Alex Jeffrey Pretti was 37 years old, an intensive care nurse at the VA hospital in Minneapolis...
January 25, 2026 (Sunday)
Yesterday, A woman is shoved to the ground. He moves to help her. Seconds later, he is dead.
Within hours, the White House calls him a domestic terrorist.
One act of courage. Two words to erase it.
Alex Jeffrey Pretti was 37 years old, an intensive care nurse at the VA hospital in Minneapolis, a man who spent his working hours holding the hands of dying veterans. In December, he stood at the bedside of a man named Terry Randolph (Air Force, Libya) as the family gathered to say goodbye. Someone recorded it. Pretti says: “We remember that freedom is not free. We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it.”
Six weeks later, federal agents would shoot him ten times in five seconds while he lay on the ground.
He had a dog named Joule, a Catahoula Leopard, who died last year. A neighbor remembered watching him carry the old dog down to the yard when Joule couldn’t walk anymore. Sitting with him in the grass, petting him for long stretches, letting him feel the sun. “He was very caring,” she said. “You could tell.”
He had parents in Wisconsin who told him two weeks earlier to be careful at the protests. Go ahead and protest, they said. But do not engage. Do not do anything stupid.
He said he knew. He knew.
___________
The videos exist. Multiple angles. Verified by the Associated Press, The New York Times, NBC, CBS. A woman in a pink coat stood on the sidewalk filming. Because of her, we know what happened.
A federal agent shoves a woman to the ground. A woman who had been recording them with her phone. Pretti steps toward her. Not toward the agents. Toward her. His phone is in his hand. Video shows an agent spray him in the face. He reaches for her coat as agents swarm. They drag him backward, wrestle him to the ground. He is prone. Surrounded.
Then the shots. Ten rounds in five seconds.
Then stillness.
His gun—the legal gun, the gun he had a permit to carry, the gun his neighbors didn’t even know he owned—was not in his hand. Video shows an agent walking away holding a handgun after leaning over Pretti’s body.
They disarmed him. Then they killed him.
___________
Before any investigation. Before any evidence. Before the body was cold.
Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller: “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”
An ICU nurse who spent his last working hours with a dying veteran.
A man whose last act was pulling a stranger out of the way of federal agents.
Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, at a press conference that lasted two questions:
“This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
A reporter asked: Did he brandish the weapon?
“This situation is evolving. Those facts will come to light.”
Bovino took one more question. Then he ended the press conference and walked away.
The conclusion was not evolving. The conclusion was already out. Domestic terrorist. Would-be assassin. Case closed. Investigation ongoing.
After the shooting, a crowd gathered. They screamed at the agents. Called them cowards. Told them to go home.
One agent, walking away, turned back.
“Boo hoo.”
____________
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The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension tried to access the crime scene. They obtained a warrant signed by a judge. Federal agents blocked them anyway. The warrant meant nothing to them.
Several witnesses were transferred to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. Taken from the scene where they had just watched him die.
The investigation will be conducted by the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS will investigate DHS.
On September 25, 2025, the President signed NSPM-7: “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” It defines the threat as “anti-fascism.” It says comparing the administration to fascism is “directly responsible” for terrorism. It directs the FBI to coordinate a national strategy. It instructs the IRS to strip tax-exempt status. It orders the Treasury to freeze assets.
The order does not create a designation process for individuals. There is no charge called “domestic terrorism.” The label is whatever they say it is.
Four months later: a woman in a car. A woman with a phone. A nurse on the ground.
Governor Walz: “They killed a man, created chaos, and then we’re left to clean up.”
The Timberwolves game was postponed. The city went quiet. The memorial grew: flowers, candles, a circle of light where he fell.
___________
1961
Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist from the Caribbean who moved to North Africa and joined the Algerian revolution against French colonial rule. He spent his days treating patients on both sides, watching what violence did to the mind. He watched the French call the resistance “terrorists.” He watched the label do its work.
In The Wretched of the Earth, published the year he died, he wrote: “The agents of government speak the language of pure force.”
When the colonizer calls the colonized a terrorist, the word doesn’t describe what someone did. It announces what the state is about to do to them. The label is the permission slip.
Fanon watched this in Algeria. The French tortured, massacred, disappeared people, and called it restoring order.
The colonizer’s violence was law. The native’s existence was terrorism.
Sixty years later. Minneapolis. Same grammar.
A woman holds a phone, recording federal agents. An ICE agent is photographing her car. She asks why. He replies: “Cuz we have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist. So have fun with that.”
A woman sits in her car. Domestic terrorist.
A nurse lies on the ground, disarmed, surrounded. Domestic terrorist.
The word doesn’t describe what they did. It describes what was done to them.
___________
The Pattern
Renee Good. January 7. Shot through her car window. Labeled a domestic terrorist within hours. They said she “weaponized her vehicle.” The video showed her trying to drive away.
Alex Pretti. January 24. Shot ten times in five seconds on the ground. Labeled a domestic terrorist within hours. They said he tried to “massacre law enforcement.” The video showed him pulling a woman out of harm’s way.
The woman in Maine. January 23. Recording federal agents with her phone. Told she’s now in a database of domestic terrorists.
Seventeen days. Three Americans. The same word.
A car is a weapon. A phone is a weapon. A gun in a holster—removed by agents before the shooting—is a weapon.
The only weapon that matters is the word itself.
___________
The Innocence
The comments came within hours.
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” “Shouldn’t have brought a gun to a protest.” “One less antifa.”
They needed him to deserve it.
His father told the Associated Press that Alex cared about people deeply. That he gave a Latino handyman a $100 tip because he was worried about what federal agents were doing to people who looked like him. His ex-wife said he felt injustice deeply. She wasn’t surprised he’d been out there. His mother said he cared immensely about the direction the country was headed.
A neighbor said he would always be willing to help others. She remembered him carrying his elderly dog to the yard.
The cruelty feels like justice. The indifference feels like strength. Baldwin warned us: it is always the innocence that constitutes the crime.
The people who believe Alex Pretti was a terrorist will never look at the video. Will never ask why agents needed to fire ten rounds in five seconds into a prone man. Will never wonder what kind of country labels a nurse a terrorist before the investigation begins.
They cannot afford to wonder.
____________
The Grammar
Domestic terrorist.
Applied to a nurse. Applied to a man who held dying veterans’ hands. Applied to a man whose last act was reaching for a stranger on the ground.
Because of the woman in the pink coat, we saw it. Because she stood there filming while federal agents killed a man, the video exists. Without her, they would say it never happened. Without her, there would be no memorial, no flowers, no candles. Just a statement from DHS and a body.
She is still out there. So is her video. So is the warrant the federal agents ignored. So is the federal building where they took the witnesses.
Renee Good. January 7.
Alex Pretti. January 24.
A woman with a phone. A woman in a car. A nurse on the ground.
The label comes first. The evidence never comes. The violence is the point. The word is just the permission slip.
The agents of government speak the language of pure force.
You learned the grammar. Now you know how the sentence ends.
Please go here for the original article and notes & sources: https://thehumanityarchive.substack.com/p/domestic-terrorist
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