It was clear after the killing of Renee Good on Jan. 7 that the Trump administration's pretextual immigration crackdown in Minnesota was a failure. Far from cowing the people of Minneapolis, Good's death at the hand of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer stiffened their resolve and led even more Minnesotans to join the fight against the president's masked paramilitaries.
A less fanatical White House might have used that moment to stage a tactical withdrawal. But in the actually existing Trump administration, they met Good's death with insults, slander and the promise of further repression.
Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said that Good was engaged in "domestic terrorism." White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Good a "deranged lunatic." Vice President JD Vance said her actions were "an attack on law and order" and "on the American people." He also said the officer who shot Good was protected by "absolute immunity." (He later backtracked from this claim, insisting instead that he said the opposite, video evidence notwithstanding.)
We know what happened next. On Saturday, officers with Customs and Border Protection detained, beat, shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who had been observing and filming ICE and CBP operations. Like Good's death, Pretti's was caught on camera, and like Good's death, it was egregious. Before the White House could even respond there were protests on the ground, demands for accountability, calls to abolish ICE and palpable discontent from across the political spectrum.
"This individual went and impeded their law enforcement operations, attacked those officers, had a weapon on him and multiple dozens of rounds of ammunition, wishing to inflict harm on these officers, coming, brandishing like that," Noem said, as if video of the confrontation did not exist. Stephen Miller, the president's homeland security adviser, called Pretti a "domestic terrorist" and accused Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota of "flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country."
By Sunday, officials in the Trump administration had begun to backpedal. By Monday, they were doing everything they could to appease the public's anger. First, administration officials announced they would remove Gregory Bovino, the highly visible field commander for Customs and Border Protection, from the area. Homeland Security said it would remove some CBP agents from Minnesota, and President Donald Trump said he would withdraw ICE officers as well. "We've done, they've done, a phenomenal job," he said.
Not only had the White House failed to achieve its strategic objective -- both the mass removal of immigrants from the Minneapolis area and the suppression of the administration's political opponents through force and the fear of force -- it had also lost significant ground with the public on its most favorable issue.
When Trump took office last January, he had a net 8-point advantage on immigration, according to an average computed by pollster G. Elliott Morris. Now he has a net 10-point disadvantage. In the latest poll from The New York Times and Siena University, 61% of respondents said the tactics used by ICE have gone too far. And Trump's overall approval has dropped below 40% in recent polls from YouGov, Reuters and The Economist.
Senate Democrats have promised to filibuster an upcoming funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security if it doesn't include a serious effort to rein in ICE and CBP. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who leads Democrats in the House, has pledged to impeach Noem if she doesn't resign. "Everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Stephen," Noem said in remarks reported by Axios, referring to Miller.
Gettysburg was supposed to be the blow that forced the United States to negotiate an end to the Civil War. Gen. Robert E. Lee would demonstrate the superiority of his Army of Northern Virginia -- on Union soil, no less -- and prove to key European powers that the Confederacy was here to stay. The Gettysburg campaign was, in other words, a strategic offensive meant to advance the overall goals of the rebellion if not win altogether.