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Full known list of Alex Pretti’s battles with cops revealed before Minneapolis nurse was shot dead by DHS

Alex Pretti clashed at least twice with federal agents before one officer gunned him down, marking the second fatal shooting of a protestor in Minnesota this month. 

A Border Patrol agent shot the 37-year-old intensive care nurse during a scuffle at an a January 24 rally against Donald Trump‘s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. 

It followed the fatal shooting of mother-of-three Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan ‘Jon’ Ross in the same city on January 7. 

In the weeks before the deadly shooting, Pretti had violent skirmishes with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on at least two occasions. 

January 13  

One clash came on January 13 when Pretti was shown on camera daring ICE agents who were carrying pepper spray to ‘soak me, motherf***er’. 

The video shows Pretti shouting ‘f*** you!’ at the agents, before yelling: ‘What the f*** is wrong with you? Every decision you’ve made in your life is f***ing wrong!’  

He also referred to one of the agents as a ‘pepper spray b****’ and ‘f***ing trash’ as the officers climbed into their SUVs to leave the premises. 

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US planning CIA foothold in post-Maduro Venezuela

The CIA is quietly working to establish a permanent US presence on the ground in Venezuela, spearheading the Trump administration’s plans to exert its newfound influence over the country’s future, according to multiple sources familiar with the planning.

Planning discussions between the CIA and State Department have centered around what the US footprint inside Venezuela will look like, both in the short and long term, after the dramatic capture of former President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.

While the State Department will serve as the primary, long-term US diplomatic presence in the country, the Trump administration will likely lean heavily on the CIA to initiate that re-entry process due to the ongoing political transition and unstable security situation in Venezuela post-Maduro, the sources added.

“State plants the flag but CIA is really the influence,” one source familiar with the planning process told CNN, noting the agency’s near-term objectives include setting the stage for diplomatic efforts – including relationship building with locals – and providing security.

In the short term, US officials may operate out of a CIA annex, prior to the opening of an official embassy, allowing them to start making informal contact with members of different factions of Venezuela’s government as well as opposition figures and target third parties who may be threats, the source said, drawing a parallel to the agency’s work in Ukraine.

“Setting up an annex is priority number one. Before diplomatic channels the annex can help set up liaison channels, that will be with the Venezuelan intelligence and that will allow conversations that diplomats cannot have,” said a former US government official who engaged with the Venezuelans.

The CIA declined to comment.

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US Media Keen on Iranian Unrest—Less So on US and Israel’s Role in It

When protests against high inflation swept Iran in late December, the usual international suspects wasted little time in endeavoring to hijack the unrest—which prompted a violent government crackdown—for their own purposes.

On January 10, Donald Trump—fresh off his abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—took to his preferred social media platform to showcase his signature manic reliance on random capitalization and exclamation points: “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP.” A few days later, another encouraging message: “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING—TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!… HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

The protests have since dissipated, without any successful “help” thus far in the form of regime change or US/Israeli military attack, although Trump has dispatched a “massive fleet” to the Middle East “just in case.” The Iranian government, which blames the US and Israel for fueling the bloody upheaval, has put the death toll at 3,117 (Al Jazeera, 1/21/26), including state security personnel. The Canada-based International Centre for Human Rights—aptly described by prominent Mideast analyst Mouin Rabbani as a “faux human rights organization”—claims that no fewer than 43,000 Iranians were killed by government agents. In between those two extremes, all manner of other numbers have also been flung about.

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Israel Replicating a Genocidal Mindset

On 29th of December 2025, The New York Times reprinted an article entitled, “At Last, a Name for the Face of a Nazi in an Iconic Holocaust Photo.”

The photo was taken on July 28, 1941, and here is how the article describes what the picture shows:

“One man kneels at the edge of a pit filled with bodies. He knows that, within moments, he will be dead. His drawn face burns with defiance. Behind him stands a uniformed, bespectacled Nazi soldier. In his extended right arm, the soldier holds a pistol, just inches from his victim’s skull. A crowd of other Germans stand watching, curious but undisturbed.”

The man about to be executed remains nameless and is guilty of nothing other than being Jewish. But who was the executioner? His identity is the revealing part of the story.

“The killer was Jakobus Onnen, 34, a former teacher [he taught languages, French and English as well as physical education] from the town of Tichelwarf, near the German border with the Netherlands.”

His identity was finally matched to other named photos identifying Onnen and attested to by living relatives.

It turns out that Onnen may be seen as an example of “well-educated, prosperous [German] professionals in early middle age” who were transformed into genocidal killers during the era of Nazi influence. How did this occur?

An explanation is offered by Dr. Christopher R. Browning in his 1992 book, Ordinary Men. This is a history of a German reserve police battalion and its role in genocidal violence carried out in 1942 Poland.

Brown argues that most of the men in this battalion did not begin as conscripted Nazi fanatics, rabid antisemites, or congenital killers. Instead they allowed themselves to be remade by “years of propaganda” absorbed within a community environment that “discouraged independent thought”[my italics]. 

The same environment encouraged “conformity, deference to authority, adaptation to new roles and responsibilities, and the altering of moral norms to justify the resulting actions.” In the end, they “perversely believed [murder] to be a professional obligation.”

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Group Chats About ICE Whereabouts Are Protected Speech. The FBI Is Investigating Anyway.

Group chats about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents aren’t illegal. But FBI Director Kash Patel doesn’t seem to care.

On Monday, Patel told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that the FBI was investigating a Signal group in which people had been chatting about ICE agents’ whereabouts.

The Trump administration has said that people are doxing federal agents, employing a term once reserved for the act of publishing private information about someone’s identity or address online. “Doxing” generally implies that this sharing is done with ill intent.

But there are all sorts of perfectly benign reasons why Americans—whether in the country legally or not—might want to keep tabs on where immigration authorities are going. Sharing this information allows people to protest, observe, or document ICE activity, or avoid run ins with ICE agents.

Chatting about ICE agent whereabouts is unambiguously speech that’s protected by the First Amendment. So the idea that the FBI would investigate on these grounds is worrying.

“There does not appear to be any lawful basis for this investigation,” said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “The First Amendment generally protects the publication of legally-obtained information, including much of what the Trump administration has labeled ‘doxxing.’ That protection extends to using an app to share information about ICE activity.”

In his interview with Johnson, Patel paid lip service to the First Amendment. Yet he also framed Signal chats pertaining to ICE whereabouts as inherently suspect and/or likely to lead to criminal actions. “You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way,” he said, drawing a direct link between constitutionally protected activity and criminality.

Of course, trapping ICE agents and harming them would indeed be illegal. But the illegal part of that is the trapping, the plotting harm, and the harming, not merely the knowing where the agents are or chatting about where they are. And even if some individual ultimately uses the location information to inflict harm, it still would not make the mere sharing of that information illegal.

“The First Amendment has narrow exceptions for true threats and speech intended and likely to provoke imminent unlawful action, but the government cannot trigger those exceptions simply by claiming that speech puts officials in harm’s way,” notes Terr. “The First Amendment also does not protect criminal conspiracy, but that requires evidence of an agreement to commit a specific crime and a substantial step toward carrying it out. No such evidence appears in the Signal messages that have been made public.”

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Beyond MREs: The U.S. Army Is Testing 3D-Printed Food for the Battlefield

The future of military rations may move beyond the iconic plastic-sealed MREs, replaced by meals printed layer by layer, tailored to each Soldier’s needs, and prepared on demand near the battlefield.

A new study conducted by researchers at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) suggests that while many Soldiers initially recoil at the idea of eating 3D-printed food, hands-on exposure and tasting experiences can rapidly shift attitudes—potentially paving the way for a new era of personalized military nutrition.

Set to be published in the June 2026 edition of Future Foods, the research offers one of the first direct looks at how U.S. Army personnel actually perceive food made through additive manufacturing.

The findings are significant not only for military logistics but also for the broader future of food technology, where customized nutrition, reduced supply burdens, and decentralized production are becoming strategic priorities.

Beyond the novelty of 3D-printed food is the reality that modern warfare increasingly demands mobility, endurance, and sustained cognitive performance under extreme conditions. Feeding Soldiers efficiently—without weighing them down—remains a persistent logistical challenge. The Pentagon believes that 3D-printed food rations could help solve that problem.

“Initially, Soldiers showed skepticism and reluctance towards use of the technology,” the researchers behind the recent study note. “However, after 3DFP technology was explained and 3D-printed prototypes were provided, Soldiers’ acceptance increased considerably.”

The Army-led research team conducted focus groups and tasting sessions with 17 U.S. Army Combat Medics to examine their reactions before and after encountering 3D-printed food prototypes.

Initially, most participants were skeptical, associating printed food with artificial, overly processed products or bland “calorie blocks.” However, attitudes evolved as Soldiers learned more about the technology and sampled 3D-printed food themselves.

One Soldier summed up a key concern voiced early in discussions, saying 3D food printing “takes the identity out of food,” explaining that “When you’re eating chicken, you see that it’s chicken. But if it’s just a brick, it almost makes the feeding process monotonous.”

Essentially, soldiers echoed a broader public sentiment: when food no longer resembles its original ingredients, the experience becomes less satisfying and more tedious.

This reaction captures a central challenge to technologically engineered meals. Food is not just fuel. It is cultural, emotional, and psychological. This can be especially true in high-stress operational environments that warfighters face.

The Army’s interest in 3D printing food stems from long-standing logistical realities. Traditional Meals Ready-to-Eat (MREs) are durable and calorie-dense, but they are also heavy and standardized. A Soldier on a week-long mission without resupply might carry more than 30 pounds of food alone, often prompting troops to cut rations and risk undernutrition.

Additionally, standard rations cannot easily account for individual differences. Soldiers vary in metabolic demands, mission intensity, climate exposure, and dietary preferences. Many end up modifying or discarding parts of their meals, a practice known informally as “field stripping,” to get something closer to what they actually need.

However, 3D printed food offers an alternative. Meals can be produced near the point of need, customized nutritionally and structurally for each Soldier. Instead of shipping finished meals across the globe, raw ingredients or shelf-stable printing materials could be transported and transformed into tailored meals in the field.

That possibility makes understanding acceptance critical. Technology is useless if Soldiers refuse to eat what it produces.

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Scientists Have Developed a Laser-Controlled Magnet With No Heating Required

Swiss researchers have developed a new technique that enables magnetic polarity changes using only a laser beam, an advancement with major potential for creating adaptable electronic circuits.

Using a special ferromagnet, researchers at the University of Basel and ETH Zurich were able to manipulate magnetic polarity using laser light, without any additional heating. The results were reported in a recent paper published in Nature, showcasing a major advancement that can produce different magnetic polarities at separate points within a single piece of material.

Ferromagnets Explained

Ferromagnets are the most common types of magnets used in our everyday world. They operate on the synchronized spin of electrons, all rotating in the same direction. That unanimous spin direction generates their magnetic power, allowing magnets to stick to metal and compasses to point toward the Earth’s magnetic poles.

However, this is only true below a certain temperature threshold. Inside magnets is also a chaotic thermal motion that remains ever-present. When the magnets are relatively cool, this motion is weak, allowing the electron interactions to overcome it and generate the synchronized spin. By contrast, above a certain temperature, the thermal motion becomes so powerful that it overrides the electrons’ synchronization, introducing larger-scale chaos that causes the material to lose its ferromagnetism.

That threshold is typically used to intentionally alter the polarity of a ferromagnetic material. Once the heated magnet begins to cool, its electrons again order themselves into a synchronized spin, typically in a different direction.

The new research by researchers at the University of Basel and ETH Zurich changes all of this, altering the polarity without applying any heat.

Constructing a Laser Switchable Magnet

“What’s exciting about our work is that we combine the three big topics in modern condensed matter physics in a single experiment: strong interactions between the electrons, topology and dynamical control,” said co-author Prof. Dr. Ataç Imamoğlu of ETH in Zurich.

The researchers built their laser switchable magnet from two thin, but slightly twisted layers of the organic semiconductor molybdenum ditelluride. Their two-layer material allowed topological states to form—that is, quantum states that are permanently defined and cannot be altered by small local disturbances.

Experiments revealed that the material’s electrons existed in tunable topological states that could be manipulated from insulating to conducting. More intriguingly, both states feature parallel aligned electron spins, turning the material into a ferromagnet.

“Our main result is that we can use a laser pulse to change the collective orientation of the spins,” says Olivier Huber, a PhD candidate at ETH.

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Funding Disparities Rebrands American Gifted Children as Mentally Ill & Paris Hilton Doesn’t Help

America is starving for gifted education while financially rewarding psychiatric labeling. While bringing attention to the ADHD issue is appreciated, Paris Hilton’s recent Business Insider interview admitting “ADHD is my superpower” is a message wrongly pushing the alleged mental disorder as some kind of empowerment.

It is of interest that Hilton would raise the ADHD mental disorder to superpower status while, at the same time, the United States is significantly underfunding gifted education and financially incentivizing psychiatric labeling practices. High-profile figures, like Hilton, who frames ADHD as her “superpower,” contribute visibility to a growing trend in how behavioral conditions are marketed as sources of empowerment.

Hilton describes ADHD as fueling her “drive, curiosity, and creativity,” along with “a million ideas all the time.” She also mentions “rejection-sensitive dysphoria” (intense unbearable emotional pain caused by perceived rejection) as linked to ADHD, calling it “exhausting” and “painful.”

The financial disparities between ADHD funding and gifted programs are telling. The U.S. Department of Education’s appropriation for the Javits Gifted and Talented program is just $16.5 million, compared to estimates that ADHD services cost the U.S. education system $13.4 billion annually. The current system prioritizes mental health funding for diagnosis over the identification of superior educational ability.

Crucially, the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis lacks an objective biological marker… no blood test, brain scan, or X-ray. Put simply, there is no known abnormality that is the alleged ADHD. Instead, diagnoses rely on behavioral checklists and school-based screenings, broadening the label and creating pathways for the behavioral health industry and pharmaceutical market within educational settings.

This system warrants scrutiny beyond treatment facilities; it must also include how labeling pipelines shape outcomes. When behaviors are categorized as disorders, questionable mind-altering medication becomes the default intervention, steering children away from educational opportunities and toward clinical drug management.

Many gifted children, who often display heightened sensitivity and intensity, are instead mislabeled as having behavioral disorders. Characteristics such as defiance, oppositional behavior, hyperactivity, mood fluctuations, and attention difficulties—traits frequently seen in gifted individuals—are too often misinterpreted as pathology. Once labeled, these children are managed clinically rather than nurtured academically, a process perpetuated by the financial incentives inherent in current mental health policy, where the disparity between funding for education opportunities for the gifted receives a little more than $16 million, while ADHD-related programs enjoy nearly $14 billion in funding.

The widespread misdiagnosis of the nation’s gifted is consequential. When institutions classify gifted students as psychiatrically disordered, subject them to medication, and lower academic expectations, the result is lasting harm to individual lives and societal potential.

Historically, under President Eisenhower with the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the U.S. prioritized identifying high-ability students, supporting guidance and testing within schools. However, legislative priorities shifted under pressure from behavioral-health and pharmaceutical interests, moving schools away from talent identification toward managing behavior through diagnostic labeling and medication.

The funding imbalance suggests that gifted students are not overlooked by happenstance and, rather, are systematically converted into patients within a lucrative behavioral management industry.

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You Can’t Have A Secure Border Without Deportations

In the wake of the Border Patrol shooting of anti-ICE agitator Alex Pretti, Democrats — and many Republicans — are utilizing his death to call for a “de-escalation” or a complete end of deportation operations while pushing, yet again, for so-called “comprehensive immigration reform.” But these politicians and pundits persistently ignore the reality that taking deportations at scale off the table undermines the entire immigration law enforcement framework President Donald Trump has so successfully implemented during his second term.

Prominent among the anti-deportation voices are, of course, Democrats Tim Walz and Jacob Frey (and their anti-ICE insurgency cells), but their numbers also include GOP Rep. Mike Lawler and editors at The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, along with Problem Solvers Caucus leaders Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., and Rep. Tom Souzzi, D-N.Y., and a cacophony of the usual legacy media suspects. WSJ editors warned that Trump’s deportation campaign has become “a moral and political debacle.” The editorial board at the Post directed Trump to “de-escalate,” because “these enforcement tactics won’t turn the tide.” Lawler bemoaned federal agents “conducting forceful operations in American communities.” (Are they just supposed to ask nicely?)

Lawler and the Problem Solvers followed up their anti-deportation admonitions with the same types of ineffectual immigration reform suggestions that proved to be the kryptonite of the obsessively pro-immigration Republicans Trump bludgeoned on his way to the White House. (Byron York of Washington Examiner provided a thorough debunking of these sorts of measures in his daily newsletter.)

As is commonly the case with America’s political and pundit classes, these “experts” overlook or deliberately ignore a basic and obvious reality in their rush to advance their agendas on the backs of the fallout from Minnesota’s anti-ICE obstructionism and sanctuary policies: Deportation is the primary penalty for unlawfully entering the United States, and it’s also the most effective deterrent to would-be illegal border-crossers.

Yes, there are other consequences. Prosecutions for first-time illegal entrants are a somewhat rare possibility (with apparently little consequence). Repeat offenders can get away with something like a year in prison if caught, convicted, and sentenced, though repeated illegal crossings typically coincide with other criminal activity like drug smuggling and human trafficking, which leads to longer prison sentences. The vast majority of illegal aliens apprehended at the border — at least under the Trump administration — are simply denied entry or returned to their home country (or another country willing to take them) courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Fines and bans on reentry could come into play, and, of course, the person trying to enter America legally has wasted the money he scraped together to pay cartels to smuggle him in.

But all of that amounts to law enforcement having one hand tied behind its back if an illegal alien sneaking his way into the States and taking up residency in a Democrat-led sanctuary city (or really anywhere, if amnesty advocates have their way) has essentially made himself invulnerable to the enforcement powers of the executive branch. Once you’re in, you’re in — and it’s obvious to all thinking people how that incentive structure will play out. Crises in places like Portland, Oregon, and in California following the defanging of the justice system serve as illustrations of how particular crimes rise when authorities remove deterrents.

Border security measures essentially function as crime prevention, catching the would-be entrant in the act. Deportations are the just punishment for the crime of illegal immigration. Eliminating deportations from the toolbelt of federal law enforcement would be as illogical as a legal system in which authorities stop would-be vandals, thieves, arsonists, and rapists if caught in the act but casually “let bygones be bygones” if they aren’t able to prevent it. (Unsurprisingly, this is actually a position some leftists hold.)

Eliminating deportations, or, as is more likely, stripping them down to a mere performative husk of efficacy, would mean the nullification of immigration law — regardless of the fervor with which federal authorities apply other methods. Deportations work. While canny consumers of legacy media content will rightly dismiss much of the “huddling at home for fear of ICE” messaging as propaganda, there are nuggets of truth to be inferred: Illegal immigrants desperately want to avoid deportations. Democrats desperately want to prevent them. In fact, deportations change the entire calculus of unlawfully entering the United States and helping oneself to the government-funded gravy train of “resources.” They make breaking U.S. law legitimately risky.

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Open-Source AI Models Vulnerable to Criminal Misuse, Researchers Warn

Hackers and other criminals can easily commandeer computers operating open-source large language models outside the guardrails and constraints of the major artificial-intelligence platforms, creating security risks and vulnerabilities, researchers said on Thursday.

Hackers could target the computers running the LLMs and direct them to carry out spam operations, phishing content creation or disinformation campaigns, evading platform security protocols, the researchers said.

The research, carried out jointly by cybersecurity companies SentinelOne and Censys over the course of 293 days and shared exclusively with Reuters, offers a new window into the scale of potentially illicit use cases for thousands of open-source LLM deployments.

These include hacking, hate speech and harassment, violent or gore content, personal data theft, scams or fraud, and in some cases child sexual abuse material, the researchers said.

While thousands of open-source LLM variants exist, a significant portion of the LLMs on the internet-accessible hosts are variants of Meta’s Llama, Google DeepMind’s Gemma, and others, according to the researchers. While some of the open-source models include guardrails, the researchers identified hundreds of instances where guardrails were explicitly removed.

AI industry conversations about security controls are “ignoring this kind of surplus capacity that is clearly being utilized for all kinds of different stuff, some of it legitimate, some obviously criminal,” said Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, executive director for intelligence and security research at SentinelOne.

Guerrero-Saade likened the situation to an “iceberg” that is not being properly accounted for across the industry and open-source community.

The research analyzed publicly accessible deployments of open-source LLMs deployed through Ollama, a tool that allows people and organizations to run their own versions of various large-language models.

The researchers were able to see system prompts, which are the instructions that dictate how the model behaves, in roughly a quarter of the LLMs they observed. Of those, they determined that 7.5% could potentially enable harmful activity.

Roughly 30% of the hosts observed by the researchers are operating out of China, and about 20% in the U.S.

Rachel Adams, the CEO and founder of the Global Center on AI Governance, said in an email that once open models are released, responsibility for what happens next becomes shared across the ecosystem, including the originating labs.

“Labs are not responsible for every downstream misuse (which are hard to anticipate), but they retain an important duty of care to anticipate foreseeable harms, document risks, and provide mitigation tooling and guidance, particularly given uneven global enforcement capacity,” Adams said.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to respond to questions about developers’ responsibilities for addressing concerns around downstream abuse of open-source models and how concerns might be reported, but noted the company’s Llama Protection tools for Llama developers, and the company’s Meta Llama Responsible Use Guide.

Microsoft AI Red Team Lead Ram Shankar Siva Kumar said in an email that Microsoft believes open-source models “play an important role” in a variety of areas, but, “at the same time, we are clear-eyed that open models, like all transformative technologies, can be misused by adversaries if released without appropriate safeguards.”

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