Minnesota protesters show us all how to make Trump blink | Opinion

In the summer of 2010, I had a temporary editing job at the Minnesota Star Tribune and have regularly visited the Twin Cities since.

The civic consciousness and liberal bent of the people there is as plain as their tolerance for cold. They ride bikes with European regularity – even in the winter. Subaru Outbacks seem more common than pickups. Black Lives Matter signs stayed in windows long after the tumult of the George Floyd protests subsided.

The people of the Twin Cities generously welcomed waves of immigrants, people from Somalia and the Hmong people of Southeast Asia, who allied with the U.S. during its “Secret War” in Laos.

Democrats in Minnesota are not just Democrats, but members of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. Their ranks have included such liberal icons as Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone, who famously said, “We all do better when we all do better.”

Yet even with their hardiness and Scandinavian-style commitment to a social safety net, it seemed unlikely that the residents of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul could stand up to an invasion of 3,000 agents from Immigration and Customs Control (ICE) and Customs Border Control. This is, after all, the home of “Minnesota Nice.”

But stand up they did, and on Wednesday, the Trump administration blinked. It announced that 700 agents would be leaving, and while some 2,000 remain, their brutish tactics also appear to have been muted.

President Donald Trump is desperately trying to recover from the political disaster that arose after federal agents fatally shot two Minnesota ICE observers, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In protest, tens of thousands of people marched in Minneapolis in bitter cold carrying signs that included “ICE OUT!,” “love thy neighbor,” “We are all immigrants” and, simply, “Enough!”

One 70-year-old man who marched told a TV interviewer, the scenes in Minneapolis reminded him of World War II newsreels.

“You see the SA Nazis roughing people up and beating people up on the streets. That’s what it is here,” he said. “If you’re a brown or black person, they’ll pull you over and ask for papers. You have to prove you are a citizen. What kind of country is that? That’s ridiculous; it’s crazy.”

The crazy has been met by people committed to protecting the democratic norms of the United States. The people of Minnesota have stood in the breech. Not only have they marched in protests and relentlessly recorded federal agents’ actions.. They have set up networks that provide food for immigrants afraid to leave their homes and ferried their children to school. They have shown the way to peacefully but effectively stand against Trump’s authoritarian push.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat and senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. presided, said after a visit to the site of Pretti’s killing, that “We are in a crisis moment in this country.”

But he said in an TV interview that the resolute stand by the protesters in Minneapolis gives him hope. He said:

“What inspires is that in the midst of the freezing cold in Minneapolis, ordinary citizens who understand that their neighbor’s well-being is tied up with their own are standing up because they are feeling the fierce, howling winds that are blowing through our country right now and that’s a wind that is much harsher than the elements we felt on the ground yesterday. They are calling out for change.”

In an interview with Vox, Harvard University’s Theda Skocpol, who studies political organizing in the U.S., said, “Other places will learn from Minneapolis. If there are efforts to flood cities with paramilitary forces, others will organize. It won’t be easy, but the fact that Minneapolis did it first — it’s a model. People do move between these places. From Chicago to California, and to Charlotte, North Carolina, there’s learning that goes on.”

The people of Minnesota have not just been protesters and networkers and defenders of their neighbors. They have been teachers.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com

This story was originally published February 5, 2026 at 11:47 AM with the headline "Minnesota protesters show us all how to make Trump blink | Opinion."