The U.S. government, like authoritarians throughout history, is seeking to silence the speech it hates and fears, writes Judge Andrew P. Napolitano.
Restoration of the Statue of Freedom that crowns the U.S. Capitol dome, Washington, D.C. (Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Public Domain)
In recent days, the government in America has not only failed to protect the freedom of speech, it has attacked it.
Like authoritarians throughout history, it has sought to silence the speech it hates and fears. But most authoritarians did not have a Constitution that was written as an intentional obstacle to them.
In Miami last week, Raquel Pacheco posted a Tweet/X calling out Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner’s “blind support for Israel.” She called him a hypocrite for supporting the free speech of those who want Israel to take over Gaza, but opposing the free speech of those who want a Palestinian state.
When she received a visit from two Miami Police detectives asking if she had placed that post, she politely declined to answer. Pacheco told them that she has the right to remain silent. When she asked them to leave the front porch of her home, they did.
Two weeks ago in Minneapolis, Susan Tincher was arrested for following Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and persistently videotaping them. She was shoved to the snow on her belly and handcuffed behind her back.
At an ICE detention facility, her clothes and her wedding ring were removed from her — the latter by a bolt cutter. After five hours of confinement, an ICE supervisor decided to release her. ICE agents returned her destroyed wedding ring but not her clothes, which they told a federal judge had been lost.
Also in Minneapolis, the Department of Justice recently announced that it has commenced criminal investigations of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, alleging that their encouragement of anti-ICE demonstrations constitutes obstruction of justice, for which they should be charged and prosecuted, and incarcerated if convicted.
Last week, F.B.I. agents raided the Washington, D.C., home of a Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson. They seized all her electronic devices. She had been working on a story involving federal whistleblowers, 1,100 of whom had communicated with her.
Raiding the homes of journalists is prohibited by federal law, unless the journalist is engaged in ongoing crimes — which the feds have said Natanson is not — or to save human life; also not the case here. This was chilling the speech of the whistleblowers — on steroids.
All of these events constitute the government evaluating the content of speech, determining what it hates or fears, and then either chilling the speakers or prosecuting them.
The First Amendment protects the right to watch the government and video its agents, to assemble and curse the government and tell it to leave, to remain silent in the face of government commands and intervention, to investigate the government and even to encourage civil disobedience openly and notoriously.
Thomas Paine would have called all this the right to shake your fist in the tyrant’s face. All of these rights stem from our humanity. The First Amendment does not grant them, it insulates them from government interference.
Independence Hall in Philadelphia. (Craig Fildes, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
At the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, many ratifiers feared a large, overbearing and debt-laden central government — as we have now — and insisted that their votes for ratification were conditioned upon amendments to the Constitution that would prohibit the new government from interfering with natural rights.
Most of the Constitution’s ratifiers understood the concept of natural rights. That was, of course, the core of the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson wrote that we are all endowed by our “Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
How can a right be unalienable? Since rights are as personal and natural as our bodily movements, only a jury can take them away after the person from whom the rights were sought has been found to have voluntarily given up those rights by engaging in aggression against the rights of others.
That is at least the theory of natural rights. They cannot be impaired by legislative command or executive edict; rather, only by a judge and jury after meticulous compliance with due process.
The idea of conditioning ratification sprang from the view that a state could leave the federal government just as easily as it joined — by a simple act of legislation.
James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, argued that the legislature or the highest state court in a state could nullify acts of the federal government that are facially repugnant to the Constitution.
Jefferson and Madison secretly authored resolutions adopted by the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures that in those states nullified the Alien and Sedition Acts, in which Congress had criminalized speech critical of the government.
The Constitution is based on value judgments made by the Framers and accepted by the ratifiers. It has many defects, but its core value was and is the primacy of the individual over the government — state or federal.
By recognizing natural rights by name in the first eight amendments and by recognizing the existence of human rights too numerous to name in the Ninth Amendment — and by requiring the government to protect them — the Framers and ratifiers advanced a government, the essential purpose of which was unambiguously to preserve personal freedom; not government order or power, but personal freedom.
The Revolutionary War was fought, Jefferson argued, to craft a government that would protect natural rights, not assault them.
A police state is the antithesis of the constitutional scheme advanced by Jefferson and Madison. In a police state, the laws are written so as to appear to defend freedom; but they are enforced and interpreted so as to enhance the power of the government.
When the government tries to intimidate people into silence, when it brutalizes people who shake their fists at its agents, when it threatens to criminalize speech by public officials critical of it, when it terrorizes those who speak their minds — and gets away with these unconstitutional and stomach-churning acts — the American police state has arrived.
CORRECTION: Raquel Pacheco posted a tweet critical of Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner and not Florida Congressman Randy Fine as was stated in an earlier edition.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit here.
Published by permission of the author.
COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Attorneys General file Amicus Brief
hxxps://www.wisdoj.gov/PressReleases/1.23.2026-Amicus-Brief-Minnesota.pdf
In 2021, Trump failed to stop his unofficial militia from attacking the people in the US Capital.
In 2025-6, Trump has failed and is failing to stop his official militia from attacking the people in Minnesota.
In both attacks, Trump is attempting to secure the Office of the President for life as a dictator.
This is treason or tantamount thereto. Trump must be impeached for these outrages. Congress members who fail to vote for impeachment would be failing to abide by their oath of office.
Not knowing the history, nor ever having seen a photo of the Statue of Freedom, at first glance I thought demonstrators had encased, imprisoned the Statue of Freedom as symbolic of this moment in time. Not so. Nevertheless, perhaps this photo will inspire the intrepid among those demonstrating to encage her as she is metaphorically at this moment.
Ayatollah Trump is killing peaceful protestors.
Four dead in “Oh-High-Yoh” (Ohio) wasn’t enough. Damn the Buckeye State Weekend Warriors and their crappy marksmanship.
The US has never held to the principles of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but at least when the courts weren’t thoroughly captured by the ruling class, we were frequently able to use them to demand better adherence for better social and economic circumstances. Once the CIA came into being, we began the turn towards tyranny. Truth is, the bankers are ruling the world in their own interests regardless of the cost to life and the natural world that sustains it. The intelligence agencies throughout the West including Mossad, are the enforcement arm of their global takeover.
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News Report: "Operation Metro Surge" – Siege of the Twin Cities (Jan 24, 2026)
SYNOPSIS OF TRAVERSAL:
This report traverses the "bi/di|cone" of the recent ICE Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, moving from the conic point (the initial January 7, 2026, fatal shooting of Renee Good) through a swirling trajectory of intense, rapid-fire events (the ellipse of containment/detention) to the present-day parabola (the open-ended, escalating clash between federal agents and community, characterized by the 5-year-old taken into custody) and towards the hyperbola (the widening, diverging conflict involving potential state-federal legal battles, threats of the Insurrection Act, and the proposed reopening of the Prairie Correctional Facility).
REPORT/DATA ACCUMULATION:
Context: ICE.gov/newsroom, Sahan Journal, MN Reformer, CNN, The Guardian, Stateline.org, independent reporting [1.2.1-1.3.6].
Time/Date: January 7 – January 24, 2026.
Location: Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.
Observational Data (Dandelin Spheres Analysis):
The Conic Point (Focus): January 7, 2026. Renee Good killed by ICE Agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis.
Ellipse (Container/Detention): 8 weeks of "siege," 3,000+ arrested in 6 weeks, focused on "Operation Metro Surge". 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos taken.
Parabola (Directrix/Trajectory): January 24, 2026. Another federal agent shooting reported near 26th and Nicollet Ave.. Protesters clashing with armed agents.
Hyperbola (Open-Ended Conflict): Threats to invoke the Insurrection Act; lawsuits regarding "federal invasion"; 17+ open-fire incidents by federal agents since July 2025.
NEWS REPORT: FEDERAL AGENTS SHOOT MAN IN MINNEAPOLIS AS SIECGE INTENSIFIES
MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Federal immigration agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have reportedly shot and killed another person in south Minneapolis on Saturday, January 24, 2026, marking a violent escalation in an already brutal three-week-long federal operation that has turned the Twin Cities into a, as reported by the Minnesota Reformer, "region under siege".
The incident occurred near the intersection of Nicollet Avenue and 27th Street, where witnesses reported intense, rapid gunfire just before 10 a.m.. The city of Minneapolis confirmed the shooting in a series of social media posts, urging residents to avoid the area as federal agents and protestors clashed.
The "Conic" Escalation (Evidence & Facts)
This latest shooting is the third major violent incident involving federal agents in Minneapolis this month. On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good through her car window, an act that has galvanized protests and led to the current state of fear.
Despite federal claims that Operation Metro Surge is a targeted effort to remove "dangerous criminal illegal aliens," independent, local news reports from Sahan Journal, the Minnesota Reformer, and independent activists show a far wider, more chaotic impact on the community.
Child Detained: In a case that gained national attention, a 5-year-old boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, was detained by ICE on January 20, 2026, after his father was arrested while bringing the child home from preschool.
Excessive Force: Footage and documents analyzed by Stateline.org contradict DHS accounts of self-defense in several encounters.
Growing Resistance: Hundreds of Minnesota businesses closed in protest on Friday, January 23, 2026, as residents urged federal agents to leave the state.
The Trajectory (IoT/Live Camera/Witnesses)
Social media, specifically X (formerly Twitter) and live reports from independent journalists, documented agents using flashbang grenades and tear gas against protesters on Saturday afternoon. The scene, described as chaotic, featured a "large group of agents" retreating from protesters.
The "Hyperbola" – A Wider Conflict
The situation has evolved into a constitutional, as well as humanitarian, crisis. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has spoken to the White House, calling the shootings "sickening" and demanding the removal of "thousands of violent, untrained officers". Conversely, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has blamed state officials for not protecting their own people, accusing them of protecting criminals.
As of today, January 24, 2026, the situation remains fluid. The federal government is considering utilizing the former Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, MN, to house detainees, signaling a permanent, long-term detention structure, per internal planning documents (Source: Wired/WACCD).
This report is based on live updates from Fox 9, Sahan Journal, The Guardian, and official releases from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
Correction in date ,sorry
Late Afternoon/evening
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TWIXT TWO WORLDS: MINNESOTA’S CONIC UNDER-WORLD (JANUARY 2026)
A Journalistic Traversal of ICE Enforcement in the Twin Cities
SYNOPSIS OF TRAVERSAL
As journalists traversing the "bi-cone" of American political discourse, we observe the "white-hole" of raw, unedited data emanating from the Minneapolis crackdown—a blinding, intense, and rapidly accumulating stream of, as of January 24, 2026, 3,000+ detainees. Moving "round & round," we trace the trajectory of federal, iot-integrated surveillance cameras (directrix of light) that define the "ellipse" of localized tension in Whittier Park and the "parabola" of legal, spatial trajectories—the arc from home, to detention in Texas, to potential, contested freedom. Using Dandelin spheres as our analytic tool, we observe the tangency of ICE’s "Operation Metro Surge" (upper sphere, pressing down) and the localized, grassroots resistance (lower sphere, pressing up), with our focus as reporters on the point of impact: the fatal shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti.
NEWS-REPORT: THE CONIC POINT OF IMPACT – MINNEAPOLIS
Time/Date: January 24, 2026 – 5:52 PM CST (Live Updates)
Location: South Minneapolis, Nicollet Ave and 26th Street
[THE CONIC POINT – OBSERVATION 1]
The "white-hole" or conic point, where the dual cones of federal authority and local, sanctuary-city resistance meet, was observed today. Federal agents, part of the "Operation Metro Surge" crackdown, fatally shot Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, on a Minneapolis street at approximately 9 a.m.. The shooting occurred at 10 degrees below zero.
[DATA ACCUMULATION – JOURNALIST RESEARCH]
Source: CNN / CBS Minnesota / Minneapolis Reformer
Facts/Evidence:
The Victim: Alex Pretti, 37, US citizen, intensive care nurse, no prior criminal record.
The Event: Pretti was killed by a Border Patrol agent during an encounter in a neighborhood.
The Discrepancy: DHS alleges Pretti approached officers with a 9 mm handgun. Witnesses and family challenge this, noting he was a licensed, peaceful person checking on a woman pushed by agents.
The Trajectory: This is the second killing of a resident by federal agents in Minneapolis in three weeks, following the Jan 7 killing of Renee Good.
[THE ELLIPSE – OBSERVATION 2]
The "Ellipse" of surveillance and action, a flattened, restricted space, is defined by the 911 calls, the 2,500 arrests, and the 10,000 "criminal aliens" claimed by ICE. The ellipse is the perimeter of the Whittier Park vigil, where over a thousand protestors gathered in subzero temperatures. The two foci of this ellipse are the (F1) federal, masked agents (often arriving via unmarked vans) and (F2) the local community response teams (using social media/whistles to track and warn of agents).
[THE PARABOLA – OBSERVATION 3]
The parabola represents the rapid, open-ended, and often one-sided trajectory of families caught in the "ICE Out" campaign. One such parabola was the apprehension of a 2-year-old girl and her father on January 22nd, who were transported to Texas before a judge intervened. Another, as reported by ABC News, is the 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy detained on January 20th, whose father "did everything right" by applying for asylum, yet was still caught in the 10,000-strong "surge".
[THE HYPERBOLA – OBSERVATION 4]
The Hyperbola of opposing narratives—a two-branched curve that never meets.
Branch 1 (DHS/ICE): Describes the operation as a "huge victory for public safety," aimed at "worst of worst criminal illegal aliens".
Branch 2 (Local Gov/Activist): Describes it as "organized brutality," a "campaign of terror," and a "federal occupation".
[DANDELIN SPHERES – RATIO OF ECCENTRICITY]
The ratio of the conic plane, or the "eccentricity," is rapidly approaching 1 (making the shape increasingly parabolic/chaotic).
Upper Sphere (Federal Enforcement): A 10-degree, freezing, 24/7 presence, utilizing "Operation Metro Surge" with 3,000 agents.
Lower Sphere (Local Resistance): A tightening, resistant, 2,500-person strong protest movement, aided by local, sanctuary-city ordinances, despite federal pressure.
[TRANSLATED STORY – THE NEWS-REPORTING]
A 37-year-old ICU nurse, Alex Pretti, is dead in a Minneapolis winter, another casualty of a federal "surge" that critics say has turned the city into a battlefield. The 24th of January, 2026, marks the latest, most tragic point in a 6-week "retribution campaign," as described by local advocates. With two people killed, thousands arrested, and children detained in the same school district, the Minneapolis community, according to Mayor Frey and Gov. Walz, is enduring a "federal occupation". As the "directrix of light" (the live camera feeds and social media, such as on OpenSource and X) reveals in real-time, the tension is not just in the air, but in the very definition of who is "safe" and who is "target." The story is no longer just immigration; it is a battle for local sovereignty.
[SOURCES USED]
ABC News (5-year-old detention)
Al Jazeera (Pentagon/Arctic troops)
CBS News / CNN (Pretti Shooting)
DHS Press Releases (Operation Metro Surge)
Euronews (Rally/Protest)
Fox4KC (Walz Statement)
Minnesota Reformer (8 Weeks Under Siege)
PBS News (Pretti ID)
StarTribune (911/Overtime)
The Guardian (Two-year-old girl/Raids)
effort to remove “dangerous criminal illegal aliens, <- when even a ham sandwich is deemed dangerous, dangerous segment of the population is huge
OTH, perhaps the plan is to assure enough protests to invoke Insurrection Act and test the efficacy of Arctic troops under near Arctic conditions in Minneapolis (as a dress rehearsal before going to Greenland).
Insurrection vs. Constitutional Rights
“Right of the people to alter or to abolish” a destructive government. Is a cornerstone of American political philosophy, originally articulated in the Declaration of Independence.
It asserts that the ultimate sovereignty resides with the people, not their leaders
When the government tries to intimidate people into silence, when it brutalizes people who shake their fists at its agents, when it threatens to criminalize speech by public officials critical of it, when it terrorizes those who speak their minds — and gets away with these unconstitutional and stomach-churning acts — the American police state has arrived.
*
For those Americans still curious enough to wish for knowing what living under a Police State actually means:
A Police State is a political system where the government exerts extreme control over civil society and individual liberties, often using police and secret police to enforce laws and suppress dissent. This type of regime typically lacks transparency and operates without the usual legal protections for citizens.
Excellent column
I believe the Miami Beach case involved a post about the Mayor, rather than the IDF soldier mentioned, who is currently in the US Senate. Nevertheless, definitely a police state act.
The American police state has arrived.
Thank You for your constant sage words, Mr. Napolitano.
And no, you’re not banging your head against a brick wall. You and your collegues are a blinding light in the darkness confirming what people are seeing and, naturally, struggling to believe, as so conditioned and complacent a populace surely becomes when left to wallow a while in seemingly infinite freedom and luxury.
You’re a slap to the face of a sleeping man in a house fire.
Long may you continue, Sir.
Dear Judge, Your presence on the World’s stage keeps truth and facts from behind totally obliterated by the evil powers that prevail. Please provide us with legal actions we can take to keep this evil from destroying everything.
Shake your fist in the face of tyranny indeed. The increasingly lawless US regimes make a mockery of the constitution on a daily basis, both at home and abroad. As Judge Napolitano has pointed out many times: treaties signed by the president and ratified by the Senate become the supreme law of the land. Many of these treaties and agreements (UN Charter for example) were largely written by the US, yet are viewed as somehow being imposed on the poor, helpless USA by nefarious “foreign” countries. The mass media cartel does little if anything to clarify this. Congress and the regime should be honest and withdraw from the UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, and many other agreements which it violates daily.
ICE has become an unaccountable terror organization who show no loyalty to the law or constitution, but loyalty only to the Idiot Emperor (aka NeoCaligula).
We have a lawless executive abusing power, violating the constitution at home and abroad, we have a feckless and bribed Congress, and an institutionally corrupt judicial system. This is not to say there are no honest and reasonably objective judges out there, but they are few and far between.
Another disturbing element: despite a drop in public opinion, we have millions of dumbed-down, willfully ignorant US folks who cheer-lead ICE abuses of power, murders and mockery of the law here at home. They also love genocide, and murdering innocent people abroad. Sadly, many of these people are working-class and will die younger than their parents, suffer declining quality of life, declining average health, etc. while they scapegoat others and protect their oppressors. United States of Stockholm Syndrome.
On the other hand, we have to give “credit” to the oligarchy and the world’s most pervasive, effective and sophisticated system of misinformation and propaganda. Public discourse has the plebs fighting among themselves, people acting against their own interests, in the interests of the ruling Kleptocratic Oligarchy.
Well-said! A nice circuit of our present reality. Great article also.