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Jane Coaston: It’s Thursday, January 29th. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that says Nicki Minaj, I know times are tough. Making music people like is hard. And your husband and your brother might want pardons for sex crimes. But girl, there is never a time that is literally hold hands with President Donald Trump and get made into meme by the GOP Twitter account tough. [music break] On today’s show, Fed Chair Jerome Powell stands up for truth, justice, and a conservative approach to interest rates during Wednesday’s Fed rate meeting. And the FBI raids a Georgia election office infamous to conspiracy theorists for its role in rigging the 2020 election. Either FBI Director Kash Patel is bored, or his 27-year-old girlfriend is performing a country music concert nearby and he needed an excuse to take the jet. But let’s start with Minneapolis. The federal officers involved in the Saturday killing of Alex Pretti have been placed on administrative leave, according to an announcement by an official with the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday. That is, of course, not what Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino said on Saturday when he alleged that the officers were still working, just in a different city. That’s just one small sample of the wildly vacillating stories we’ve gotten from the federal government over the last few days about what’s going on in Minnesota. Remember how White House deputy chief of staff and worst person alive Stephen Miller said Alex Pretti was a quote, “assassin and domestic terrorist?” On Wednesday, Miller flipped like the most disgusting possible pancake, telling CNN in a statement that Border Patrol agents quote, “may not have been following protocol regarding protesters when Pretti was killed.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed on Saturday that Pretti wanted to quote, “massacre law enforcement.” Now, according to Axios, she’s blaming the White House for her statements. And at least one Republican senator, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, is having none of it. Or of Trump’s attacks on him. Here he is speaking to CNN’s Manu Raju on Wednesday. 

[clip of Senator Thom Tillis] They’re discrediting what I consider to be a very well-organized operation in ICE, but they’re discrediting even these officers. They’re going to make their job more difficult and more dangerous with this incompetence that I’m seeing out of Noem and out of Stephen Miller. 

[clip of CNN’s Mau Raju] The President called you a loser, I believe. 

[clip of Senator Thom Tillis] I am thrilled about that. That makes me qualifed to be Homeland Security Secretary and Senior Advisor to the President. 

Jane Coaston: It’s worth noting that Thom Tillis is retiring because no one is as brave as a retiring Republican. But Minneapolis is still under ICE’s thumb and contrary to the Trump administration and to some media reports, ICE has not quote, “deescalated in the Twin Cities.” Multiple media outlets have reported no real change in DHS activity. And on Tuesday, video captured ICE officer is trying to enter the Ecuadorian consulate in Minneapolis, which is against the law. As embassies and consulates are protected by diplomatic immunity. Trump border czar, Tom Homan, will be giving a press conference today in Minneapolis in an attempt by the administration to try to take control of the narrative about Minnesota. But the communities in Minneapolis are still standing up to the Trump administration, using every peaceful tool at their disposal to do so. To find out more, I spoke to Alex Wagner, host of Crooked’s Runaway Country podcast, who is reporting from Minneapolis. Alex, welcome back to What a Day. 

Alex Wagner: Jane, I’m thrilled to be here. I’m always thrilled to be here, but I have like a lot to tell you. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, no, you do, because you got into Minneapolis on Tuesday and you hit the ground running, but what did you see when you first arrived? What was your impression of the environment besides cold? 

Alex Wagner: That was an overwhelming feeling, I will say. The first is, you get the sense, people aren in hiding, for real. Like we got to the Park Avenue United Methodist Church, which is normally a hub of activity in that part of the city. It’s a block from where Renee Good was killed. And we were walking in there to interview the pastor and there were four people guarding the door because they’re so worried about ICE coming in to raid the church, which is, you know, a place that used to have a clinic and preschool and Spanish language services. And all of that has had to go remote. And I was out on a parent patrol this morning with a mother of a one-year-old and a four-year old. And there are you know watch people, grandparents and parents in yellow vests watching the streets to make sure ICE isn’t imminently going to raid the school and take the teachers away, all of whom have a legal right to be here but are Spanish speakers in many cases. Um. And there is a 100 plus person sort of chauffeur network that the parents have developed to get the teachers to school, to get groceries to the teachers, to help them care for their children that they have to leave at home because they’re too afraid to bring them to school. I mean, the amount of networking, the amount of banding together, this this group of people in Minnesota have done to make life livable for those in the shadows is something really extraordinary and powerful and in a weird way full of joy. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, I was thinking because you have this weird juxtaposition of people who have been pushed into the shadows, but also people who are coming out of the shadows to protest. You know, we’ve seen the videos of people who are like, I’ve never protested anything before. I’ve been a Republican voter for 25 years, something like that, where they’re just like, I have to stand on business right now. And so the people of Minneapolis have been protesting en masse for three weeks now in extraordinarily cold weather. 

Alex Wagner: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: How are they feeling? What are the numbers like? What are you seeing? 

Alex Wagner: Well, it ranges. I mean, I think there are always protests happening at the Whipple Federal Building where people are being brought for detention hearings and are being taken out and on busses and onto chartered deportation planes. And there’s always kind of a tension between those protesters and ICE, and that’s probably the liveliest. But I was at the Alex Pretti Memorial last night, which is the site of where he was gunned down. And there were, you know, scores of people there just paying their respects to his life. The sun is set. It’s two degrees. And this is the calling. I mean, I cannot underscore or emphasize enough how much people are emotionally invested in this. They feel like this is the fight for the country. And Minnesotans, let me just say, Jane, they don’t mind the cold like we do. 

Jane Coaston: Nope. Nope.

Alex Wagner: They’re tougher they’re tougher people. 

Jane Coaston: Now, now I’ve watched a lot of Minnesota Gophers football, and I can tell you that. They don’t care. It’s a different thing. But you mentioned going to a UMC church, and, you know, I’m a member of a UMCA congregation. And I can tell you, like, United Methodists are going to stand up to power. What did that pastor tell you about the church’s experience in the midst of all of this? 

Alex Wagner: Well, so he quoted from the Bible, and being a bad church goer myself, I can’t, I’m not going to butcher the phrasing, but he said it’s a time where the sound of joy is equal to the sound or sorrow. And what he has seen among his congregation, the way they have come through for each other, the ways that they have looked out for each other, this is a moment of community and connection. And in that way, I think the pastor, Dan Johnson, of this church was incredibly emboldened to continue the good work that he’s been doing. I will also say, you know, I asked him about this video that’s gone viral of Don Lemon and a bunch of people protesting ICE going into a church and interrupting church service, which was greeted on the right with like, people were appalled that the House of Worship had been desecrated in this way and that people’s church services would have been interrupted. That is what is happening at a place like Park Avenue United Methodist Church every day. They cannot have Spanish language services anymore because they’re afraid of ICE. They had to close the preschool. The House of Worship is being compromised, abused, I would say, by Trump and his ICE goons every single day because they’ve targeted the people that worship in that particular house. And you know that’s okay, because it’s a liberal House of worship. It’s not okay. It’s not okay. 

Jane Coaston: You mentioned also that you’ve been talking to child care providers, and I think a lot about how, how are local child care folks dealing with the high tensions with immigration enforcement? You know, tell me about what the community is doing to wrap themselves around them?

Alex Wagner: Well, I mean, first of all, when I was talking to these parents, they’ve organized collectively a toy library for the kids who are stuck at home so that they have access to new toys. They’re trying to share, you know, parenting and babysitting services so that these children are not completely alone. But I mean Jane, there are ICE notices on the front door of a preschool. They don’t have outdoor recess anymore because they’re worried that the teachers are going to get grabbed by ICE. They keep the shades drawn on all the classrooms because they don’t want ICE agents to be able to look inside. This is collective trauma that is being visited upon people that I think we haven’t even begun to grapple with. I mean, I asked this mother, I said, you have a one and a four-year-old, what do they think is happening? And she said, I just try and tell them without too much detail that parents always wanna keep teachers and kids safe, and that’s what we’re trying to do. And that explanation can fly up to a certain age, but I got to tell you, you know, we talk about COVID and what those school closures did. This kind of fear is piercing and it stays with you. And if you are a child, I cannot imagine what this does to your understanding of yourself and your place of safety in the world. 

Jane Coaston: I’ve been thinking a lot about how so many of the people who are leading this effort to defend Minneapolis against this incursion, as I view it, are women. You think about Renee Good, you think about the women who are leading this effort. It was funny, there have been a bunch of kind of MAGA tweets about, like, this must be the most well-organized thing ever, you know, they’ve got hot hands, they’ve got all this stuff, who’s behind this? And I was like, clearly you have–

Alex Wagner: Women. 

Jane Coaston: –never, you have never–

Alex Wagner: You fucking idiots.

Jane Coaston: –been to a PTA meeting. But like, what has it been like to see these women in Minnesota working together to protect their community? 

Alex Wagner: Yeah, one mom I said, I you know how are you dealing with this? What’s your self care? And she was like, I look at my spreadsheet of uh drivers that are on you know the schedule for the next day and that’s my piece. And I was like God, I feel you so hard. Sometimes I stand in front of an organized closet and I’m like, I got this, I can do this. I think the sense of shared purpose is really powerful. And you know one mother told me that often in our the hurly burly of daily life, you know, you go drop your kids off at school, you don’t really talk to other parents. This has brought people in much deeper communication with each other. And she said, you know and there’s still side chats about like, can you believe she did this? Like, it is still a social network. And that gives people, I think, strength and also a sense that they’re in control. You know, I think one of the things that Minneapolis teaches us is that you are not powerless and that you there are levers to pull and doing all of this. This organization has made people feel a sense of control over what is an unbearably chaotic and viscerally destabilizing time. 

Jane Coaston: News broke Wednesday that two federal immigration officers involved in Alex Pretti’s killing were placed on administrative leave on Saturday. Have you heard any reactions on the ground there? And I think moreover, when you ask people, like, what kinds of repercussions do you want for what has happened here? 

Alex Wagner: So I interviewed the Minnesota AG, Keith Ellison today, and I was asking about those officers placed on administrative leave. And, you know, unsurprisingly, he is deeply skeptical about what is happening here in terms of both review and investigation. And the idea that ICE is investigating ICE, he’s like, first of all, they don’t have the capacity to do a criminal investigation. They don’t know how to do that. The FBI does. And by the way, Kash Patel is a clown, but there are plenty of people at the Bureau that understand what needs to be done here. They’re just not on the case. That has to be reformed. I mean, you can put them on administrative leave, but that took days. Alex Pretti was murdered on Saturday. Today is Wednesday. That should have happened immediately. And he told me, he’s like, those ICE officers were back out on the street after they shot and killed Alex Pretti. I mean think about that for a second. They walked away from that murder scene and then went back to work. That in and of itself is a miscarriage of justice. 

Jane Coaston: Some sources report those officers were placed on administrative leave on Saturday. Is Ellison saying that didn’t happen?

Alex Wagner: Ellison was saying that didn’t happen. Now. 

Jane Coaston: Okay. 

Alex Wagner: You know the feds are obviously not sharing a lot of information with the state, but he told me he believed that they were back out on the street. I mean, there are massive questions about how much evidence the state is actually ultimately gonna gain access to and whether they’ll be able to conduct a fulsome investigation. But I think they are focused and Keith Ellison said, look, this caravan is gonna go to another blue state. And I have a word out to all other state AGs, like get your documents ready. Get your filings ready about why the Insurrection Act isn’t necessary. Be prepared. And I think that is the silver lining here, is that it is a model both for resistance but also for accountability. 

Jane Coaston: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar hosted a town hall in Minneapolis on Tuesday night where she was attacked by a man who sprayed her with an unknown liquid from a syringe. Congresswoman Omar continued with the town hall uninjured like an OG. The Hennepin County attorney said Wednesday that the liquid was nontoxic, but I imagine it’s jarring all the same, especially because Ilhan Omar has been the subject of so much, actually the object of so much derision and hate, including from the administration, even today. Have you heard any discussion of that? 

Alex Wagner: A.G. Keith Ellison, whose seat she took over when she became a representative, said she has the heart of a lion. And I just think, first of all, all props to Ilhan Omar, not only for just being who she is, so resilient and resolute, but at the end of that video, she’s ready to go after the guy, right? Like, that’s so Minnesota. That’s so the immigrant mentality, like just the tenacity and the daring do, right. I think it’s a huge issue as far as safety. You know, we talk about Trump putting targets on people’s backs, like it is not a coincidence that in this moment where he is vilifying Somali migrants, where he is talking so ill specifically about Ilhan Omar that someone tries to scare her at best, if not hurt her. So yeah, I mean, I think it raises really big questions about how we’re protecting people who are in the crosshairs of Trump’s rhetoric, if not his actual goon squad. 

Jane Coaston: It’s funny um how you see both Congressman Ilhan Omar and Alex Pretti, who were so brave and who were standing up for what’s right. And meanwhile, the MAGA right pretends like they’re so tough and they’ve got like 90 guns and it’s really indicative of where strength really lies here. 

Alex Wagner: Bullies always try and project strength until you punch them in the nose and you realize that it’s just mostly talk. And there’s a reason that Trump’s moniker that he hates the most, I think, in the last year is TACO. Trump always chickens out. So. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Alex Wagner: Take that and smoke it. 

Jane Coaston: Alex as always, thank you so much for joining me. 

Alex Wagner: Jane, as always, thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Alex Wagner, host of Crooked Media’s Runaway Country podcast. There is way more news to come, but don’t forget you can watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines.

[clip of Chuck Schumer] What ICE is doing is state-sanctioned thuggery. It must stop. 

Jane Coaston: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says Democrats are ready to pass every bill in a massive funding package before the Senate, except for the Department of Homeland Security portion. During a press conference on Wednesday, Schumer said the DHS bill, which includes ICE funding, needs work. He told reporters the Democratic caucus was united behind three main legislative goals to rein in ICE. First–

[clip of Chuck Schumer] We want to end roving patrols. We need to tighten the rules governing the use of warrants and require ICE’s coordination with state and local law enforcement. 

Jane Coaston: Second. 

[clip of Chuck Schumer] We want to enforce accountability. There needs to be a uniform code of conduct and accountability. Federal agents should be held to the same use of force policies that apply to state and local law enforcement. And be held accountable. 

Jane Coaston: And third. 

[clip of Chuck Schumer] We want masks off, body cameras on. 

Jane Coaston: That all sounds pretty reasonable to me, but a White House official told Roll Call that a demand for legislative reforms as a condition of funding the DHS is a, quote, “demand for a partial government shutdown.” Because masks are just too awesome, I guess. The deadline to pass the massive funding package and avoid a partial-government shutdown is Friday night. The package would allot funds for a swath of government agencies, including the Departments of Labor, Education, and Defense. A Senate vote on whether to move forward with the legislation is set for today. As Schumer reiterated on Twitter, quote, “until ICE is properly reined in and overhauled, the DHS funding bill won’t have the votes to pass the Senate.” This week in Trump’s Revenge Tour, the FBI raided Georgia’s Fulton County Election Office on Wednesday. Fulton County became ground zero for right-wing conspiracy theories about Trump’s 2020 defeat. District 5 Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. Spoke to the press Wednesday. 

[clip of Marvin Arrington Jr.] This is nothing but sowing the seeds of distrust. Right? This is a full frontal attack on democracy. This is code red in America, in Fulton County. We’ve seen it in Minneapolis and now we’re seeing it here in Fulton County. 

Jane Coaston: Trump has spent years falsely claiming Fulton County, Georgia rigged the 2020 election. Six years, to be exact, despite courts and his own former attorney general finding no evidence of widespread fraud. Trump’s tirade eventually landed him and 18 others under stage indictment for trying to overturn the vote. Now the FBI says it’s executing a court-authorized search at the county’s main elections office, seizing records tied to 2020. As of the time of this recording, officials and the Justice Department aren’t offering details. Cool. So, there’s a whiff of suspicion here, prompting Arrington Jr. to make the right request. 

[clip of Marvin Arrington Jr.] I want to make sure that there is a full and complete inventory, because these are the original voting records, original absentee ballots, right? And so once that stuff leaves our custody, where is the chain of custody? Once it leaves our control, how can we know if we’re going to get everything back? How can we know if they might do something–

[clip of unknown person 1] We won’t know. 

[clip of Marvin Arrington Jr.] –mischievous? 

[clip of unknown person 2] Oh we won’t. 

[clip of unknown person 1] We don’t know. 

[clip of unknown person 2] We won’t and we don’t know. 

[clip of unknown person 1] They’re taking ballots.

[clip of Marvin Arrington Jr.] They might lose ’em.

Jane Coaston: Yes they might. 

[clip of Jerome Powell] While job gains have remained low, the unemployment rate has shown some signs of stabilization and inflation remains somewhat elevated. In support of our goals, today the Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave our policy rate unchanged. 

Jane Coaston: Jerome Powell, noted Fed chair and human white noise machine, announced Wednesday that interest rates remain unchanged. So soothing. This is Powell’s first public comment since he disclosed earlier this month that he’s under federal investigation. An investigation, he says, is really just a thinly veiled attempt to bully the Fed into lowering interest rates. 

[clip of Jerome Powell] Indicators suggest that conditions may be stabilizing after a period of–

Jane Coaston: Sure, his cadence sounds like an audio instruction manual for an instruction manual, but make no mistake, these are shots fired at Trump’s intimidation tactics. Powell was peppered with questions about who might replace him, new details on the DOJ’s probe into him, and about Fed Board Governor Lisa Cook’s case at the Supreme Court. And of course, he didn’t answer. What a class act. What he did talk about, the danger of politicizing the Fed, saying credibility is quote, “hard to restore once independence is lost.” 

[clip of Marco Rubio] We didn’t remove an elected official. We removed someone who was not elected, and was actually an indicted drug trafficker in the United States. 

Jane Coaston: Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. Rubio defended President Trump’s recent military action to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela. He argued the operation took out a major U.S. National security threat and said the U.S. is now working with interim authorities to stabilize the country. He insisted there are no current plans for further military intervention. One question came up a lot. Are we at war with Venezuela? Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul asked the question rhetorically until he was forced to answer it himself. 

[clip of Marco Rubio] We just don’t believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of a war.

[clip of Senator Rand Paul] But would it be an act of war if someone did it to us? Nobody dies, few casualties, they’re in and out. Boom, it’s a perfect military operation. Would that be an act of war? Of course it would be an act of war. I’m probably the most anti-war person in the Senate and I would vote to declare war if someone invaded our country and took our president. 

Jane Coaston: When Rand cooks, he cooks. Senators also pressed Rubio on other foreign policy issues, like concerns about Iran and recent tensions over Greenland and NATO. Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine pushed Rubio on Trump repeatedly referring to Greenland as Iceland last week at Davos. 

[clip of Senator Tim Kaine] We’re not mad at Iceland. They haven’t cost us any money. The president just mistook the two countries for each other, correct? 

[clip of Marco Rubio] Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we’re all familiar with presidents that have verbal stumbles. We’ve had presidents like that before. Some made a lot more than this one. 

Jane Coaston: Apparently, it’s not as bad as the guy we said had dementia is the new defense. And that’s the news. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate how there is a fairly decent chance that Trump never finishes his ballroom after all, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how the destruction of the East Wing of the White House and the construction of a ballroom that might cost nearly half a billion dollars might get held up in court because Trump was supposed to get authorization from Congress, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and when a Justice Department lawyer compared Trump destroying the East Wing to the time President Gerald Ford put in a pool, a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush said the only non-explicit thing one can. Come on. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Emily Fohr and Chris Allport. Our producer is Caitlin Plummer. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Ethan Oberman, Greg Walters, and Matt Berg. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]