The New Yorker :: @NewYorker :: An advance look at the cover for next week’s issue: “Targeted,” by Till Lauer.

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 28, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 29, 2026

Federal agents continue to rain terror on Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other U.S. cities including Portland and Lewiston, Maine. That violence has made it crystal clear that the goal of attacking immigrants is not simply to create a white nation; it is also to terrorize Americans into accepting the domination of MAGA Republicans.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has delivered the Department of Justice into the service of this project. The Department of Justice is not investigating the killings of Renee Good or Alex Pretti and so evidently intended to cover up information about the shooting of Pretti that a judge ordered its officers not to destroy evidence.

On Monday, four Democrats from the House Committee on the Judiciary wrote to Bondi noting that “[f]ederal agents have now gunned down and killed two American citizens—Renée Good and Alex Pretti—in Minneapolis. Videos taken by bystanders who observed and documented these killings leave little doubt that there is no legal or moral justification for these cold-blooded homicides. Yet, under your leadership, the Department of Justice (DOJ)—an agency created in 1870 at the height of post–Civil War Reconstruction to enforce the civil rights of all Americans—actively obstructed any investigation into these killings, and instead of defending the civil rights of Americans, now appears to be covering up the most egregious civil rights offenses and systematically condoning the lawless killing of Americans by agents of the government.”

The four Democratic representatives—Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania, and Lucy McBath of Georgia—noted that Bondi’s refusal to investigate the deaths was unprecedented, and demanded the department provide all documents and information related to the killings by February 2, including those showing who ordered the department to abandon the investigations.

On Monday, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, appointed by President George W. Bush, suggested his patience with ICE had run out. After officials apparently ignored his order to permit a detainee to have a bond hearing or release him, he ordered Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, to appear in court on Friday to explain why he wasn’t in contempt of court. On Tuesday, the government released the detainee.

Today Schiltz canceled the Friday hearing but went on to rake ICE over the coals. He identified “96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases” and commented, “The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated.”

“This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” Schiltz warned that he would haul Lyons or other government officials into court if they kept ignoring court rulings. “ICE is not a law unto itself,” he wrote.

Malcolm Ferguson of The New Republic reported today that because the federal government won’t hold ICE and Border Patrol agents accountable for their actions, elected prosecutors around the country have launched a group called Fight Against Federal Overreach, or FAFO. This acronym is more commonly used to represent the saying: “F*ck Around and Find Out.”

Today Bondi traveled to Minnesota, not to restore the rule of law but apparently to try to reclaim the narrative of the crackdown in Minneapolis for the administration. In a social media post, she said that federal agents had arrested “16 Minnesota rioters for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement—people who have been resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement agents. We expect more arrests to come. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: NOTHING will stop President Trump and this Department of Justice from enforcing the law.”

She then posted images of 11 of those arrested. They are facing the camera, while the federal agents standing next to them have their backs to the camera. Journalist Matt Novak commented that the photos make the “rioters,” looking at the camera, appear to be heroes, while the ICE agents look like cowards, afraid to be seen. “Bondi thinks she’s going to win the propaganda war with this sh*t,” Novak wrote, “but it’s never been more clear that they’re losing.”

The department charged the 16 with assaulting immigration agents, but the judge overseeing the court where they were charged said she was “deeply disturbed” that Bondi had posted the photographs. In the United States of America, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The government should not post their images suggesting otherwise. “This conduct is not something that the court condones,” Judge Dulce J. Foster said.

G. Elliott Morris of Strength In Numbers reported yesterday that federal agents’ killing of Good and Pretti has created a backlash that amounts to a tipping point. The number of American adults who approve of Trump’s presidency has dropped to a new low: 39.2%. Support for his immigration policies has also collapsed, dropping 18 points from its highest point to put it at –10 now. On deportation, Morris says, he is at -12.

Morris notes that these averages may overestimate Trump’s support, as when Americans hear the world immigration now, they don’t think of migrants under an overpass in south Texas, but of an “ICE officer killing a woman in her car and calling her a ‘f*cking bitch’” or a “regular guy being shot 10 times in the back after being tackled to the ground and disarmed.” Morris shows that Americans have moved dramatically toward abolishing ICE: 46% of Americans now support abolishing the agency,, while only 43% oppose getting rid of it.

Today, music legend Bruce Springsteen posted a song called “Streets of Minneapolis.” “I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis,” he wrote. “It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free.”

As the administration loses control over the national narrative, MAGA domination may well depend on stealing the 2026 and 2028 elections. Hours after federal agents killed Alex Pretti last Saturday, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota governor Tim Walz blaming Democrats for the violence and suggesting that to “bring an end to the chaos in Minnesota,” the governor must give the Department of Justice access to the state’s voter rolls “to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960. Fulfilling this common sense request will better guarantee free and fair elections and boost confidence in the rule of law.”

Tying aggressive immigration enforcement to access to voter rolls is a different justification for the DOJ’s continuing demands for state voter rolls. According to Eileen O’Connor of the Brennan Center for Justice, since May 2025 the Trump administration has demanded complete voter rolls, including sensitive information, from at least 44 states and the District of Columbia. When most refused, the Department of Justice began in September 2025 to sue for them. So far, it has sued 24 of those jurisdictions.

Abby Vesoulis and Ari Berman of Mother Jones note that Minnesota has the highest turnout rate of any state and is often cited as a model for election security. The journalists also note that right-wing activists have sought voter data for decades as part of their quest to prove that noncitizen voting is a huge problem in the country, an accusation that has been repeatedly debunked.

The federal government has no authority to oversee state elections systems. The 1960 Civil Rights Act Bondi cites as authority says that the attorney general may request records “relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting in such election.” But it specifies that the DOJ must provide “the basis and the purpose” for the request. Until now, Bondi has claimed that the DOJ wants to make sure lists are maintained correctly, but tying state violence to the voter rolls is an ominous sign.

“Here’s the bottom line…they’re not entitled to that data,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes told Yunior Rivas of Democracy Docket. “This isn’t leadership. This is blackmail. This is the way organized crime works. They move into your neighborhood, they start beating everybody up, and then they extort what they want. This is not how America is supposed to work, and I’m embarrassed that the administration is pushing in this direction.”

Today the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant at the elections warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize ballots from the 2020 presidential election. It appears President Donald J. Trump and his loyalists remain determined to convince Americans that the election was stolen through voter fraud despite zero evidence of such a theft, five years in which Trump’s claims have been thoroughly debunked, and the dismissal of dozens of court cases.

On January 2, 2021, Trump tried for an hour to persuade Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” 11,780 votes for Trump, one more than he needed to steal the state’s electoral votes from Democrat Joe Biden, the presidential candidate the Georgia people had chosen. When Raffensperger refused, Trump suggested Raffensperger could have committed a crime by refusing to do as Trump demanded.

That story has been in the news again lately, as Trump told the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 21 that “everybody now knows” the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

Former special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on January 22. A grand jury indicted Trump on four counts related to that attempt, but Trump’s reelection to the presidency halted the case. Smith reiterated his conviction that there was enough evidence that Trump committed crimes to convict him.

And now, according to journalist Jen Psaki of The Briefing with Jen Psaki, Trump’s administration has seized the physical ballots from the 2020 election, all tabulator tapes, and all ballot images from the original ballot count, breaking the line of custody and contaminating the files. Crucially, they also seized all voter rolls from Fulton County. “This is a seismic event,” Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) told Psaki. “This should have people across the country absolutely shook. This is a huge deal. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton County elections office.... This is a shot across the bow at the midterm elections. He tried to steal power when he lost it in 2020.” Ossoff warned that Americans must be prepared as Trump tries to take away Americans’ right to choose their elected officials in 2026.

On January 6, 2026, Trump explained to Republican lawmakers: “You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN