighbor trying to document and de escalate a scene that already looked ugly.

In the footage, agents shove Pretti, pepper spray him and drag him to the sidewalk, where several officers pile on while he is on the ground. One appears to strike his head with a hard object as he is already restrained, and then, with his body pinned and the danger clearly moving in only one direction, agents fire a rapid volley of about ten shots. Officials immediately leaned on the familiar script that he was armed and that the shots were “defensive,” even as the videos show his phone in his hand and his movements focused on the battered woman beside him.

Pretti did, in fact, legally own a handgun, and Minnesota law allows open carry with a permit, which Minneapolis police have already confirmed he had. By every public account so far, the gun stayed holstered and never appears in his hands before or during the shooting. What the evidence does show is a licensed nurse with minor traffic tickets on his record stepping in to shield a stranger from an immigration dragnet that has already left multiple people dead in the same city this month, and paying for it with his life.

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And from Heather Cox Richardson:

January 24, 2026 (Saturday)

This morning, on a street in Minneapolis, at least seven federal agents tackled and then shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse for the local VA hospital.

Video from the scene shows Pretti directing traffic on a street out of an area with agents around, then trying to help another person get up after she had been pushed to the ground by the agents. The agents then surround Pretti and shoot pepper spray into his face, then pull him to the ground from behind and hit him as he appears to be trying to keep his head off the ground. An agent appears to take a gun out of Pretti’s waistband during the struggle, then turns and leaves with it. A shot then stops Pretti’s movements, appearing to kill him, before nine more shots ring out, apparently as agents continued to fire into his body.

It looked like an execution.

After he was dead, the agents walked away, apparently making no effort to preserve the crime scene, which people on the street later tried to secure by walling it off with trash bins.

As journalist Philip Bump noted, administration officials didn’t even pretend to wait for more information before jumping straight to “the opponent of the state deserved it.”

Mitch Smith of the New York Times reported that federal agents have blocked state investigators from the scene. Drew Evans of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a statewide investigations team that specializes in police shootings, told reporters his agency had obtained a search warrant—a rare step—but the federal government still refused them access.

Tonight, in a lawsuit against Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials, Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison asked a judge for a temporary restraining order to prevent DHS agents from destroying evidence related to the shooting. The suit noted the “astonishing” departure from normal investigations, seemingly trying not to preserve evidence but to destroy it. A judge, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, immediately granted the restraining order, barring the administration from "destroying or altering evidence" concerning the killing.

Ernesto Londoño of the New York Times reported that federal officials also “have refused to disclose the identities of federal agents involved in Saturday’s shooting, as well as the names of federal agents who have shot people in recent days.”

Minnesota police have refused to obey the federal officers, though. Local law enforcement has been talking to witnesses and finding videos of the shooting. Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference: "Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity, and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands. We urge everyone to remain peaceful."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that it, rather than the FBI, will investigate the shooting. But, as Alex Witt of MS NOW noted, DHS had already issued a statement about the shooting, which falsely asserted that Pretti had “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and that he “violently resisted” as “officers attempted to disarm” him. The statement continued that “an agent fired defensive shots” and added that Pretti “also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."

“So,” Witt noted, “they're gonna be investigating that which they’ve already issued a summary about…. It would seem that it’s a closed book?”

After repeatedly being exposed as liars over previous accusations against those they have shot, the Department of Homeland Security has so little credibility that Witt is not the only journalist calling out the federal agents for lying. Devon Lum of the New York Times wrote: “Videos on social media that were verified by The New York Times contradict the Department of Homeland Security's account of the fatal shooting of a man by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.

“The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and they tried to disarm him. But footage from the scene shows the man was holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him.”

But lying to the American people is the only option for the administration when we can, once again, all see what happened with our own eyes. Pretti did have a permit for a concealed handgun and appeared to have carried the gun with him, although witnesses say he never reached for it. Tonight Noem doubled down on the lie, saying again: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”

When the Democratic Party’s social media account posted: “ICE agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis this morning. Get ICE out of Minnesota NOW,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller replied: “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.” The Democrats’ social media account responded: “You’re a f*cking liar with blood on your hands.”

Miller continued to bang that drum. When Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said that “ICE must leave Minneapolis” and that “Congress should not fund this version of ICE—this is seeking confirmation, chaos, and dystopia,” Miller responded: “An assassin tried to murder federal agents and this is your response.” When Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar similarly decried the killing, Miller responded: “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response? You and the state’s entire Democrat leadership team have been flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country.”

Miller is a white nationalist, who has recommended others read a dystopian novel in which people of color “invade” Europe and destroy “Western civilization.” Those who support immigration are, in the book’s telling, enemies who are abetting an “invasion”—a word Miller relies on—that is destroying the culture of white countries. They are working for the “enemy.”

In the wake of Pretti’s shooting, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota governor Tim Walz to suggest he could “bring back law and order to Minnesota” if he handed over the state’s voter rolls to the Department of Justice. As Jacob Knutson of Democracy Docket noted, she explicitly tied the administration’s violence in the state to its determination to get its hands on voters’ personal data before the 2026 election. Minnesota has voted for the Democratic candidate running against Trump in the past three presidential elections, but he insists that he really has won the state each time.

As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers wrote: Republicans could stop this at any time they wanted to.

“All it would take to end the murder of American citizens by an untrained government goon squad is 16 Republicans in Congress voting with Dem[ocrat]s to defund ICE (or 23 to impeach and remove Trump—3 in House & 20 in Senate). That’s it. 23 Americans can vote for the public and end all of this.”

Morris also pointed out that in December, Trump’s approval rating was negative in 40 states, including 10 he won in 2024. That covers 30 seats currently held by Republicans. Pretti’s shooting will likely erode Trump’s support further. Tonight, even right-wing podcaster Tim Pool reacted to Pretti’s killing by noting that it looked as if the agent had disarmed Pretti before the other agents shot him. “I don’t see Trump winning this one,” Pool commented.

The funding bill for DHS is effectively dead in the Senate, as Democrats have said they will not support any more funding for DHS. Tonight, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters: “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.” But the July law the Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured nearly $191 billion into DHS through September 30, 2029, with almost $75 billion going to ICE and $67 billion going to Customs and Border Protection (FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, got just $2.9 billion).

Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) had more to say: “​​What we just saw this morning on the streets of Minneapolis is another outright murder by federal officials. And let me just be clear, those federal ICE officers are absolute cowards. I am a Marine veteran standing here telling you to your face they are unprofessional, pathetic cowards. Because if a Marine, an 18 year old Marine, did that in Iraq in the middle of a war zone, he would be court martialed because it is murder. And you pathetic little cowards who have to wear face masks because you're so damn scared, couldn't even effectively wrestle a guy [to] the ground, so you needed to shoot him? This is why ICE needs to be prosecuted. Yeah, I voted to defund it, but ICE, you need to be prosecuted, and Director [Todd] Lyons, who's running ICE right now, I hope you're hearing this from this Marine to you. You guys are criminal thugs. You need to be held accountable to law if you think you can enforce it, and you need to be prosecuted right now.”

Just hours after the killing of Alex Pretti, agents pinned U.S. citizen Matthew James Allen to the street while he screamed: “I have done nothing at all. My name is Matthew James…Allen. I’m a United States citizen…. You’re gonna kill me! Is that what you want? You want to kill me? You want to kill me on the street? You’re going to have to f*cking kill me! I have done nothing wrong.” Nearby, his sobbing wife screamed: “Stop please! Stop!! Please!! We were just running away from the gas. That’s all we were doing.”

“We all know the poem,” Blue Missouri executive director Jess Piper wrote, “and there is no shade of white that will save you from this murderous regime.”

Tonight, Susan and Michael Pretti, the parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, issued a statement:

“We are heartbroken but also very angry,” they said.

“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.

“I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.

“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”

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And just so you get to read both side of this story,

here's Debi Burk Scott's FB version on Jan 24, 5 pm:

While the media is rushing to humanize Alex Jeffrey Pretti by highlighting his nursing license and college background, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is making one thing clear: A resume is not a license to attack federal agents.

The narrative of the "peaceful nurse" is quickly falling apart in the face of forensic evidence and official statements from the front lines of Operation Metro Surge.

DHS has released a photo of the SIG Sauer Emperor Scorpion 9mm handgun recovered at the scene—the same weapon Pretti brandished when he approached agents during a targeted operation.

Pretti wasn't just carrying a gun; he had two loaded magazines and was operating without any form of identification.

Despite his professional background, federal agents report that Pretti "violently resisted" efforts to disarm him, forcing an 8-year veteran agent to fire defensive shots to protect his team.

White House advisors have stated that Pretti’s actions suggest he was acting as a domestic extremist attempting to "assassinate federal law enforcement."

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Occupy Democrats Jan 24, 2:30 pm said:

BREAKING: The footage of federal agents murdering Alex Jeffrey Pretti CLEARLY shows that they disarmed him before executing him on the ground.

On the left is a photograph of Pretti's firearm shared by the Department of Homeland Security account on X. Next to it you see a still image from a video of the killing. It shows an agent running away with Pretti's gun BEFORE the agents opened fire.

You can see the silver-colored slide, silver grip, and black metal receiver. The Sig Sauer sights mounted on top of the pistol are identical.

The order of events is clear here. Agents disarmed Pretti despite him having a legal permit to carry the gun. Once they had taken his gun and he was helpless, the agents fired multiple bullets into him.

This is cold-blooded murder.

Please share to spread the truth!