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MINNEAPOLIS MAY BE TRUMP’S GETTYSBURG  
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Jamelle Bouie
January 28, 2026
The New York Times
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_ Gettysburg was supposed to be the blow that forced the United
States to negotiate an end to the Civil War. What Lee did not
anticipate was th e iron resolve, the ferocious tenacity, of the Union
defenders. _

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It was clear after the killing of Renee Good on Jan. 7 that
“Operation Metro Surge” — 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 ICE 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, to pull back on the assault and recalibrate in
the face of stiff resistance. But in the actually existing Trump
administration, immigration policy is dictated by rigid ideologues.
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 [[link removed]] that
Good was engaged in “domestic terrorism.” The White House press
secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called Good a “deranged lunatic
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President JD Vance said
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that her actions were “an attack on law and order” and “an
attack on the American people.” He also said that the officer who
shot Good was protected by “absolute immunity.” (He later
backtracked
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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 I.C.U. nurse who had been observing and filming ICE and
C.B.P. operations. Like Good’s death, Pretti’s was caught on
camera, and like Good’s death, it was egregious. Images and video of
Pretti’s killing exploded on social media. 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. And when the administration did address
the killing, it returned to the same lies and distortions it used to
try to discredit Good.

“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. Similarly, Stephen Miller, the
president’s homeland security adviser, called Pretti a “domestic
terrorist” and accused Senator 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 that
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 C.B.P. agents from Minnesota, and President
Trump said that he would withdraw ICE officers as well. “At some
point, we will leave,” he said. “We’ve done, they’ve done, a
phenomenal job.”

This was no longer a defeat; it was a rout. 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 eight-point
advantage on immigration according to an average computed
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the pollster G. Elliott Morris. Now he has a net 10-point
disadvantage. Individual polls show an even starker decline: Trump is
18 points underwater on immigration, according to the latest poll
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from The New York Times and Siena University. Sixty-one percent of
respondents also said the tactics used by ICE have gone too far. And
Trump’s overall approval has dropped below 40 percent in recent
polls
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from YouGov, Reuters and The Economist.

The president is so clearly in retreat in the wake of Pretti’s death
— especially coming as it did on the heels of Good’s — that even
congressional Democrats have abandoned their usual defensive posture
for something more aggressive. 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
C.B.P. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, who leads Democrats in the
House, has pledged to impeach Noem if she doesn’t resign. There are
signs, too, of infighting within the administration. “Everything
I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and
Stephen,” Noem said in remarks reported by Axios
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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 so as to push them off the sidelines. The
Gettysburg campaign was, in other words, a strategic offensive meant
to advance the overall goals of the rebellion if not win the conflict
altogether.

What Lee did not anticipate was the iron resolve, the ferocious
tenacity, of the Union defenders. There was Brig. Gen. Gouverneur K.
Warren, whose quick thinking brought reinforcements to a small, rocky
hill at the left flank of the Union line — Little Round Top —
where Col. Joshua Chamberlain and the 385 men of the 20th Maine held
their position against a fierce Confederate offensive. There was the
lone brigade of New Yorkers, led by George S. Greene, who fended off
attacks on the right flank, suffering significant losses but
successfully holding Culp’s Hill. And there were the soldiers of the
Army of the Potomac’s II Corps, who successfully repelled Lee’s
frontal assault on the Union center.

The result was a catastrophic defeat for the Confederacy. Lee lost the
initiative and would spend the rest of the war fighting on the
defensive, unable to wage another strategic campaign. The Confederacy
would not win foreign recognition, leaving it helpless against a Union
blockade. And even with the tremendous loss of life — the Union Army
suffered more than 23,000 casualties over three days of battle — the
Northern public would be reinvigorated by victory, ready to continue
the fight.

ICE and C.B.P. still roam the streets, and Trump’s authoritarian
aspirations have not dimmed. But surveying the wreckage of Operation
Metro Surge — of this reactionary administration’s crushing defeat
at the hands of another band of tenacious Northerners — it does look
to me like MAGA’s Gettysburg.

_Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, __Jamelle Bouie_
[[link removed]]_ is a columnist for the New York
Times. He covers history and politics. In addition, he co-hosts __the
Unclear and Present Danger podcast_
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on the political and military thrillers of the 1990s. Before the
Times, Jamelle was chief political correspondent for Slate magazine.
He began his career at the The American Prospect magazine and also
spent time as a writer for The Daily Beast. Jamelle has also
contributed essays to volumes such as "Four Hundred Souls: A Community
History of African America, 1619-2019" and "The 1619 Project: A New
Origin Story."_

_Get __the best of the New York Times_
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newsletter. Gain unlimited access to all of The Times with a__ digital
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* Gettysburg
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* American Civil War
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* MAGA
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* Minnesota
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* Minneapolis
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