Better in their words…

Mostly peaceful protests swell nurse shot; Trump demands cooperation; Bondi serves Walz; shutdown threats loom; WHO tries reset; Texas crackdown at DMV; testimony rocks healthcare hearings; more.

Source: JUSTIFIED ☙ Monday, January 26, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS

ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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Unsurprisingly, the weekend’s loudest story splashed onto the front pages again this morning, about the peaceful Minneapolis nurse who was minding his own business and innocently playing with his bear horn and practicing his wrestling techniques when he was suddenly and unexpectedly murdered by ICE agents for no reason. The New York Times ran this morning’s top-of-page story under the headline, “How the Trump Administration Rushed to Judgment in Minneapolis Shooting.”

To be clear, the Times’s story was not referring to the Athens, Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, who was abducted by an illegal immigrant while she was jogging and then raped, murdered, and stuffed in the bushes. The Times isn’t concerned about that nurse, nor did it run days of multi-story coverage about her. Don’t be silly.

No, it was a completely different nurse who was, in an ironic twist on Laken’s story, shot while defending illegal alien criminals from federal agents. Even more ironically, Mr. Pretti used a very different standard for avoiding risks during covid:

Had he followed his own ‘safety-first’ covid advice, he might still be here today to help agonize over all the different video angles of the incident that the media has been obsessing over.

This is already a widely discussed story, so I won’t dwell on the details. Plus, I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there when Pretti was shot while federal agents were dealing with his “peaceful arrest-resisting.” It seems self-evident that going to violent, chaotic protests, shouting obscenities, blowing bear horns in agents’ faces, interfering when they tried to subdue another protester, carrying a semi-auto with extra magazines, and wrestling with officers in a high-adrenaline encounter carries known risks of an unfortunate misunderstanding and tragic outcome.

Nurse Pretti stayed home to avoid the risk of a mild viral infection, but he practically sprinted to a tumultuous street protest, armed, and grappled with law enforcement. Make it make sense.

🔥 The blame-game is off and running. The Times and Democrats claim the shooting was unjustified. But, if millions of people carefully flyspecking the incident frame-by-frame, from multiple angles and videos, can’t even agree whether Pretti touched his gun or tried to reach his holster, how on Earth are officers involved in the scrum expected to tell in the heat of the moment and in a split second?

The fact that this debate has raged for so long without any clarity is evidence of ambiguity, which must accrue in the officers’ favor. We can’t ask citizens to enforce laws and then hold them to impossible standards. If anyone is at fault, it is the Minnesota authorities, whose inept decisions created the high-risk conditions leading straight to the shooting.

Think about it. There have been no police shootings in jurisdictions like Florida that cooperate with federal authorities, instead of undermining them. This chart, which shows ICE arrests as a proportion of illegal immigrant population, tells the whole story:

The apparent outlier, the District of Columbia, is under federal control, so it should be considered a red state for the chart’s purposes. Put simply, the chart proves that blue states are resisting immigration enforcement. They refuse simple cooperation, such as handing over aliens from their jails, prisons, and hospitals. So ICE must go into those communities to find the aliens. Meanwhile, activists track ICE and organize insta-riots, which leads to more demonstrations and more chances for ugly encounters like the Pretti shooting.

I’m sorry Mr. Pretti lost his life due to his poor choices. But considering the risks these states and protesters are obviously creating for themselves and others, it’s a miracle there have only been two deaths so far.

🔥 It’s also worth noting that the streets of Minneapolis (-17 degrees) were calm until just after Operation Metro Surge began in response to the Quality Learing fraud. Are the protests a cover up? Yesterday, President Trump posted this:

He immediately followed that post with an even longer one, “formally” demanding that blue states begin cooperating with immigration enforcement:

Also yesterday —and the timing cannot be ignored— CBS reported, “Bondi seeks Minnesota voter rolls, welfare data to “help bring back law and order” in wake of shootings.” Yesterday (Sunday!), in the wake of the ugly Pretti shooting, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired off a 3-page letter to Minnesota’s Coach-in-Chief, Tim Walz, setting terms for a mutual climb down. CBS didn’t bother linking the letter. (But here it is!)

She wants three things. Bondi’s letter first demanded that the state “share all of Minnesota’s records on Medicaid and Food and Nutrition Service programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program data … to efficiently investigate fraud and ensure that Minnesota’s welfare funds are being used to help those in need, not enrich fraudsters.”

For some reason, CBS’s story didn’t mention Bondi’s first demand, relating to the fraud, till later down the story. But it seems significant that fraud was her first issue.

Second, “repeal the sanctuary policies that have led to so much crime and violence in your state” and cooperate with ICE, including allowing access to local jails and honoring federal detention requests. Third, “allow the DOJ to access voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law.”

Seems simple enough. Bondi offered some more advice. “Do not obstruct federal immigration enforcement,” Bondi advised. “Do not allow rioters to take over the streets and houses of worship; do not hinder federal officials from investigating financial fraud and violations of election laws.” She optimistically concluded, “I am confident that these simple steps will help bring back law and order to Minnesota and improve the lives of Americans.”

Haha! Too optimistic! Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon shot back with a statement last night saying, “The answer to Attorney General Bondi’s request is no.” Alrighty then.

So where are we? It seems like the unstoppable force is colliding with the immovable object— Tim Walz’s granite noggin. It’s hard to predict where this ends up, but it isn’t Trump’s first rodeo with Minneapolis. Somehow, I doubt it’s a coincidence that this frozen showdown is happening there. Somewhere, George Floyd’s ghost is shaking his head.

🔥 Related: here we go again! Yesterday, the Associated Press reported, “Democrats vow to oppose homeland security funds after Minnesota shooting as shutdown risk grows.” Get ready for another government shutdown! Amidst a DC snowstorm that closed Congress today, the Friday deadline to complete a spending package is racing toward us like a herd of smelly anti-ICE protesters. Since Mr. Pretti got himself shot, furious Senate Democrats are now demanding the defunding of ICE.

It’s not clear what form a new government shutdown would take, or to what extent it will occur. Six short-term spending bills (half of them) have already been passed. Some media platforms are talking about a ‘partial shutdown,’ whatever that is, or whether anyone could even detect it without scientific instruments.

The shutdown threat seems especially silly and irrational since Democrats can’t stop immigration enforcement anyway. ICE and CBP are classified as “essential operations,” and are currently funded several years in advance. All Democrats can do is value-signal and give non-essential DHS staff paid vacations. Again.

Republicans clearly saw this fight coming, or something like it, since this timethey wisely split the spending package into an even dozen bills. Since they obviously have a plan, I wonder what the rest of it looks like? Prepare popcorn.

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The World Health Organization is now adrift in its little lifeboat, since the U.S. has finally and formally withdrawn from the global “health” agency. But what really grabbed its short hairs was Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s rationale for the US pullout— that the WHO had demanded destructive lockdowns and authoritarian vaccine mandates during the pandemic. On Saturday, the organization’s multisyllabic director tried to retcon its role in toppling the world:

That is a fat lie. Unsurprisingly, it immediately provoked all the vicious social media mocking you could hope for. (Unfortunately for the WHO, its pandemic-era efforts to lock down social media aren’t working anymore.) It’s true that the WHO lacked the direct power to mandate anything (though it tried like the dickens to gain that power, and nearly succeeded). Nevertheless, its “guidances” indirectly shaped the pandemic response and gave cover to every slippery authoritarian eel in the world. Remember this?

The WHO provided the excuse for all the so-called mitigations. I should know; I litigated these issues. Governments, right down to the county health department, cited “WHO guidance” right along with “CDC guidance.” All participating countries —most of the world— credulously and enthusiastically hung on its every tweeted word.

The WHO was wrong about every bit of it. Dead wrong. Who knows how many millions more died because of the WHO’s horrible “guidance?” How on Earth is Tedros Whateveritis Hunnamomba still running the WHO?

Good riddance. Thank you, Secretary Kennedy for poking the WHO’s yellowed eyeball.

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Last week, the Austin American-Statesman ran an unintentionally terrific story headlined, “Texas DMV plan to tighten ID for car registrations draws backlash.”

Last week, the Texas DMV announced a rule change requiring proof of citizenship to register a car in the Lone Star State. “While the proposal is popular among some voters,” the Statesman admitted, “it would make it effectively impossible for Texans without legal immigration status to register a car.” Poor babies.

And, “Texans without legal immigration status?” The article made it sound like they just forgot to pay their most recent Hulu bill or something.

Popular among some voters. The alert reader might rightly wonder: among which voters this proposal wasn’t popular? The answer quickly emerged: car dealers. In his testimony at Wednesday’s rules hearing, Dallas auto dealer Octavio Vasquez argued that it shouldn’t be the dealer’s job to enforce immigration law. “My job is: Sell the car, collect the money, submit the tax money to the state,” Vasquez said. “We don’t care if they carry papers. That’s none of my business.”

Previously, before this rule change, county tag offices could accept a wide range of identification documents, including expired foreign passports or a note from an amigo.

Encouragingly —though the dealers didn’t see it that way— another Dallas car seller, Emily Sanchez, testified despondently that year-over-year sales at her dealership (which primarily serves Hispanic buyers) dropped 50% from November through January.

Undoubtedly, it was bad news for Señorita Sanchez. But to me, that shows its working.

Historically, lots of these common-sense rule changes —like not letting illegal aliens register cars, an unimaginably awful idea— have always floated away down the Rio Grande, due to opposition from entrenched interests, like car dealers. But now the politics have profoundly changed, and people are focusing on the right things again.

Progress!

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Last week, Reuters ran an eye-opening article headlined, “US lawmakers press health insurance executives on affordability.” Representative Jason Smith (R-Mo.) published a clip from the Ways and Means Committee Hearing that is, perhaps, the best short explainer of everything wrong with Obamacare and our ‘healthcare’ system. It should be mandatory viewing for all Americans.

CLIP: Vice-chair Buchanan asks Big Insurance about vertical integration(1:16).

The January 22nd hearing on “Healthcare Affordability” was attended by a panel of stern-looking Big Health Insurance CEOs, like Stephen Hemsley (UnitedHealth), David Joyner (CVS), David Cordani (Cigna), and Gail Boudreaux (Elevance). If you have a spare day and an enormous appetite for healthcare policy talk, here’s a link to the whole fascinating hearing on CNBC(5 hours).

At one point during the hearing, Representative Smith, Chairman of Ways and Means, asked the assembled CEOs a series of pointed questions about their companies. Here’s a rough transcript:

SMITH: Which of your companies owns or controls a health insurance division? Raise your hand.

CEOs: All raise hands.

SMITH: Please keep your hand up if you also employ healthcare providers, or own clinics, specialty pharmacies, or any other kind of medical practice or pharmacy?

CEOs: All raise hands.

SMITH: Please keep your hand up if you also own or control a pharmacy benefit manager?

CEOs: All raise hands.

SMITH: Please keep your hand up if you lead a publicly traded company at which you have a legal responsibility to maximize shareholder value?

CEOs: All raise hands.

Chairman Smith wrapped up the electrifying segment like this: “We’ve established on the record that the largest health insurance companies are not just insurers. They’re also medical providers and pharmacies, diagnosing and deciding treatment for patients. They are also PBMs, another form of middlemen, managing drug benefits. They are increasingly controlling every aspect of our healthcare system.”

In other words, Obamacare created a three-tier system: hospitals, doctors, and pharmacies on the bottom; “pharmacy benefit managers” to negotiate drug prices in the middle; and insurance companies at the top. The big insurance companies responded to this perverse incentive by buying up the whole stack. Now they control the entire health process from stem to stern. No wonder their stock prices skyrocketed 10x since Obamacare was passed.

Meanwhile, patients’ health outcomes have plunged.

So it tracks that Representative Nathanial Moran (R-TX) asked them, “How many of you would agree with Leader Jeffries that we have a broken healthcare system?” Four of the five CEOs immediately raised their hands. The fifth —Boudreaux— saw the glass half full. She partially raised her hand and said, “I think we have an incredible opportunity to fix our system.” She’s an upbeat kind of lady.

In any case, the insurance CEOs all agreed. The system is broken.

Remember, the Democrats started this. “Affordability,” Reuters reported, “is seen as a key issue in this year’s elections that will decide control of Congress.” Democrats’ broken-record suggestion during the hearing was more giant subsidies to the insurance companies, which is what got us into this situation in the first place.

But Republicans have their eyes on much bigger reform. While everyone’s attention is glued to the freezing fracas in Minnesota, there is more happening on Capitol Hill than you might think. Stay tuned.

Have a marvelous Monday! Coffee & Covid will return tomorrow morning, right here, same time, with more essential news and skeptical commentary.

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