2026-01-26 00:13:22
2026年1月24日，明尼苏达州一名女子在一处临时设立的纪念地哀悼，那里是37岁的亚历克斯·普雷蒂被联邦移民局特工射杀的地点。普雷蒂是一名重症监护病房护士，当天他拍摄了ICE（移民与海关执法局）特工在明尼阿波利斯的行动。当特工袭击一名女性时，普雷蒂试图干预，结果被特工制服、殴打，并最终被射杀。现场视频显示，普雷蒂在被击毙前并未持枪，而特工在开枪前已经夺走了他的枪。这些画面与叙利亚和伊朗等地的场景惊人相似，那里人们因反抗独裁政权而遭到警棍和子弹的镇压。这种相似性尤其令人不安，因为特朗普政府对此的反应是抹黑普雷蒂并赞扬凶手。
在正常运作的自由民主国家中，政府官员对公民的暴力行为会受到严肃对待。然而，特朗普政府却迅速将普雷蒂污蔑为“国内恐怖分子”，并称他试图暗杀联邦执法人员。这些说法已被证实是谎言，与罗妮·戈德（Renee Good）被联邦特工杀害时所使用的谎言如出一辙。尽管普雷蒂确实携带了武器，但他在明尼苏达州合法持枪，并且在事件发生时并未使用枪支。独立分析证实，特工在开枪前已经控制了他的武器。因此，这不仅是联邦特工像独裁者一样杀害一名美国公民，而且他们的上级在华盛顿还用这种赤裸裸的谎言为暴力行为辩护，这种做法让人联想到德黑兰和莫斯科。
这些事件表明，美国正走向一个黑暗的临界点。特朗普政府的行动预示着越来越暴力的镇压，他们试图通过暴力手段而非法律操纵来巩固权力。然而，在美国这样一个拥有强大公民力量的国家，这种暴力手段不太可能奏效。因为美国的国内安全部队并不具备足够的极端暴力能力，以应对日益增长的公众愤怒。
将一个原本民主的社会转变为威权社会有两种主要方式。一种是隐晦而合法的，即政府通过法律手段逐步扩大权力，使选举变得越来越不公平。另一种是直接而暴力的，即通过剥夺政治权利和公民自由，以及对异议者和被排斥群体的残酷镇压来实现。维克多·奥班（Viktor Orbán）领导的匈牙利是第一种方式的典型例子，而斯大林时期的苏联则是第二种方式的代表。
第一种策略依赖于巧妙的法律操作，将威权政策隐藏在合法的外衣之下，以避免公众的广泛抗议。第二种策略则依赖于赤裸裸的暴力，通过制造血腥的镇压案例来震慑任何挑战政府的人。这两种策略显然存在矛盾：当安全机构公开使用暴力时，隐藏威权意图变得更加困难。然而，特朗普政府却同时尝试了这两种策略。有时，他们采取了类似奥班的全国选区划分策略；有时，他们则绑架合法居民并将其送往萨尔瓦多遭受酷刑。周六的事件以及明尼阿波利斯的镇压行动，标志着政府可能正在向第二种策略迈进。
现在，这种暴力行为已无可否认地成为派遣准军事力量占领不愿接受的城镇的直接后果。如果特朗普政府希望避免民主危机的表象，他们必须改变政策并追究相关特工的责任。撤回ICE（移民与海关执法局）并进行真正的调查，将是他们选择奥班式策略的更明智之举，这有助于维持民主的外衣，从而为更隐晦的权力扩张提供合法性。然而，政府官员对涉案特工的迅速辩护，以及缺乏对公正调查的任何诚意，显然表明他们正在加倍下注于公开的镇压。
特朗普政府在巩固权力方面最有效的举措，如利用监管权力帮助亿万富翁艾利森家族控制美国媒体的一部分，都遵循了奥班的模式。然而，这种粗暴的ICE行动却未能有效压制异议，反而加剧了公众对政府的不满。这不仅在明尼苏达州如此，在洛杉矶、芝加哥、华盛顿特区等其他主要城市也一样。在这些地方，反对镇压的组织基础设施在过去一年中已经形成。而且，这些活动者在周六之前就已经开始取得胜利：特朗普的民调正在下降，包括在移民这一他原本强势的议题上。
周六的事件无疑会加速这一趋势。我们已经看到，路易斯安那州参议员比尔·卡西迪（Bill Cassidy）称该事件“令人极度不安”，并要求进行“联邦和州联合调查”。枪支权利活动人士也批评试图将普雷蒂的死亡归咎于其武器的做法。这些只是统治联盟内部的裂痕；民主党正准备因ICE的暴力行为而关闭政府，而全国范围内的非暴力活动人士的反应尚未显现。
通过暴力手段控制如此程度的公众抵抗，在美国是不可想象的。历史证据表明，一旦民众被动员起来，他们不会因为个别暴力事件而退缩。要压制大规模抗议，需要压倒性的武力，就像伊朗最近的镇压行动中，安全部队在街头杀害数千名抗议者以镇压群众起义一样。除非某些强硬的威权政权能够实施如此血腥的手段，否则特朗普政府无法迫使不满的美国人接受其统治。
然而，他们目前的暴力行动已经导致至少两人在明尼阿波利斯死亡。如果他们继续坚持无节制地让ICE占领城市，拒绝在面对非暴力抗议时做出任何让步，那么类似的场景将不断重演。政治学者保罗·穆斯格雷（Paul Musgrave）写道：“非正义的杀戮并不是强权政权的标志，但它们可能是血腥政权的预兆。” 现在，我们必须为这种前景做好准备：一个对美国民众失去耐心、不再通过隐晦手段而转向暴力手段的敌对政府。
By this point, you’ve probably seen the videos — or at least heard about what’s in them. They show a man named Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who is filming ICE activity in Minneapolis, intervening when federal agents assault a woman. In response, the agents grab Pretti, force him to the ground, beat him, and ultimately shoot the defenseless man repeatedly. Pretti was pronounced dead on the scene.
The footage of Pretti’s killing, shot from different angles by different bystanders, looks disturbingly similar to scenes in places like Syria and Iran — where people rising up against authoritarian regimes were silenced by baton and bullet. The resonance is especially chilling given the Trump administration’s response.
In a well-functioning liberal democracy, acts of official brutality against citizens are taken seriously by public officials. Yet the Trump administration responded almost immediately by smearing Pretti and lionizing his killer. In its statement on the incident, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Pretti was armed and was “violently resisting” arrest — that the officer who killed the man “fired defensive shots.” Stephen Miller called Pretti “a domestic terrorist [who] tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”
These are verifiable lies — the same kind of lies deployed against Renee Good when she too was killed by federal agents. While Pretti was indeed armed, carrying a gun openly is legal in Minnesota, and he had a permit to do so. At the beginning of the incident, he is holding a cell phone; at no point does he draw his gun. In fact, independent analysis of the footage confirmed that federal agents had secured Pretti’s gun before firing on him.
So it’s not only that federal agents kill an American citizen like authoritarian thugs, but their superiors in Washington justified that killing with the kind of bald-faced lie that recalls Tehran and Moscow.
These resonances suggest America is at a grim tipping point. The Trump administration’s actions augur an increasingly violent crackdown, one in which they attempt to secure power less by legal manipulation than by application of brutal force.
Such a violent approach is unlikely to succeed in a country like the United States: Our domestic security forces are not equipped for the level of extreme brutality necessary to make it work in the face of growing public outrage.
But how Trump responds to the democratic outpouring in the streets of Minnesota, and the growing unease among even some in his party, will determine just how dark and brutal the next few months will be.
There are two broad routes to turning a previously democratic society into an authoritarian one.
One is subtle and mostly lawful: The executive accrues increasing levels of power through legal shenanigans, and deploys it to make elections become less and less fair over time. The other is brutally overt: bald suspensions of political rights and civil liberties paired with brutal repression of dissenters and disfavored groups. Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is an archetypal example of the first; Stalin’s Soviet Union a classic case of the second.
The first strategy depends on subtlety, hiding its authoritarian policies behind legal veneers that hide their true nature in order to avoid widespread citizen outrage. The second depends on being brutally, nakedly violent — making a bloody example out of dissenters to show anyone who challenges the state risks the same fate.
These two logics are obviously in tension: It’s a lot harder to successfully hide authoritarian intent from most people when your security services are engaging in overt violence. Yet the second Trump administration has attempted both strategies at once. Sometimes, they employ tactics like a nationwide gerrymandering push that fit squarely in the Orbánist playbook; sometimes, they abduct lawful residents and send them to be tortured in El Salvador.
Saturday’s developments — and the Minneapolis crackdown more broadly — mark a potentially decisive move in the latter direction.
It is now undeniable that this kind of violence is the direct consequence of sending a paramilitary force to occupy an unwilling city. If the Trump administration wished to avoid the appearance of democratic crisis, they would both change their policy and pursue real accountability for the agents involved.
Pulling back ICE and conducting a real investigation into Pretti’s killing would be the more strategic approach if they wished to go the Orbánist route: It would help them maintain the democratic veneer that is so vital to legitimizing subtle power grabs.
But the immediate defense by administration figures of the immigration officers involved in the shooting, without even a credible pretense of mobilizing government resources to conduct an impartial investigation, clearly suggests a doubling down on brazen repression.
In such a context, Stephen Miller’s recent comments on global politics — that the “iron laws” of the world mean it is one “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power” — take on a sinisterly domestic cast.
The Trump administration’s most effective moves to consolidate power, like using regulatory power to help the billionaire Ellison family control a growing chunk of the American media, have all followed in Orbán’s footsteps. By contrast, the thuggish ICE deployments have done little to repress dissent — and much to inflame public sentiment against the government.
This is true in Minnesota, obviously, but also in Los Angeles, Chicago, DC, and other major cities. In each case, an organizational infrastructure has emerged to oppose the crackdown that didn’t exist a year ago. And these activists were winning even prior to Saturday: Trump’s poll numbers are plummeting, including on his formerly strong issue of immigration.
Saturday’s events are all but certain to accelerate this dynamic.
We’ve already seen Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, called the killing “incredibly disturbing” and demanded a “full joint federal and state investigation.” Gun rights activists are criticizing attempts to blame Pretti’s weapon for his killing. And these are just the cracks inside the ruling coalition; Democrats are on the brink of shutting down the government over ICE killings, and we’ve yet to see what response nonviolent activists from across the counry put together.
Controlling this level of public resistance by force is unthinkable in the United States. Evidence from history shows that, once mobilized, mass publics don’t retreat in the face of isolated incidents of violence. It takes overwhelming amounts of force — something akin to the recent crackdown in Iran, where state security forces killed thousands of protestors in the street to subdue a mass uprising. Barring such butchery, which is difficult even for some hardened authoritarian regimes to pull off, the Trump administration will not be able to force restive Americans to accept their rule.
But their attempts to impose their will by force, however haphazard, already has a body count of at least two in Minneapolis. If they double down on unrestrained ICE occupations of cities, refusing to give an inch in the face of nonviolent public defiance, this kind of scene will play out again and again.
“Extrajudicial killings are not the sign of a strong regime,” the political scientist Paul Musgrave writes. “But they may be the portent of a bloody one.”
This is what we in America now have to prepare for: a hostile government that has lost patience with establishing sufficient control by more subtle means and is now increasingly turning to violent ones.
2026-01-25 21:30:00
在马绍尔群岛的恩尼瓦克环礁，参与“硬头鞋行动”（Operation Hardtack）的摄影师和摄像团队拍摄了“科阿”（Koa）核试验的场景。该行动是美国在1958年进行的35次核试验之一。| Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images
尽管战后国际秩序可能正在崩溃，国际法也显得越来越像一种礼仪性的虚构，但我们刚刚迈出了全球和平与稳定的一个重要里程碑：自原子时代开始超过80年，世界已连续最长时间没有发生核爆炸。上一次核试验发生在2017年9月3日的朝鲜。此前最长的无核爆炸时期是在1998年5月30日巴基斯坦最后一次试验和2006年10月9日朝鲜第一次试验之间。我们于1月14日打破了这一纪录，目前已有八年四个月二十一天没有核爆炸。
尽管核武器自1945年问世以来仅在战争中使用过两次，但据《联合科学组织》的Dylan Spaulding在最近的一篇博客中指出，至少有八个拥有核武器的国家在历史上进行了超过2000次核试验。这些核试验对“下风者”（居住在试验地点附近的居民）的健康产生了深远影响，包括癌症、自身免疫疾病等。一项由挪威人民援助组织（Norwegian People’s Aid）发布的报告估计，核试验可能已导致多达400万例癌症及其他相关疾病的过早死亡。
由于对这些核试验放射性影响的担忧，世界开始逐步停止核试验。1963年的《部分禁止核试验条约》（Partial Test Ban Treaty）禁止了地面核试验，这是全球大国首次就核武器达成共同限制协议，为美苏之间更全面的核裁军协议奠定了基础。冷战结束后，核武器试验的压力大幅下降。截至目前，已有178个国家批准了1996年的《全面禁止核试验条约》（Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, CTBT），该条约禁止所有核试验。美国在克林顿总统任内签署了该条约，但从未正式批准。尽管如此，美国自1992年在内华达州最后一次地下核试验后，已暂停了所有核试验。俄罗斯的最后一次核试验则是在1990年。
从核时代初期开始，科学家就质疑这些试验是否必要。在广岛和长崎原子弹爆炸之后，我们已经知道这些武器是有效的。作为“原子弹之父”的罗伯特·奥本海默（Robert Oppenheimer）拒绝参加1946年在比基尼环礁进行的首次战后美国核试验，他写信给时任总统哈里·S·杜鲁门，表示这些试验无法提供比“简单实验室方法”更多的信息。一些核试验，如苏联的“沙皇炸弹”（Tsar Bomba）——一枚威力超过广岛原子弹3300倍的5000万吨级核弹——可能更多是为了展示国家实力，而非获取实际科研数据。
如今，实验室方法已变得更加先进。当世界在1月14日打破无核爆炸纪录时，我恰好在洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室报道一篇关于该实验室如何将人工智能融入其先进建模工作的新文章。该建模工作包括确保美国核武器在我们可能决定使用它们的情况下能正常运作。
然而，令人担忧的是，暂停核试验的政策可能不会持续太久。今年10月，特朗普总统呼吁美国恢复核试验。虽然目前尚不清楚是否已经开始相关工作，但美国再次进行核试验可能需要数年时间。然而，这一想法正在获得越来越多的支持，尤其是在中国正在扩大其核武库、俄罗斯则在增加核威胁的背景下。
此外，2023年，俄罗斯总统普京宣布退出《全面禁止核试验条约》，理由是美国尚未批准该条约。美国情报机构也暗示中国可能在进行小型核试验，但并未达到违反条约的程度。结合伊朗的核计划虽受挫但未放弃、以及一些美国盟友对美国安全承诺的不确定性日益增加，核试验暂停的未来变得不确定。
我们幸运地度过了核试验频繁的年代，也幸运地生活在一个多年未发生核爆炸的时代。考虑到过去的情况，这无疑是一个最好的新闻故事。但未来我们是否能继续保持这种幸运，仍需观察。本文最初发表于“好新闻”（Good News）通讯。欢迎订阅！
The post-war international order may be tearing apart at the seams and international law is increasingly looking like a polite fiction, but we did just pass one notable milestone of global peace and stability: As of this month, the world has gone the longest time without a nuclear explosion since the atomic era began more than 80 years ago.
The last nuclear test took place in North Korea on September 3, 2017. The previous longest period without a detonation was between May 30, 1998, when Pakistan conducted its last test, and October 9, 2006, when North Korea conducted its first. We reached the new record on January 14, and are now at eight years, four months and 21 days.
Though they’ve only been used in war twice since their creation in 1945, Dylan Spaulding of the Union of Concerned Scientists noted in a recent blog post that “at least eight countries have detonated more than 2,000 nuclear weapons” over the years, all in tests. (For a mesmerizing and disturbing visualization of these nuclear tests, I recommend this time-lapse animation by the Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto, which runs to 1998.)
It’s difficult for people today to imagine just how constant nuclear detonations were in the first decades after Hiroshima. At the height of the testing era in the late 1950s and early 1960s, dozens of nuclear tests were taking place every year. Most of those tests were done above ground, marked by iconic mushroom clouds.
The detonations were the visible backdrop to rising fears of a civilization-ending nuclear war, which at times seemed not just possible but inevitable. (The Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, who worked for the national security think tank the Rand Corporation in the late 1950s, wrote in his memoir that he never joined the company’s retirement fund, because he assumed the world would end in nuclear holocaust.) Nuclear conflict was a dominant and ever-present theme in global politics, a reality that, for all the geopolitical instability of our current era, most people alive today have never experienced.
In addition to being provocative and destabilizing political acts, these tests have, for decades, been linked to increased rates of cancer, autoimmune disorders and other health conditions among the “downwinders” living near testing sites. The effects may be wider-ranging than that: a report released this week by the NGO Norwegian People’s Aid estimated that nuclear testing may have caused as many as 4 million premature deaths from cancer and other conditions.
It was partially out of growing fear of the radioactive effects of these detonations that the world began gradually phasing out testing, starting with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty that prohibited above-ground detonations. That treaty — the first time global powers agreed to shared limits on nuclear weapons — set the stage for more comprehensive nuclear arms control agreements between the US and Soviet Union.
The end of the Cold War arms race dramatically reduced the pressure for more field experiments involving nukes. One hundred and seventy-eight countries have ratified the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits all nuclear testing. The United States signed the treaty under President Bill Clinton but has never formally ratified it. Nonetheless, it has observed a moratorium on testing since its last detonation, conducted underground in Nevada in 1992. The last Russian test was in 1990.
From the earliest days of the nuclear era, scientists questioned whether these tests were necessary at all. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we knew that these weapons worked. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” declined to attend the first postwar US nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in 1946, writing to President Harry S. Truman that testing wouldn’t reveal anything about the bomb that couldn’t be deduced from “simple laboratory methods.”
Some nuclear tests, like the record-setting “Tsar Bomba” set off by the Soviet Union — a 50-megaton warhead that was over 3,300 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — may have been about projecting a powerful image as much as obtaining practical research data.
Those “laboratory methods” have only gotten more sophisticated since then. When the world passed the record on January 14, I happened to be in Los Alamos reporting for a forthcoming story on how the lab that Oppenheimer built is now integrating artificial intelligence into its advanced modeling work, which includes ensuring that America’s nuclear weapons will work the way they’re supposed to in the hopefully unlikely circumstance that we ever decide to use them.
But there are worrying signs that the pause on tests may not last indefinitely. In October, President Donald Trump called for the US to resume nuclear testing. It’s not clear if any work has actually begun to make that happen, and it would probably be years before the US would be ready to test again, but the idea is gaining support amid a new nuclear era in which China is building up its arsenal and Russia is increasing its nuclear saber rattling. Next month, New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, will lapse, and there’s little momentum toward replacing it.
Advocates, including the drafters of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” argue that a return to testing is necessary not so much for technical reasons, but as a demonstration of the credibility of America’s nuclear deterrent. But in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, warned that “a return to testing at this time would likely benefit U.S. adversaries more than it would the United States. Worse still, it might rekindle an even greater and broader arms race than in the first few decades of the Cold War.”
We’re not there yet, but the recent signs aren’t good. In 2023, Vladimir Putin withdrew Russian ratification of the CTBT, citing the US failure to ratify the treaty. US intelligence services have also suggested China may be conducting small nuclear tests, though not at the level that would violate the CTBT.
Put those developments together with Iran’s set-back but not abandoned nuclear program and increasing support for nuclear weapons among US allies who are less sure than ever about American security guarantees, and the future of the pause is far from certain.
We were lucky to survive the era of constant nuclear testing, and we’re fortunate to still live in a moment where years can go by without a detonation. In many ways, given how dire things looked in the past, it’s the ultimate good news story. But it remains to be seen whether we’ll maintain that luck.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
2026-01-25 20:00:00
2023年的一项调查显示，美国有一半成年人表示愿意签署婚前协议。婚前协议过去主要与名人和超级富豪有关，但现在已逐渐普及到普通人群。根据Axios/Harris的调查，41%的Z世代和47%的千禧一代在订婚或已婚的情况下表示他们签署了婚前协议。这一趋势可能受到多种因素的影响，包括使婚前协议更容易且更便宜的新应用程序、社交媒体和播客中推崇婚前协议的网红，以及年轻一代更可能来自离异家庭，因此对婚姻可能结束的现实更加清醒。
《纽约客》的专栏作家詹妮弗·威尔逊深入探讨了婚前协议现象，采访了离婚律师、已婚夫妇等，以了解婚前协议为何日益流行。她与Today, Explained的主持人诺埃尔·金分享了她的发现。以下是他们对话的节选（已进行删减和润色）。
在《爱是盲目的》节目中，一位从事人力资源工作的参赛者要求未婚夫签署婚前协议，尽管他们都没有太多钱。这与人们原本对婚前协议的刻板印象不同，即富人试图保护自己的财产。然而，社交媒体上对此的反应却出人意料，许多人认为婚前协议是一种“财务卫生”，是负责任的表现。
TikTok上的一些个人理财网红，尤其是女性，也在推动婚前协议的普及。例如，网红Vivian Tu（Your Rich BFF）曾发布了一段关于婚前协议和钱包中物品的视频，引发广泛共鸣。此外，婚前协议的签署人数也大幅上升，2023年调查显示，40%的千禧一代和Z世代声称签署了婚前协议。尽管一些律师认为这个数字过高，但他们也承认，年轻夫妇对婚前协议的咨询量显著增加。
婚前协议的条款也变得更加多样化。例如，一些公司提供“社交媒体图片条款”，规定在社交媒体上发布贬低前伴侣的内容需支付罚款。这源于人们意识到，关于关系的公开信息可能会影响职业生涯。此外，随着千禧一代和Z世代结婚年龄推迟，一些新的条款也应运而生，如“胚胎条款”，用于规定离婚时如何分割胚胎以及谁负责存储费用。而传统的“不忠条款”也变得更加复杂，因为现在越来越多的人接受伦理上的非排他性关系。
在采访中，一位离婚律师提到，与AI聊天机器人的关系可能被视为不忠，甚至可能在离婚诉讼中被引用。她建议客户在与AI聊天时要谨慎，因为这些对话可能被作为证据。
尽管婚前协议有其优势，但也有反对的声音。一些人认为，婚前协议是将离婚问题私有化，而不是寻求更广泛的社会解决方案。此外，婚前协议是复杂的法律文件，许多人可能并不真正了解其内容就签署了。例如，一位收入较低的女演员在与金融从业者结婚时坚持要求婚前协议，因为她希望在离婚时能获得她为公寓或房屋支付的首付和大部分财务支出。她解释说，如果她能获得演出机会或电影角色，她希望确保自己的权益。
此外，婚前协议可能反映出一种“乐观偏见”，即人们认为自己不会离婚，因此在协议中可能同意不太有利的条款，甚至可能为了显示自己不图金钱而要求更不利的条件。这种过度关注“谁是谁的”可能让婚姻变得复杂，而人们似乎希望通过婚前协议来创造一些确定性。
Prenuptial agreements, long exclusive to celebrities and the ultra-rich, have trickled down to the rest of us.
A 2023 Axios/Harris poll found that half of US adults say they’re open to signing a prenup, and that younger people are driving the trend.
Forty-one percent of Gen Z and 47 percent of millennials who are engaged or have been married said they entered a prenup, according to the poll.
There might be several things driving the trend: new apps that make it easier and cheaper to draw up prenups, influencers touting the value of prenups on social media and in podcasts, and young people being more likely to be the children of divorced parents and therefore more realistic about the possibility that their marriage won’t last.
The New Yorker staff writer Jennifer Wilson did a deep dive into the world of prenups, speaking to divorce lawyers, married couples, and others to better understand why prenups are growing in popularity. She shared some of her findings with Today, Explained host Noel King.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
What got you thinking and writing about prenups?
I just noticed them all over. You’ve seen prenups on TV shows like Sex and the City or reality shows like Real Housewives. And in those contexts it makes sense because we’re talking about people with a lot of money. The stereotype is that you’ve got a rich guy and he wants to figure out a way to screw his gold-digging younger partner out of her share of the assets.
But I started seeing prenups appear on shows like Love Is Blind. There was a contestant who worked in HR and she wanted her fiance to sign a prenup, and neither of them really had much money. And I expected the conversation on social media to be sort of making fun of this a little bit. Like, “Come on girl, like, we don’t have any money. We’ve blown it all on avocado toast.” But everyone’s saying, “Absolutely, this is just financial hygiene. This is just being responsible.”
All over TikTok, there were these personal finance influencers, often female. There’s one who goes by the handle Your Rich BFF, her name’s Vivian Tu, and she had a viral video that said, “What’s in my prenup and in my purse?“ It was a very cutesy conversation about prenups. And she got a lot of support from people online saying, “Yes, every woman should push for a prenup.”
And also just the numbers of people getting prenups have just risen dramatically. So there was a 2023 Axios/Harris poll that showed that 40 percent of millennials and Gen Z claimed that they had signed a prenup. That number struck a lot of the lawyers I spoke to as way too high, although they all told me that they have seen a big uptick in younger couples asking for prenups. So I just wanted to dig into this phenomenon.
You have laid out what my understanding of a prenup always was, which is, there’s a rich guy, he’s coming to the marriage with all the money, the woman has no or less money. And so the idea is basically, “I’m going to protect myself from this woman just in case,” a very gendered scenario that I just laid out but, I also think, rooted in some truth. You said it was a woman on Love Is Blind who was like, “I want a prenup,” and she didn’t have money. So what are the differences that we’re seeing here?
You’re right that there is a really big gendered shift. One of the things I researched for this piece are these apps that have just kind of proliferated across the market. Many of their founders are women. One is Hello Prenup. One is called First and that was actually launched by Sheryl Sandberg’s former chief of staff at Facebook, a woman named Libby Leffler. And she absolutely has used very much like “lean in” kind of language around prenups.
The same way that Sheryl Sandberg was telling women, “You’ve got to negotiate your salary,” now her protege is saying, “Well, you should renegotiate your marriage contract. You would never take on a new job without knowing your compensation package. Why would you enter a marriage without the same know-how?”
I think that one thing that’s really important here to understand is we’re talking about a particular generation, millennials and Gen Z, who are used to thinking about divorce and separation. Twenty-five percent of millennials are the children of divorce or separation. So they’re coming to their new relationships with a certain amount of trauma. And so there was a little bit of that, but not nearly as much as you would think. I think that this generation is just a bit more realistic, that “happily ever after” or “until death do we part” are not realistic ways to think about marriage.
When you were learning about the details of people’s prenups, what surprised you? What really raised your eyebrows or made you go, “Oh damn, they really thought of something there”?
Companies like Hello Prenup, they are offering all sorts of new clauses. So something called a social media image clause, what that does is you can, in your prenup, say for any disparaging content about your ex that you post on social media, you have to pay a financial penalty. And I think that’s because we’ve seen people’s careers be affected by information about what happened in their relationship becoming public.
So it’s not totally irrational. Millennials are also getting married later. So things like IVF have come up. Hello Prenup also has an embryo clause where you can decide how you want to, for instance, divide embryos in the event of a divorce, and even who’s going to pay for storage fees.
Even [with] classic clauses like the infidelity clause, you have to be very particular about how you define infidelity these days. I mean, we’re living in an era of ethical non-monogamy. More people are thinking differently about what infidelity is. I interviewed for the piece a divorce lawyer who said that relationships with an AI chatbot, those could conceivably violate an infidelity clause. And she actually said that she’s already telling her clients to be careful about how much, for instance, you even divulge to some of these chatbots because she said you can actually subpoena those conversations and they can come up in a divorce, but also in custody.
So you heard all of the arguments for prenups, and I imagine, you found some of them very convincing. What are the arguments against prenups?
I think on one level, it feels like people are giving up on a broader kind of social repair to the way that divorce happens now. It’s a privatized solution.
I also think these are really complicated legal documents, and I don’t think that everyone knows what they’re doing when they press these buttons on an app. For instance, I interviewed a woman who is a theater actress. She does not make a lot of money. She picks up shifts as a cater waiter and at Lululemon, and she married a finance bro, and she insisted on a prenup. She wanted whoever paid the down payment on an apartment or house and covered most of the financials that they would get that property in the event of a divorce. And I thought, what? Why would you do that if you’re the lesser-earning partner? And she said, well, what if I book a show? What if I get a movie?
I also think that there’s a lot of manifesting that can happen in these prenups. I spoke to a researcher who studied something called the optimism bias, and she said that prenup signers suffer from this. So what does that mean? It means that when someone says, you and your partner, do you think you’ll ever get divorced? You’re going to say no. And that actually can impact what you get in a prenup, what you think that you want in a prenup, because you might agree to less favorable terms. You might even ask for less favorable terms because you want to show your partner that you’re not in it for the money.
I do wonder sometimes what it means to go into the messiness of marriage, thinking so much about “what’s mine, what’s yours?” I do wonder how that works on a day-to-day basis when you’re living complicated lives and things go awry. And life is so unpredictable and I felt really often that the people I was interviewing knew that and they were almost using the prenup to create some certainty.
2026-01-25 06:25:00
2026年1月24日，明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯市，一名联邦特工在抗议者中踢出催泪瓦斯罐，随后联邦特工开枪射杀了一名男子。据称，该男子亚历克斯·杰弗里·普里蒂（Alex Jeffrey Pretti）当时正在该地区观察特工行动，是一名美国公民，同时也是注册护士和持枪合法者，但事发时他已不再持有武器。普里蒂的死亡是今年明尼阿波利斯地区联邦移民特工第三次开枪杀人，其中两人死亡。这些事件在全国范围内引发了广泛关注。
自2026年1月初特朗普政府在明尼阿波利斯地区展开移民执法行动以来，美国移民与海关执法局（ICE）和海关与边境保护局（CBP）的特工被指控广泛滥用职权，包括频繁使用催泪瓦斯和胡椒喷雾等化学控制手段、对示威者、旁观者和移民实施暴力行为，以及无端且具有煽动性的逮捕和拘留。
2026年1月7日，即特朗普政府宣布“有史以来最大规模的移民行动”后不久，一名ICE特工乔纳森·罗斯（Jonathan Ross）在试图驾车逃离时射杀了瑞妮·古德（Renee Good）。白宫、国土安全部长克里斯蒂·诺姆（Kristi Noem）及其他联邦官员迅速支持罗斯，称古德为“国内恐怖分子”，并认为其被射杀是正当的，尽管有视频证据显示并非如此。此后，明尼苏达州的ICE特工表现出更像占领者而非执法者的姿态，不仅当地官员恳求他们离开该州，他们还戴着面罩，使用军事化装备，包括战术装备、防暴剂和突击武器。他们甚至与当地警方发生冲突，一名明尼阿波利斯地区的警察局长表示，一些警员在非工作时间遭到移民特工的骚扰和种族歧视。
此外，联邦特工还被记录在近距离对一名已被拘留的男子面部喷洒胡椒喷雾。上周，一名明尼阿波利斯家庭在从篮球比赛回家途中，被特工在车内喷洒催泪瓦斯，其中6个月大的婴儿需要进行心肺复苏。所有家庭成员都幸存下来，但婴儿情况危急。
在明尼阿波利斯地区，联邦特工的第二次开枪事件也是一起误伤：一名ICE特工误将一名委内瑞拉男子当作目标，开枪击中其腿部，尽管该男子并非他们原本的目标。最近，一名美国公民乔恩李·“斯科特”·陶（ChongLy “Scott” Thao）在家中被特工持枪带走，当时他只穿着内衣、凉鞋和一条毯子，且在零下温度中被带走。陶被逮捕时没有搜查令，最终数小时后被释放，但特工并未为此道歉或赔偿其家庭损失。
在明尼阿波利斯，ICE特工的行为已构成对第四修正案（禁止不合理搜查和扣押）的严重违反。据《纽约时报》的同事埃里克·利维茨（Eric Levitz）周五报道，根据一份由美联社首次获得的内部备忘录，ICE决定可以仅凭行政令（而非司法令）进入住宅进行搜查。这类行政令不需要法官批准，可由ICE特工自行签发。
此外，ICE的行动还波及到了明尼阿波利斯地区的儿童。据当地学区官员称，本周有特工试图利用一名5岁儿童作为“诱饵”，在将其父亲拘捕后，让儿童敲门以引诱其他人。另外，周四特工还拘捕了一名2岁女童及其父亲，并暂时将他们送往德克萨斯州。
当地媒体如《明尼阿波利斯星-三角报》以及旁观者拍摄的执法互动视频，为记录ICE和CBP在该州的行为提供了更全面的资料。然而，即便只是这些有限的事件，也显示出特工行为中明显的不受约束的攻击性和持续升级的趋势。明尼阿波利斯市长雅各布·弗里（Jacob Frey）在周六表示：“还有多少居民、多少美国人需要死亡或受伤，才能让这次行动停止？”但对于特朗普政府而言，这些死亡似乎并未引起太多关注。
On Saturday, a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti at close range after Pretti had been pepper-sprayed, beaten, and forced onto his knees by other agents.
Pretti, 37, was a US citizen and reportedly in the area to observe agents’ actions. He was also a registered nurse and a legal gun owner with a permit to carry a weapon — one that he was no longer in possession of when he was shot to death.
Pretti’s death is at least the third shooting by immigration agents in the Minneapolis area this year, and the second where the person who was shot died.
The shootings have understandably attracted the most attention nationwide. But since the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis began in early January, there have been widespread abuses of power US by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, including widespread use of chemical crowd control like pepper spray and tear gas; brutality against protesters, bystanders, and immigrants; and baseless and often inflammatory arrests and detentions.
On January 7, just days into an immigration crackdown targeting the Minneapolis area that Trump officials heralded as “largest immigration operation ever,” an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, shot and killed Renee Good as she attempted to drive away.
The White House, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and other federal officials quickly backed Ross to the hilt, describing Good as a domestic terrorist and describing the shooting as justified, despite video evidence to the contrary.
Since then, the message behind the administration’s support for Ross and the shooting seems to have been clearly received by ICE agents in Minnesota, who have behaved much more like an occupying force than a law enforcement operation: Not only have local officials pleaded with them to leave the state, they are also operating from behind masks and with militarized force, including tactical gear, riot control agents, and assault weapons.
They have even pitted themselves against local police: A Minneapolis-area police chief said this earlier week that some of his off-duty officers have been harassed and racially profiled by immigration agents.
In multiple cases, federal agents have been documented using Good’s killing as a threat against other observers documenting their actions, asking one woman, “Have y’all not learned?” before grabbing her phone and detaining her.
Other incidents are too numerous to tally in full, but several stand out.
Last week, federal agents violently detained two Target employees, both of whom a Minnesota state representative said were US citizens and who were later released. At least one of the employees was left in a nearby parking lot with injuries.
In another incident, a US citizen was dragged from her car by federal agents after she was stopped on the way to a doctor’s appointment; agents broke the windows of her vehicle and carried her hanging face down by her arms and legs. And federal agents have been recorded pepper-spraying an already-detained man in the face at close range.
A Minneapolis family was also caught up and brutalized by federal agents last week: On the way home from a basketball game, a family of eight — including a 6-month-old and five other children — was tear-gassed inside their vehicle by federal agents. All survived, but the 6-month-old required CPR.
The second of three shootings by federal immigration agents in the Minneapolis area was also a case of mistaken identity: ICE agents shot a Venezuelan man in the leg, wounding him, even though he was not their original target.
More recently, ChongLy “Scott” Thao, also a US citizen, was detained in his home at gunpoint by federal agents and taken away in sub-freezing temperatures wearing only his underwear, sandals, and a blanket. Thao was arrested without a warrant and ultimately released hours later — without an apology for his detention or for the damage to his home, Thao said.
Thao’s detention is part of a larger pattern in Minneapolis, where ICE agents are increasingly acting in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. As my colleague Eric Levitz wrote on Friday, ICE has decided, according to a closely held internal memo first obtained by the Associated Press, that it can enter homes with only an administrative warrant, rather than a judicial warrant. Such administrative warrants do not require a judge’s approval and can be issued by ICE agents themselves.
ICE’s crackdown has also swept up children in the Minneapolis area, including an incident this week where agents attempted to use a 5-year-old child as “bait” to detain others by having him knock on the door of his home after taking his father into custody, according to officials at a Minneapolis-area school district. They also detained a 2-year-old and her father on Thursday and temporarily removed both of them to Texas.
Local publications like the Minneapolis Star-Tribune — and bystanders filming interactions, as Pretti appeared to have been doing before he was shot and killed on Saturday — have created a more comprehensive record of ICE and CBP’s actions in the state. But even this relatively limited number of incidents shows a clear pattern of unchecked aggression and ongoing escalation by agents.
“How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey asked on Saturday. But for the Trump administration, it’s not clear those deaths are very much of a problem at all.
2026-01-25 01:53:50
一段视频截图显示联邦官员杀害一名男子。@TheJFreakinC 表示，明尼苏达州最新发生的杀人事件令人震惊。视频中，大约有五六名身穿军装的男子（看起来像是由特朗普总统派往明尼苏达州的联邦移民官员）将一名男子按倒在地并反复殴打，随后一名官员似乎向该男子连开数枪。即使该男子已经倒地不动，枪声仍未停止。据明尼苏达州警察局长布莱恩·奥哈拉称，这名男子（目前尚未被确认身份）已死亡。任何由此事件引发的逮捕或起诉都必须等待警方调查结果。视频并未显示这名男子在被攻击前的行为，因此尚不清楚他是否曾参与犯罪或暴力活动。但目前所掌握的有限证据似乎非常不利。即便有某种法律辩护可以为第一枪开脱，也很难想象能为连续向倒地男子开枪找到正当理由。然而，特朗普政府开展真正调查的可能性极低。今年早些时候，联邦官员射杀瑞内·古德（Renee Good）后，副司法部长托德·布兰奇（Todd Blanche）不仅关闭了对凶手的调查，还下令对古德进行刑事调查。但明尼苏达州并非只有联邦政府，州官员对特朗普的准军事力量在短短几周内再次造成死亡感到愤怒。明尼苏达州州长蒂姆·沃尔兹（Tim Walz）呼吁特朗普“立即把成千上万的暴力且未经训练的联邦官员从明尼苏达州撤走。”州检察官也可能尝试对这两起杀人案的责任官员提起指控。然而，美国最高法院的共和党多数派使私人公民起诉违反法律的联邦执法官员变得极为困难。但问题是，联邦官员是否真的可以被起诉并定罪违反州刑法？直到最近，法律对联邦官员在执行公务时涉嫌违反州刑法的情况仍倾向于保护他们。标志性案例“Neagle v. California”（1890年）中，最高法院裁定一名联邦治安官在担任美国最高法院法官保镖时射杀一名男子，不能在州法院被控谋杀罪。但去年6月，最高法院在“Martin v. United States”（2025年）一案中推翻了这一观点，指出Neagle案并不总是保护联邦官员免受州法律的追究。Martin案中确立的规则较为模糊，因此尚不清楚它是否适用于明尼苏达州的枪击事件。但其核心内容是，联邦官员只有在证明其行为“虽违反州法，但却是履行联邦职责所必需且适当的”，才能获得保护。如果这些负责明尼苏达州枪击案的联邦官员违反了明尼苏达州法律，那么任何起诉都将取决于法院是否认为该枪击行为是“履行职责所必需且适当的”。此外，还存在另一个潜在问题。一项联邦法律规定，任何针对“美国政府官员或其下属人员”的州刑事指控，都可以被移送到联邦法院审理。这项法律并未阻止州检察官提起指控或进行审判，但确保了有关Neagle案是否适用的问题将由联邦法院裁决，而这些法院正日益由保守派共和党人主导。明尼苏达州的联邦案件通常上诉至第八巡回上诉法院，该法院11名现任法官中有10名是由共和党人任命的。当然，第八巡回上诉法院的裁决可能还会被上诉至最高法院，而那里有6名共和党人担任大法官。所有这些都表明，虽然法律并未完全阻止明尼苏达州检察官对这些官员提起指控，但这些指控是否能够成立仍存在很大不确定性。
那么，联邦官员在何种情况下可以免受州法院的起诉？Neagle案的事实令人震惊。大卫·特里（David Terry）曾是加利福尼亚州的律师和前州最高法院首席法官，他曾在担任州最高法院法官期间与美国最高法院法官史蒂芬·菲尔德（Stephen Field）共事。当时，联邦法官需要“巡回审判”，即在华盛顿特区以外的地方审理案件。因此，菲尔德不得不审理一起关于特里妻子是否应分得一位美国参议员财产的案件。在庭审中，菲尔德裁定特里妻子无权获得该财产，特里随即殴打了一名联邦治安官，持一把博伊刀（Bowie knife）威胁，并被以藐视法庭罪监禁。获释后，他和妻子继续威胁菲尔德的生命，因此，总检察长下令让副治安官大卫·内格尔（David Neagle）担任菲尔德的保镖。之后，特里在乘火车前往加利福尼亚州途中袭击了菲尔德，内格尔开枪将其射杀。鉴于这些事实，最高法院裁定加利福尼亚州不能对内格尔提起杀人罪指控，因为这涉及对现任法官的袭击，而且内格尔是在履行其作为菲尔德保镖的职责。135年后，最高法院在Martin案中重新审视了Neagle案。Gorsuch大法官在该案中指出，Neagle案的背景是担心“加州可能通过起诉一名联邦治安官来妨碍联邦法律”，因为该治安官是根据美国法律被授权执行某些行为的。保护菲尔德是内格尔的职责，因此他在射杀特里时“只是做了必要的和适当的事”。因此，Gorsuch从Neagle案中提炼出一个规则：联邦官员只有在证明其行为“是履行联邦职责所必需且适当”时，才能受到州法律的保护。在Martin案之后，明尼苏达州可能有机会起诉那些在该州造成死亡的联邦官员。一般来说，联邦执法官员没有法律授权在没有正当理由的情况下开枪杀人。因此，如果这次枪击行为被证明是非法的，联邦法院可能会认为该官员的行为并非履行职责所必需和适当。然而，Martin案是一个较新的裁决，其规则仍较为模糊。此外，对联邦移民官员的起诉不可避免地带有政治色彩。因此，尚不清楚审理此案的法官是否会以公正和中立的态度对待，还是以党派立场来裁决。换句话说，关于联邦官员何时可以被起诉犯有州刑事罪的法律仍不明确，因此，即使州检察官能够说服陪审团定罪，这些联邦官员的起诉是否能够成功仍存在很大不确定性。
The video of the latest killing in Minneapolis is truly horrific. In it, about half a dozen men in military garb, who appear to be federal immigration officers sent to Minnesota by President Donald Trump, wrestle a man to the ground and repeatedly strike him. Then one of the officers appears to fire multiple shots into the man. The shots continue, even after the target is lying motionless on the ground.
According to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, the man, who has yet to be identified, is dead.
Any arrests or prosecutions that arise out of this killing will have to await a police investigation. The video does not show what happened before this man’s killers started wrestling with him, so it is not yet clear if he was engaged in criminal or even violent activity before the altercation began. But the limited evidence available right now appears incredibly damning. Even if there is some legal argument that could justify the first shot fired, it’s hard to imagine one for continuing to fire multiple shots into a man lying on the ground.
But it is also exceedingly unlikely that the Trump administration will conduct a real investigation into this killing. After federal officers shot and killed Renee Good earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly did not just shut down an investigation into her killer, he also ordered federal officials to conduct a criminal investigation into Good.
But the federal government isn’t the only sovereign entity in Minneapolis, and state officials are understandably livid about the second killing by Trump’s paramilitary forces in just a few weeks. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) called for Trump to “Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.” State prosecutors could also attempt to bring charges against the officers responsible for the two killings.
The Supreme Court’s Republican majority has made it very difficult for private citizens to sue federal law enforcement officers who break the law. But can a federal officer actually be charged with, and convicted of, violating a state criminal law?
Until fairly recently, the law was favorable to federal officials who allegedly violate state criminal laws while they carry out their official duties. The seminal case, known as In re Neagle (1890), held that a deputy US marshal who shot and killed a man could not be charged with murder in state court, because this federal officer did so while acting as a bodyguard for a US Supreme Court justice.
Last June, however, the Supreme Court handed down Martin v. United States (2025), which held that Neagle does not always protect federal officials who violate state law. The rule announced in Martin is vague, so it is unclear how it would apply to the shooting in Minneapolis. But the gist of the ruling is that a federal officer is only protected if they can demonstrate that “their actions, though criminal under state law, were ‘necessary and proper’ in the discharge of their federal responsibilities.”
If the officers responsible for the Minneapolis killings broke Minnesota law, in other words, any prosecution against them would turn on whether the courts decide shooting this woman was a “necessary and proper” exercise of the officer’s official duties.
There is one other potential complication. A federal law provides that state criminal charges against “any officer (or any person acting under that officer) of the United States or any agency thereof” may be removed from state court and heard by a federal judge. This statute does not prevent state prosecutors from bringing charges or from prosecuting a case. But it does ensure that the question of whether Neagle applies to this case would be decided by federal courts that are increasingly dominated by conservative Republicans.
Federal cases out of Minnesota appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, a very conservative court where 10 of the 11 active judges were appointed by Republicans. And, of course, any decision by the Eighth Circuit might be appealed to the Supreme Court, where Republicans control six of the nine seats.
All of which is a long way of saying that, while the law does not absolutely preclude Minnesota prosecutors from filing charges against these officers, it is far from clear that those charges will stick.
The facts underlying the Neagle case are simply wild. David Terry was a lawyer and former chief justice of the state of California, who had served with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field while the two were both state supreme court justices. At the time, federal justices were required to “ride circuit” and hear cases outside of Washington, DC. And so, Field wound up hearing a dispute about whether Terry’s wife was entitled to a share of a US senator’s fortune.
At the court proceeding, where Field ruled against Terry’s wife, Terry punched a US marshal, brandished a Bowie knife, and was jailed for contempt of court. After his release, he and his wife continued to threaten Field’s life, and so, the attorney general ordered Deputy Marshal David Neagle to act as Field’s bodyguard.
Then, Terry attacked Field while Field was traveling through California by train, and Neagle shot and killed Terry.
Given these facts, it’s unsurprising that the Supreme Court ruled that California could not bring charges against Neagle for this killing. The case involved a physical attack on a sitting justice! And, besides, Neagle acted within the scope of his responsibilities as Field’s federally appointed bodyguard.
135 years later, however, the Court decided Martin. That more recent decision focused on language in the Neagle opinion that suggested that its scope may be limited. Neagle, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in Martin, arose from concerns that “California could frustrate federal law by prosecuting a federal marshal “for an act which he was authorized to do by the law of the United States.” Protecting Field was something that “it was [Neagle’s] duty to do.” And, in shooting Terry, Neagle “did no more than what was necessary and proper.”
Thus, Gorsuch extracted a rule from Neagle that federal officials are only protected from state law when their actions “were ‘necessary and proper’ in the discharge of their federal responsibilities.”
In the wake of Martin, Minnesota may very well be able to prosecute the officers responsible for the Minnesota killings. As a general rule, federal law enforcement officers are not authorized by the law of the United States to shoot people without justification. So, if it turns out that this killing was legally unjustified, federal courts may conclude that the officer’s actions were not necessary and proper in the discharge of his official duties.
That said, Martin is a fairly new opinion, and the rule it announced is vague. And any prosecution against a federal immigration officer would be unavoidably political. So, it is unclear whether the judges who hear this case would approach it as fair and impartial jurists or as partisans.
The bottom line, in other words, is that the law governing when federal officers may be charged with state crimes is quite unclear. So, it is uncertain whether a prosecution against these particular federal officers would succeed — even assuming that a state prosecutor could convince a jury to convict.
2026-01-24 21:05:00
今天，Explained将每周六发布视频节目，以音频和视频形式呈现，内容包括对政界和文化界重要人物的深入访谈。请订阅Vox的YouTube频道以获取这些节目，或在您常听的播客平台收听。
明尼苏达州——唐纳德·特朗普并未退让。他坚持自己的关税政策，反对将联邦移民官员部署到争议地区，不愿利用司法部打击政治对手，也不放过对“蓝色城市”（指民主党主导的城市）的攻击。在 Renee Good 被一名 ICE（美国移民与海关执法局）官员射杀后，政府官员却继续指责受害者，并拒绝配合地方官员对事件的调查。本周，司法部对几位明尼苏达州民主党人展开刑事调查，并发出传票，指控他们阻碍了联邦移民优先事项。这使得当地社区陷入紧张不安之中。
五年来，乔治·弗洛伊德之死引发了全球对种族正义和警察改革的抗议运动，而如今，全国的目光再次聚焦于明尼苏达州。虽然人们最关心的问题是“特朗普愿意走多远”，但他的施压行动也对州内的民主党官员构成挑战，包括州检察长 Keith Ellison。Ellison 曾是国会议员和民主党全国委员会副主席，自2019年起担任检察长，同时他也是明尼苏达州民主党州长候选人之一。在一次深入访谈中，我询问了他关于未来在州政坛的发展、如何应对特朗普的施压、州民主党是否在调查社会服务欺诈案件上行动迟缓，以及是否应废除 ICE。以下是我们的对话中最引人注目的部分。
Ellison 强调了一个重要观点：司法部的民事权利部门拒绝调查导致 Renee Good 死亡的 ICE 官员。他们没有审查证据，也决定不追究责任。美国副司法部长 Todd Blanche 在与福克斯新闻的采访中表示：“那天发生的事情已经被数以百万计的美国人观看，因为当时被手机记录下来了。司法部的民事权利部门并不只是在每次警官被迫自卫时就进行调查。”
与此同时，FBI 从现场扣押了关键证据，包括子弹壳以及 Good 的汽车（可能显示子弹轨迹），但拒绝与州和地方检察官分享这些证据。Ellison 表示，联邦政府正在隐瞒可能帮助查明真相的证据，并阻止那些试图为 Good 家人寻求答案的人。
特朗普政府的核心论点之一是，明尼苏达州是“庇护城市”，地方官员积极阻止 ICE 执行任务。Ellison 却坚决否认这一点，并强调这一区别至关重要。明尼苏达州有一项被称为“分离法案”的规定。Ellison 表示，虽然州和地方执法部门不会像其他一些城市那样阻止 ICE 进入监狱，但该法案意味着城市工作人员没有法律义务这样做。他指出，如果超越这一界限，州政府可能会面临法律风险。例如，ICE 可以根据移民逮捕令拘留人员，但明尼苏达州不会根据移民指控延长拘留时间。例如，如果法官下令释放因酒驾被起诉的人，州政府就会释放他们。如果 ICE 想要根据移民问题将其带走，他们可以这么做，但明尼苏达州不会因移民指控而拘留他们。Ellison 将当前的政治局势与2020年夏天的事件进行了比较，当时共和党成功将民主党描绘成支持“取消警察经费”的激进派，尽管大多数民主党官员从未真正支持这一口号。
本周在 Truth Social 上，特朗普指责明尼苏达州民主党未能调查该州索马里裔社区中报告的数起社会服务欺诈案件，并以此为借口派遣联邦特工。在我们的访谈中，Ellison 强烈否认民主党在调查这些案件上有所拖延。他表示，特朗普和白宫正在不公正地针对整个社区，因为个别犯罪行为。当我提到“喂养我们的未来”丑闻——明尼阿波利斯一家非营利组织与一家索马里餐厅合谋骗取超过2亿美元联邦资金时，检察长对此感到愤怒。
“这次 ICE 的大规模行动是针对欺诈的，但特朗普却派出了武装人员，戴着面具，”Ellison 说，“他没有派会计师，也没有派金融调查专家，而是派出了带着枪的强硬分子。因此，你必须得出这样的印象：我们谈论的并不是欺诈。”
特朗普威胁动用“叛乱法案”并非虚张声势。Ellison 表示，他和其他州官员自2024年初就开始演练应对措施，准备对特朗普可能提出的联邦权力扩张进行法律挑战。Ellison 还详细说明了“叛乱法案”在明尼阿波利斯可能带来的影响：现役联邦军队将巡逻美国城市街道，表面上是为了支持 ICE 的行动。Ellison 认为，特朗普正在兑现其竞选承诺，即对政治对手进行报复。
“‘我就是你的报复’不仅仅是一句竞选口号，而是一种治国理念。”Ellison 说。明尼苏达州拥有大量索马里裔居民，政治倾向进步，且在乔治·弗洛伊德事件后曾发生过大规模抗议，这使得该州成为特朗普向反对者传递信息的完美目标。
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MINNEAPOLIS — President Donald Trump is not budging. On his tariffs. On his controversial deployment of federal immigration agents. On his willingness to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. On his war against blue cities.
In the weeks after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, administration officials have doubled down on comments that laid blame with the victim and stonewalled local officials trying to investigate the shooting. This week, the Justice Department opened criminal investigations into several Minnesota Democrats, issuing subpoenas that allege they have impeded federal immigration priorities.
The result is a community on edge. Five years after the killing of George Floyd made Minneapolis the center of a global movement for racial justice and police reform, the eyes of the country have returned to the Twin Cities. And while the foremost question may be, “Just how far is Donald Trump willing to go?” the pressure campaign from the president has also challenged the state’s Democratic elected officials, including state Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Ellison, a former Congress member and DNC vice chair, has served as attorney general since 2019 — and he’s also a rumored candidate for the state’s Democratic nomination for governor. In an extended interview, I asked Ellison about his future in state politics, the playbook for pushing back on Trump, whether state Democrats were slow to investigate claims of social services fraud, and whether the solution for ICE is to abolish it.
Here’s what most struck me in our conversation.
Ellison stressed an important point: The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division declined to open an investigation into the ICE officer who shot and killed protester Renee Good. They didn’t review evidence and decided not to pursue charges.
“Look, what happened that day has been reviewed by millions and millions of Americans because it was recorded on phones,” US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview with Fox News. “The Department of Justice, our civil rights unit, we don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger.”
Meanwhile, the FBI has seized critical evidence from the scene — bullet casings, as well as Good’s car, which could show the bullet trajectory — and won’t share any of it with state and local prosecutors who want to pursue the case. According to Ellison, the federal government is sitting on evidence that could help determine what happened, and they’re keeping it from the people trying to get answers for Good’s family.
One of the Trump administration’s core arguments is that Minneapolis is a “sanctuary city” where local officials actively block ICE from doing their jobs. Ellison was adamant: that’s just not true, and the distinction matters.
Minneapolis has what’s called a “separation ordinance.” Ellison says that while state and local law enforcement do not block ICE from accessing jails, as some other cities do, the ordinance means that city workers are under no statutory obligation to do it. Ellison argued that going beyond that would expose the state to legal liability.
For example, ICE can collect people with immigration detainers, Ellison said. What Minnesota won’t do is hold someone beyond what a court has ordered based on their criminal charges. For example, if a judge says someone charged with a DUI should be released, the state releases them. If ICE wants to pick them up for immigration violations, they’re free to do so — but Minnesota isn’t going to detain them on immigration charges.
Ellison compared the politics of the situation to summer 2020, when Republicans successfully branded Democrats as supportive of the activist movement to “defund the police” even when most Democratic officials never embraced that slogan.
This week on Truth Social, Trump argued that Minnesota Democrats need to be asked about documented cases of social services fraud in the Somali American community. Trump further alleged that Minnesota Democrats had not properly investigated those cases under state Democratic leadership, which was one of his pretexts for sending in federal agents.
In our interview, Ellison vehemently denied that Democrats slow-walked fraud cases among politically supportive communities. He said Trump and the White House were unjustly targeting an entire community for the criminal actions of a few. When I mentioned the “Feeding Our Future” scandal, where a Minneapolis nonprofit conspired with a Somali restaurant to take in more than $200 million in federal money, the attorney general was indignant.
“This ICE surge is about fraud, but [Trump] is sending armed men with guns, wearing masks,” Ellison said. “He’s not sending accountants. He’s not sending forensic financial investigators. He’s sending aggressive men with guns. So you gotta get the impression that we’re not really talking about fraud.”
Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act is to be taken seriously. Ellison said he and other state officials have been war-gaming responses since early 2024, preparing legal challenges to what would be an extraordinary assertion of federal power.
Ellison also laid out just exactly what the Insurrection Act would mean in Minneapolis: active-duty federal troops patrolling the streets of an American city, ostensibly to support ICE operations.
Ellison argued Trump is living out his campaign promise for retribution against political enemies. “I am your retribution” isn’t just a campaign slogan — it’s a governing philosophy. And Minnesota, with its large Somali population, its progressive politics, its history of protest after George Floyd, makes the perfect target to send a message about what happens when you resist this administration.