Bovino is out of Minneapolis — but Trump isn’t backing down

Beyond the heinous fact of Alex Pretti’s killing on Saturday in Minneapolis, when at least 10 bullets were fired by Border Patrol officers at the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was caring for others at a peaceful protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, it was body language that stood out. The curve of his thin back as he tried to shield a woman before he was dragged away; the swagger of the federal agents who were soon to kill him. The officers’ gait was unmistakable: They moved with the assurance of impunity. 

That, perhaps more than anything else, sums up why we are now at this moment, confronting a president who, to most appearances, lacks a heart while leading an administration that lacks a soul. 

In the wake of the compounding killings and violence against peaceful protesters, along with sadistic images of children being taken into custody — and, at least in the case of Liam Conejo Ramos, a preschooler who was seized in his driveway and shipped to a detention facility 1,300 miles away — reports are emerging that Donald Trump is, to paraphrase the Washington Post, softening his tone on the violence in Minnesota in the face of polls that show more Americans are souring on ICE.

The first signs of the shift came Sunday during a five-minute interview with the Wall Street Journal. The president, while criticizing Pretti for attending a protest while armed, refrained from saying that the federal officer who fatally shot the nurse had acted appropriately — even while administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, were blaming Pretti for his own death. (His killing, she falsely claimed, had thwarted “an act of domestic terrorism.”)

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reinforced the tonal change in remarks from the briefing room that, despite featuring shades of continued blame-casting, were more superficially conciliatory. “Nobody in the White House, including President Trump, wants to see people getting hurt or killed in America’s streets,” she said. “It is [his] hope and wish and demand for the resistance and chaos to end today.” Leavitt followed her statement with a call for cooperation on ICE’s “vital public safety mission” from Republicans and Democrats, and state and local law enforcement.

By Monday evening, it appeared the White House had realized they needed to take some measure of action. Reports emerged that Gregory Bovino had been relieved from his position as “commander at large” for Border Patrol and would return to his role as sector chief in El Centro, California, before quietly retiring. Bovino, the diminutive jackboot whose military cosplay and pugnacious rhetoric has attracted widespread attention, had been dispatched to the Twin Cities, along with up to 2,000 federal agents, in the wake of Renee Nicole Good’s fatal shooting on Jan. 7. The operation will now be helmed by border czar Tom Homan who will, Trump said on Truth Social, “report directly to me.”

The wording of the president’s post amounts to a humiliation for Noem, whose position seems to be precarious. More than anyone save White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, she has been responsible for ICE’s transformation over the past year into a domestic paramilitary force. The secretary, accompanied by her omnipresent chief adviser Corey Lewandowski, met for two hours at the White House with Trump about Homeland Security operations in the Twin Cities. According to the New York Times, the president did not indicate to Noem and Lewandowski that their jobs were on the line. But the meeting has done little to quell rumors that have existed at least since early December, when the Bulwark’s Adrian Carrasquillo reported that Trump was weighing whether to sack Noem. At the time, the White House derided the story as “FAKE NEWS.” On Monday, despite being publicly sidelined by Trump, Leavitt said that Noem continues to enjoy the president’s “utmost confidence and trust.”

None of this, of course, is remotely enough. Not the subtle shifts in rhetoric, the sacrifice of Bovino nor the ongoing rumors of Noem’s imminent departure. Because the rot in the administration comes from the top. As the Nation’s Joan Walsh wrote, “Alex Pretti was a good man at a time when very bad men are running our country.”

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In the absence of a substantive change in policy — an end to mass deportations, deploying federal officers as a paramilitary force and targeting blue cities — Democrats have a moral responsibility to not let this moment pass. 

House Democrats plan to open an investigation into Noem’s actions as soon as next week, an action that could lead to a drive to open impeachment proceedings. (Already, at least 145 members have signed an impeachment petition.) There has been movement among centrist Democrats from swing districts who supported legislation last week to fund Homeland Security. One of them, New York Rep. Tom Suozzi, sent a contrite email to his campaign list, admitting that he “failed to view the DHS funding vote as a referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis.”

In the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pledged on Saturday that the Democratic caucus will block the Homeland Security appropriations bill, which includes funding for ICE, from advancing, raising the likelihood of a partial government shutdown. While he has called for a rewrite of the legislation, Schumer has yet to publicly outline specific demands. But according to POLITICO, they include “requiring judicial warrants for immigration arrests,” “mandat[ing] federal agents identify themselves, requir[ing] DHS to cooperate with state and local investigations and limit[ing] the ‘mission creep of federal agencies.’”

While a good start, these efforts too, are not enough. It’s long past time for Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, his counterpart in the House, to harness the power of the bully pulpit afforded by their positions as caucus leaders to mount an effective opposition to Trump — or get out of the way for those who will.

To borrow a phrase from Ronald Reagan as he stumped for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race, now is “a time for choosing.”