Minneapolis: A Moral and Political Turning Point

When your eyes don't lie

On Saturday, Alex Pretti was shot dead repeatedly, mercilessly, senselessly by Customs and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis.

What else is there to say?

I have been nauseous since seeing the video for the first of many times. It is sickening to once again watch a citizen die at the hands of the government on my stupid phone. It is disorienting to put that phone down to stir a pot of chicken noodle soup, to zip my 10-year-old into her snowsuit, to light candles on my 15-year-old’s birthday cake. There are moments when I nearly faint from grief and rage, but there is a foot of snow on the ground, and I’ve already talked this through with my kids once. I don’t know that I have it in me to discuss it again.

This is January 2026 in America. I’m texting friends about Heated Rivalry and the upcoming America’s Next Top Model documentary while writing to my representatives, begging them to act to protect our civil liberties. I’m connecting with people in my community to strategize: how we support Minnesota, how we approach the midterm elections, how we plan for a reckless state showing up on our street.

I have no answers. I am just here with you, feeling, doing, feeling, doing.

Today, Sarah and I process this news and talk about what it calls us to. I remain ever grateful that you are here to talk it through with us. -Beth

Topics Discussed

• Alex Pretti Killed By ICE Agents in Minneapolis

• Greed, Corruption, and Show Running in the Trump Administration

• Outside of Politics: Cultivating and Nurturing Online Communities

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• Help us prepare for our 2026 team retreat by filling out this One-Minute Survey

ICE Kills Alex Pretti in Minneapolis

• Timeline: A Moment-by-Moment Look at the Shooting of Alex Pretti (The New York Times)

• Voters Are Split on Deportations but Disapprove of ICE, Poll Finds (The New York Times)

• Protest breaks out at Dilley immigration detention facility holding 5-year-old Liam Ramos (TPR)

• Our Man in Caracas (The Morning | The New York Times)

• Welcome to the American Winter (The Atlantic)

• NRA Minnesota statements: Calls out ‘dangerous and wrong’ sentiment (Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul)

• Libertarian National Committee chair: ‘Abolish ICE’ (The Hill)

Greed and Corruption in the Trump Administration

• Kash Patel’s FBI Is Making America Less Safe, Current and Former Employees Say (The New York Times)

• For Trump, Justice Means Vengeance (The New York Times)

• “I Lost Everything”: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime (ProPublica)

• Trump says U.S. used secret ‘discombobulator’ on Venezuelan equipment during Maduro raid (PBS News Hour)

• Thom Tillis (X.com)

• Republicans tried to snag Jack Smith on technicalities. But they didn’t engage with the facts. (POLITICO)

• Opinion | How Trump Has Used the Presidency to Make at Least $1.4 Billion (The New York Times)

Sarah and Beth’s Personal Substacks

• Thoughts and Prayers (Beth Silvers)

  • The PDF of how to show up for people: Our Community Project (Thoughts and Prayers)

• Reading America250 (By Plane or By Page)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:00] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:01] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:03] You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. We’ve been doing this a long time, and there have been a handful of moments when I both dreaded recording our episodes and knew I couldn’t move forward until we did. The 2016 election, the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, the beginning of the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd. Today is another one of those moments.

Beth [00:00:28] It is a pivotal time in American history. We are here to talk about that with each other and with all of you today. And we really hope that as we work this out and we are working it out, that there is something valuable for you in that. We hope that you will continue to work it out with us and with each after you listen.

Sarah [00:01:04] Beth, on Saturday morning I woke up after being very emotional and stressed about the violence in Minnesota over the previous week and kind of gave myself a talking to. I just was like, look, if I wanted to, if I want to right now, I couldn’t get there to help. I couldn’t get there protest because of the weather. And I needed to come down some and be present with my family. We’re all home because of this snow. So I deleted the New York Times app. I deleted Apple News app. I even deleted a browser that surfaces news stories when you open it and really, really tried to step away. An hour later, not very long after that, a long time listener texted us, despondent over the murder of another U.S. Citizen by ICE agents that morning. And so I redownloaded all the apps and tried to learn as much as I could about the murder of Alex Preti.

Beth [00:02:43] I was in it pretty deep by the time we got that text message because Saturday morning we had our future problem solving teams over for an early morning practice. We knew that snow was coming and we wanted to get everybody home safe before it did. So we had that practice and then it ended right at about half time of the Kentucky basketball game. So I turned the game on and I opened X to see what people were saying about the first half of the game. And the very first thing I saw was a video of Alex being shot repeatedly by federal agents. And I just really haven’t been right since then. I was already in a little bit of a fragile state as I mentioned to our Spice Cabinet listeners, my mom had surgery last week. She’s doing okay, but I have been in this kind of anxious posture for about a week. And then when you combine that with the news and then you just casually sit on your couch and watch someone be shot over and over again, there’s just not, I think, a way to feel at home with yourself, and that’s where I am. I just, I still feel shaky and not very grounded.

Sarah [00:03:58] It’s hard to unpack what feels different this time to me. I don’t know if it is just the clear distance between the truth of the events as portrayed in the videos and the statements of our government. I don’t know if it is the fact that Alex Pretti was a federal employee, an ICU nurse who took care of veterans. I don’t know if it’s on top of all the other violence and terror that has been taking place in this American city. I mean, this was Saturday. On the 20th, Liam Ramos, a five-year-old boy, was detained with his father. That was another sort of breakthrough moment. On the 22nd, two-year-old Chloe Renata Tipan Vilacis was pulled away from her screaming mother and flown to Texas against a court injunction. She is now back with her mother, but Liam Ramos is still in a facility in Texas where there was a protest this weekend where the detainees, many of them children, poured into an open area of the facility, chanting freedom. The streets of Minneapolis flooded with people on Saturday, thousands and thousands of people in Sub-Zero temperatures protesting this. Hundreds of clergy were arrested at an airport trying to bring attention to the detention flights. I just kept thinking this weekend, I’ve always wondered-- and I’m sure I’ve said it on this podcast-- how scary and intense it must have been to be alive in the 60s during the protest, during the assassinations. And now I don’t have to wonder anymore. Now I don’t have to wonder what that was like.

Beth [00:06:47] I’m stuck on you saying what makes it different. I do think it’s cumulative. And that the stress of the past year and especially of the last month is just piling up. I do think it’s that distance between the truth and what the administration says. I also felt a particular stress in recognizing the potential for conflict when the federal government says to Minnesota state police, get out. We are investigating this, you can’t. And Minnesota says, not this time. And when the National Guard is being deployed by the state of Minnesota and you just know we are headed to a really dark place if something doesn’t change here. I think that cumulative impact and seeing how it broke through, people who I haven’t heard from in decades, I heard from about this. There’s just no corner of life where I think anyone is looking away from it. And so all of that together, it just feels like increasing, increasing, increasing pressure. And that pressure is increasing in ways that are not at all hypothetical. Like you and I know the people who are in the streets protesting. It’s really easy for me to say to folks who are calling them like anarchist and rioters, no, I know a lot of these people personally. And that you have these folks who are dead and you’re watching them die in these videos where it is unclear what kind of law enforcement they’re supposedly interrupting. It just looks at this point like the federal government has gone to war with a city. The idea that even a year ago we would have had to say there shouldn’t be casualties of immigration enforcement as a matter of course, that would have been absurd a year ago. So I just think it’s all coming together in a moment and no wonder it’s just sitting on everyone in such a heavy way. It should be. It’s awful. I read an Atlantic piece this morning that compared what’s happening in Minneapolis to the Arab Spring. And it didn’t seem overwrought to me in any way, but it also is unbelievably sad and rage-inducing and all kinds of things.

Sarah [00:09:33] Yeah. On Sunday morning I posted a lot about Alex Preti’s death, which is something I haven’t done in a very long time. I’ve stopped posting political content online because it doesn’t feel political; it feels moral. And I’ve been trying to think about why all of a sudden that feels important to do. I posted on Facebook and a friend from college commented, well, you shouldn’t wave a gun in the air. And I responded publicly, but then I pulled the conversation into chat and had a long exchange with him. That was productive. It was productive and I’m happy it happened. But I realized afterwards what bothered me about it and what has bothered me a lot about people’s statements is this idea that he was disrupting law enforcement. What law enforcement? What law reinforcement? I don’t see any law enforcement in that video. I see them assaulting protesters, shoving a woman to the ground and Alex Pretti trying to help her. Or what I see online is people who I’ve had to listen to for my entire adult life as a victim of a school shooting, defend the second amendment, now telling me if you legally carry a firearm to a protest you deserve to die. And so I am struggling because it feels like this isn’t a partisan argument in the mode of anything even we’ve had at the most intense moments of 2020 and 2016. Because we’re talking about government power, we’re talking about the most powerful people with incredible surveillance at their disposal. Reading in that Atlantic piece about how they are training regular citizens on how to deal with facial recognition while listening to their government come out and lie, it feels dystopic in a way that I am struggling to articulate. But what is the first commandment of 1984? Do not believe what your eyes can see. And what everyone can see, journalists, our listeners, everyone who has step foot in Minneapolis and St. Paul, says one thing very clearly, the federal government is going to war with its own citizens.

Beth [00:12:31] So I spent a bunch of time over the weekend just trying to think about the fact that the president is still going to be the president for three more years. And this can’t continue. And what does that mean? What do those two facts mean when you put them side by side? And so I also posted online about this this weekend, which I never do. I always figure I have a podcast about politics. If people want to hear from me about it, they can opt in here. I don’t argue with people on Facebook about things, but sometimes I just feel called to say something and I did. And so what I posted was a tweet that I saw from someone just saying, hey, the president can end this. This is a policy choice, and the president can make a different choice. And that’s what I most want to communicate to people who tend to disagree with me about everything. I have a narrow ask of you right now. And my narrow ask is to just make this stop, just to communicate that this policy choice is not acceptable. That you can absolutely enforce immigration laws. You can enforce immigration law to a degree that I find reprehensible, but you can do it without this kind of violence accompanying it. Because I think so much of what has become glaringly obvious is that they’re producing immigration enforcement more than they’re doing immigration enforcement. So I just want this to stop. Can we get on the same page about that?

[00:14:18] Can we on the page that this needs to stop? Can we get on the same the role of the gun here? Look, guns are scary. I agree. Nobody has to convince me that a gun is scary. That is why professional law enforcement works really hard to build relationships that aren’t scary in their communities. That’s why you see the National Guard right now handing out donuts and hot chocolate and coffee and saying we’re not here to scare people. We’re here to help people. It takes a lot of work to convince people that you’re here to help them when you also are carrying a very scary gun. That’s just the truth of it. And the damage that is being done to law enforcement across the country because of the way that border patrol and ICE are acting in Minneapolis is incalculable. And I think about this too. What is border patrol doing in Minneapolis? Border patrol should go back to the border. Can my conservative friends and I agree on this? Can we just agree on this narrow thing that this is not right? This is a waste of resources and it’s a waste of resources that is resulting in people being killed and the law enforcement officers that you’ve told me for a decade it is important to use to support are all being tarnished by the behavior of people who are growing increasingly callous. I keep thinking about this report in the morning a couple weeks ago from the New York Times out of Caracas. They had a reporter in Venezuela and he was writing about what it was like right after Maduro was captured. And the sentence that has stuck with me is he said there are people patrolling the streets right now. The men with guns are jumpy. And that’s what’s going on in Minneapolis. You can see it. The men with guns are jumpy. And that is just a recipe for more and more death. Can we all agree that we don’t want that?

Sarah [00:16:18] I think what has been so hard is realizing that I’ve spent so much time in my political existence, but particularly in the last several years, feeling like the extremes of the political spectrum were performing for clicks and polluting the civic reality for the rest of us. But when you read much less if you live there and experience what is happening in Minnesota, beginning with the immigration enforcement. Although we had plenty of warning about this, what they did in that Chicago high rise is about as dystopic as you get. I mean our government repelling down from helicopters in the dead of night into a residential apartment building is pretty apocalyptic. California, Los Angeles, so many places have experienced this aggressive, reckless approach to immigration that has nothing to do with protecting Americans from criminals. It’s just hard not to feel that both extremes. The people who I would roll my eyes at who would put up don’t tread on me flags and scream about government tyranny, and all the way on the other end, the resistance liberals who would tell us this is how bad it could get. You’re talking about armed men ripping children from their mothers, people having to hide children in their basements, like true World War II level actions.

[00:18:31] I’m struggling not to see how I shouldn’t have listened more carefully to both sides. Because my desire to moderate and to keep things on an even keel and to calm myself down it feels like-- and all of us, like that’s what we want. I keep thinking about the American Revolution and how many people just were like can we just go back to normal? Can we just back to normally, please? If we have to put up with the king, fine. Whatever it takes, can we go back to normal? And normal is over. Normal is gone. And so I’m just trying to think what that means for me and for my family and for the future of this country because a line has been crossed. And I’m not saying it’s never been crossed before in American life. It absolutely has. And we’ve come back from it. But there’s permanent damage done in the process. The children who have witnessed these immigration enforcements, either the children of immigrants or the citizens of this country whose daycares and schools and apartment complexes were invaded by federal forces, are permanently changed. Permanently changed. And so processing that and deciding, not just processing, not just feeling, deciding, what does this mean? It’s terrifying.

Beth [00:20:16] I was impressed by a statement that the Libertarian Party put out about this incident. I was impressive that the NRA spoke up. I was disappointed by the milquetoast statement that came from corporations in Minnesota. I’m glad they finally decided to say something, but what they said was not good enough for me. I am looking around thinking about how we got here, and about my misplaced trust in our representatives to even act in their own self-interest. Because what’s happening right now is not in anybody’s interest. I listened to Jamie Comer of Kentucky saying that if he were the president right now, he might just move ICE along to another city. And I thought, boy, Jamie, that’s not the call. That is not the call right now. Another city should not have to endure this either. There’s a fundamental brokenness happening with these agencies that needs to be dealt with before you ask them to continue enforcing the law. This piece that we keep referencing from the Atlantic, we’ll link in the show notes, mentions a person sitting in his apartment and seeing two ICE officers at a makeshift memorial for Renee Good. And one of them picks up a rose off of the memorial and tucks it into his lapel and then pretends to very dramatically give it to a female ICE officer with him. And then they both laughed about it. And this person described this event as a transformational moment in his life. And he runs downstairs and gets in his car and drives over there and starts yelling at them, like, what are you doing? Have you lost all your humanity? Because this is not how normal people behave.

[00:22:21] And so that’s why you’ve got to completely put the brakes on everything right now. You can’t just move them to another city because they too are changed by what’s happened. Whatever side of these protest lines you’ve been on, you don’t get a pass from the emotional scarring that’s happening here. And I really believed for too long that our representatives in Congress were adults enough to prevent things from going this far. I believed last year when Trump started talking about Greenland and the Panama Canal that that was a bridge too far, that our representatives would hold back a little bit, that our titans of industry would hold that stuff back a bit. That everybody believed in enough stability, enough status quo, that they would let him kind of play around the edges, much like they did in his first term. And a lot of that went too far too, but every time it did, every time it felt like we were on the brink, it turned out that we were, and he stepped back. And this has gone so far. And even if he finds an off-ramp here, and I think he will, I think he’ll fire Kristi Noem. I think he’ll probably send Greg Bovino somewhere else, get them out of Minnesota, but that’s not enough. And how do you restore the trust that allows us to get through another three years here that we won’t be on this brink again in a hurry? I don’t know.

Sarah [00:23:58] I’ve been thinking about why Minneapolis? In the hopes that it reveals some understanding of what comes next. You and I both read a New York Times piece about the FBI and what it’s been like under leadership of Kash Patel which matches very closely another article the New York times said about the Justice Department and the fallout there that what rules this administration is performance, not competence. It matters what we tweet. It matters how we look. There is no long-term strategy. It is an aggressive, cruel power grab. It is informed by the ruling ethos of Donald Trump, which is just ego. It’s just a selfish pursuit. And so that’s how everyone else behaves. And so I’m trying to think through, okay, what is the play here? Because ICE is incredibly well funded. It’s like the best funded force outside of our own military and China’s around the world right now. Enormous amount of money. They are building a very powerful surveillance apparatus that I have no doubt at this point they will use against United States citizens. It’s a private army at his discretion. It’s the only way I know how to describe it. I think, do they choose Minneapolis because of the fraud scheme? I mean, they were pulling FBI agents off the fraud investigation to do immigration enforcement. But did they think like they could get away with it? Like they’d weakened the Democratic Party and the Democratic leaders in Minneapolis enough that they could away with it?

[00:26:10] What does that look like in another location? Because I think you’re right, even if they move on, what comes next? Then they will move on. Because they’re so short-sighted, they do seem to respond to Political pressure to a certain extent and there has been enormous political fallout. There is going to be a funding fight over DHS and the United States Senate. You’re seeing some daylight between Republicans though some that are retiring some that aren’t for re-election, but some that are seeing the polling that Americans are opposed to the ingressive enforcement going on right now by large and growing numbers. I don’t know about you, but it’s showing up and like you said, people texting me, but also just on social media, from accounts that never get political, which I find incredibly encouraging. So I’m trying to delineate, like, thinking about these people at the very top who seem to be broadcasting six ways to Sunday they want to invoke the Insurrection Act. Are they pushing it off until election day? Is that when they’re going to use the Insurrection Act? Pam Bondi’s letter did read like a ransom note. I want the voter rolls. So what is the play around the midterm elections? How do we resist that? How do we think let’s not assume Congress is going to do something. Let’s not assumed the Supreme Court is going to rescue us. If they try to shut down the elections, what comes next? Because you cannot look square in the eye at what’s happening in Minnesota and not as a caring citizen play out what comes next here. I just really think it’s important to say that as clearly and as often as necessary.

Beth [00:28:13] I think they chose Minneapolis because they thought that this pressure on top of what the city had already suffered in 2020 would make it an easy place to invoke the Insurrection Act. And I think that it is to the eternal and deep credit of people in Minneapolis that they have managed to say, not in my community without tearing their community apart. With complete love and solidarity in their community. With care for neighbors. You can’t find footage that is what the Trump administration wanted to come out of this. And that is to be committed. I am extremely, extremely grateful for that.

Sarah [00:29:06] Some of it is organization built on the backs of what happened in 2020. I think that’s important to note because another community might not be as well-equipped because they’re not going to have this infrastructure. That’s something else we should all be thinking about in our communities.

Beth [00:29:20] Yeah, I was wishing this morning for some of the training that these observers are receiving and thinking about it specifically in the election context. I trust our Secretary of State in Kentucky. I trust my local election officials. I worry about what things could look like on the ground from agitators that aren’t from here. I’m trying to think about what do we not have that we would need if this knocked at our door, because knocking at our doors feels increasingly likely. And even if it doesn’t in the immediate, I think there is a benefit in preparing for it to remind us all how serious this has gotten. Hopefully, we never need that kind of training here, but we should have it to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people who are having to use it every day and we should have it as we go vote to remember how bad it can get and to remember that we need to elect people who will stand in the breach here and who will do a lot more than the folks who we’ve elected thus far. I don’t think politics will be the same after this year in this country for a very long time and maybe ever, and that’s probably okay. I think that what my children are seeing from this will completely-- realign the parties sounds hilarious compared to what I think will happen just watching my own children respond when they learned about Alex Preti’s murder. And so, yeah, I’m really trying to think about who can I connect with in my community that’s not looking for a fight, but that is prepared if one arrives at our door and that will take seriously our need to stop going, oh, you know, this senator’s probably fine. And get serious about what we need in Washington right now.

Sarah [00:31:39] I do want to say there is a temptation to feel despondent. That’s why I do remind myself that we have come to the brink so many times over America’s history, but also to say and to respect that we have so many more tools at our disposal than other places around the world. The Iranian government opened fire on their citizens and murdered thousands of them. They shut down the internet. And so while we have those tools, because I don’t love him talking about this discombabulator like it’s a new fun toy he’d love to show off, thinking about what that means, we can film and upload it to the internet immediately and we should. We can step into the streets. We can call our representatives. They aren’t doing as good a job as we would want, but they’re still there. And I’m just trying to hold that alongside this like now is the time for choosing energy because I think that’s why I posted. And I’m really trying to separate people who have real power, people who are abusing that power, people who have really influence from my fellow citizens. I think there is a desire to pile on that I’m seeing that I don’t think is helpful.

[00:33:10] If someone will give you an inch, take it. Take it and run. If someone says, okay, wait, I see this differently. If someone is doing that, fabulous. I’m not trying to sort my fellow’s citizens. I’m trying to hold those in power to account. And I think that is such an important distinction. We need each other. If this has gotten as bad at the highest levels of government, if there is-- not if, there is as much corruption and criminal hiding as there openly appears to be. Then we’re going to need each other. I’m going to need that libertarian dude. I’m going to need that guy I’ve been fighting with about the second amendment since I was in high school. We’re friends now. You know what I’m saying? Like we’re allies. We are going to meet each other to stop this runaway train and to rebuild the wreckage it left in its wake.

Beth [00:34:22] Yeah, I put the marker for myself down at violence. That’s where I put my red line personally and what I feel comfortable arguing with people about on Facebook. Or arguing with people by text message, which is all any of us can do here right now because we’re snowed in. And I think that’s another reason that social media feels important to me right now. People have to get this out somewhere and that is where we have because of the weather. And maybe it is the best place. I sometimes forget how many people watch what I do on social media. I heard from a lot of people about how I handled this just on social media. And I’m not trying to toot my own horn. I’m trying to say to our listeners who are desperate to help, that you’re probably helping and you don’t even know. Like our influence does really matter. And how we talk to people about this and when we use our voices and what we say with them, it is still true. It is still true that we are a democracy where that stuff matters a lot and you might be exercising a lot more power than you feel. I don’t feel any power right now whatsoever, but then I hear from a lot of people who look to me in moments like this.

[00:35:47] And I just know that that’s true for the people who listen to this show. You are influential in your communities. Your friends and family care what you think and respect what you have to say. And even when it doesn’t feel like it, even when feels like maybe someone’s being openly hostile toward you, you don’t know what they’re thinking about on the other side of those conversations. And so I am just really searching my soul about how I can more effectively continue to say like, listen, I’ll negotiate on everything, but we don’t kill each other. That is not how we solve problems in this nation, and I don’t desire that. There is not a single person around me, not one, whose views or actions I think are abhorrent enough to be a death sentence. So everything else, let’s talk about. I’m here for you and I respect you enough to have the conversation. That’s my line and I believe it to be yours too. I really do.

Sarah [00:36:48] Beth, I got to say, as much as Jamie Comer’s statement was not enough, I will be calling him today and saying, thanks. Thanks for doing the bare minimum. Here’s what I’d like you to do next. I’m going to call Rand Paul and say, I’m not a libertarian, but you are. And I expect you to vote against any additional Department of Homeland Security funding.

Beth [00:37:15] Yeah, I’ve been watching carefully for Thomas Massey’s statements on all of this. He is my representative in Congress and he has reposted some libertarian leaning statements particularly in defense of the right of Alex Preti to have had a gun. I would like to hear as much enthusiasm for the First Amendment as the Second in those statements. But again, I will take the bare minimum. And I have been grateful to Representative Massey in a number of respects because that is the truth of it. I think sometimes we feel like there’s no good in contacting Republican officials. They have the most power right now. They have most power. And when you have someone within the party being willing to even hint at accountability, being willing to push-- Tom Tillis has taken so much mocking online for the way that he’ll put out statements blaming the president’s advisors. And I get why that’s annoying. And I think it’s very inauthentic. And I also think he’s doing what he thinks has the likeliest chance of being effective because Donald Trump is still going to be the president on the other side of this. And so what can I do to move the needle at all? And I do think right now pressuring Trump to throw his people under the bus and change directions is the most likely thing to be effective. And so that is what I intend to say just over and over to anyone who will listen. I think Kristi Noem needs to go. I think the Department of Homeland Security needs new and responsible leadership. And that is what I am focused on right now.

Sarah [00:39:03] Yeah, it’s really hard. I struggle with Trump and his “advisors” and what I think is the smartest political strategy, what I think is the most effective government strategy, what I think we should be doing policy-wise. There’s a part of me who wants one person and one person only gone absent Donald Trump, and that is Stephen Miller, who I think is a true architect of this chaos. Who is cruel and racist and a white nationalist and does not represent the views of Americans. I don’t know why he’s back after being the architect of separating children from their families in the first Trump administration, many of which who have never been reunited. And I think that he has plans for this army beyond just instituting aggressive immigration enforcement. I don’t pretend to know what they are, but I do not think it ends with immigration with Stephen Miller. And I worry because Donald Trump is so powerful a political presence, what happens when he’s gone? Who is going to be emboldened in his absence. And as much as I want to be like, oh, he’s getting that Tom Tillis approach, like whatever, do what you can; I also want to make sure that these people are shackled forever with what they have stood for, particularly JD Vance, particularly Marco Rubio, in their pursuit of political power.

[00:41:01] Because I don’t think they’re done and their ambition is over. And so, yeah, I want Kristi Noem gone, but I don’t even think she does anything. I think all she does is get dressed up for the press releases. I think Corey Lewandowski is in charge over there. And so I struggle with, like, as far as administrative accountability, what that would look like. I want real articulation of policies, legislation that can pass, that will reign in ICE, if not completely disband it. Not because I don’t want immigration enforcement, but because they have sacrificed any legitimacy they might have had with the American public, which has been a concern with the Department of Homeland Security since it started, and it’s not even that old. They were walking a fine line and they have now crossed it, leaped over it. I don’t know how they come back from this. I don’t know. I don’t want a department that has all this surveillance data on American citizens. I don’t want the attorney general saying we’ll pull out our private immigration army if you give us the voter rolls. This is next level intimidation, corruption, anti-democratic assault.

Beth [00:42:36] Yeah, let me be clear that Kristi Noem being fired is not the only thing that I want. It’s not even close to sufficient. I do think that if she’s fired, there’s a good chance Corey Lewandowski is out too, and I want that. I also want Stephen Miller gone. I think that is a scary proposition for this president because he is the only policy arm in the White House. But I do you think that he is ultimately responsible for much of the vitriol that we see, and the violence and the aggression and the show running. I think people are show running as much for Stephen Miller as for Trump now. I think Trump does at the end of the day really want to be popular and liked and respected. And it is wild to me that he thinks that has to happen at gunpoint. And I think the reason I hope Noem gets thrown under the bus is I hope that that’s the beginning of a turn where he can at least see this doesn’t serve him. This does not serve what he cares about. It’s so weird to sit in my house and like root for his self-interest to went out here. But that’s what I got. If he can’t care about the country, hopefully he cares enough about himself to know that this does not serve him. I want a whole bunch of things that I am trying to decide the timing of. What can reasonably happen before the midterm elections? That’s where I’m a little bit stuck.

[00:44:01] I want the midterm elections to be a full throated repudiation of all of this by the American people. I want seats to turn blue that have never had a prayer of being blue. I want The Libertarian Party to fully split from the Republicans. It’s never made sense for libertarians and Christian nationalists to live in the same house. That’s nuts. And that’s tough, right? You got to have principled people leading that libertarian movement, not people who acquiesced to Trumpism because it has been a conflict from the very beginning. But I want to see that party make a move because we need a strong party that says, no, the government should stay out of your business. That’s important. That an important flag to carry in this country. I would like to see immigration out of homeland security completely. I just think tying those things together makes no sense. And again, if you are confused at all about the motivations here, read that Kash Patel piece, they’ve taken everybody off actual terrorism work. Not everybody, that’s an exaggeration, but they have really hamstrung the ability of people to follow clear terrorist threats in the name of assigning people to be out in the streets, turning people like Renee Good and Alex Preti into what they’re going to call domestic terrorists because they dare to disagree with the government. I mean, the way that they use the word terrorism is to me one of the most chilling things that’s happening right now. So I want a whole bunch of things to change fundamentally from this. And I’m just trying to get clear in my own mind about what can change without the composition of Congress changing.

Sarah [00:45:49] Yeah, there was a moment when reading the Department of Homeland Security statement, an agency I’ve never been comfortable with since its founding, and the president’s statements and thinking, I’m an enemy of my government. I’m an enemy. They see me as an enemy. I don’t know how else I can interpret this administration. I do not agree with Donald Trump. I do like Donald Trump. I am not a Republican. Which and I would and will protest in the streets and have outside immigration enforcement in the first administration. So I don’t know what else to think. I don’t know what to view the relationship I have with the federal government right now in this administration. Which is scary. But also you start to get real clear. It starts to expand your vision beyond partisanship. You might define me as an enemy because of my partisanship, but what am I fighting for? What makes me an American? I think the fact that all this has happened after Jack Smith went before Congress last week and laid out his case that Donald Trump violated the law in 2020, and just gave such a full-throated endorsement for the rule of law.

[00:47:34] We don’t get to pick and choose. This is what this feels like when the rules don’t apply to everyone equally. Well, you were in a car. Well, you had a gun on your hip. Well, you were on the wrong voter roll. Well, you posted that you were giving away whistles to protestors so the government’s going to show up at your door and do a full audit of your fifth generation Minnesota business toy shop. It doesn’t matter if there are no processes, if we’re just at the whims of people’s personalities, ambitious pursuits, or greed. I don’t know any other way to state a lot of what motivates Donald Trump. Again, all of this is happening is the New York Times is putting out a piece that he made $1.4 billion in his first year in office, which they state clearly is absolutely an underestimate. I mean, this is what it feels like. We thought that we had institutions we couldn’t trust, that were applied unfairly. And look, to a certain extent we did. None of them were perfect. But if you really want to feel what it feels like when there is no rule of law, when the guy at the top decides who sinks, who swims, who lives, who dies, who’s an actual citizen and who’s a domestic terrorist, this is it.

Beth [00:49:10] I was really impressed with Jack Smith and his testimony. And the way when he was asked if he had regrets, he said he should have defended his staff more. And when you look at what the people who have worked for him have dealt with, it’s extraordinary. It is extraordinary to read the statements from people who has resigned from this administration, people who had been fired, people who really wanted to do good, who dedicated their lives to doing good, who did good. Who did real good for the country, who prevented things that we never want to know about, and then became unable to do that job anymore because the job became more focused on making sure Kash Patel is sufficiently entertained, that he’s able to be with his girlfriend whenever he wants and fly on a private jet. The reporting about him being more concerned at a meeting of the Five Eyes, this international incredible cooperative effort to try to keep the world safer.

[00:50:12] And his assistant is yelling at people over where he’s going to eat and work out. It’s so galling. I am very deep in learning about prediction markets and how there is a direct opportunity for people with sensitive information to personally cash in on that information through prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi. And we see it happening. And the response from this administration, rather than thinking about how do we regulate it, is to say that attempts to regulate it were anti-innovation. And by the way, we’d like a piece of that. So the president is still the largest shareholder in Trump media group and continues to make money off of cryptocurrency and meme coins. And Trump media group is opening its own prediction market. You can now cash in on insider information on a prediction market that’s largest stockholder is the president of the United States. And that level of building systems in front of our very eyes to profit from your position of public trust. It’s hard to pay attention to that stuff when people are being shot in the street by masked law enforcement agents, but it all hangs together.

Sarah [00:51:37] Yeah, it does. Yeah, that’s what I was going to say, but it’s connected. It matters. I don’t know what brilliant person just thought up no kings, but I really don’t think there’s a better description of what’s happening. I want to put my name on stuff. I want to make money off my position of power. There is no modicum. No even tip of the hat, wink of the eye, to public service, to the fact that this is a democracy and your power comes from us and that the rules that apply to us apply to you. And I do believe as much as Americans are struggling economically, and that is a valid concern. It really, really is. It is scary between AI and affordability and grocery prices. I do belief in my core that our individualist streak, our devotion to liberty and freedom is still there, deep down. Down below the numbing of social media and our decentralized media environment and the years of scarring and grief over polarization. I have to believe; I do believe that we are seeing right now that we do not want to be each other’s enemies. That we do believe the rule should apply to everyone and that we are willing to fight for it. Certainly, the people of Minneapolis are. Thousands of them have come into the street. Many of them had been arrested. Two of them has lost their lives. I hope it ends with them, but if it doesn’t, I hope we are all carefully considering what we are able, capable, and willing to do ourselves. You and I both have personal Substacks. I thought today in our Outside of Politics, since people are trapped in their house feeling antsy, wanting to participate in community in any way, shape, or form available to them, we could talk about a couple of the projects we have going on. You set up pen pals. First question, have you read The Correspondence?

Beth [00:54:53] I haven’t. It’s on my list.

Sarah [00:54:55] It’s so funny because this is a hot book right now. It’s so, so good, and the entire premise is we should write to each other.

Beth [00:55:03] Yeah, I love to get a letter. One of my absolute favorite tasks that I have once a week is writing thank you notes to people who have done something for Pantsuit Politics. If we interview someone, I send them a handwritten thank you note. There are other thank you notes that I send out for our business. And I love sitting down with my stationery and my colorful pens. I put stickers on the envelopes. I don’t care if we’re supposed to be a very serious news and politics podcast. I like a beautiful piece of mail coming my way and I like to send one out. And what I saw with the people who read my Substack, which it’s just a lot about faith and kind of how I process the world through the lens of my faith. But it’s also just about what it means to like live your faith in action. And I just saw this real generosity of spirit of people sharing here’s just what’s going on in my daily life and I want to support other people. Last year I had a series of questions going in our chat like, what’s the best food to take to someone when someone has died? Or what’s the most helpful way to help after a death? And there was just this incredible list of suggestions. What’s your favorite graduation gift? Just easy things like that, and I compiled all that in a PDF. And now we’ve got this handbook for how to be a helpful person. And so the pen pals felt like the next logical step to me. Here are all these really generous, loving people who seem to just want to love on each other. How about I connect them one-on-one to do some of that? And so it took some time to sort through. I just did a Google form and let people share their contact information, took some time to start through all that and reach out and get everybody paired. But I did that this weekend and even the short notes of thanks that I got back for that, it felt special and personal to just hear from regular people saying, yeah, I can’t wait to put a note in the mail to a stranger.

Sarah [00:56:56] I love that. I mean we get stacks and stacks of Christmas cards every year with incredible letters and notes from listeners and so I am also a correspondent. I love to send a thank-you note. I love to send a birthday card. So I definitely see the appeal. Over on my Substack By Plane or By Page it’s all about reading really mostly and travel. Some of my itineraries are there. But I am arguably at this point obsessed with America 250. Just kind of the harder it gets the more I cling to this celebration. My mom was like I’m just not even going to have something to do with it because he’s in charge. And I said absolutely not. I will have not have this stolen from me. No. No. No. So I’m very, very into it. I definitely have the discipline of celebration that Elizabeth Oldfield talks about don’t worry about that. And so I thought last year we did the First Books Book Club where we talked about bestselling authors’ first books which was really fun. The best one was Hondo by Louis Lamour in case anybody was just desperate to know. It was really good because I just love a Western. But this year we’re going to do an America 250 book club. Four books, once a quarter about American families because I love a multi-generational family drama. You know what I’m saying? Like I just love it. So I want to do one all around the geographic continental United States. I kind of wanted like a diverse mix. So we’re reading Giant from Edna Farber which is about Texas. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow just about New York. Roots by Alex Haley which is set in Georgia. And then the Joy Look Club which is set in California. So we have a good geographic mix. Two women authors, two male authors. Goes over like 300 years of American history. So I’m really, really excited. Have you read any of those?

Beth [00:59:04] No, but my Mahjong group talks about the Joy Luck Club often. That’s how one of our members got introduced to the idea. And it made me want to read it at some point.

Sarah [00:59:16] Yeah, I read it a long time ago. I’m obviously going to read it again. I’m really excited. I’m real excited about Giant. Michelle, who is a long-term listener of Pantsuit Politics, went on the Pride and Prejudice pilgrimage with me, she helped me pick these books. It’s a long story, but I got my book club date wrong, and so it was just me and Michelle, and so we were like, hey, let’s pick the books for next year. We did such a good job. She’s already read it. She says it’s incredible, so I can’t wait to get started. It’s going to be really fun. Because these books are complex. These are not like rah, rah america. These are going to be--

Beth [00:59:47] I mean, Roots is a deep read.

Sarah [00:59:51] So I’m really, really excited about it. I’ve clearly found my people because so many people are like I didn’t need a fourth book club. I’m like same. How many book clubs you think I have? All of them, but it’s like one of my favorite. It just checks every box for me when it comes to community. There’s interaction, there’s reading, there’s often deep cultural issues and history. There’s just so much swept up and something like this. So I am really excited and then somebody in the comments sent me a link to this America 250 journal with all these journal prompts from explorers that went across America. Are you freaking kidding me? Gosh, just anything at this point. If anybody’s like, here’s a fun way to celebrate America 250, I don’t even need to hear the rest of the sentence. I’m so locked in.

Beth [01:00:36] So you have your online book club, meaning like you have Zoom dates or how does that work?

Sarah [01:00:41] Yeah, we’re going to have Zoom book club dates. That’s what we did for the first books book club. You read one once a quarter. We’ll have a quarterly book club meeting that are really fun. Listen, I know we all have complicated relationships with Zoom post-pandemic, but it works really well for a book club. We just had our first one for slow read, which I’m doing with Laura Tremaine. We are slow reading The Stand. We had like 68 people and it was great. Like people just raised their hands and had all kinds of interesting insight and it was just great. It works pretty good for a book club. I honestly think sometimes it’s better than an in-person book club because an in-person book club can become so much about socializing. If you’re not careful, you’ll be like, oh, do you want to talk about the book now? But Zoom keeps everybody kind of focused, you know what I mean?

Beth [01:01:24] Yeah, they figured it out. They just figured out how to make it work. They went through all the things and now they’ve got it down. I feel like Zoom is by far the most reliable of those kinds of platforms and that people have figured out how to use it and make it fun to be together. And I think that as much as I would always say find your people in person because there is something about proximity that is special and important, it is also really special the kind of bonding that you see people do just through comments and a chat. Like it’s incredible to me to see the way in our Pantsuit Politics space and also in thoughts and prayers that I write, the way that people just come in and say like I’m heartbroken right now. Here’s what’s going on. And somebody else will come in and say, me too, I’ve been there before. Here’s what helped me. I mean, people are incredibly generous with one another online and I need that right now.

Sarah [01:02:27] And you know what it is, it reminds me of the cliche phrase it takes a village to raise a child. Because you just can’t meet all of your children’s needs between two parents. Humans are more complex; experiences are more complex. They’re in a different generation. Just on and on and on. You have to have a lot of adults in their lives to meet the complex needs of just your child. Well, in that same regard, probably even if you have the most amazing community, which I absolutely do, they’re not going to be capable or able to meet every diverse interests you have or every diverse experience you have. The broader depth of humanity you can bring to your own experiences or grief or interests, that’s one of the beautiful things about the internet is like you just get so damn niche and people are niche. You know what I’m saying? Like they can get really into a lot of different things. And so like the more humanity you bring to it, the more likely you are to meet someone else in that niche. You know what I am saying?

Beth [01:03:46] I think that especially as we face the kinds of issues that we spend the bulk of this podcast talking about, and as we think about celebrating our country, those online connections always keep the story from getting flat for me. They always make it more complicated. Pairing up my pen pals, I had a few people from outside the United States and I was thinking about how to connect them and we figured it out and they were all so lovely about it. And it just gave me a moment to be like, God, the post office is incredible. I just really appreciate how easy it is to pair people up all over this giant country of ours and know that they’re going to have the same price to send mail to one another. That’s amazing. I think any moment where the story doesn’t get flat and you’d keep it as alive and strange and mysterious and messy as it can be is generative. It keeps me wanting to think and create and share and publish and put one foot in front of the other on days when that feels impossibly hard.

Sarah [01:05:02] Well, I know that is true because that is what I felt from Pantsuit Politics for the last 10 years, and I hope you guys have too. Knowing that I can come here and talk to Beth and be in community with all of you during some of these hardest, most difficult moments in America keeps me moving forward. That’s for sure. Thank you for listening with us today. We will be back in years on Friday with another episode. In the meantime, if you have a minute or two to spare or you just need a distraction, how about a listener survey? Linked in the notes of this show or on our website Pantsypoliticsshow.com. Until then, keep it nuanced, y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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