Last week, powerful politicians and business leaders gathered in Davos, promising to “unlock new sources of growth” to solve the world’s many crises. Poverty, climate breakdown, and political instability—all, we were told, can be fixed if only we grow our economies a little faster. 

It is a familiar refrain that we have seen in countless other global gatherings—from the G7 to the G20 and IMF-World bank meetings in Washington D.C., But my six years of experience as the United Nations’ expert on poverty have taught me at least one thing: it is profoundly misguided. Economic growth is no magic bullet. And it certainly won’t solve global poverty. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Historically, the global economy everyone is so desperate to grow,  has funneled vast wealth into the hands of a few, trapped millions in insecure and poorly-paid work to boost corporate profits, relied on the plundering of natural resources and the exploitation of cheap labour in the Global South  and has caused irreparable damage to the planet.

This is not a system that has gone slightly off course. It is one that is fundamentally unfit for purpose.

At Davos, economic growth was not defended cautiously; it was celebrated. U.S. President Donald Trump boasted of growth “no country has ever seen before.” And Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, described the 3.3% global growth forecast as “beautiful but not enough. “

The response from the top, to any claims that growth may be causing more harm than good,, is to reach for “green growth”—the idea that, when done right, economic growth can be accompanied by a reduction in its ecological footprint.  China’s Vice-Premier He Lifeng’s Davos speech was littered with references to “global green and low-carbon development”,  “green production capacity”, “green finance”, and a “green and prosperous future”. Yet even under the best conditions, a growing body of evidence shows that the absolute decoupling of gross domestic product (GDP) from environmental degradation—growing the economy while simultaneously reducing resource use, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution—is impossible. Technological advances simply cannot compensate for an economic model built on ever-expanding production and consumption.     

As I told the UN Human Rights Council when presenting my 2024 report on Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth, the global economy, in its current form, will only ever serve a tiny minority. And it will always do so at the expense of the planet and the vast majority of people who live on it. 

Given the evidence at hand, it beggars belief that world leaders continue to shout from the mountaintops of Davos that we need yet more growth. One is left to wonder whether they—as members of the economic elite—stand to benefit personally, or if they have simply run out of imagination.  

Outside the conference halls, however, imagination is very much alive. This week’s first annual Reclaim the Economy Week reflects a growing global demand for fresh thinking, with individuals and collectives uniting to demand an economy that puts people and planet first.

And a new development model is emerging on the back of my report to the UN—one that breaks from the outdated formula of prioritizing economic growth first and attempting to redistribute through taxes and transfers later. 

This alternative approach to global poverty eradication is being built by a growing alliance of UN agencies, governments, civil society organisations, academics, trade unions, and others. Now, this approach is being translated into a Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth, which I will present to the UN later this year. 

The aim of the roadmap is not abstract theory, but practical change: a set of concrete policy options for governments in both the global north and south that shift economies away from profit maximization and towards the fulfilment of human rights. 

This shift requires better rewarding work according to its social and ecological value—raising wages for essential workers, while placing limits on pay in destructive industries such as fossil fuels or tobacco. And we can benefit from job-guarantee programs whereby the government guarantees a job to anyone willing and able to work. Our approach should also include debt cancellation and restructuring, because it is indefensible that 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on interest payments than on health or education.

The policies detailed in our roadmap will also guide governments towards deeper structural change: reclaiming economic decision-making, bringing democratic control to the financial system through the taxation of extreme wealth and investment in care and public services; restoring and protecting the commons; supporting just transitions to renewable energy and sustainable food systems; and holding corporations accountable for environmental destruction, labour abuses, and human rights violations.

These are the bold—but achievable—measures that could positively shape the next generation of efforts to end poverty, including the globally agreed development goals that will succeed the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030. Unfortunately, these pragmatic policies will remain out of reach as long as we cling to the belief that economic growth equals human progress.  

After nearly a century of being told that the most important metric in all of our lives is how fast the economy grows, this may sound radical. But it is far less reckless than continuing to defend an economic system whose rules are written by and for billionaires and multinational corporations—and then acting surprised when it fails everyone else.  

In his speech last week at Davos, President Donald Trump zeroed in on Somalis: “We’re cracking down on more than $19 billion in fraud that was stolen by Somalian bandits. Can you believe that Somalia, they turned out to be higher IQ than we thought?”

The president continued: “These are low IQ people, how do they go into Minnesota and steal all that money? And we have, you know, their pirates, they’re good pirates, right, but we shoot them out of the water, just like we shoot the drug boats out.” 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

This disparagement of Somalis—calling us “low IQ,” “bandits,” and “pirates”—has been translated into every language Somalis speak. These words are discussed in American living rooms, and in refugee camps and cities across the Somali diaspora. When the president of the United States speaks this way, Somalis everywhere hear it.

I am Somali American, a refugee, and a naturalized U.S. citizen. I grew up in Mogadishu during a brutal civil war. I lost my sister. I was separated from my family. I taught myself English by watching American movies and listening to American music because America represented something rare to me: possibility. Law. Order. A future shaped not by violence, but by effort.

When I finally arrived in the United States in Aug. 2014 through the Diversity Visa Lottery—my “golden ticket”—I arrived with gratitude, humility, and responsibility. I did not come to take from America. I came to join it.

That is why the president’s words sting so deeply—not just because they are insulting, but because they flatten an entire people into a single, negative image. They ignore complexity. They erase our contributions. And they miss an essential truth: Somalis are not perfect, but neither is America, and neither is any community that has ever been part of this nation.

Let me say this clearly: fraud is real, and fraud is unacceptable. Any Somali—or any American—who commits fraud should face the law. Accountability matters. Justice matters. No community should be shielded from consequences simply because it has suffered. Most Somalis I know believe this deeply. We want fairness, not favoritism. We want integrity, not excuses. Afterall, the vulnerable communities are the ones hurt by fraud.

But what is unjust—and dangerous—is using the wrongdoing of some to condemn an entire people.

There are so many Somali Americans like me who are law-abiding, hardworking, and deeply invested in this country. Many of us arrived after surviving war, displacement, years in refugee camps, and the most extensive vetting processes the U.S. government has. Somalis born here are not outsiders or visitors; we are Americans who know no other home. To suggest that all of us are suspect, or should be targeted, is not law enforcement. It is collective punishment.

That is not how America works—or at least, not how it is supposed to work.

President Trump’s rhetoric also misunderstands Somalia itself. Somalia is often spoken about as if it is nothing more than chaos. Yes, Somalia is fragile. Yes, it struggles with corruption, insecurity, and weak institutions. But it is also a country whose people have endured extraordinary hardship with resilience, faith, and determination.

Somalia did not always know extremist violence in the way the world imagines today. Radical groups like Al-Shabaab emerged in a global context shaped by war, power vacuums, and regional destabilization. Today, Somali soldiers—poorly equipped and underpaid—are fighting an extremist group that openly chants “death to America.” They are dying on the front lines of a conflict that also protects American interests.

That reality deserves honesty, not mockery.

President Trump does not understand Somali American patriotism. Many Somali Americans love this country fiercely—not because it is flawless, but because we know what life looks like without functioning institutions. We value the rule of law because we have lived without it. We value free speech because we have known fear. We value citizenship because we have known statelessness.

My story is not unique. Somali Americans are doctors, U.S. army servicemen and veterans, truck drivers, and public servants. We take the oath to be loyal to and serve this country, and many of us stand by that oath and stay here. Those who break the oath are not representatives of Somali Americans.

Patriotism does not mean silence. It does not mean pretending problems do not exist. It means believing a country can do better—and choosing to stay engaged even when it is painful. When I write critically about America, I do so as someone invested in its future, not as someone standing outside of it.

President Trump’s words have consequences. They shape how neighbors see each other. They influence policy. They embolden suspicion. Somali Americans—many of whom already navigate Islamophobia, racism, and misunderstanding—are caught in the weight of those words, regardless of how they live their lives.

To be sure, America has always struggled with newcomers. Every immigrant group has faced suspicion before eventually becoming part of the national fabric. Somalis are no different. We are living through that familiar chapter of American history—one where fear speaks louder than facts.

The president’s rhetoric is not just about Somalis. It is about America’s ability to hold complexity: to condemn wrongdoing without demonizing communities, to enforce laws without abandoning humanity, and to recognize that loyalty can come from many places.

I am Somali and I am proudly American.

These identities do not cancel each other out. They strengthen each other. And they allow me to say this with conviction: Somalis are not America’s enemy. We are part of its story: imperfect, accountable, resilient, and deeply committed to the country we now call home.

America is strongest when it remembers that.

On our final day in Poland, my wife and I rose early. I could barely tie my shoelaces with my trembling hands. Unable to eat breakfast, we got on the road at daylight. I grew increasingly nervous as our destination approached. By the time we arrived, my knees were shaking. How would this day take shape?  How would it feel to walk the grounds of Auschwitz?

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

My wife, Robin, initiated this journey. In the face of an intimidating milestone birthday, she refused to celebrate or even discuss it. “I just want to crawl in a hole,” she said in existential anxiety. I begged her to let us find a way to honor the moment. In the end, there would be no parties, but she relented to the idea of a trip, just the two of us. 

“Anywhere you’d like to go?” I asked. “Japan? Australia?”

“Poland,” responded my beloved. A devoted student of World War II, the Holocaust, and all things Jewish, she wished to go to the country she’s read about for decades, has nightmares over, and which holds a vague sense of familial roots and one grisly memorial. Robin wanted to see Auschwitz.  

On departure day, our flight, originally scheduled to leave at 6:30 PM, was delayed multiple times and finally took off after 2:00 AM. We missed our connection through Amsterdam and could only book a new transfer several hours later. We arrived in Warsaw 12 hours later than anticipated, well into the evening, and dragging our bags. What seemed like a royal pain was quickly put into perspective by all that came later.  

In Warsaw, we visited the Museum of Warsaw, the encyclopedic POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum with many artifacts and first-person accounts.  We watched a short film about Hitler’s demolition of Warsaw, which turned 90% of the city to rubble. We wandered through the area that had been the ghetto, touched some of the bricks that remain, and felt the heavy history. Over several days, we got an overview of Poland with its shifting geographic boundaries and brutal history. And I knew that the truly rough part was yet to come.

Two days later, we took the three-hour train ride through Poland’s rural landscape to Krakow. The only thing these Polish cities have in common is their nestling along the Vistula River. Krakow answers Warsaw’s Soviet-style rebuild with an idyllic European town: the picturesque Wawel Royal Castle, 14th-century Jagiellonian University, and sprawling medieval market square. Today in Krakow, as is the case throughout Poland, there are almost no Jews. Krakow’s few remaining synagogues struggle to continue with very few congregants.

Finally, at the Auschwitz entry gate, our guide Pawel Sawicki, extended a warm, strong handshake. As we moved through, he explained how the horrors crept in slowly. First, the site was used to house workers needed by local industries. Not all were Jews. We learned that it was later that the camp became a prison and then, ultimately a death factory. I felt faint as we walked beneath the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign. We saw piles of clipped human hair, much of it the same shade of gray as my own. We saw a room full of abandoned eyeglasses, and victims’ ransacked suitcases. Among a pile of shoes was one belonging to a child in which his mother had written her son’s name and his transport number in case he got separated from her. As a mother, I recognized that woman’s protective instinct and then felt such horror at the thought of her son and her demise.

The atrocities and methods of torture were almost too much to absorb. Pawel had a deep, resonant voice that narrated the experience in a profound way. He didn’t allow facile observations or easy answers. Pawel generously shared his nuanced insights. He talked about the victims, the perpetrators, and the bystanders with deep humanity—and didn’t allow for the dehumanization of the men, women, and children who perished there. Nor did he lump all the perpetrators into one basket of evil. As we stood at the haunting spot where selections were held, he said, “No one was born a victim, and no one was born a perpetrator.” Pawel’s view was that we are all born innocent, and things happen to people to shape their destinies.

We spoke at great length about the bystanders—citizens who were neither soldiers nor prisoners. I wondered if the farmers working the Polish fields had not seen the transport trains full of Jews headed to slaughter. What about the people living near the camp? I noticed one such home had a beautiful old apple tree. Did the family who lived there slip apples over the concentration camp wall? What did the locals do? What would I have done?

Pawel argued that we cannot comprehend the fears and conditions of the time—that we should not judge. 

We can only ask ourselves, what are we doing now?  How do we respond to today’s atrocities?

This question resonated with me. 

For years, I have felt frustrated and frozen, unsure how to respond to the many crises I see around me every day in New York City. What can I possibly do to address the climate crisis, the refugee crisis, the mental health crisis, and the homelessness crisis? Faced with the overwhelming odds of today’s challenges, one can turn away, face inward, or do nothing.

When we left Poland, these moral questions weighed on me. We stopped in Paris upon my request. 

As we walked along the Seine, Robin explained to me that near the end of World War II, Hitler had ordered the bombing and leveling of Paris just as he had done in Warsaw. But German General Dietrich von Choltitz is credited with disobeying Hitler’s command. Rather than raze the city days before it was recovered by the Allied forces, Choltitz went rogue, negotiated a truce, and surrendered the city. One man saved Paris.

Hearing this, I remembered the discussion with Pawel. And though I understand his point that we should not judge others, I also firmly believe we should never sell ourselves short on what a single individual can do.

At every turn, we can relinquish our bystander status and do something. Anything.

Canceled competitions due to warm weather and lack of snow. Skiing in slush. Postponed training sessions for freestyle athletes who need to perfect their risky tricks. Climate change is wreaking havoc on winter sports, so much so that the president of the world skiing and snowboarding governing body has called it an “existential threat” to the sports he oversees. Human-induced global warming is estimated to have cost the U.S. ski industry more than $5 billion in the first two decades of this century. “You have to be blind,” says Canadian aerial skier Marion Thénault, “to not notice it.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

So now the Winter Olympics themselves are at the mercy of rising temperatures. According to a 2024 study commissioned by the International Olympic Committee that appeared in the journal Current Issues in Tourism, under a high-emissions future, 56% of 93 potential Winter Olympic host sites around the world would not be considered climate reliable by the 2050s; 71% of the sites could not host the Games by the 2080s. The authors write that under a more likely medium-emissions future, 46% of the locations would be untenable by the 2050s, while 55% would be out of play by the 2080s. The Paralympics, which take place closer to the spring in March, are at even greater risk of losing potential hosts.  

Read More: ‘I Don’t Believe in Limits.’ How Eileen Gu Became Freestyle Skiing’s Biggest Star

“Climate change is ultimately going to change the geography of where we can host the Winter Olympics,” says Daniel Scott, professor from the University of Waterloo’s Department of Geography and Environmental Management, and one of study’s co-authors. The good news: even in a worst-case, high-emissions scenario, nearly 27 places in Europe, North America, and Asia should be able to host the Games in 50 years. The Winter Olympics will almost certainly survive, in this century at least. 

Warmer weather also shouldn’t impact the 2026 Olympics. Northern Italy, in February, can be quite frigid—average temperatures in Cortina D’Ampezzo, where women’s alpine skiing is taking place, range from a high of about 30℉ to a low of around 12℉ in February. “In relative terms, it’s a lower risk compared to other locations,” says Robert Steiger, a professor at the University of Innsbruck and co-author of the Current Issues in Tourism article. 

But it’s hardly a guarantee. According to a new analysis from the nonprofit Climate Central, Cortina’s temperatures have warmed 6.4℉ since the last time the town hosted an Olympics, in 1956, resulting to 41 fewer freezing days annually. Gus Schumacher, an American cross-country skier who trained at the Olympic venue last winter, says, “it was pretty horrible there. Super icy one day and pretty slushy the next. Not ideal.” Two years ago, Thénault went to Livigno to test that Olympic venue. “There was no snow, and conditions were so, so bad,” she says. But a World Cup event in March 2025 was snow-packed and idyllic. “We just don’t know what we’re going to get,” says Thénault. “We’re rolling the dice.” 

Read More: Inside Lindsey Vonn’s Unprecedented Attempt at an Olympic Comeback

Milano Cortina stakeholders have taken steps to mitigate the environmental impact of these Games. Renewable energy will be used at nearly all competition venues. Only two venues were built from scratch; the other 11 are either existing or temporary facilities. In Livigno, a “snow farm” preserves snow from the previous winter under a geothermal cover and layer of sawdust, lessening the need to rely on energy-consuming artificial-snow machines. Organizers are encouraging fans and Olympic officials to use trains, rather than private cars, to travel from Milan to the far-flung mountain regions of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Livigno, and other locations. They have also set a goal of recovering or recycling 100% of food leftovers from the Games, to help reduce emissions. “It’s costly,” says Diana Bianchedi, chief strategy planning and legacy officer for the Milano Cortina 2026 organizing committee. “But at the end, the event will be more sustainable. It’s our responsibility.”   

Some athletes are doing their part. Thénault, who won bronze in Beijing, works with an engineering firm to track her carbon footprint. Thanks to measures like riding a bike to training instead of driving, and taking as few short flights around Europe and North America as possible—using a carpool or bus instead—data showed that Thénault, who is studying aerospace engineering at Concordia University in Montreal, reduced her footprint by 27% last season. She’s worked with the organizers of the World Cup aerials competition in Quebec, where she lives, to offer shuttle services to fans so they wouldn’t have to rely on their cars, to provide vegetarian options at the concession stands to limit meat consumption, and mostly eliminate the use of single-use plastic during the event. “People are reluctant to change,” says Thénault, an athlete alliance member of Protect Our Winters Canada, a climate-advocacy organization. “But I think being solution-oriented is very important so that we can move forward.”

Olympic athletes have a powerful platform. “Use your gold medal and get in the door and say, ‘Hey, I’m passionate about this,’” says Jessie Diggins, the American cross-country skier who, in what will be her last Olympics, seeks to win the first individual cross-country gold in the country’s history. “I want to tell you why it’s important to me that, hopefully, I get to ski with my grandkids one day.”

As the Trump Administration prepares for the U.S. to co-host the World Cup this summer, easing travel rules for sporting events amid otherwise tightening immigration policy, some members of the global soccer community are saying: “Stay away from the U.S.A.!”

That particular phrasing came from Mark Pieth, a Swiss attorney who chaired the Independent Governance Committee’s oversight of FIFA reform between 2011 and 2013, in an interview with Swiss newspaper Der Bund last week. But calls for a boycott of the world’s biggest international soccer competition have gained traction among other prominent soccer figures, lawmakers, and fans.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The U.S. is co-hosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19, with the final match set to take place at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

On Monday, former FIFA President Sepp Blatter posted Pieth’s comment on X, adding “I think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup.” Blatter was suspended by FIFA in 2015 for a controversial $2 million payment to former French soccer player and president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Michel Platini; both men were later acquitted by Swiss courts of criminal charges related to the payment.

Critics have cited the Trump Administration’s violent immigration crackdown, which has resulted in the killing of two Americans by federal agents in Minneapolis; its expansionist foreign policy towards Greenland and Venezuela; travel bans; and broad-based tariffs on the rest of the world.

“What we are seeing domestically—the marginalization of political opponents, abuses by immigration services—doesn’t exactly encourage fans to go there,” Pieth said. “You’ll see it better on TV anyway. And upon arrival, fans should expect that if they don’t please the officials, they’ll be put straight on the next flight home. If they’re lucky.”

FIFA’s ties to Trump

Donald Trump’s fondness for what the rest of the world calls football has been bolstered by his love of flattery. FIFA President Gianni Infantino, whom Platini said earlier this month has “become more of an autocrat” who “likes the rich and powerful,” has been criticized for cozying up to the U.S. President.

Trump was met with boos when he remained centerstage as English team Chelsea lifted the FIFA Club World Cup trophy in New Jersey last July. Infantino had presented Trump with that very same trophy earlier that year, and in December awarded Trump with a newly created FIFA Peace Prize after the U.S. President lost out on the Nobel.

“This is your prize, this is your peace prize,” Infantino said. “There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go.”

Infantino also announced in July that FIFA opened an office in Trump Tower in New York City. And a replica of the World Cup trophy has been spotted in Trump’s Oval Office since 2018, the year that Infantino announced the U.S. would co-host the 2026 World Cup.

Calls for boycott

Trump’s preparations for the U.S. to host the tournament, including the formation of a federal task force last March and the creation of a fast-tracked visa system for ticket holders, has not fully assuaged international concern.

Oke Göttlich, a vice president of the German soccer federation, said in an interview last week with newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost that it was time to “seriously consider and discuss” a boycott. He compared the current situation to Olympic boycotts during the Cold War.

“What were the justifications for the boycotts of the Olympic Games in the 1980s?” Göttlich said. “By my reckoning, the potential threat is greater now than it was then. We need to have this discussion.”

European lawmakers have also raised concerns with the U.S. hosting the tournament, particularly amid Trump’s push to gain greater control of Greenland, which is currently an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark.

Earlier this month, German Member of Parliament Jürgen Hardt told tabloid Bild that Germany’s national football team might consider skipping the tournament “as a last resort” to bring Trump “to his senses.” The German team has historically been one of the top teams, having won four World Cups in 1954, 1974, 1990, and 2014. Another MP of the same center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union, Roderich Kiesewetter, echoed Hardt, telling newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine that considering Trump’s Greenland-related tariff threats, “I have a hard time imagining that European countries would take part in the World Cup.”

The German government said on Jan. 20 that the decision on whether or not to participate would be left up to the country’s soccer federation.

In the U.K., Conservative MP Simon Hoare said in an address to the House of Commons that the English, Scottish, and Welsh teams should consider boycotting the tournament in order to “embarrass” him. England and Scotland have already qualified for the World Cup, while Wales will compete in the qualification playoffs in March.

“We need to fight fire with fire,” Hoare said. 

Liberal Democrat MP Luke Taylor added, of Trump: “The only thing he responds to is his own pride.”

French MP Eric Coquerel, of the left-wing La France Insoumise, called on France to consider a boycott and suggested the tournament be moved out of the U.S. and instead played only in Canada and Mexico.

“Seriously, can we really imagine going to play the footie World Cup in a country that attacks its ‘neighbors,’ threatens to invade Greenland, undermines international law, wants to torpedo the UN,” Coquerel posted on X.

Some fans have also considered boycotting the event. A poll in Bild earlier this month found that 47% of around 1,000 German respondents said they would support a boycott if Trump moved to annex Greenland. Meanwhile, more than 150,000 people signed onto a petition in the Netherlands calling on the Dutch national team to boycott the event in protest of “aggressive U.S. military intervention.”

Many fans from around the world have little choice in the matter. The Trump Administration has announced a range of travel restrictions on dozens of countries, including Senegal, Ivory Coast, Iran, and Haiti, which all have qualifying teams.

“Qatar was too political for everyone, and now we’re completely apolitical?” Göttlich said, referring to the German national team’s protest of FIFA’s ban on pro-LGBTQ armbands.

“The life of a professional player is not worth more than the lives of countless people in various regions who are being directly or indirectly attacked or threatened by the World Cup host,” he added.

It would come as a surprise if any boycott takes hold, considering that uproar over human rights abuses in Qatar including what has been described as “modern slavery” of migrant workers did not translate into any large-scale or institutional action. All 32 federations that qualified for the 2022 World Cup participated. And while Russia was suspended from all FIFA and UEFA competitions after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, calls since 2023 for Israel to be banned over its bombardment of Gaza have not been met.

France’s Sports Minister Marina Ferrari said as of now there is “no desire for a boycott of this great competition.”“Now, I will not anticipate what could happen,” she told reporters last week. “I am one who believes in keeping sport separate. The World Cup is an extremely important moment for those who love sport.”

Seven House Democrats broke ranks with their party last week to help Republicans pass a $64.4-billion bill funding the Department of Homeland Security. But after federal agents killed another U.S. citizen in Minneapolis amid President Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown and growing protests, one of those seven said Monday that he regrets his vote.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York posted on Facebook that he “failed to view the DHS funding vote as a referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] in Minneapolis.” He added that he has “long been critical of ICE’s unlawful behavior and I must do a better job demonstrating that.”

Suozzi’s mea culpa comes as public anger grows over the violence exhibited by immigration officials in recent weeks, and even some Republicans have grown more disapproving of ICE.

Suozzi added that the death of Alex Pretti on Jan. 24 “underscores what happens when untrained federal agents operate without accountability,” and he called on Trump to immediately end anti-immigration operations in Minneapolis that have “sown chaos, led to tragedy, and undermined experienced local law enforcement.”

The DHS funding bill, which earmarks about $10 billion for ICE, will be deliberated in the Senate, where Democrats in the chamber have suggested they will attempt to block it even at risk of another government shutdown.

While Suozzi, a prominent centrist, expressed regret for his vote, other House Democrats who helped the bill pass out of the lower chamber have not, with some speaking out to justify their vote and others remaining silent for now.

Rep. Henry Cuellar 

Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas asserted in talking points shared with Axios on Monday that the bill he supported does not “add more money into ICE” and includes some oversight provisions, though he admitted they were not as strong as he’d hoped.

House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, attempted to include measures in the bill that would have increased oversight into ICE activity—such as body camera mandates and bans on officers wearing masks during operations—but failed to secure them. 

“This bill doesn’t solve every problem overnight,” the document from Cuellar’s office said. “But the worst thing we could do is allow a powerful Department to operate with a blank check under a continuing resolution—or shut the government down entirely,” arguing that the bill was “not perfect” but “better than those alternatives.”

Rep. Don Davis

Rep. Don Davis of North Carolina earlier framed his vote for the DHS funding bill as a measure to protect his state constituents from natural disasters. The bill allocates $32 billion to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including $26.4 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund. 

Davis recognized that his constituents “have serious concerns about the manner in which ICE operations are being conducted,” adding that he believes ICE should be held more accountable for its actions,” but “in eastern North Carolina, we know all too well what hurricanes, floods, and natural disasters can do to our communities,” Davis said in a statement. “Strong, reliable support for disaster relief is non-negotiable.”

After Pretti’s death, Davis extended condolences in a post on X and called on the Trump Administration to “take immediate and decisive action to bring an end to this violence and disorder that have taken lives and undermined public trust.”

Davis’ office has not immediately responded to TIME’s request for comment.

Rep. Laura Gillen

In a statement Monday, Rep. Laura Gillen of New York said her vote last week was for the funding of “essential disaster-relief and local and national security efforts to keep our communities safe. Gillen added that opposing it would have removed funds from FEMA, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Coast Guard, “while allowing ICE to continue operating under the status quo,” referencing $75 billion added to the agency’s budget under the President’s “Big Beautiful Bill” passed last year.

Gillen, however, called for the impeachment of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, saying: “The tragic killings of Americans by federal agents make it clear that Noem’s removal from office is urgent and necessary.”

Rep. Jared Golden 

Rep. Jared Golden of Maine posted on X last week that “federal law enforcement agencies have the right and responsibility to enforce federal laws, including immigration laws, and a targeted law enforcement operation focused on individuals who have engaged in criminal activity serves the public interest.” Golden emphasized that DHS’s enforcement actions should comply with federal laws, and he said that everyone should “resist the urge to amplify tensions or spread unverified reports,” warning it would be “a recipe for confrontation and escalation that helps no one.” 

Following Pretti’s death, Golden, in a statement to Axios, called for an independent investigation and said: “It is well past time to lower the temperature.”

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas shared a video on social media on Monday to clarify his vote to fund DHS. 

“Just last week, some of y’all called me asking why I voted for that DHS funding,” he said. “Let me make it clear: it was not to fund ICE.” 

Gonzalez said ICE already had “all the resources they need” and that he, similar to Davis, voted for the bill to ensure access to resources for South Texas. Gonzalez added that holding ICE accountable should be done “thoughtfully” and “smartly.” 

“So many of our friends and neighbors and family members who work for the government here in South Texas would not be getting paid for their hard work,” he said. “I find that unfair when ICE would continue to be funded.”

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state similarly cited worries over disaster mitigation resources in justifying her vote to fund DHS. She said in a statement last week that she “could not in good conscience vote to shut [DHS] down,” decrying how her fellow Democrats “embraced a false narrative–that shutdowns solve problems–instead of being honest about the tools we have at our disposal and working towards bipartisan solutions.”

After Pretti’s killing, Perez issued another statement on Sunday that did not address her vote but echoed calls for Noem to resign. “It’s unacceptable to have another needless death in Minnesota,” Perez said, “and it’s unacceptable to have elected officials, candidates, and Administration officials continue to throw gas on this fire, or tacitly encourage assaults on law enforcement and anyone else.”

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

In 2020, Republicans opened their national convention with a swaggering couple who had become cause célèbre in conservative circles for aiming guns at Black Lives Matter protesters marching through their St. Louis neighborhood. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who would later plead guilty to misdemeanor charges and surrender their weapons, championed Donald Trump’s re-election and warned that an out-of-control government led by Democrats could come for any and all gun owners if left unchecked.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

A scant six years later, Mark McCloskey expressed a surprisingly similar sentiment. “Say goodbye to the Second Amendment. Once again, the government [is] using crisis to take away your rights,” he posted on Monday.

McCloskey—who rose to national prominence for his advocacy of the Second Amendment and later become an advocate for those prosecuted for their conduct on Jan. 6, 2021—was referring to Trump and his fellow Republicans. On Monday, days after federal officers fatally shot a second protester against immigration raids in Minneapolis, the White House again suggested that 37-year-old Alex Pretti was to blame because he had a registered gun tucked in his waistband while he was filming—not the federal Border Patrol officers who pinned him down, disarmed him, and then shot him.

“Any gun owner knows that when you are carrying a weapon, when you are bearing arms, and you are confronted by law enforcement, you are raising the assumption of risk and the risk of force being used against you,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a feisty briefing on Monday. 

This he-had-it-coming mentality is one that stems from the top of this administration. After the Saturday killing of Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis—one filmed from just about every possible angle as officers shot him at least 10 times in five seconds—administration officials sought to cast Pretti as the aggressor, an “assassin” aiming to “massacre law enforcement.”

That rhetoric is not sitting comfortably in Washington or even within some corners of the Trump coalition. The MAGAverse, after all, championed folks like the McCloskeys as heroes standing their ground and using guns as tools of intimidation. “That’s what the guns were there for, and I’d do it again anytime the mob approaches me,” Mark McCloskey said after entering his guilty plea in 2021.

It was a similar brand of defiance from—and praise for—Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted on criminal charges after he fatally shot two people during the 2020 civil unrest in Kenosha, Wis. Rittenhouse, who emerged as an avatar of anti-Black Lives Matter discourse, said he traveled to Kenosha to protect businesses and acted in self defense. 

It’s almost impossible to square support for Second Amendment rights for the likes of McCloskeys and Rittenhouse alongside a denial of them when employed by Pretti. For decades, guns have been a birthright among conservatives. (To be fair, it’s the top issue for few voters, usually in the 3% to 5% range in polls.) Any challenge to gun rights was immediate heresy, disqualifying in any measure. Yet here is Trump, elected with strong support of those who cited his support for guns, undermining that very orthodoxy in the name of suppressing growing dissent in Minneapolis.

Hence, the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus have all sought distance from the Trump argument. So, too, did some typical Trump allies. (For an accounting of defections or faltering, see here.)

Minnesota has long allowed pretty wide gun rights. Heck, you can even bring a weapon into the state capitol building with a license. But that has not stopped the Trump posture that has defined so much of his return to power: FAFO.

“I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal. “But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”

Many of his Administration’s top officials have backed him up.

“No one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines,” FBI Director Kash Patel said.

Added Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino: “We respect that Second Amendment right, but those rights don’t count when you riot and assault, delay, obstruct and impede law enforcement officers and, most especially, when you mean to do that beforehand.”

This all might sound like some of the country’s most prominent Republicans have rethought their views on the Second Amendment. But intellectual consistency is often optional in Trump’s orbit. The President himself has shown an open indifference to absolute truths. If it sounds good, it’s true enough, he likes to say.

Americans have noticed. A paltry 32% of Americans consider the President to be honest and trustworthy, according to an Economist-YouGov poll this month. It’s the admonition from Trump’s first turn in Washington that became a parody of itself: Take him seriously but never literally.

But on the political right, guns are a brand apart. It’s one part lionizing and one part victimhood for those who find their gun rights challenged. Yet Pretti does not seem to be part of the right’s favored tribe, which is why we are seeing fissures—but not fractures—in the GOP base on this.

But it may be the folks like the McCloskeys who register the most serious shake inside the Trump orbit. When they spoke via video to the Republican convention in 2020, they warned of the end of the suburbs and profligation of low-quality apartment complexes, while also wrapping themselves in the victim swaddle: “What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country.”

It was quite the shift by Monday, when Mark McCloskey registered his betrayal about what he was hearing from Washington. “So now Kash Patel, who is supposed to uphold the Constitution, says it is a Capital Offense (meaning it’s OK to kill you) if you lawfully carry your weapon and ammo to a protest.”

And from Rittenhouse, who has made Second Amendment advocacy his cause these days, came similar rejection of Trump’s footing.

“Carry everywhere. It is your right. #ShallNotBeInfringed,” Rittenhouse posted on social media.

The outrage is real. The consequence is less apparent.

— With reporting by Nik Popli

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.

In the aftermath of two fatal shootings in Minneapolis in which video evidence suggests federal agents may have ignored or defied protocol, the growing impression among legal experts, many lawmakers, and much of the public is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol are operating recklessly and far outside the norms of law enforcement.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

During a surge of thousands of federal agents to Minnesota for a sweeping immigration crackdown, federal officers shot and killed Renee Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Saturday. In both cases, the Trump administration has followed a pattern of smearing the victim, misrepresenting the facts, and refusing to cooperate with local investigators. Across the state, immigration agents have been seen arresting US citizens and legal immigrants, entering homes and vehicles without judicial warrants, and using excessive force against observers and protestors.

The impact has been a mounting repudiation of President Donald Trump’s handling of the signature issue that helped him win back the White House less than two years ago. Former ICE agents have warned ICE’s conduct in Minnesota and elsewhere has damaged the agency’s reputation so badly that it may be harder for ICE to fulfill its mission of finding and deporting immigrants in the country illegally.

ICE’s transformation into its larger, more aggressive form, was a goal of the Trump Administration from the start of his second term. Within weeks of his Inauguration, Trump wiped away internal guidelines that told immigration agents to focus on deporting people with criminal convictions and blocked them from making arrests at schools, courthouses and places of worship.

The Administration also quickly pared back mechanisms in place to keep ICE from abusing its power. Personnel cuts last year gutted offices tasked with monitoring the conduct of immigration officers including the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman and the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. There is enough uncertainty around oversight across the Trump Administration that the webpage for another watchdog with authority over ICE—the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties—includes a notice stating that the office “continues to exist and will perform its statutorily required functions.”

While Trump stripped ICE of long-standing guardrails and oversight, the agency has gone on its largest hiring spree ever, more than doubling its manpower from 10,000 to 22,000 in less than a year. To put officers in the field more quickly, ICE shortened training at Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia from 13 weeks to six weeks. ICE also waived its long-standing age limit for agents, accepting new agents as young as 18 and older than 40.

The Administration’s current immigration strategy, which prioritizes boosting deportations, is reflected in internal changes in ICE itself. In the fall, several senior leaders of ICE’s field offices were replaced with leaders from Border Patrol and other agencies, multiple outlets report. A former ICE official who was granted anonymity to speak candidly tells TIME that the internal changes have been “concerning,” because Border Patrol has never previously enforced immigration laws in the interior part of the United States.

All of this is happening while ICE’s budget has ballooned from around $10 billion annually to $85 billion, making it the nation’s highest-funded law enforcement agency. But polling shows that public sentiment is turning against ICE. A YouGov online poll conducted the day after Pretti was shot and killed found that more Americans support abolishing ICE than oppose it, with 46% supporting abolishing ICE, 41% opposed, and 12% unsure. Most striking, 19% of Republicans “somewhat or strongly support” abolishing ICE, according to the poll, up from 12% of Republicans earlier this month. A clear majority of Americans, 58%, agreed with the description of ICE’s tactics as “too forceful.”

Lindsay Nash, a law professor and expert on immigration enforcement at Cardozo School of Law in New York, says the Trump Administration came into office promising they were “taking the gloves off” and casting a wider net than previous administrations to more meaningfully reduce the number of people in the country illegally. In practice, that’s meant that ICE hasn’t lived up to Trump’s campaign promise to focus on deporting criminals. “The statistics don’t show ICE is making arrests according to what it says are its priorities.” Nash says. “Many people are being arrested who don’t have criminal convictions.”

In the days after Pretti was shot in Minneapolis, some Trump administration officials were quick to brand the VA hospital nurse as a threat to law enforcement. Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security, said Pretti had “committed an act of domestic terrorism.” Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official who has been leading the surge operations in Minneapolis, said it “looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” But videos from the scene show Pretti approaching officers with his hands up and a phone in his right hand. When officers surround Pretti on the ground, an officer appears to pull a handgun from Pretti’s waistband just before another officer opens fire. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told reporters that Pretti was believed to be a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday said that the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection are conducting investigations of the shooting. “Let’s be clear about the circumstances which led to that moment on Saturday,” Leavitt said. “This tragedy occurred as a result of a deliberate and hostile resistance by Democrat leaders in Minnesota.”

The conservative editorial boards at the Wall Street Journal and New York Post have turned on Trump’s harsh immigration actions in Minnesota. “However noble the mission is to rid the country of the ‘worst of the worst,’ the broad support for it is now ebbing fast,” the Post wrote, warning that if Trump followed through with his earlier threats to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota it would “backfire.” The Journal called the shooting of Pretti “a moral and political debacle” for Trump’s presidency and called for ICE to “pause” in Minneapolis. Even Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, one of the most outspoken advocates of immigration enforcement in the country, said Monday that ICE needed to “recalibrate” its operations in Minnesota.

In a sign that President Trump may be open to cooling down tensions in Minnesota, Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday that he had a “very good call” with Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz that morning, and the two “actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength.” Trump also said Monday he was sending his “border czar” Tom Homan, a former acting head of ICE, to the state to talk to local officials and that Homan will report “directly” to Trump. 

Some legal experts argue that Trump administration officials have created a permissive atmosphere for immigration officials to employ excessive use of force, making deadly encounters more likely. After Renee Good was shot on Jan. 7, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller had this message for all ICE officers: “You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one—no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.” Vice President JD Vance inaccurately said the officer who fired at Good’s head through the windshield of her car “is protected by absolute immunity.” Vance seemed to dial that back during a news conference in Minneapolis last week, saying officers would face discipline if they violate policies or the law.

The American Civil Liberties Union has helped file a lawsuit in federal court in Minnesota demanding ICE end the pattern of illegal activities, including arresting people without warrants, stopping people without probable cause and racial profiling. That case was brought by a 20-year-old U.S. citizen named Mubashir Khalif Hussen, who alleges that on Dec. 10 in Minneapolis while walking to lunch, he was stopped by masked ICE agents who put into an SUV and took him to a federal building where he was shackled and fingerprinted before being released. “We are filing lawsuits about the illegality of their actions,” says ACLU attorney Naureen Shah. “They don’t have the kind of total immunity or the absolute prerogative to do whatever they want that the administration is asserting.”

While such court action may lead to some changes, there are limits on a citizen’s ability to sue a federal officer for damages related to actions in the line of duty. Shah and the ACLU would like to see Congress pass a law that would give the public more power to operate more as guardrails on law enforcement in court. “What we often are doing is suing for injunctive relief–’stop that thing you are doing’–but we also would like to be able to sue for damages against the officers that are actually doing the harm,” Shah says. A measure called the Bivens Act that would allow people to sue for damages if their rights are violated by federal officials has been introduced by Democrats in the House and Senate, and has drawn the support of dozens of fellow Democrats. So far, no Republicans have signed on to sponsor the bills.

—WITH REPORTING FROM PHILIP WANG

A massive snowstorm blanketed much of the U.S. in snow and ice over the weekend. At least 12 deaths have been attributed to the storm, and more than one million are without power. 

As of Monday afternoon, Bonito Lake, New Mexico received 31 inches of snowfall, the most in the U.S., according to the National Weather Service. Napanoch, N.Y. received the second highest total of 30 inches while Jennerstown, P.A.. received 24.7 inches. The agency notes that snowfall totals can lag by a few days, as it takes time for stations to report their data.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The storm broke records in many parts of the country. In New York City, Central Park saw 11.4 inches of snow in Sunday’s storm, the most ever recorded, while Dayton, Oh. where 12.4 inches of snow fell in one day broke its record established during the Blizzard of 1978. Cities in Pennsylvania also set records—Harrisburg recorded 14 inches of snow, breaking a one-day record of 5.4 inches set in 1988. Meanwhile Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, which received 11.2 and 9.3 inches of snow respectively, also broke one-day snowfall records set in 2014 and 2000.

Though snowy conditions are subsiding, the impacts of the storm will linger in the coming days—especially as many regions that saw snowfall are beginning the week with single-digit temperatures. At the peak of the storm on Sunday, one million households were left without power—particularly in southern states that rarely see heavy snowfall like Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky. It could be days—or even weeks—before some areas see power restored. In Mississippi, utility company Tippah Electric Power said there was “catastrophic damage” and that it could be “weeks instead of days” to restore everyone. The storm also brought widespread travel disruptions—the number of cancelled flights rivaled the early days of the pandemic.

Ahead of the storm, President Donald Trump used the storm as an opportunity to express his long held skepticism on climate change. “Record Cold Wave expected to hit 40 States. Rarely seen anything like it before,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social on Friday. “Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain — WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”

But a winter snow storm doesn’t disprove that the planet is, overall, warming. And climate change could help drive record levels of precipitation like snow.

On average, climate change is leading to shorter and milder winters. But research shows that climate change can make some extreme weather events—including heat waves, heavy rainfall, severe floods, droughts, extreme wildfires, and hurricanes—more intense and more frequent.

Global warming from greenhouse gasses is contributing to a rise in global average temperatures. A warmer atmosphere can carry more moisture, which then is released as precipitation.

During the wintertime, that could mean some regions see storms that dump rain instead of snow as temperatures rise above freezing, while others simply see more heavy snowfall.  

In my early thirties, I relocated to rural New Hampshire from Florida. It was supposed to be a joyful and exciting time: I was in love and had moved north with the intention of building a life with my husband. It was also stressful. The losses of friends and community hit me harder than I realized. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Compounding these changes was the loss of warmth and light. I was unprepared for a New Hampshire winter. Late that first autumn, after picking apples and watching the leaves turn maroon, I found myself overwhelmed by winter realities I hadn’t considered. 

I wasn’t prepared for the ice. Before work, my Volvo was fully encrusted, the door frozen shut. Items left in the car for a few hours transformed, like the shampoo in my gym bag that became a solid block.

On other days, snow barricaded the front door. I didn’t consider how roads could become unnavigable due to layers of white. I’d never heard the ominous term, “black ice,” until I described to coworkers the way my fiancé and I spun like a dreidel on Rt. 120 on our commute home.

I was unaware of the minutes added to seemingly every task, from defrosting and scraping the car to dressing myself before I left home. I learned that my wardrobe was inadequate, too. The cold made my fingers and toes ache, and my lungs burn. Approaching the winter solstice, the light departed long before 5 p.m. Days were short, and the darkness, and my dark moods, were perhaps the hardest thing of all. I became tearful at inconveniences, like when the salad I packed for lunch had frozen to a crisp.

I also felt a deeper sense of despair. Although I was happy in my relationship, at times I profoundly regretted my move from Florida. Problems that could be addressed, like my dissatisfaction with my office job, seemed insurmountable. Past traumas in my life resurfaced—bullying from my childhood, family alcoholism—lurking in my mind like unwelcome guests from October to April.

This cycle of emotional darkness let up by spring, as the days lengthened. I recognized the pattern: I sought treatment for seasonal affective disorder. I used light boxes and received cognitive behavioral therapy, but every year, for several years, my mood changed with the time change.

Seventeen years later, as snow spirals outside my window and gathers on the pines, I reflect on why winter is no longer such a struggle. The shift was so gradual I didn’t perceive it.

My life circumstances altered in the intervening years, certainly. In the course of that time, I got divorced from the person I’d moved north to be with. I made more fulfilling friendships and connections than that relationship provided, and I found a vocation instead of a job. My soul grew warmer.

I developed winter hacks. I wrapped string lights around my curtain rods well before the holiday season and kept them up until St. Patrick’s Day. I took noon walks to make the most of the sunshine and to feel my feet on the frozen earth. I reframed snow shoveling as a cardio-strength workout. I mastered the art of layering and discovered micro spikes.

Most of all, though, I learned to accept winter instead of resisting it. It was this acceptance that allowed me to change. Now, I welcome the limitations that let me slow down from the frenetic activity of warmer months. I appreciate the opportunity to rest.

I take in what light I can, and I luxuriate in the warmth—and even beauty—that I find. A snowstorm can be peaceful; it covers the earth in a fresh start. A blue and pale pink Vermont dawn, I’ve seen, can rival a Florida sunset.

After my divorce, I could have returned to Florida, but I’ve become accustomed to an all-season life. Winter reminds me that when something is taken away, we cherish it all the more. And winter gives something back: It teaches resilience.

Now, I know I can manage discomfort and cope through this harsh season. I can trust that longer, lighter days will inevitably return. I can navigate change.

I can even change myself.

At the start of The Big Fake, a Netflix dramatization of one criminal’s involvement in the most tumultuous events in post-war Italy, Toni Chichiarelli (Pietro Castellitto) is a talented painter living hand-to-mouth as a portrait artist on the streets of Rome. It’s the 1970s, deep in Italy’s “Years of Lead,” an era of turmoil marked by political terrorism by neo-fascists and far-left militants like the “Red Brigades,” not to mention interference from the Italian state and profiteering from organized crime groups. As Toni tells us via voiceover, in a time when Rome was home to all sorts of people—bishops, artists, criminals, communists, and fascists—all he cared about was being the best out of them all.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Toni’s blasé egotism is mostly consistent across a film filled with conspiracy, backstabbing, and political fallout. Lacking the robust convictions of his two childhood friends who come with him to Rome from their home in the Lake Duchessa area—the priest Vittorio (Andrea Arcangeli) and the future Red Brigade member Fabione (Pierluigi Gigante). Toni’s amoral ambition leads to a life of forgery, producing perfect replicas of paintings for his gallery owner girlfriend Donata (Giulia Michelini) and other lucrative jobs for the Banda della Magliana, a criminal organization stretching its wings in Rome, with the charismatic Balbo (Edoardo Pesce) taking the forger under his wing.

Soon, history comes a-knocking; in 1978, the Red Brigades kidnap former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, holding him captive and demanding the release of political prisoners as ransom. After a brief stint as an aloof, romantic crook, Toni has a head-on collision with the Years of Lead when a state policeman referred to only as “The Tailor” (Claudio Santamaria) enlists Toni’s meticulous forgery skills for “the common good.” He must forge a communiqué from the Red Brigade announcing that Aldo Moro has killed himself in their custody, even though he hasn’t. It’s a commission from the big leagues that Toni’s ego can’t resist, but it leads to a rude awakening about the cost of his self-serving ethos in a dangerous political moment.

Toni Chichiarelli, Italy’s forgotten master forger

This act of forgery, along with a major robbery that Toni commits to spit in the eye of his state puppet-masters at the end of the film, are the two big reasons why Antonio Chichiarelli has a place in the Italian history books. The heavily dramatized story of The Big Fake (titled Il Falsario in Italian) adds plenty of color to the scant information available about the real man who inspired Toni the forger. Sandro Petraglia’s script characterizes him as a dashing rogue out of his depth, an artistic genius in an illicit trade, a disco-loving womanizer, all of which Castellitto performs with confidence. Based on an obscure non-fiction book by Nicola Biondo and Massimo Veneziani, The Big Fake indulges in a fair share of both noir and Scorsesean motifs—shadowy hideouts, mafia violence, disco music, macho bromance and soccer banter—which director Stefano Lodovichi blends together to paint a portrait of Italian tradition and modernity clashing at a turning point for the country. But here, the stylized storytelling, which includes a tragic, melodramatic journey of three friends divided by principles, serves the film’s portrait of history.

Even though he’s an artist, Toni is well suited for organized crime—he craves wealth and fame, he wants to prove his own greatness above loyalty to any political ideals, and he’ll side with anyone who helps him see himself as legitimate and talented. Toni’s stint as a master forger—including a self-portrait by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Jacques-Louis David’s epic “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” —puts him in touch with plenty disreputable folk, but none of the mafia or state intelligence give him too much anxiety, so consumed is he by his own independent greatness. But Toni’s ambition makes him isolated, as he lacks the organized solidarity of his left-wing brother and the faceless authority of the Tailor’s state apparatus. After the kidnapping of Aldo Moro turns suddenly lethal, Toni realizes how his talents have been appropriated to further political agendas, and his isolation makes him a pretty easy target.

The imprisonment and death of Aldo Moro

There is a lot of ambiguity and speculation around the abduction and death of Aldo Moro, which lets The Big Fake turn conspiracy into suspenseful drama that keeps Toni close to the epicenter of the kidnapping. Moro belonged to the Christian Democracy party and was an influential figure in Italy’s centre-left movement, modernizing the country’s flagging economy with reforms across his impressive five terms. During Moro’s imprisonment, Chichiarelli forged a statement from the Red Brigades saying that the former Prime Minister had committed suicide, and his body was dumped in the waters of Lake Duchessa—a foggy, picturesque region that The Big Fake suggests was the forger’s childhood home.

On the surface, the forged communiqué—dated April 18, 1978—seems like a confusing and counterintuitive move, but it was intended to force the Red Brigade to announce their prisoner was alive and healthy, putting them on the back foot while also testing the waters to see who the Italian public would blame for Moro’s death. The communiqué’s mention of suicide was read as a mocking, perhaps threatening reference to the group suicide of the Baader—Meinhof Group leaders the previous year, the culmination of the “German Autumn”—as reported by, among others, TIME Magazine while the incident was still ongoing in 1978.

Moro was a personal friend of the sitting pope, Paul VI; The Big Fake includes a scene of an attempted ransom exchange between Toni and a representative of the Vatican who tells him, ultimately, the Holy Father has decided against paying Moro’s ransom. Although he doesn’t know it, the Pope has just saved Toni’s skin—the Tailor had a sniper trained on Toni, ready to shoot as soon as he was given the ransom money.

When Toni learns of Moro’s assassination, it is not because he’s an important agent close to the action. He hears the unconfirmed radio report in his studio and follows the crowds of Romans to the reported crime scene where the former statesman’s body sits lifeless in the back of a stolen car. Even though he was instrumental to the escalation of the historic case, in the end he is reduced to an ordinary bystander, craning his neck to catch a sight of a gruesome and senseless crime.

The heist that was Toni’s real masterpiece

The Big Fake skips a few years to get us to the other famous crime associated with Toni Chichiarelli, the 1984 Brink’s Securmark robbery. One night in March, 35 billion lira (valued at the time at around $21 million) was stolen from the security company’s vaults in Rome. Items left at the scene of the crime pointed towards Red Brigade terrorists being responsible, including a photograph of the kidnapped Aldo Moro, but as The Big Fake book and film suggest, this was just another of Toni’s masterful cons to taunt the authorities who used his artistry to bring down the Red Brigade in the Moro affair. In the opinion of journalist Roberto Bartali, “Chichiarelli made that robbery as a sort of “return” for his help during the kidnapping,” but here, The Big Fake makes the stakes even more personal. 

After Moro’s death, Fabione is in hiding, and his ever-loyal friend Toni forges passport documents to aid his escape, in exchange for Moro’s complete, uncensored memoirs in the Red Brigade’s possession. After the exchange, Fabione is discovered by police and killed, just as Toni grasps the political gravity of the memoirs—so he keeps them hidden in Vittorio’s workshop as leverage in case the Tailor decides he is expendable.

With the robbery, Toni tries to simultaneously reclaim his independence, fund an escape from Rome with Donata, and give the Tailor the middle finger—confident that knowing where the memoirs are hidden will stop any harm coming to him. But although the robbery is a roaring success, the Tailor makes a fateful visit to Vittorio, who has been gradually slipping into corruption by misappropriating church funds. (It looks like neither Vittorio nor Fabione’s principles did them any favors, in the end.)

The priest gives up the location of the memoirs, and Toni retaliates by letting Vittorio be assassinated in his place. The real Chichiarelli was shot six times under mysterious circumstances a few months after his role in the Securmark robbery, similar enough to the climactic murder in The Big Fake for director Lodovichi to playfully suggest, like a good noir should, that facts can easily be fiction in disguise. Even if Toni did get away with one last con, a bleak mood lingers over the credits; even if he wasn’t killed, Toni has elected to live a new life as hollow and deceptive as one of his forgeries. The Big Fake spins history into noir-tinged spectacle, and when Toni encounters the darkness and violence of his country’s history, he may find it more appealing to be an obscure, anonymous footnote than for his painful failures and complicity to be remembered. 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has tackled his first major test since he was sworn into office, readying the city for a historic winter storm that dropped more than a foot of snow in some areas over the weekend.

Winter Storm Fern, which forecasters predicted could affect more than 230 million people across the country, brought heavy snowfall, damaging ice, and below-freezing temperatures to a number of states over the past few days. The inclement weather led to thousands of canceled flights, as well as power outages that affected more than 1 million people. More than a dozen people died during the storm, including seven in New York City. The deaths in New York City are still under investigation.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“It is still too early to share a broader diagnosis or a cause of death,” Mamdani said during a press conference. But, he continued, “We haven’t seen this kind of cold for eight years, and it is debilitating.”

Read more: ‘A Politics of No Translation.’ Zohran Mamdani on His Unlikely Rise

The storm was the first significant weather event in the city since Mamdani succeeded former mayor Eric Adams on Jan. 1. And, according to many residents and prominent local figures, Mamdani proved up to the task of handling it.

Here’s how the new mayor responded to the storm.

What steps did Mamdani take to prepare for the storm?

In the days leading up to the storm’s arrival in New York City, Mamdani held several press briefings, appeared on multiple news networks, and posted many videos on his social media platforms to keep the public updated on the forecast and how the city was preparing for the anticipated storm. He urged New Yorkers to stay home on Sunday, when the worst of the storm was expected to blow through the city—and he did so with some humor.

“I can think of no better excuse for New Yorkers to stay home, take a long nap, or take advantage of our public library’s offer of free access to Heated Rivalry on e-book or audiobook for anyone with a library card,” he said during a press conference on Sunday.

Under his leadership, the city opened 10 warming centers across all five boroughs for residents who needed a safe and warm space. And staffers at the Department of Homeless Services “relaxed intake procedures” and conducted “intensified outreach across all five boroughs,” in an effort to connect people who are unhoused with shelter and warming centers, the city said.

The city also set up an informational hotline of sorts—residents could stay up-to-date on the storm and the city’s response by texting NOTIFYNYC to 692-692. 

Read more: ‘Historic’ Storm Leaves Several Dead, Thousands of Flights Canceled, and a Million Without Power

Department of Sanitation workers started pre-salting streets, highways, and bike lanes on Friday, before the worst of the storm hit. The city said the department would deploy about 2,000 workers on 12-hour shifts, and that it would be plowing streets with 700 salt spreaders and more than 2,000 plows. Thousands of the department’s trucks were converted into snow plows, according to Mamdani. The mayor said that crews would begin salting neighborhoods in every borough as soon as snow started falling, and that plows would start rolling out in the city once there was more than 2 inches of snow on the ground.

The mayor also advised families that the inclement weather might force New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) to shift to remote learning on Monday—and ultimately, he and the NYCPS chancellor decided on Sunday to make that call.

“As snowfall begins to blanket our city and conditions become hazardous, closing school buildings is a necessary step to keep New Yorkers safe,” Mamdani said in a press release. “Over the past week, my administration has prepared for this moment—ensuring devices are in hand, families are informed and educators are ready to welcome students online. Our school system, and our city, is prepared to weather this storm together.”

Mamdani also repeatedly reminded New Yorkers to call 311 if they saw anyone who needed assistance during the storm.

“We will get through this storm the way we always do—by looking out for one another,” he said in a press release on Saturday.

What local groups and leaders have said about Mamdani’s handling of the storm

Overall, the response to Mamdani’s handling of the storm was fairly positive.

A video of Mamdani shoveling snow in Brooklyn to help a driver whose car appeared to be stuck in the snow circulated on social media over the weekend, generating praise from some users.

“Wow—that’s hand on leadership!” the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn said when reposting the video on X. “Thank you @NYCMayor for being out on the streets ensuring that the city is moving.” The following day, the group went on to thank the Department of Sanitation for the “great job in clearing the streets, and continuing to clear them,” as well as Mamdani’s administration for its “close cooperation, checking in that all OK (in addition to mayor’s personal visits and assisting those stranded).”

The new mayor even received approving nods from some of his critics.

“Credit where due, looks like @NYCMayor is handling this storm very well so far,” Benny Polatseck, an aide to Adams who has criticized Mamdani in the past, said in a post on X on Sunday. Polatseck, though, later posted on X on Monday afternoon that he was “hearing from some outer borough folks that they haven’t seen a plow truck yet,” asking people to share their experiences. The city has created a website that gives residents real-time updates on whether their street has been plowed yet.

The city’s response to the storm wasn’t without hiccups. Some families told Gothamist they had issues accessing remote learning for their kids on Monday, although school officials said that there was a “smooth start to the day” and that the majority of students and teachers were able to access the portal.

Julie Menin, the City Council speaker, praised the city’s response, while also pointing out some flaws.

“There are areas where emergency response has been stretched and needs to improve, and the Council will be closely engaged in addressing those gaps,” she said in a statement to the New York Times. “But the scale of the effort today reflects how seriously our essential workers take public safety, and the crews on the ground deserve real credit and gratitude from the millions of New Yorkers who rely on them.”

Federal health care workers condemned the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents, accusing the department of causing a “growing public health crisis.”

“We cannot pursue our mission to improve the health and well-being of all Americans while DHS agents are murdering, assaulting, and terrorizing people who call this country home,” a coalition of current and former Health and Human Services (HHS) staffers wrote in a letter released by the group Save HHS on Monday. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The letter writers said they had been “deeply shaken” by what they described as the “execution” of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis who they called “our colleague.” Multiple videos of the incident show Pretti attempting to help a female protestor who was being pushed by a federal agent. A Border Patrol agent then sprays Pretti in the face with a substance and a larger group of agents pins him to the ground. Not long after that point, the fatal shooting occurs: multiple gunshots can be heard and officers move away, leaving Pretti motionless on the ground.

Read more: Alex Pretti, Man Shot By Federal Agents in Minneapolis, Wanted to ‘Make a Difference’

Aryn Backus, a founder of the National Public Health Coalition—the organization behind  the Save HHS initiative—and a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employee, tells TIME that both documented and undocumented Minnesotans are skipping medical appointments, keeping their children out of school, and staying away from grocery stores out of fear of being prosecuted by federal agents, which she says is contributing to a health crisis. 

“Even if they’re not afraid of potentially being deported, they’re afraid that they could be assaulted by ICE, just for being out and about or for expressing their First Amendment right,” Backus says. “And when people are afraid, they’re not safe and they’re not healthy.”

She adds that the health community, including current and former HHS employees, is angered, frustrated, and shocked by Pretti’s shooting, but that the concerns being raised about the killing on both sides of the political aisle make her believe change is imminent. 

“There does seem to be a little bit more hope because the response from this has seemed to be bigger, and in some cases, a little bit more bipartisan than some other events that have happened over the past year. So even though it’s a really dark and frustrating time, I’m hopeful that maybe something will change.”

Pretti’s death follows the shooting of another Minneapolis resident by an ICE officer just weeks earlier. Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and U.S. citizen, was shot by an immigration officer on Jan. 7 in her car while attempting to drive away from the scene of a protest against the agency. Her death has sparked demonstrations in Minnesota and beyond. On Friday, a day before Pretti’s shooting, thousands took to the streets in mass protests in the heart of Minneapolis. 

Save HHS laid out specific demands in its letter. The organization called for members of Congress to halt ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operations “until these agencies justify their activities to Congress and the American people.” It also demanded that Congress refuse ICE and CBP funding until both agencies “immediately halt the invasion of American cities,” agree to being investigated, and adopt new protocols “that do not violate the Constitution.”

The demands come as the Senate is set to vote this week on an appropriations bill including $64.4 billion in DHS funding—$10 billion of which would go to ICE—that key Democrats have vowed to oppose following Pretti’s shooting. The legislation needs 60 votes to pass, meaning some Democrats would need to join Republicans’ narrow 53-seat majority to approve it. And with federal funding for the government set to expire at the week’s end, the growing opposition to the measure has increased the likelihood of a partial government shutdown. 

“Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the D.H.S. funding bill is included,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement, calling the events in Minnesota “unacceptable.”  

Save HHS expressed concern that a potential shutdown could threaten public health by prompting the Administration to furlough staffers in a number of positions. 

“If the bill fails to pass by January 30, many of us will be placed in unpaid furlough status and barred from providing essential services that support the health and well-being of the American people,” the letter states. 

But, it added, “We believe ICE and CBP are a greater threat to the health of our nation than the lapse of HHS services.”

The Trump Administration has sought to defend federal immigration agents in the wake of Good and Pretti’s shootings and portray the killings as acts of self-defense. But witnesses and video of the incidents have contradicted federal officials’ accounts. Several congressional Republicans have joined Democrats in calling for an investigation into Pretti’s shooting

Amid the bipartisan backlash, Trump has deployed White House border czar Tom Homan to oversee federal immigration operations in the area, the President announced on Monday. Trump said in a Truth Social post that he would have Homan call Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who the President said was “on a similar wavelength” to himself. 

President Donald Trump attempted to quell growing bipartisan backlash to his immigration crackdown on Monday following a second fatal shooting by a federal agent in Minneapolis in just over two weeks.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Trump ordered a shake-up among of top officials, announcing that his border czar, Tom Homan, would head to Minneapolis to manage Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the city.

Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, who has been at the center of the aggressive surge of immigration arrests across the country in recent months, is expected to leave the city on Tuesday along with a contingent of federal agents, the Associated Press reported.

Homan is considered a proponent of targeted enforcement, while Bovino has become associated with the highly visible, often indiscriminate raids that have sparked protests, injury and death in Minneapolis and other American cities in recent months.

Trump said that Homan “has not been involved in that area, but knows and likes many of the people there,” and would report directly to him.

Read more: Support for Abolishing ICE Is Surging Among Republicans

Also on Monday, Trump softened his tone towards Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey after speaking to both by phone.

Trump described both calls as “very good”, and said he and Walz were now on a “similar wavelength” regarding immigration enforcement in the city. Just two days ago, he accused the two Democratic politicians of “inciting insurrection.”

The apparent shift in tone and strategy from Trump comes as he faces mounting pressure over a spate of violence linked to his Administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was killed by a Border Patrol agent as he took part in a protest in Minneapolis on Saturday morning. His death came just over two weeks after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, also by a federal immigration agent. 

A city on fire

Minneapolis was already convulsed by protests over Good’s killing in the days before Pretti’s death. Minutes later, the scene of his shooting became a battleground between protesters and federal agents as the city exploded in anger again.

By Saturday evening, the shooting had developed into a political crisis for Trump. In Washington, D.C., Senate Democrats who had previously been reluctant to block funding for ICE now threatened a partial government shutdown rather than pass another spending bill that would give the agency $10 billion more in funding. Several Republicans were calling for an investigation into the shooting.

The anger was fueled not just by the shooting itself, but by the Trump Administration’s handling of its aftermath. Trump and his top officials quickly tried to pin the blame on Pretti, labelling him an instigator and suggesting he had attacked the agents who killed him, despite multiple videos clearly showing otherwise.  

“This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go — What is that all about?” Trump posted soon after the shooting. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in its initial statement on the killing that Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” and “violently resisted,” suggesting that he wanted to “massacre law enforcement.”  

At a press conference in the hours after the shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem suggested Pretti wanted “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” 

Bovino claimed that Pretti had approached agents with a handgun, had “violently resisted, and intended to “massacre law enforcement.”

In several social media posts, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller described Pretti as an “assassin” and a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Vice President J.D. Vance reposted Miller’s characterization of Pretti as an “assassin” on X.

But multiple videos of the incident, released by witnesses to the shooting in the hours after, clearly contradicted those accounts.

They show Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, when an agent approaches him and other protesters and squirts pepper spray in their faces. When Pretti moves to help another protester who has been sprayed, he is tackled and pulled to the ground, where he is struck repeatedly. 

Soon after, one shot rings out, then several more in quick succession. 

In total, at least 10 shots appear to have been fired within five seconds—including several after Pretti is lying motionless on the floor. 

The backlash 

The reaction to Pretti’s killing was more forceful than the one that followed Renee Good’s— compounded by it. On Saturday, responding to a wave of anger from his party, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would oppose a government spending bill that includes $64.4 billion in funding for DHS, of which $10 billionis earmarked for ICE.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city,” Schumer, who represents New York, said on Saturday evening. He added that “because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE.”

Before the weekend, Schumer and other Senate Democrats had signaled that they had wanted to avoid a shutdown and the bill looked likely to pass in the Senate. But Pretti’s killing at the hands of a Border Patrol agent, after being pepper-sprayed and shot several times on the ground, prompted a wave of anger in the party.  

The shooting prompted rare statements of condemnation from former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Obama, whom Trump succeeded in 2017, called Pretti’s killing a “heartbreaking tragedy.” In a statement with his wife Michelle posted on X on Sunday, he said Trump and officials in his Administration “seem eager to escalate the situation” instead of “trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed.”

Several Republicans, too, broke ranks with their party to call for an investigation into the shooting, among them Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas and Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

Cassidy, who serves on the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, described the events in Minneapolis as “incredibly disturbing” and said the “credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake” following the shooting. 

Ricketts, who is a staunch supporter of Trump, called for a “prioritized, transparent investigation into this incident,” describing the shooting as “horrifying”.

Sen. Rand Paul, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent letters to the heads of ICE, Border Patrol, and Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Monday, inviting them to a hearing on Feb. 12. The Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, New York Rep. Andrew Garbarino, requested a similar hearing over the weekend.

Walking back 

By Sunday, Trump appeared to have realized that Minneapolis represented a political crisis. Successive polls have shown his approval rating on immigration plummeting. A YouGov poll taken after the killing of Pretti showed support for abolishing ICE at record highs—with more supporting abolition than opposing it—and nearly 20% of Republicans in favor of shuttering the agency.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he declined to give his backing to the officer who killed Pretti, and said his Administration was “reviewing everything” to do with the incident. 

He also suggested for the first time that he might be looking for a way out of Minneapolis. 

“At some point we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job,” he said, without offering a timeline.

On Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt distanced Trump from Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem’s description of Pretti, saying she had “not heard the president characterize” Pretti as a domestic terrorist.

Pretti was an intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis, the city where he lived. He was a keen outdoorsman and biked trails near his home. 

Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan Pretti, found out about the death of their son when they were called by an Associated Press reporter.

In a statement released to the media, the family criticised the “sickening lies told about our son by the administration.”

“Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has 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,” the statement said.

Michael Pretti said his son wanted to “make a difference in this world.”

“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,” he said in a statement shared with several media outlets. 

“Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact,” he added.

AI might not have taken your job yet—but it’s already writing your breakup text.

What began as a productivity tool has quietly become a social one, and people increasingly consult it for their most personal moments: drafting apologies, translating passive-aggressive texts, and, yes, deciding how to end relationships.

“I wholeheartedly believe that AI is shifting the relational bedrock of society,” says Rachel Wood, a cyberpsychology expert and founder of the AI Mental Health Collective. “People really are using it to run their social life: Instead of the conversations we used to have—with neighbors or at clubs or in our hobbies or our faith communities—those conversations are being rerouted into chatbots.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

As an entire generation grows up outsourcing social decisions to large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, Wood worries about the implications of turning the emotional work of connection over to a machine. What that means—for how people communicate, argue, date, and make sense of one another—is only beginning to come into focus.

When AI becomes your social copilot

It often starts as a second opinion. A quick paste of a text message into an AI chatbot. A question typed casually: “What do you think they meant by this?”

“People will use it to break down a blow-by-blow account of an argument they had with someone,” Wood says, or to decode ambiguous messages. “Maybe they’re just starting to date, and they put it in there and say, ‘My boyfriend just texted me this. What does it really mean?’” They might also ask: Does the LLM think the person they’re corresponding with is a narcissist? Does he seem checked out? Does she have a pattern of guilt-tripping or shifting blame? 

Read More: Is Giving ChatGPT Health Your Medical Records a Good Idea?

Some users are turning to AI as a social rehearsal space, says Dr. Nina Vasan, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and the founder and director of Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation. People gravitate to these tools because they’re “trying to get the words right before they risk the relationship,” she says. That might mean asking their LLM of choice to draft texts to friends, edit emails to their boss, help them figure out what questions to ask on a first date, or navigate tricky group-chat dynamics.

Vasan has also seen people use AI tools to craft dating-app profiles, respond to passive-aggressive family members, and set boundaries they’ve never before been able to articulate. “Some use it to rehearse difficult conversations before having them,” she says. “Others process social interactions afterward, essentially asking AI, ‘Did I handle that OK?’” ChatGPT and other LLMs, she says, have become a third party in many of our most intimate conversations.

Meet the new relationship referee

Consulting AI isn’t always a welcome development. Some young people, in particular, now use LLMs to generate “receipts,” deploying AI-backed answers as proof that they’re right.

“They use AI to try to create these airtight arguments where they can analyze a friend’s statements or a boyfriend’s statements, or they especially like to use it with their parents,” says Jimmie Manning, a professor of communication studies at the University of Nevada, where he’s also the director of the Relational Communication Research Laboratory. (None of his students have presented him with an AI-generated receipt yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time, he muses.) A teen might copy and paste a text from her mom into ChatGPT, for example, and ask if her parents are being unreasonably strict—and then present them with the evidence that yes, in fact, they are.

“They’re trying to get affirmation from AI, and you can guess how AI responds to them, because it’s here for you,” Manning says.

Using LLMs in this way turns relationships into adversarial negotiations, he adds. When people turn to AI for validation, they’re usually not considering their friend or romantic partner or parent’s perspective. Plus, shoving “receipts” in someone’s face can feel like an ambush. Those on the receiving end typically don’t respond well. “People are still wary of the algorithm entering their intimate lives,” Manning says. “There’s this authenticity question that we’re going to face as a culture.” When he asks his students how their friends or partners responded, they usually say: “Oh, he came up with excuses,” or “She just rolled her eyes.”

“It’s not really helping,” he says. “It’s just going to escalate the situation without any kind of resolution.”

What’s at stake

Outsourcing social tasks to AI is “deeply understandable,” Vasan says, “and deeply consequential.” It can support healthier communication, but it can also short-circuit emotional growth. On the more helpful side of things, she’s seen people with social anxiety finally ask someone on a date because Gemini helped them draft the message. Other times, people use it in the middle of an argument—not to prove they’re right, but to consider how the other person might be feeling, and to figure out how to say something in a way that will actually land.

“Instead of escalating into a fight or shutting down entirely, they’re using AI to step back and ask: ‘What’s really going on here? What does my partner need to hear? How can I express this without being hurtful?’” she says. In those cases, “It’s helping people break out of destructive communication patterns and build healthier dynamics with the people they love most.”

Yet that doesn’t account for the many potentially harmful ways people are using LLMs. “I see people who’ve become so dependent on AI-generated responses that they describe feeling like strangers in their own relationships,” Vasan says. “AI in our social lives is an amplifier: It can deepen connection, or it can hollow it out.” The same tool that helps someone communicate more thoughtfully, she says, can also help them avoid being emotionally present.

Plus, when you regularly rely on a chatbot as an arbiter or conversational crutch, it’s possible you’ll erode important skills like patience, listening, and compromise. People who use AI intensely or in a prolonged manner may find that the tool skews their social expectations, because they begin expecting immediate replies and 24/7 availability. “You have something that’s always going to answer you,” Wood says. “The chatbot is never going to cancel on you for going out to dinner. It’s never going to really push back on you, so that friction is gone.” Of course, friction is inevitable in even the healthiest relationships, so when people become used to the alternative, they can lose patience over the slightest inconvenience.

Then there’s the back-and-forth engagement that makes relationships work. If you grab lunch with a friend, you’ll probably take turns sharing stories and talking about your own lives. “However, the chatbot is never going to be, like, ‘Hey, hang on, Rachel, can I talk about me for a while?’” Wood says. “You don’t have to practice listening skills—that reciprocity is missing.” That imbalance can subtly recalibrate what people expect from real conversations.

Plus, every relationship requires compromise. When you spend too much time with a bot, that skill begins to atrophy, Wood says, because the interaction is entirely on the user’s terms. “The chatbot is never going to ask you to compromise, because it’s never going to say no to you,” she adds. “And life is full of no’s.”

The illusion of a second opinion

Researchers don’t yet have hard data that provides a sense of how outsourcing social tasks to AI affects relationship quality or overall well-being. “We as a field don’t have the science for it, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on. It just means we haven’t measured it yet,” says Dr. Karthik V. Sarma, a health AI scientist and physician at the University of California, San Francisco, where he founded the AI in Mental Health Research Group. “In the absence of that, the old advice remains good for almost any use of almost anything: moderation and patterns are key.”

Greater AI literacy is essential, too, Sarma says. Many people use LLMs without understanding exactly how and why they respond in certain ways. Say, for example, you’re planning to propose to your partner, but you want to check-in with people close to you first to confirm it’s the right move. Your best friend’s opinion will be valuable, Sarma says. But if you ask the bot? Don’t put too much weight on its words. “The chatbot doesn’t have its own positionality at all,” Sarma says. “Because of the way technology works, it’s actually much more likely to become more of a reflection of your own positionality. Once you’ve molded it enough, of course it’s going to agree with you, because it’s kind of like another version of you. It’s more of a mirror.”

Looking ahead

When Pat Pataranutaporn thinks about the effects of long-term AI usage, his main question is this: Is it limiting our ability to express ourselves? Or does it help people express themselves better? As founding director of the cyborg psychology research group and co-director of MIT Media Lab’s Advancing Humans with AI research program, Pataranutaporn is interested in ways that people can use AI to promote human flourishing, pro-social interaction, and human-to-human interaction.

The goal is to use this technology to “help people be better, gain more agency, and feel that they’re in control of their lives,” he says, “rather than having technology constrain them like social media or previous technologies.”

Read More: Why You Should Text 1 Friend This Week

In part, that means using AI to gain the skills or confidence to talk to people face-to-face, rather than allowing the tool to replace human relationships. You can also use LLMs to help finesse your ideas and take them to the next level, as opposed to substitutes for original thought. “The idea or intent needs to be very clear and strong at the beginning,” Pataranutaporn says. “And then maybe AI could help augment or enhance it.” Before asking ChatGPT to compose a Valentine’s Day love letter, he suggests asking yourself: What is your unique perspective that AI can help bring to fruition?

Of course, individual users are at the mercy of a bigger force: the companies that develop these tools. Exactly how people use AI tools, and whether they bolster or weaken relationships, hinges on tech companies making their platforms healthier, Vasan says. That means intentionally designing tools to strengthen human capacity, rather than quietly replacing it.

“We shouldn’t design AI to perform relationships for us—we should design it to strengthen our ability to have them,” she says. “The key question isn’t whether AI is involved. It’s whether it’s helping you show up more human or letting you hide. We’re running a massive uncontrolled experiment on human intimacy, and my concern isn’t that AI will make our messages better. It’s that we’ll forget what our own voice sounds like.”

In the wake of the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti by federal agents amid the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, voters’ support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is spiking—including among President Donald Trump’s own party.

A new YouGov poll taken on Saturday, the day of Pretti’s fatal shooting, showed 19 percent of Republicans and 48 percent of American adults across the political spectrum voicing support for abolishing ICE.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

That marks a notable shift from when YouGov pollsters asked the same question last June, as Trump was ramping up his immigration crackdown. At that time only 9 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Americans overall backed abolishing ICE. Support for shuttering the agency has also surged among independents, with 47 percent backing its elimination in the Saturday poll compared to 25 percent in June.

Read More: What Minnesota Tells Us About America’s Future

Good and Pretti’s fatal shootings have heightened scrutiny of the aggressive tactics being used by federal immigration agents under Trump’s second Administration. Following Pretti’s killing, several congressional Republicans have joined Democrats in calling for an investigation into the incident.

Other recent polls have shown support declining for how Trump is carrying out the mass deportation effort that he successfully campaigned on in 2024 as ICE’s operations in the interior U.S. come under fire.

A New York Times/Siena poll conducted from January 12 to 17, after Good’s killing on January 7, found that a majority of voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of several issues—immigration included—and ​​49 percent said the country was worse off than a year ago, compared with 32 percent who said it was better off.

Regarding immigration specifically, 58 percent of respondents disapproved of how Trump was handling the issue, up from 52 percent in a previous Times/Siena poll conducted in September. A larger portion of around half of respondents backed the Administration’s deportation of illegal immigrants and the President’s handling of the U.S.’s southern border in the recent poll. But the reality of ICE’s enforcement tactics drew censure from most Americans: 61 percent—including 19 percent of Republicans, compared to 94 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of independents—said that ICE tactics had “gone too far.”

Trump attacked the Times/Siena poll on Truth Social the day it was released, calling the results “fake” and “heavily skewed toward Democrats.” (Among the registered voters who responded to the poll, 45 percent identified as Democrats or Democratic-leaning compared to 44 percent who identified as Republicans or Republican-leaning.)  In a separate post, he said that “Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense.” 

Yet, the poll is part of a larger trend of surveys that have documented growing disapproval of ICE’s tactics, especially after Good’s deadly shooting, which sparked protests in Minneapolis and around the country, and follows a longer decline in support for Trump’s handling of immigration.

A poll conducted for CNN by SSRS from January 9 to 12 found that 56 percent of respondents said that the shooting was an “inappropriate use of force” by federal officers, and 51 percent said that ICE enforcement actions were making cities less safe rather than safer. More than half of independent respondents were among those who said that ICE enforcement was making cities less safe. And while a majority of Republicans—56 percent—said the shooting represented an appropriate use of force, 21 percent said it was an inappropriate use of force, with 7 percent saying it was inappropriate but an isolated incident and 14 percent saying it was both inappropriate and reflected a bigger problem with ICE’s operations. 

Another survey, taken by Ipsos January 16 to 18, similarly found that 52 percent of Americans felt Good’s shooting marked an excessive use of force, including 19 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of independents.

And a separate poll by Quinnipiac conducted from January 8 to 12 found that 57 percent of registered voters disapproved of ICE’s handling of immigration enforcement, including 64 percent of  independents and 12 percent of Republicans.

Backing for Trump’s broader handling of immigration had also been falling for months even before the recent shootings, according to a number of polls. Recent approval numbers on the issue differ markedly from polling taken in the weeks after Trump took office last year. A Pew Research Center survey taken last February, for instance, found that 59 percent of U.S. adults said they approved of Trump increasing efforts to deport people. In December, in contrast, Pew found that 53 percent of Americans said he was doing “too much” to deport illegal immigrants, with that sentiment rising among both Democrat sand Republicans.

That approval of Trump’s immigration agenda was already waning by the spring and summer. An Ipsos poll from April 2025 found Americans slightly more disapproving (53 percent) than approving (46 percent) of his handling of immigration.

President Trump announced on Monday that he was dispatching border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis that evening, amid a bipartisan outcry over the fatal shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti and signs that the Administration may be open to pulling back federal law enforcement efforts in the city.

Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first term, will report directly to Trump, according to Trump’s announcement on Truth Social. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

In another post, Trump said he has directed Homan to give Minnesota Governor Tim Walz a call, and the Administration is looking for “any and all Criminals” that the state has in possession.

“The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future. He was happy that Tom Homan was going to Minnesota, and so am I!” Trump wrote. The tone of Trump’s second post suggested a thawing in his relationship with Walz, after weeks of the two men publicly criticizing each other.

In a similarly reconciliatory tone, Walz said in a statement that he and Trump would look into reducing the number of agents in Minnesota and work with the state in a “more coordinated fashion” during a “productive conversation.” Trump also agreed to talk to DHS to allow the state authority to conduct an independent investigation into the shooting of Pretti.

Read more: How a Partial Government Shutdown Over ICE Would Impact Immigration Enforcement

The White House tells TIME in a statement that Homan would be managing ICE operations on the ground in Minnesota and coordinating with others on ongoing fraud investigations. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during the press briefing that Homan will be the “main point of contact on the ground in Minneapolis,” while Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino will remain in charge of Customs and Border Protection.

The news comes as Trump has been less quick to defend the agents involved in the Pretti shooting than high-ranking Administration officials. In an interview on Sunday with the Wall Street Journal, Trump declined to say whether the federal agents who shot Pretti acted appropriately, only saying the administration is investigating the matter. 

“We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” Trump said. 

The Administration is scrambling to contain the fallout from Minneapolis, where Pretti’s death was the second high-profile killing by federal agents in just over two weeks, and comes amid other confrontations that have drawn outrage. On Wednesday, two ICE agents were pictured aiming a canister of pepper at a protester’s face while he was pinned down. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the incident “should alarm every American.”

Tens of thousands of protesters flooded the streets over the weekend to protest against the federal agents’ presence in the Twin Cities, as the legality of the deployment of federal agents is contested in court. On Monday, a federal judge is hearing arguments on whether the immigration operation in Minnesota violates the Constitution. The judge will then deliberate whether the operation should be halted, at least temporarily.   

Up through Pretti’s death this weekend, Bovino was and seen as the face of the immigration operations in Minnesota. On Sunday, Bovino doubled down on his defense of officers who shot Pretti, telling CNN that the officers are the victims of the incident, and that Pretti, who was legally carrying a firearm, was not entitled to the Second Amendment rights.

“Those rights don’t count when you riot and assault, delay, obstruct and impede law enforcement officers and, most especially, when you mean to do that beforehand,” he says.

A filmmaker auditioning leads for his next project has a philosophical insight. “Our ideas about heroes and gods, they only get in the way,” the eccentric Eastern European auteur Von Kovak (Zlatko Buric) lectures the actors assembled in his home for a day of offbeat dramatic exercises. “It’s too difficult to comprehend them. So, let’s get past them. Let’s find the human underneath.” This might not seem like such a profound realization for a lion of the festival circuit. But it feels downright revolutionary when you hear him say it in the new Disney+ Marvel dramedy Wonder Man. The MCU isn’t exactly known for getting past lofty ideas about heroes and gods.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

What is this guy even doing in this world, you might ask. In fact, he’s a key character in a show set not on a distant planet or in a grid of skyscrapers doomed to topple in a superpowered melee, but in a mostly realistic Los Angeles where the entertainment industry is still (and here you might have to suspend your disbelief) based. Wonder Man, whose first season will stream in full on Jan. 27, is not like other Disney+ Marvel projects. Nor is it like the other Disney+ Marvel projects that were hyped as being not like other Disney+ Marvel projects (see: Wandavision) but ultimately abandoned ambitious storytelling in favor of generic, VFX-heavy fight scenes and choppily integrated teasers for the next MCU movie. This alone might’ve made it the platform’s best Marvel show yet. But smart casting, witty writing, lively directing, and artful character development have also yielded the rare superhero riff that, as Kovak puts it, finds the human underneath.

Though its Hollywood is fleshed out with a big, delightful cast, Wonder Man is built on the skeleton of a classic two-hander. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, whose resume in this genre includes the Aquaman movies as well as HBO’s subversive Watchmen series, is our self-sabotaging would-be hero, Simon Williams, a struggling actor first seen getting fired from American Horror Story for overthinking a minor role. A cinephile obsessively devoted to his craft, he’s the kind of guy who makes notes about which books his single-scene character would be reading and expects everyone on set to care about it as much as he does. This same self-centeredness compels his girlfriend (Olivia Thirlby) to move out of their modest apartment without warning.

Drowning his woes in a Midnight Cowboy matinee, he spots a fellow thespian. Marvel fans will also recognize this character, whose sonorous British accent is audible before we see his face. It is Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery, who was introduced as an ostensible villain, the Mandarin, in a series of propaganda videos claiming credit for terrorist attacks in 2013’s Iron Man 3. You can read more than any reasonable person would want to know, on the internet, about the history of this character. But for our purposes, what’s important is that Trevor never masterminded any bombings. He was a pathetic, substance-addicted actor too high to comprehend that he was the frontman for deadly acts of terrorism—a performance he provided for the low price of free drugs.

The past decade, with its rampant conspiracy theories, has clearly taken its toll on the now-sober Trevor. “Whatever theories you’ve seen on Reddit are totally false,” he grumbles when Simon introduces himself. “I had nothing to do with Pizzagate, I’m not a member of the Illuminati, and I did not have my hands replaced by baby hands.” Simon’s surprising reply: “I always dug your performance as the Mandarin.” For both men, the play, as it were, is the thing. They speak the same culturally omnivorous language, savoring Pinter but also reminiscing about Trevor’s stint opposite Joe Pantoliano in a medical soap. (Wonder Man is the kind of show where a mention of Joey Pants reliably leads to a Joey Pants guest appearance.) They’re in similar positions, too, stuck at the fringes of their art form due to their own poor choices.

In a refreshing departure from so many impenetrable Marvel series past, creators Deston Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest expediently fill in viewers on the essential points of Trevor’s backstory. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to reveal that his and Simon’s meet-cute in the cinema is no coincidence; suffice to say that it isn’t so simple to extricate yourself from the grasp of law enforcement once you’ve been the face of a notorious terrorist organization. He isn’t the only half of this buddy comedy harboring secrets, though. In an industry that has reason to be wary of superpowered individuals, Simon’s career depends upon his ability to control his emotions.

Soon, he’s cajoling Trevor (or so he thinks) into admitting that he’s about to read for a role in a reboot of the 1980s superhero flick Wonder Man. Simon has loved the movie since he was a kid and will stop at nothing to audition for the lead. Pity his agent, Janelle, a kind but long-suffering truth teller played by the charismatic X Mayo. “You’re one of the most talented people that I know,” she tells her client. “But there’s a lot of talented people out here who are not pains in the ass.” This doesn’t stop Simon from lying his way into the casting. Trevor is, of course, waiting for him there, and their friendship develops through a series of adventures that feel authentic to the characters and setting. The Englishman tags along to a party at Simon’s childhood home, where a warm welcome from his effusive Haitian mom (Shola Adewusi from Bob Hearts Abishola) and judgmental comments from his more successful, square brother (Justified’s Demetrius Grosse) establishes the family dynamic that has made Simon so desperate to prove himself.

Wonder Man doesn’t just use Hollywood as a backdrop for a superhero story. Cretton, who broke through with the acclaimed indie film Short Term 12 before making his Marvel debut as the director and co-writer of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Guest, a network sitcom alum who scripted some of the best episodes of Community, demonstrate a genuine affection for the setting. As wonderfully portrayed by Buric, the Wonder Man reboot’s director is every European artiste absorbed into the American studio system cut with a dose of Werner Herzog’s gloom; his mansion could be a museum of Hollywood Regency decadence. The show is equally witty about the quirks of the 21st century movie business. Simon takes Trevor to record a self-tape audition at a janky, nautical-themed storefront studio called Ahoy Tapes. In a standalone episode that makes hilarious use of Josh Gad, guest-starring as himself (and recalls Guest’s Community highlights), a nightclub doorman (Byron Bowers) finds stardom when he touches a mysterious goo and his body becomes a literal door that people can pass through.

Judging by the glut of films and series set on studio lots, screenwriters have taken the age-old advice to write what they know to heart. Wonder Man might sound redundant the year after Apple gave us Seth Rogen’s excellent The Studio, which shares its fun guest casting and we-kid-because-we-love approach to Hollywood satire. (One of Simon’s rivals for the Wonder Man role got his start as “Paul Thomas Anderson’s surfing instructor.”) Marvel also feels a bit late to the meta-superhero show concept; Watchmen and Amazon’s The Boys both debuted in 2019. HBO’s dour, short-lived MCU sendup The Franchise came and went in 2024. What makes Wonder Man fresh despite all the competition is the care with which Simon, Trevor, and their fraught relationship are rendered by Abdul-Mateen, Kingsley, and the creators. Characters this vivid and enjoyable to spend time with are hard to find in any genre, let alone superhero fare.  

That’s not to say the show escapes every Marvel (and particularly Disney-Marvel) pitfall. Most of the female characters are underwritten; I don’t see the point of hiring a talented actor like Thirlby when her presence is going to be confined to a few scenes spread out across an eight-episode season. A story adult enough to feature cursing still can’t muster the maturity to resist the old coming-of-age cliché of superpowers as an all-purpose metaphor for the innate differences that make people special. Yet this all feels very forgivable when you arrive at the season finale, and it’s an episode focused on advancing character arcs rather than having those characters shoot lasers at each other from high up in the heavens. More than any live-action Marvel show that Disney+ has produced before, Wonder Man accomplishes what Netflix did with Jessica Jones and FX did with Legion (while also creating a much lighter viewing experience). It gives people with no interest in superheroes for superheroes’ sake reason to watch—all the way to the end.

As Minneapolis reels after a second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen at the hands of federal agents, some Republicans have joined their Democrat colleagues in calling for a full, urgent investigation into what happened.

Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse at a VA hospital, was shot on Saturday morning after being surrounded by Border Patrol agents amid ongoing protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the city. Videos of his final moments, showing him being sprayed with a substance and pinned down to the ground, have since gone viral. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a statement stating Pretti had “approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told press that Pretti was believed to be a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry. Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff of policy and homeland security adviser, referred to Pretti as a “would-be assassin.” In the videos circulating online, Pretti is not seen holding the handgun during his interactions with the federal agents.

Trump, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, appeared to criticize Pretti for bringing a handgun to the protest. “I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it,” Trump said, before adding: “But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”

The President said his Administration is “reviewing everything and will come out with a determination” about the fatal shooting. On Monday morning, Trump followed up by announcing he is sending his border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota. “Tom is tough but fair, and will report directly to me,” he said.

Trump previously lashed out via social media at the Democratic leadership of Minnesota and appeared to refer to the shooting as a “cover-up” for the ongoing fraud investigations taking place in the state.

He also suggested Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had “called off” local police. “It is stated that many of these police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to protect themselves,” he claimed. “The Mayor and the Governor are inciting insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric.”

Making reference to Renee Good, another 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, Trump placed the blame on Democrats, claiming: “Tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos.”

Walz has said America is at an “inflection point” following the fatal shooting of Pretti and asked Americans to “set aside the political side of it and go back and ground in the humanity of this.” The former Vice Presidential candidate also repeated his request for Trump to “pull his 3,000 untrained agents out of Minnesota before they kill another American in the street.”

Late Monday morning, Trump suggested progress had been made in communications between himself and Walz. He said the two had shared “a very good call” and claimed they “seemed to be on a similar wavelength.” Trump hinted at a bipartisan approach to the next steps in Minneapolis, stating his intention for Homan to make contact with Walz as he arrives in his state.

Meanwhile, Democrats over the weekend indicated they are willing to enact a partial government shutdown, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said his party would oppose a funding bill that would allocate over $64.4 billion to the DHS, including around $10 billion for ICE.

Despite Trump’s previous remarks blaming Democrats for the “chaos” in Minneapolis, a growing number of lawmakers within his own party have splintered from his rhetoric. They are instead calling for a “transparent” investigation into the latest Minneapolis shooting and a hard look into the tactics being used by federal agents.

Here are some of the Republicans who are taking that stance:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska

Lisa Murkowski, who is part of a bipartisan effort alongside Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire to introduce a bill to block Trump from taking over Greenland, has called for a “comprehensive, independent investigation” in order to “rebuild trust.”

She said the fatal shooting “should raise serious questions within the Administration about the adequacy of immigration-enforcement training and the instructions officers are given on carrying out their mission.”

Distancing herself from the DHS and Trump’s focus on Pretti carrying a handgun, she argued: “Carrying a firearm does not justify federal agents killing an American—especially, as video footage appears to show, after the victim had been disarmed.”

Urging Congressional committees “to hold hearings and do their oversight work,” she finished her statement by warning that “ICE agents do not have carte blanche in carrying out their duties.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana

Bill Cassidy, who serves on the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, described the events in Minneapolis as “incredibly disturbing” and said the “credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake” following the shooting. 

“There must be a full joint federal and state investigation. We can trust the American people with the truth,” he urged, echoing Walz’s assertion that the state must be involved in any official reviews of the incident.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine

Susan Collins, chair of the Appropriations Committee, issued a statement calling for the “tragic” shooting to be “thoroughly and transparently investigated to determine whether or not excessive force was used in a situation that may have been able to be diffused without violence.”

Joining the growing number of Republicans to raise concerns about ICE training, she said the shooting “further underscores the importance of equipping federal law enforcement agents with training and body cameras for their safety and the safety of the public.”

Collins implored protesters “not to interfere” with ICE operations, while reminding officers of “the public’s right to protest and the highly charged situation they now face.”

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina

Thom Tillis called for a “thorough and impartial” investigation into the incident and stepped away from issuing blame at Democratic leadership.

He said a full investigation is the “basic standard that law enforcement and the American people expect following any officer-involved shooting” and urged for transparency between “federal, state, and local law enforcement.”

Emphasizing the necessity for the investigation to be carried out uninterrupted, he said: “Any Administration official who rushes to judgment and tries to shut down an investigation before it begins are doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump’s legacy.”

Tillis, who announced last year that he will not seek reelection after a series of high-profile clashes with the President, has opposed the Trump Administration on several key issues as of late.

Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska

“The nation witnessed a horrifying situation this weekend,” said Pete Ricketts.

The lawmaker stated that his “support for funding ICE remains the same” and argued the enforcement of immigration laws “makes our streets safe” and “protects our national security.” However, he noted that America must “maintain [its] core values as a nation, including the right to protest and assemble.”

“I expect a prioritized, transparent investigation into this incident,” he said, joining several of his colleagues. 

Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas

Michael McCaul said he is “troubled by the events that have unfolded in Minneapolis” and said a “thorough investigation is necessary—both to get to the bottom of these incidents and to maintain Americans’ confidence in our justice system.”

“I look forward to hearing from DHS officials about what happened here and how we can prevent further escalation in the future,” he said, urging “both sides” to turn down the temperature.

Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma 

Kevin Stitt called the shooting of Pretti a “real tragedy” and argued that Trump is “getting bad advice” on immigration.

“Americans don’t like what they’re seeing right now,” he told CNN, in response to the latest fatal shooting. “What’s the goal right now? Is it to deport every single non-U.S. citizen? I don’t think that’s what Americans want. We have to stop politicizing this”

Sen. Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania

Dave McCormick echoed Trump’s rhetoric about Democrats, accusing Minnesota’s politicians of “fueling a dangerous situation.”

He also expressed his support for immigration enforcement, however he called for a review into what happened in Minneapolis and urged for law enforcement that coincides with public safety.

“We need a full investigation into the tragedy in Minneapolis. We need all the facts. We must enforce our laws in a way that protects the public while maintaining its trust,” he said. “This gives our law enforcement officers the best chance to succeed in their difficult mission.”

Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont 

Phil Scott called the killing in Minneapolis unacceptable. 

“At best, these federal immigration operations are a complete failure of coordination of acceptable public safety and law enforcement practices, training, and leadership,” he said. “At worst, it’s a deliberate federal intimidation and incitement of American citizens that’s resulting in the murder of Americans. Again, enough is enough.”

The Governor called on Trump to “pause these operations, de-escalate the situation, and reset the federal government’s focus on truly criminal illegal immigrants.”

In 2026, TIME will publish its first-ever ranking of America’s Top WorkTech Companies, in partnership with Statista, a leading international provider of market and consumer data.

This list identifies the most impactful and financially strong companies that have established themselves as leaders in shaping how people and organizations work. These companies make products including HR technology, and tools for workforce management, employee experience, learning and development, and workplace operations.

Companies that focus primarily on developing and providing WorkTech solutions are encouraged to submit applications as part of the research phase. An application guarantees consideration for the list, but does not guarantee a spot on the list, nor is the final list limited to applicants.

Click here to apply.

The application period will be open until March 1, 2026, and the final list will be published in June 2026 on TIME.com.