A Border Patrol agent aims a munition launcher at a crowd in Minneapolis after a federal officer shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti on Saturday. Ben Hovland/Minnesota Public Radio via AP

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Toward the end of 2024, several weeks before Donald Trump would regain power, I wrote an article headlined, “Donald Trump Will Need a Police State to Implement His Agenda.” In this piece, I observed, “Trump has many plans for his return engagement at the White House. Several will require police-state tactics”—foremost his vow to round up and deport 11 million or so undocumented immigrants. Peering into the future, I wrote:

Such a program would require deploying a paramilitary force—or even the National Guard or the military—to locate migrants, apprehend them, and guard them in a network of prisons and detention camps. (Executives at private prison, security, and surveillance software companies are already salivating.) This system would depend on Trump ramping up monitoring of workplaces and neighborhoods, and on anonymous tip lines susceptible to abuse and false leads. (Have a problem with a neighbor? Report ’em.) Perhaps the forces rounding up migrants will be afforded special powers to evade civil liberties protections. As in East Germany during the Cold War, an atmosphere of terror and intimidation will pervade.

I bring this up to make two points. First, what we are seeing in Minneapolis with the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti was entirely foreseeable. I’m no Nostradamus, and it was obvious to me this horror was coming. (By the way, Nostradamus was no Nostradamus.) No one should be surprised that Trump, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, Gregory Bovino, and others have unleashed a violent and unlawful wave of terror upon the nation. Any Trump supporter aghast at this has no excuse. (I’m looking at you, Joe Rogan.) Trump had a long history of encouraging and excusing violence. He praised authoritarians who resort to violence. He plainly spelled out his intention to remove over 10 million people. Such a profound disruption of American life could not be achieved without force and cruelty.

Barbarity on the ground requires malice in the highest offices of the land.

Second, even though I feared Trump would turn to police-state tactics, I and others who expected some of this did not fully envision the lawlessness, savagery,........

© Mother Jones