There’s no shortage of footage on the sights in the Twin Cities, where residents have spent these past few weeks in the streets, blocking roads, patrolling their own communities, and protesting against federal immigration agents—especially after the death of Alex Pretti last Saturday. While the Trump administration has seemingly taken a psychic hit and a brief stumble from the blowback of Pretti’s death, it’s worth remembering what it was doing as Minnesotans responded with grief and anger: It didn’t call for de-escalation but rather for Minnesota to give into its demands or face further reprisals.

Treat any talk of a “pivot” to come with grave skepticism. One year into the second Trump administration, those in power have shown they not only are comfortable with regular attacks on the public and the ensuing chaos, they are, even now, systemically enabling them. They’ve taken kids and used them as bait to draw out family members. Each new day, footage or images out of Minneapolis show protesters and legal observers brutalized, hit with pepper spray or less than lethal rounds, or tackled by groups of masked agents. And even as the administration shifts out Greg Bovino for Tom Homan in Minnesota, it is ramping up a new large-scale operation in Maine.

And none of what has happened in the last month is new or unique to Minneapolis. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and other Department of Homeland Security agents have raided communities, abducted people including American citizens, held detainees in poor conditions—and they’d already shot several people before the new year kicked off. The administration has defended these actions, smearing dissenters as dissidents and domestic terrorists and ramping up its “immigration enforcement” by surging personnel into cities to cow them.

But in the last month, the full scope and agenda has become clear. Between the assaults on constitutionally protected rights, the ambient menace projected into peaceful communities, the endless smearing and scapegoating of the victims of state violence, and the brazen way the regime figures haven’t much bothered to downplay their........

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