Jeff Day and Paul Walsh, reporting from occupied Minneapolis for The Minnesota Star Tribune (Apple News+):

The man fatally shot by federal officers in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 24, has been identified as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The shooting follows the shooting death of Renee Good by an agent on Jan. 7 in south Minneapolis…

At a news conference, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the man who was shot was a 37-year-old white man whose criminal record only showed some parking tickets. Law enforcement sources said Saturday their records show Pretti had no serious criminal history.

O’Hara said the man was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit to carry a firearm in public, a fact that was later repeated by Gov. Tim Walz…

Just moments earlier, Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino said at a news conference that the man who was killed “wanted to do maximum damage to agents.”

“Thank God we have video,” Walz said. “It’s nonsense, people. It’s nonsense, and it’s lies.”

“They already will slander this individual,” Walz said. “They already have made this the case. But you will all start to see it, some of you probably have, there are multiple angles [of this shooting]. And I’ll go back to what we talked about before. They’re telling you not to trust your eyes and ears. Not to trust the facts that you’re seeing.”

Further reporting from Ernesto Londoño, Devon Lum, Hamed Aleaziz, and Mitch Smith for The New York Times:

Videos analyzed by The New York Times contradict accounts given by Homeland Security officials about the shooting. They said the man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and the intent to “massacre” them. Footage of the encounter shows the man holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when agents take him to the ground and shoot him.

I’ve been trying to contend with and process what happened all afternoon, but in all honesty, I’ve fallen short. I can’t think of any combination of words that could adequately describe my feelings. I believe that many Americans feel the same way, unable to describe their cascade of emotions upon the shooting in Minneapolis on Saturday. There are elements of shock, disgust, indignation — but no words seem to fit this moment adequately. I realize this is an unhelpful thing to say as a writer, but there is no other way to prove it.

The last time I felt this way was in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd. Except, in the case of Floyd’s murder, the American establishment — corporations, citizens, and a plurality of those in power — largely converged on the idea that Floyd’s killing was indeed a murder. An act of intentional killing. There were right-wing agitators and racists, but the notion that the video was false never occurred to anyone. It was a high-definition, 4K video of the police officer kneeling down on Floyd’s neck, asphyxiating him. No sighted person could dispute this even if they wanted to. Not even the president of the United States could.

This time is different. Both in the case of Good and Pretti, the Trump regime has demanded American citizens reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. It is this fact that continues to haunt me, more than the murder itself. The difference between other countries and the United States of America — and why we express more outrage toward other authoritarian regimes’ actions than our own — is that Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea silence their citizens. If a video happens to leak of their atrocities, they shut down the internet and deem it fake Western propaganda. When the Biden administration botched its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, it did not dispute that the mission indeed was handled poorly. This is the line between authoritarianism and incompetence.

The Trump regime has called us liars. They’ve called us communists, terrorists, illegals, Marxists, and fascists for demanding they stop murdering our citizens. And they’ve repeatedly besmirched innocent people to continue their murderous journey across America. The regime has proven over the past month that it will do anything to massacre U.S. citizens it does not like, including by disputing high-resolution videos. The courage and commitment to the truth these bystanders show is enough to segment them as great American patriots for eternity. Yet the Ministry of Truth, with one press conference, debases their rectitude shamelessly and callously. Once again, I find myself limited by words to describe my rage.

And this time, unlike Floyd’s murder, the silence from the American establishment is enough to make anyone’s ears bleed. Seven House Democrats voted with Republicans to advance funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Senate Democrats feel more strongly about avoiding a government shutdown than defunding the terrorists murdering our citizens in broad daylight on our streets. Not a single corporation has said a word about the two murders or the kidnapping of a 5-year-old Minneapolis boy that happened this week. The American kleptocracy has led to a racist YouTuber receiving more respect than two American citizens with families who were murdered by their government. Again, I find myself short on words.

I sit here, at home in a Republican congressional district with neighbors who probably feel much differently than I do, at my wits’ end. I don’t even know how to end this article, let alone how to save my citizens from being murdered or kidnapped by my government. Ultimately, I’m just one person, and so are you. But if the story of Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” is anything to go by, the nescience of the constituency is the Party’s only chance of survival. An uneducated republic is no republic at all. And every day for the last year, we have witnessed a republic in name only — one where nescience begets nescience, and where nescience leads to savagery. Do not let the Party repudiate the evidence of your eyes and ears.