Name: Why is Trump obsessed with Minneapolis? | Today, Explained
Uploaded: 2026-01-24T17:02:31.000Z
Duration: 27 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi, and welcome to Today Explained Saturday.

Future continuous

every week I'll be talking to someone in the news, in the culture, or just exploring an idea I can't get out of my head.

This week, we're in Minneapolis, where thousands of federal immigration agents have descended on the city in recent months.

And it's also the site of the fatal killing of Renee Good, the protester who was shot and killed by ICE officers.

By now, we've all seen the video and we've heard the statements from President Trump in his cabinet.

But I wanted to dig in deeper into the context behind this fatal encounter.

Why is ICE in Minneapolis in the first place?

What happens if Donald Trump invokes the Insurrection Act?

And what are Democrats going to do to push back against federal officials?

So this week, I talked to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and

I put all those questions in front of him.

Attorney General Keith Ellison, thank you for joining us, particularly at this difficult time for your state.

I wanted to talk to you not only because of the recent news, but

also because you have had a history here in Minnesota.

Also, the political questions I think have come up for Democrats, for you and others, in response to Donald Trump's deployment here in Minnesota.

Obviously, one of the unique things about this incident is how quickly the White House moved to place blame on the victim.

Secretary of State Kristi Nunn said this was an act of domestic terrorism.

Almost Immediately, Vice President J.D. vance said that Renee Goode was a, quote, deranged leftist.

I wanted to know, did those statements impact your ability to go about your job, and

Yeah, I thought they were deeply callous, and I thought they showed no compassion for Ms.

Good or her family or her children or anyone.

I thought to myself, this can't be how these officials are handling this.

Normally, officials in my position and in theirs say, wait, let's do an investigation.

And that's been Democrats and Republicans, Democrats and Republicans.

This is the normal way that we do these things, but

we're not doing these things the normal way.

And they came out swinging, justifying the actions of the officer right away.

And my thought is, if the officer is as innocent as you claim that he is, why not let's just have a investigation and then say, look, you know, this is a horrible tragedy, but

here's the conclusion that we've come to after reviewing the evidence.

And that just really is Another reminder of how much we're in new territory right now.

You know, I don't want to make a one to one comparison to what Republicans said and what Democrats have said.

But you know, Mayor Jacob Fry here did famously say, get the F out of our city to ice.

You did have Governor Walls kind of characterizing this as an occupation.

Do those statements from Democrats turn the temperature down or were they also, you know, part of a turning up of tension?

No, because those statements were made in reaction to the escalation in which there was no Democratic conduct that sort of brought this escalation on.

So the dramatic escalation happens regardless of what either one of them say, temperate or intemperate.

And I will say this part of what it means to be an elected official is to channel the emotional vector of your electorate.

Of course, the latest escalation from the federal government was the announcement that the Justice Department is now investigating Governor Tim Walls and make up Jacob Frye and saying they impeded officers from doing their work.

Here I was going to put that in front of you.

How do you see these criminal subpoenas and has.

Have Democrats in Minnesota impeded the federal government from what they would say is lawful immigration enforcement?

Well, you've just pointed out that the mayor and the governor are under federal investigation.

You know who's not under federal investigation?

Well, Jonathan Ross, that's who's not under investigation.

This is clearly a weaponization of the criminal justice system.

Just like Letitia James, just like James Comey, just like others who have been unjustly targeted out of revenge, out of malice, out of retribution.

You know, we've seen reporting that the federal government has shut out state and local agencies from the investigation into Reno goods killing.

And what's the status of the federal investigation and its relationship to what you all are doing in the state?

From the federal government's perspective, what we know is at least three or four things.

Number one, the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, whose job it is to investigate use of four death cases, has.

Has declined before there's been any investigation.

They have said publicly, we will not even open an investigation.

And these are the people whose job it is to do this work.

We've seen six assistant US Attorneys quit because they were told you're going to investigate Renee Goode and Becca Goode, her wife.

And we're not doing any investigation on Renee Goode's death.

As you've already noted, state and local prosecutors have been informed that they're not going to be allowed to have access to the investigative file that the FBI has acquired so far.

You know, things like bullet casings, things like the car which has the windows, which can help show trajectory.

You don't, you all don't have access to the car at this point?

We're hoping that the federal government changes its mind because it's so clearly unjust that for them to deny.

And in the past, these kind of investigations are done jointly.

I guess one thing I was asking, though, is because of the degree to which Donald Trump made clear that his plans were to ramp up a mobilization in cities like Minneapolis and because of the kind of growth we've seen over the last several months, is there anything that state officials could have done to prevent what has now become a deadly encounter?

Is there a way that that kind of telegraphing could have been an off ramp and that off ramp wasn't taken?

And I would have to say not to my knowledge, because our lawsuit, we're not saying that ICE doesn't have a right to, doesn't have a right to exist in Minnesota.

ICE existed before and we didn't sue them.

Ice, even ice, has an obligation to, to abide by the law and to obey the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment.

They have a obligation to not break and violate things like the Administrative Procedures act and the policy of the government through ice, cannot be arbitrary or capricious, and

they can't violate the sovereignty of the state of Minnesota vis a vis the 10th Amendment.

So, yeah, if ICE would have come here and even if they had more people and then just operated in the way that ICE historically has operated, which some agree with and some don't, I tend to be not that big of a fan, but

I'm, but I don't question their existence, but I, but this lawsuit is about their conduct.

this is not, again, I don't want to be placing blame on, on individuals.

Yeah, you're asking a good question, but I want to put it in front of you.

And there are folks who are coming out with the purposes of, at minimum, annoying ice, but

at maximum, disrupting some of their activities.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Why is Trump obsessed with Minneapolis? | Today, Explained

plenty

specifically

general

community