Is Minnesota Trump’s Waterloo? (with Ed Luce)
Episode
66 min
Read time
3 min
Topics
Career Growth, Relationships, Investing
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Visual Evidence Impact: Approximately 70-75% of Americans viewed videos of both the Renee Goode and Alex Preddy shootings, according to Economist YouGov polling. This viewership exceeds Super Bowl audiences and most blockbuster movies. The widespread visual documentation creates accountability pressure that Trump cannot overwhelm through narrative control, unlike text-based controversies that remain confined to news-following audiences.
- ✓ICE Memo Constitutional Crisis: A previously undisclosed May 12, 2025 ICE memo signed by acting director Todd Lyons claims agents can forcibly enter homes using administrative warrants without judicial approval. This breaks from decades of Fourth Amendment precedent requiring judicial warrants for home entry. Federal courts have already begun pushback, with one judge ruling ICE violated Fourth Amendment rights in the Garrison Gibson case involving battering ram entry.
- ✓Collective Action Problem: Business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and industry groups privately express alarm about Trump policies but refuse public opposition due to fear of individual targeting. The solution requires collective action through industry bodies like Chambers of Commerce, where Trump cannot single out individual CEOs for regulatory punishment. Minnesota Chamber of Commerce demonstrated this approach by condemning the Preddy shooting collectively.
- ✓Political Miscalculation Pattern: Trump administration transformed immigration enforcement from a winning issue into a liability by using paramilitary tactics against sympathetic Americans. Alex Preddy was a Veterans Affairs nurse acting as a Good Samaritan when killed. Polling shows Trump support on immigration falling sharply among Republicans. The administration prioritized ideological mission over maintaining political advantage on their strongest issue.
- ✓Institutional Cowardice Consequences: Former Biden administration officials report employers saying they would love to hire them but it is not worth the risk of Trump retaliation. Law firms and corporations are refusing qualified candidates purely due to political fear. This creates a chilling effect where talented professionals face employment blacklisting based on prior government service, fundamentally altering professional norms and career mobility.
What It Covers
Preet Bharara and Financial Times columnist Ed Luce examine the fatal shooting of Alex Preddy by ICE agents in Minneapolis, analyzing whether this represents an inflection point for the Trump administration. They discuss institutional capitulation, the disconnect between video evidence and official narratives, and constitutional concerns about a leaked ICE memo claiming warrantless home entry authority.
Key Questions Answered
- •Visual Evidence Impact: Approximately 70-75% of Americans viewed videos of both the Renee Goode and Alex Preddy shootings, according to Economist YouGov polling. This viewership exceeds Super Bowl audiences and most blockbuster movies. The widespread visual documentation creates accountability pressure that Trump cannot overwhelm through narrative control, unlike text-based controversies that remain confined to news-following audiences.
- •ICE Memo Constitutional Crisis: A previously undisclosed May 12, 2025 ICE memo signed by acting director Todd Lyons claims agents can forcibly enter homes using administrative warrants without judicial approval. This breaks from decades of Fourth Amendment precedent requiring judicial warrants for home entry. Federal courts have already begun pushback, with one judge ruling ICE violated Fourth Amendment rights in the Garrison Gibson case involving battering ram entry.
- •Collective Action Problem: Business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and industry groups privately express alarm about Trump policies but refuse public opposition due to fear of individual targeting. The solution requires collective action through industry bodies like Chambers of Commerce, where Trump cannot single out individual CEOs for regulatory punishment. Minnesota Chamber of Commerce demonstrated this approach by condemning the Preddy shooting collectively.
- •Political Miscalculation Pattern: Trump administration transformed immigration enforcement from a winning issue into a liability by using paramilitary tactics against sympathetic Americans. Alex Preddy was a Veterans Affairs nurse acting as a Good Samaritan when killed. Polling shows Trump support on immigration falling sharply among Republicans. The administration prioritized ideological mission over maintaining political advantage on their strongest issue.
- •Institutional Cowardice Consequences: Former Biden administration officials report employers saying they would love to hire them but it is not worth the risk of Trump retaliation. Law firms and corporations are refusing qualified candidates purely due to political fear. This creates a chilling effect where talented professionals face employment blacklisting based on prior government service, fundamentally altering professional norms and career mobility.
- •Market Discipline Mechanism: Gold prices jumped 8% in one week, the highest weekly increase since the 2008 financial meltdown, signaling investor flight from dollar assets. Bond markets forced Trump to retreat on tariff threats internationally. Similarly, overwhelming public opinion on the Minnesota shootings, reflected across New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Post editorial boards, creates domestic pressure Trump cannot ignore.
Notable Moment
Ed Luce notes that both Renee Goode and Alex Preddy displayed no fear during their encounters with armed federal agents, suggesting they believed they lived in an America where unarmed citizens face no lethal danger from law enforcement during routine interactions. Their expressions and words moments before death revealed they had not yet recognized the country had changed around them.
Episode Transcript
From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Preet Bharara. The Trump always chickens out thing works when he meets a force he cannot overwhelm. You cannot overwhelm 70 to 75% of America seeing these videos hearing bloodtoddling justifications for the execution of the kind of American you know would be shoveling the steps outside your house. That's Ed Luce. He's The US national editor and a columnist at the Financial Times, where he writes about US politics, foreign policy, and all things Trump. He joins me to discuss the fatal shooting of another US citizen in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents, and why this moment could prove to be an inflection point for the Trump administration. We also discuss the broader pattern of the capitulation on the part of leaders and institutions, and what it will take for more of them to speak out publicly against the President. At the end of the episode, I answer your questions about a leaked ICE memo claiming agents can enter a Target's home without a warrant, and a far fetched hypothetical about Canada becoming a fifty first state, and more. That's coming up. Stay tuned. Are we at a turning point? Ed Luce shares his thoughts on why the recent events in Minnesota could be more consequential than we think. Ed Luce, welcome back to the show. Delighted to be with you as ever, Preet. So I called you Ed, and I recall from our last meeting together, our last splendid time on the program, you you said you'd you'd rather be Eduardo Luce. Can you can you remind listeners why Ed Luce is not good enough for you and Eduardo Luce is your aspiration? So it's two monosyllables. It sounds like sort of Bob Smith. Eduardo Lice just sounds like the kind of guy attractive Italian and French women would flock towards. Many, many lovers. Yes. Eduardo Lice probably has probably has too many lovers. Right? Yeah. But before any sort of has set racing in people's heads about my grandiose pretensions, I'm extremely happily married and in in in firmly deep into middle age. Well, I'm glad you cleared that up because otherwise we would have been overwhelmed with correspondence. You know, Ed, I said to you before we hit the record button that I had not expected to talk so much about what I think we'll probably spend a good amount of time talking about, and that's ICE and immigration. I wanna point out for folks when we're recording this. This is the afternoon of January 26. It's Monday afternoon. That's important because who knows what will transpire on the topics that you and I discuss between now and Thursday? And if people listen to the podcast sometime later, you know, the world may have altered a bit. Maybe there will have been another shooting. Maybe there will have been a drawdown of ICE agents in Minnesota. There's some hints of that. …
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