The City of Minneapolis vs. Donald Trump

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Politics, Washington, News, Obama, Wnyc, President, Lizza, Barack, Wickenden

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

The staff writers Emily Witt and Ruby Cramer discuss the situation in Minneapolis, a city effectively under siege by militaristic federal agents. “This is a city where there’s a police force of about six hundred officers [compared] to three thousand federal agents,” Witt points out. Cramer shares her interview with Mayor Jacob Frey, who talks about how Minneapolis was just beginning to recover from the trauma of George Floyd’s murder and its aftermath, and with the police chief Brian O’Hara, who critiques the lack of discipline he sees from immigration-enforcement officers. Witt shares her interviews with two U.S. citizens who were detained after following an ICE vehicle; one describes an interrogation in which he was encouraged to identify protest organizers and undocumented people, in exchange for favors from immigration authorities.

Ruby Cramer’s “The Mayor of an Occupied City” was published on January 23rd. Emily Witt’s “The Battle for Minneapolis” was published on January 25th.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene. I'm David Remnick.
0:08.3	Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:15.8	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:23.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:28.4	It was just over a week ago that Donald Trump announced to the world this.
0:32.9	Sometimes you need a dictator.
0:36.1	He's made a dictator joke before, but this was no joke. It was a simple
0:40.2	statement of how Trump views democracy and the rule of law as hindrances to asserting his own
0:46.2	will over the nation and the world. Trump made the dictator remark at the World Economic Forum in
0:53.0	Davos, as he was threatening to seize Greenland from Denmark and end the post-war order.
0:59.5	But back home, we were looking at quite another side of the same coin, an American city, Minneapolis, seemingly in a state of siege.
1:09.8	Federal agents were going door to door, demanding identification
1:13.4	from people on the street, and detaining those who got in their way. René Good, a poet,
1:19.8	had already been killed and others had been wounded, but that did nothing to moderate their
1:24.4	tactics. Then Alex Pretty, a nurse, was shot and killed in a hail of bullets
1:30.5	after he came to the aid of a protester. The administration did what, frankly, a dictatorship does.
1:38.1	They said that Preddy, who had been carrying a licensed firearm that he never brandished,
1:43.0	was in fact a terrorist, an assassin,
1:46.8	and they justified the killing.
1:50.2	We're going to talk about Minneapolis today and what it bodes for this country.
1:55.3	Emily Witt and Ruby Kramer have been reporting from the city, and I spoke with them this past week.
2:00.7	They're both staff
	...

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