‘This Has Got to End’

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For a man at the center of history, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has remarkably little information. Walz still doesn’t know the name of the two officers who shot Alex Pretti. He doesn’t have any proof that the officers actually have been placed on administrative leave, as the Department of Homeland Security claimed yesterday. And he has no guarantees, yet, that immigration agents will leave the state. “I don’t trust ’em,” he said on Wednesday in an interview with The Atlantic.

It’s true that President Donald Trump finally did call Walz this week for the first time since tragedy began to unfold in Minneapolis. Trump has been facing political pressure over how his administration has handled Pretti’s shooting, even from supporters. Reaching out directly to Walz was one way to de-escalate.

Trump’s tone in the phone call was conciliatory, Walz said. But the president didn’t make too many concrete concessions. Walz told Trump he needed to “immediately” drop the investigation into the widow of Renee Good, the first U.S. citizen fatally shot by federal agents deployed to the city. Trump said he would check with FBI Director Kash Patel.

In this episode of Radio Atlantic, our staff writer Isaac Stanley-Becker interviews Walz at his office in Minneapolis. They discuss Walz’s phone call with Trump, the governor’s dealings with other administration officials, and the surreal nature of the past few weeks in Minneapolis. Stanley-Becker also asks what Walz might do if federal agents don’t, in fact, leave Minnesota.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Hanna Rosin: This week, Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor he considers a political enemy. The call was something of a minor concession in a week of minor concessions.

The killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents looks like a turning point. Trump started hearing objections from everywhere, including people who normally support him: Republicans, gun-rights advocates, celebrities, athletes.

So the president made some moves: He ushered [Border Patrol official] Greg Bovino out of Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security said they put the two agents involved in Pretti’s shooting on administrative leave, and Trump called for a “big investigation” into the shooting.

I’m Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic. In this episode, an interview with Walz.

[Music]

Isaac Stanley-Becker: I was out reporting in and around Minneapolis, and this interview with Governor Walz had been set for 3 o’clock, so make my way over to the Capitol—

Rosin: Atlantic staff writer Isaac Stanley-Becker interviewed the governor on Wednesday to get a sense of whether he thinks the promises Trump is making will make a difference on the ground in Minnesota.

Isaac, welcome to the show.

Stanley-Becker: Thanks, Hanna.

Rosin: So going into this interview with Tim Walz, what was the main thing that you were wondering about?

Stanley-Becker: I think I had some practical questions for him about how much he knew about certain really basic details—or, I guess, details that one would assume, under ordinary circumstances, the governor of a state would know, such as: What exactly are federal agents doing in his state? How many of them are there? What are they up to? And then also: What are the names and the identities of federal agents who had just killed a resident of his state?

And just right off the bat, one of the striking things was that he had little information and, in the second case, no information about these questions. So that was a rather striking finding. And I think part of what I then wanted to understand from him related to that is what that’s like for a governor in this moment, to be in that kind of situation.

Stanley-Becker: So you said that Minnesotans don’t let their guard down. It seemed for a moment like there was a real risk that things were unraveling in terms of what’s unfolded here. Have we kind of gotten past that? Have we moved into a somewhat-better place, or is there still a risk of things really spinning out of control, in your mind?

Governor Tim Walz: Well, I think that has a lot more to do with how the White House and President Trump responds. Look, I think there’s a little downturn here, but I don’t think anybody in America thinks this downturn was because Alex was murdered or Renee [Good] was murdered or the chaos that’s on the streets here. I think it’s because there was bad politics for him.

And I’ve talked to the White House, talked to the president, talked to [White House “border czar”] Tom Homan, talked to all kinds of people over the last few days. The interesting thing was, the only thing they never talked about—they never mentioned Alex’s name. They never mentioned Renee’s name. They never asked how the families were. I’ve been talking to ’em. They didn’t really even ask me how Minnesotans were doing in this. They said, What can you do to help us? What can you do to cooperate more? Most of that was misinformation.

So, look, you gotta be hopeful. I’ve got to figure out how to deal with this. This is a very transactional White House; that’s probably the understatement of the world. I go from being called a Communist and the person who started this to: We’re on the same wavelength to fix this.

We’re on the same wavelength—we want this to end. But I don’t know if the White House end state looks the same as mine, ’cause my end state is: You need to get these people out of here. You need to quit the assault on this state. And, look, you’re seeing it in the streets: It’s a physical assault. It’s an armed force that’s assaulting, that’s killing my constituents, my citizens. But there is an all-out attack on all of state government—all the things that make Minnesota great.

Stanley-Becker: Did you see what Pete Hegseth wrote on Twitter, where he said, “ICE > MN,” or ICE above Minnesota? I’m wondering what your reaction to that kind of message is.

Walz: He’s a Minnesotan, for your listeners on this, and not that I would talk about that often, but it’s despicable. It is absolutely despicable. Nothing on there, again, about the families, nothing about what’s going, and this untrained force that anybody, to the casual observer, knows these folks don’t know what they’re doing.

The great example is they had control of the Whipple building, the federal building. That’s the place where they stage ’cause they’re not gonna use state property. And every day, it was a confrontation. They would come out of there all geared up, like they’re in Afghanistan. They would charge people—retired teachers, nurses, students, people who were out there expressing their First Amendment rights. They would throw gas at ’em. They would yell at them. They would heckle. They would do all that.

Well, to try and ease this tension, we took that over—we being the state—and I sent National Guard, folks I served alongside for the years I was in. And my first directive to them was, as I said, When you get up there, I said, you deliver doughnuts. You deliver hot chocolate. You deliver coffee. And you learn the names of those people who are there, ’cause they’re human beings; they’re your neighbors. And my Guard troops are there—no masks on, names on—they’re delivering that, and now the protesters are asking if they can deliver food to the National Guard who are away from their family. That’s how you do policing.

Now, look, if those protesters do something that crosses the line—if they throw something or if they would cross that line from nonviolence—we will arrest them because we’re rule of law. But rule of law means we respect their right to protest.

So there’s a resiliency here, but there’s just deep frustration. And I keep hearing from the White House that we need to cooperate. I don’t know what you want me to say about cooperating with a force who clearly was doing everything wrong, and then, before Alex’s body was cold, they were sullying his name. They were saying lies. They were making outrageous comments. And there were some news-media outlets that were following along on that. This has got to end. This has gotta end.

Stanley-Becker: So the president didn’t ask about Alex or his family. Can you just say a little bit more about what he did say, and is there anything about the conversation that surprised you? This is, if I understand it correctly, only the second time you’ve spoken, the first being in 2020.

Walz: I think I’ve spoken to him a couple times. I’ve been to the White House. I spoke to him during COVID, and I spoke to him in 2020.

Like I said, he’s been saying all kinds of horrible things about me and the people of Minnesota, and the one thing is, he at least tells what his real issue is: He’s lost here three times, and he thinks the elections—and so he has the [attorney general] ask for our election rolls.

Look, he said, Tim, this is very bad. I said, Yes, it’s very bad. And he goes, I just don’t understand you Minnesotans. This worked fine in New Orleans, worked fine in Louisville. I said, You didn’t kill anybody in Louisville or New [Orleans], and you got thousands of people here, Mr. President.

Well, if you just cooperate—we’ve already taken 14,000 people. And I had to tell him—I said, You have not taken 14,000 people. That’s factually inaccurate. But I said, We want you to get outta here. We want to do the things. And I said, I follow federal law. My prisons, if there’s a detainer, we give ’em over to you, so don’t say that.

And he said, Well, I think we can work together. And I said, Well, to work together, you need to do two things: You need to get these guys outta here, and you need to make sure that we get to be part of these investigations. And if charges need to be brought, we need to do it.

Stanley-Becker: And what did he say about that?

Walz: He said, I’ll look into ’em. And then last night, I think he said that he would personally be in charge of the investigations, which should horrify every American ’cause it’s a violation of that separation that he is now running the Department of Justice. And I would just say that I appreciate your offer, Mr. President, but the last thing we want is for you to supervise the investigations into these two murders.

And he said we would work together. And he said, I’ll send Tom Homan out. And I will say this, that Tom Homan landed on the ground, gave me a call right away. We met yesterday, right away in the morning. We came up with a plan. I had my public-safety folks in there, all professional law enforcement. And we’re gonna get back together. He’s meeting with some of them today—them being [the Minnesota Department of] Corrections, [Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,] State Patrol. And then tomorrow, I’m gonna expect that he’s able to tell me how many of these forces are gone and what the next step is.

It was more professional—because Greg Bovino never called me; [DHS Secretary] Kristi Noem never called me. They never called any of our people. So at least Tom Homan understood, Look, this is a mess. This is wrong.

Now, what he thinks is wrong, I’ve yet to be seen, but I thought it’s important that we created a space here, a window of opportunity—and in my opinion, that was about 48 to 72 hours—that if we don’t see a massive change here, I have no choice but to go back and tell my folks that you’re not doing it.

And, look, Minnesotans are out there saying, Well, what are you gonna do if they don’t leave? Well, that’s our next step to figure out.

Stanley-Becker: Well, what are you gonna do if they don’t leave and if the situation doesn’t improve?

Walz: We’re gonna continue to go to the courts. They’re going to continue to get news that shows they are more unpopular in immigration than any president in the last 50 years, and this was supposedly that. And I would remind them we had a special election here yesterday in Minnesota. The results of that race was 95 to 5—the Democrat won. It’s a pretty blue district, but I think you see what’s happening here.

[Music]

Rosin: Was there any point where Walz felt like he could have done anything differently to de-escalate or tone things down or even prevent what happened? Because he came in somewhat hot, I would say, in his interview with you.

Stanley-Becker: I think he’s been pretty adamant that state and local governments have operated carefully and competently here. And he was firm in his position that, when it comes to immigration enforcement, they’ll comply with federal law, but they’re not gonna go out of their way to take these steps to assist Trump’s immigration-enforcement operations.

Walz: I’m not sure I can do much more. I’m not gonna send my police in to search preschools. I’m not gonna have them walk down the street and ask brown people for their papers. I’m not gonna do that, because that’s not my job and I don’t think it’s constitutional.

If they wanna do their job—and they’ve operated for decades, since they’ve been formed in Minnesota—and if you wanna do it by due process, with humanity, with decency, and by the law, we’ve always worked with you, so I don’t know what more they want.

I’m not gonna join you in battle gear with my people on the streets. I’m not going to grab 5-year-olds out of day cares. I’m just simply not gonna do that. And I’m not gonna not hold you accountable when you do this.

Can we all just ground ourselves, again, that after the first murder, the vice president of the United States said, You have absolute immunity? I don’t know, if I’m Yale, I’m embarrassed. You gave a law degree for that? I don’t have one, and I know that’s not true. But look at what he said.

And I’m telling you, the attitude and the aggressiveness and the interactions of this, countless things—reporters have been there—that these guys joking like it’s a video game and things like that. The disruption and the moral harm that they have done to our state is unimaginable.

And I would just say, if you’re watching this from the outside, and you see some of this, it’s worse than you think; it’s deeper than you think. I think they hate us ’cause we have low childhood-poverty rates. I think they hate us because we have high homeownership rates. I think they hate us because we have a progressive taxation system, meaning if you’re rich, you’re gonna pay more. I think they hate this ’cause it’s a state that works. And that assault will come to your state soon.

[Music]

Rosin: After the break, we hear Governor Walz’s reaction to the news that federal agents involved in the Alex Pretti shooting have been placed on leave—and if he thinks we’re in a Fort Sumter moment.

[Break]

Rosin: We’ve all been reading and hearing a lot about Minneapolis, watching the videos. Did he address, at all, the trauma to the state—how it felt to be there?

Stanley-Becker: Oh, boy. He described this as utterly dire.

Walz: We’ve got students not in school. We’ve got students who are afraid. We have people now, and I just have to say it: I have—

Stanley-Becker: One of the kind of amazing moments to me was when he talked about Suburban vehicles, these SUVs, that his own residents, his own constituents, mistook that for ICE vehicles and basically fled from him.

Walz: I’ve watched it: I’ve watched people run. I’ve watched people run when it’s driving. And you think about the psychology of the stress that is. You see vehicles around here that look like this that say, We’re not ICE. I’m a teacher, or whatever.

I asked my team—I said, Maybe we need to say, “It’s security perspective.” I think most Minnesotans wouldn’t run or one-finger-salute me, but you can feel the fear.

Stanley-Becker: Well, what’s the logical end point of this, of this kind of vendetta and also of this kind of open hostility against blue states, blue communities? Do you worry about a kind of civil-war scenario in this country?

Walz: Well, I don’t wanna alarm people, but the people who think that Governor Walz should call in the National Guard and arrest ICE—guns pointed, American at Americans, on this is certainly not where we want to go.

I think what you’re seeing is, is the power far beyond the bullet in this is the people, the people who are out there. The way this ends is, quite honestly, if they’re not able to—and I think [Attorney General] Pam Bondi played the hand, interfering with our election systems—they will be wiped out, and this White House will spend the next two years in court, with people facing, potentially, prosecution, and they will not be able to do their agenda.

But I hear Americans on this, is: What makes you think we can get to November? I’ll go back to my analogy on this: Winter’s long, but we’re prepared for it. If it takes being in the streets ’til November, we’ll be there. If it takes fighting them in court ’til November, we’ll be there.

And I said—just for their thing, if they wanna think about this— Minnesota’s always first or second in voter turnout. Do you not think that tens of thousands of people who stood out in 40 below zero are not gonna show up in a heated voting booth to vote against this? (Laughs.) If you’re a Republican, you’re gonna lose here. And that is going to have repercussions. And, look, people can make peace with their own morality on this, but at some point in time, these people are thinking about that, and you’re seeing it across there.

I think there’s some that actually have conscience. I think [Representative] Tom Massie, I served with, actually does. I think [Senator] Thom Tillis, who I served with and served on committees with. I think these folks truly do have it. I think they found their spine. I think it’s spreading like wildfire.

And what I do know is, if that catches a little more fire, you’re gonna see the most impotent, ineffective presidency you’ve ever seen, because it’s shut down. They can shut it down. They keep asking, What are the Democrats gonna do? We need to do more; we need to do everything. Republicans can end this.

Stanley-Becker: One more question on the National Guard, and you said people want you to order the Guard to arrest the agents. Have you thought about a scenario, a kind of worst-case scenario, in which there’s a clash between these different parts?

Walz: We work at everything to avoid that. And I think, following the law—and it’s one thing that we’ve always done: I will follow the law to a T. I spent eight hours in front of Congress talking about our state. We’re not a sanctuary state. Now, do counties have the ability to make their own? Sure, they do. And that’s always been Minnesota law.

They try to make the case that we’re not helping; we’re not doing this. We have. We follow the law all the way. But I said, We get to this point—it’s what I told them—at what point are we going to have to stand up and push back more? You killed our people, you closed the crime scene, and you won’t tell us who they are.

Does it strike you as strange that I’ve had two of my citizens killed—in one, they’re angry, they being DHS and the president, are angry that it feels like they got doxxed with [Jonathan] Ross’s name, who was part of the shooting of Renee— but I don’t know who did this. I don’t know if these guys are on the streets right now here in Minneapolis.

Stanley-Becker: Well, so there’s been reporting that they were placed on administrative leave. You still don’t know the names of these officers?

Walz: No. No. And I gotta be honest with you—to be generous in this, I’ll do my Ronald Reagan: “Trust, but verify”—I can’t verify this, so I don’t trust ’em. I don’t trust ’em they’re on administrative leave. And at this point in time, I told Tom, I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, but unless I see a reduction in these folks on the streets, I’m gonna have to say that to my folks.

So, look, I think we all wanna avoid that, but I think the reality has sunk in this week. If you thought you could pass this by and you thought there was nothing there, is this a Fort Sumter, John Brown—where are we at on this?

And we’re doing everything right, and I have said it time and time again: The way you win this is through nonviolence, that you cannot do violence. And I know my constituents are mad at me for saying that. They’re shooting us. They’re killing us. They’re beating us. They’re taking our children. But you see what’s happening now. For all that power and all that cruelty, they are retreating massively.

Now, I believe they’ll only retreat far enough to get to the next day or the next news cycle, but again, they underestimated this state, and I think they’re underestimating the American people. I’m still baffled—if you were gonna pick two states to mess with, Maine and Minnesota, especially in the middle of winter, not smart.

Stanley-Becker: You’re still under investigation—is that right?

Walz: As far as I know.

Stanley-Becker: Did that come up at all in the conversation with the president?

Walz: I will not bring it up. The only thing I asked him on the investigations was I told both the president and Tom Homan they needed to immediately drop the investigation into Renee Good’s wife. And, as a show of goodwill to us, I expected that to be done today; I don’t know if it has been yet. But I will not bring up any of the others, but that one I feel very strongly about.

Stanley-Becker: What did the president say about that?

Walz: I don’t think he replied anything on that, but Tom Homan said he would call [FBI Director] Kash Patel and check with people. He told me that.

Stanley-Becker: Is there anything else about the president’s tone or the dynamic that surprised you or stuck out to you from Monday?

Walz: Other than he was conciliatory towards me, which I know he despises me with a burning passion that I don’t understand. (Laughs.) I feel like I’m a pretty nice guy; I don’t know. But he was very cordial, which I’ve learned enough about this to read him, that he needed something from me badly, so he had to change that. We’ll see.

Stanley-Becker: Do you think that there’s a chance that this might change the immigration debate? And do you think that would be a short-term change or do you think a real transformation in the way the country and the Congress handle this really vexed issue?

Walz: Well, I’d like to think that. I thought we were getting close, and I, whether in Congress and as a governor, but when we’ve been close to this—I really do believe that the Biden administration had a good one on that, and I think it’s pretty clear they killed that ’cause they wanted it to be an election issue. And it was. It was a powerful election issue, and we didn’t have enough to push back in the election of 2024.

But if you really wanna fix this, and that’s what I keep saying is, it’s this straw-man argument that, Well, you’re not cooperating with us. You don’t care if there’s criminal, illegal—their language—criminal undocumenteds. Well, of course I care about that, but I also care deeply and understand that someone who’s willing to carry their children across the Darién Gap, risk life and limb to come here, and clean our homes, and get their children into school, and put little bunny ears on ’em in a Spider-Man backpack, I’m gonna go ahead and stand with those people and figure out a way they can stay.

[Music]

Rosin: There were points when he was talking to you where it seemed like it was surreal, the experience that he just went through, like [Margaret] Atwood novel–kind of surreal.

Stanley-Becker: I think there’s something surreal about this whole moment, and some of our colleagues have chronicled this really well. But just before we went in for the interview, I was on the phone with a pastor and a mother of four children who was describing her own work and trying to document ICE and kind of interrupt these operations.

And she was saying, like, I’m driving my child to school, and I’m getting these messages about ICE operations in my community, and I’m thinking, Should I go and do this? But, no, I don’t wanna get killed and have my son be motherless. So these monumental decisions that are being made by just ordinary people who are not familiar with these kind of stakes, I think there is something surreal about the whole experience.

Walz: This is nuts. It is absolute insanity. And I don’t know, when it’s written afterwards, I hate to make the comparisons of this, but no one’s ever seen this.

Stanley-Becker: Yeah, well, you saying—

Walz: And I worry about this—

Stanley-Becker: —Fort Sumter, it’s a profound comparison, but—

Walz: The discipline of the people on the streets here—because, look, everybody’s armed; this is America, and this is Minnesota. Myself included.

Stanley-Becker: He brought up these analogies, including John Brown, as a way of suggesting that people in Minnesota were making different decisions. They were not resorting to that kind of violence. So that’s what I took him to be saying.

But I also took him to be saying that we don’t know how these moments are going to unfold and the kind of dire consequences they might have, so we need to be careful, especially in a hair-trigger environment and in an environment where we just, frankly, are seeing things that are unprecedented, that we don’t know the kind of violence or damage could be done.

[Music]

Stanley-Becker: So there’s certainly a risk of hyperbole, but I think that there is also a risk of understatement and not fully coming to grips with the possible consequences of what we’re seeing.

Rosin: Well, Isaac, thank you so much for doing this interview and for joining us today.

Stanley-Becker: Thank you so much.

Rosin: This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Jinae West, with reporting from Jocelyn Frank. It was edited by Kevin Townsend. Rob Smierciak engineered and composed original music. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of audio at The Atlantic, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

Listeners, if you enjoy the show, you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to The Atlantic at TheAtlantic.com/Listener.

I’m Hanna Rosin. Thank you for listening.