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- [00:00]
A
This is not a capture Maduro type event that seems to land on us out of nowhere just as we're coming back from the holidays. This is a long running trend that all of a sudden has an extremely sympathetic symbol of sort of what has gone wrong. And so I'm inclined to think that is this going to be American's number one issue in November of 2026? No. Like, I mean, I doubt it. Whatever. I have no idea what's going to happen between now and then. Will this, I think, become emblematic of like the withdrawal from Afghanistan when, when really the bottom started to fall out for Biden, for example? I, I am inclined to think that it's possible. Hello and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druke. Call this something of an emergency podcast. I'd planned on airing an episode setting the table for the 2026 midterms today, but we're going to save that for another day because on Saturday, a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Preddy, a 37 year old ICU nurse at the Veterans Affairs Hospital. It's the second killing by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis in less than three weeks, the first being Renee Good, a 37 year old mother who was shot while impeding traffic as part of a Protestant. We're going to get into some of the details of what happened on Saturday, but I think it's fair to say that the public, many lawmakers and even some Republicans have lost patience with the Trump administration's immigration enforcement tactics. In both killings in Minneapolis, the Trump administration rushed to brand Good and Pretty as domestic terrorists and fabricated events, despite the shootings being visible in multiple videos. While there was plenty of pushback amongst Democrats, independents and the press, in the case of Good this time, a handful of Republicans, including the nra, have joined the pushback as well. As listeners well know it's going to take a minute before we can fully understand the impact of this weekend on American politics. But we'll share what we know in this moment. And so here with me to do that is head of research at 50 plus one, Mary Radcliffe. Welcome to the podcast, Mary.
- [02:12]
B
Hey, Kaylin. It's good to be here, although the topic is a little grim.
- [02:16]
A
Yes, yes, indeed. Also here with us is managing editor at Vote Beat, Nathaniel Rakic. Welcome, Nathaniel.
- [02:22]
C
Hey, Galen. Hope you guys both, you know, made it through the storm okay.
- [02:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at a, I'm looking at a lot of snow, but survived in one in one piece. Thank you for asking. And likewise. So we're gonna get into the data and political reactions in a second. But to start, I'll say that I have the impression from, you know, I guess existing online that Alex Preddy's killing feels like it has the potential to be a turning point. I can say a little bit more about that, but I want to ask you guys first, sort of check my priors. Nathaniel, Mary, do you get that sense as well?
- [03:01]
C
I do get that sense and I obviously want to qualify that with the fact that it is very much a gut decision and this is a data based podcast and, you know, we'll get into the data in a bit. But it did feel like people had kind of said and enough is enough. And I think that the, the best data, quote unquote, for that is I think the statements from a lot of Republicans. Obviously, we know that Republicans have basically gone along with Donald Trump on almost everything, 98% of what he has wanted to do. And so I think it is notable anytime that you see a Republican kind of criticize him. And I think we saw a couple of statements, including crucially from, not from the Lisa Murkowski of the world, you know, the kind of more moderate Republicans, but from people like Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, who was basically being, we called shooting a tragedy and said, what is the goal right now? Is it to deport every single non US Citizen? I don't think that's what Americans want. You saw Max Miller, who's a fairly maga e congressman from Ohio, calling for a full investigation and saying they're, quote, serious unanswered questions. So to me, I think that the fact that in this case, you know, there may be many reasons for why, you know, maybe this one has broken through. I think that in this case, the video, I think, is so important. And the video here seemed pretty clear in a way that with the Renee Good video, people were slicing and dicing it. You could kind of read into it what you wanted. This one seems pretty undeniable. And I think it does take on the Republican side a lot of cognitive dissonance to be like, yeah, everything was fine here. And so you're seeing some Republicans kind of bump up against the limit of what they're, how far they are willing to go to, to defend Trump. And so I think from that I am getting the sense that there may be some actual juice behind reform or at least like a turning point, like, you know, like the, the nation turning against increased immigration enforcement. But obviously there's a lot of time for that. The kind of the natural parallel to me, you know, this is maybe a little bit weird is January 6th, which was the other time that really Republicans seemed to say, listen, enough is enough. And obviously with that, they ended up kind of having some selective memory and pedal back a lot of their criticism. Only like a couple months later.
- [05:10]
B
Yeah, that's the issue for me, when I think about whether this is a turning point or not. My question is, like, what does a turning point actually mean? Does that mean that, okay, maybe attitudes change a little bit. Maybe we're hearing some more statements from Republicans saying that they, that they think something has gone wrong or awry in the administration's approach to immigration enforcement. But the question is, does anything actually happen? And I think January 6th is a great parallel for that, Nathaniel, because the answer was no, nothing happened. Right. Like they did not successfully impeach and, well, they impeach, but they did not successfully remove Trump from office. They took no real actions other than prosecuting people who committed offenses during those riots. But, like, there was no fundamental. And they were pardoned and then, well, yeah, I mean, that's four years later, right? I'm not thinking about a four year timeline right now, but I guess for me, I don't really understand what a turning point is unless someone is suggesting something to turn to, which, frankly, I don't know that we are seeing from these kinds of statements from Republicans. Right. Like you look at statements from Republican senators, for example, there's been at least six Republican senators that I have seen calling for investigations into this shooting. And like you said, Nathaniel, it's not all of your, like, expected folks. Right. Like, yes, you've got Collins and Murkowski, but also Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, just perhaps a surprising name for me, McCormick, my senator here in Pennsylvania has called for investigations. So, yes, they're saying some words, but like, calling for investigations is not really like some fundamental shift necessarily in policy.
- [06:52]
C
Yeah, I think that's right. I think obviously there are multiple definitions for what a turning point could be. I could see another obvious potential parallel is kind of the George Floyd murder and then protests, which also, of course, coincidentally happened in Minneapolis. I could see this kicking off another big protest movement. And, you know, you could, I think, credibly say, you know, like, okay, protests, but, like, what is that actually going to change? I also think the. An important thing is the fact that the government funding is going to expire on Friday. And this incident does seem to have made a number of moderate Democratic senators whose support would be needed to fund the government say, I'm not going to fund any DHS bill that is funding ICE at this level.
- [07:33]
B
Chuck Schumer had a statement to that effect that Democrats would not support the funding package unless it stripped out the DHS funding.
- [07:41]
C
Right. So I think that the odds of a government shutdown have increased. And I think given the softness that you're maybe seeing among some of these Republican senators, I wonder if you could actually see that funding get decreased, which would obviously be a tangible policy win for the left in this case. So I think there are a couple of different. And then, you know, I guess like the dream scenario for, you know, liberal rules would be that, you know, oh, the backlash is so strong that Trump himself actually kind of like caves and withdraws, you know, the troops from Minneapolis. I don't really see that happening. But I, you know, we should be open minded.
- [08:17]
A
Yeah, A couple things on that. We'll get more into the prospect of a partial government shutdown. Of course, there was a lot of funding in the one big beautiful Bill act. As we discussed on the last podcast of 2025, those funds would still be available for immigration enforcement even if the current funding bill being considered changes. And when it comes to Trump, he did an interview with the Wall Street Journal Sunday evening where he said the administration is reviewing everything and acknowledged that at some point immigration enforcement officers will leave Minneapolis, which is seems to be a little bit less of a defiant stance than the administration was in the case of Rene Good. But I want to maybe put some info behind why I'm thinking this could be a potential turning point and what the parallels might be for me. I mean, longtime listeners of this podcast and its forebearer know that I was pretty clear eyed about the political repercussions of the Biden administration's handling of the border crisis and immigration enforcement from 2021 to 2025. And I think it is quite clear that in some ways the Biden administration its they responded to that crisis radicalized Americans on the issue of immigration. Right. Building the border wall was never popular during Trump's 2016 campaign. During his entire first term, by and large, Americans saw immigration as more of a net positive than a net negative. I think seeing the border crisis and the consequences more broadly made Americans start to side more with the hardline Trump view on immigration. And that has endured to some extent up until the most recent polling where Americans still trust Republicans more than Democrats on the issue of immigration. We're going to see if that changes now and we can. We'll get into that polling in a second. Despite the fact that they have soured quite a bit on Trump's handling on immigration when it's more of a referendum on Trump as opposed to a choice between Democrats and Republicans. But I think when I talk about turning and look, that turning point mattered, I think it was quite visible that by the summer of 2022, the combination of inflation plus an increasing sense that there was a crisis when it came to the border and immigration turned the public quite squarely against the incumbent administration. Now, I have a sense that Trump's administration and their immigration enforcement tactics may be radicalizing American in the other direction. So, you know, turning points can happen more than once. In a sense, I think we. We turned in 2022, we may be turning again in the sense that Americans will no longer support the more hardline immigration enforcement tactics. And in the same way that probably the Biden administration did a significant disservice to people who have more permissive attitudes about immigration, I have the sense that this moment is going to do quite a disservice to people in American politics who want more hardline immigration tactics. You know, we can. We can get into broader politics later on, but in some sense, because both administrations have not offered anything resembling what Americans actually want or say they want in polls, they end up radicalizing the public in ways that ultimately probably don't serve their goals.
- [11:53]
B
Yeah, I mean, I recall saying multiple times during the 2024 election period on podcasts that the Republicans are further to the right than Americans overall on immigration, and Democrats are further to the left than Americans overall on immigration. And I think that's exactly what is happening. We saw during the Biden administration the further left policies that people did not like. We see now these harder line stances that people really do not like. There is a middle ground here, and I think there's a potential for someone to step in and take that position and potentially do quite well with it, because we've seen two different extremes, and Americans are pretty unhappy with both of them.
- [12:35]
A
Yeah. So let's take that step back now and ask the question of how Americans view Trump's handling of immigration overall. There are a lot of nuances here, but the good news is you guys are both really good at reading, polling and imbuing it with nuance. So, Mary, I think this is probably your purview. Why don't you, why don't you start us off by describing the public opinion landscape?
- [12:59]
B
So just the broad picture, like, if you look at overall approval of Trump's handling of immigration, I looked at the strength in Numbers polling average on this because strength in numbers does this really, I think, useful thing, which separates out questions that ask about immigration from those that ask about deportation specifically. So there's like a separate polling trend for approval of Trump's handling of immigration and approval of Trump's handling, handling of deportations. So Trump is underwater by nine points on his handling of immigration. And the strength in numbers average on deportations, he's underwater by 11 points. And both of those have fallen in recent weeks. I mean, he's been underwater for, for months, but they've both fallen enough to see it on the chart in recent weeks.
- [13:40]
A
Now, basically after Renee Goode's killing.
- [13:43]
B
That's right. I do wanna flag though, that, like, this is still among his better issues overall. In the 50 plus 1 polling average, Trump is underwater by 17 points. And that's using the same model and architecture that the strength of numbers averages are, because both are produced by Elliot Morris. So even though we've had all this chaos, this remains among Trump's best issues. ICE is further underwater than Trump. So I, I took a look at polling conducted in January asking about favorability of ice, so whether people had a favorable or unfavorable opinion. I only used the most recent poll from each pollster because there were a number of pollsters that asked the question more than once during January. And on average, ICE is underwater by 14 points in those polls. But even that, that 14 points underwater still doesn't meet Trump's overall approval. So I think there's, that's an interesting wrinkle that, like, people don't like Trump's handling of immigration, they don't like ice, but they disapprove of Trump more overall than on this issue. So that may be an indication that sort of the economic malaise and the cost of living stuff is still driving Trump's approval more than this and this chaos.
- [14:55]
C
Yeah, I think that's certainly right. Obviously, though, you don't. If immigration is the one thing kind of like buoying you above water, you don't want to lose people on it because then you're the bottom. Really could fall out on it. You know, I think, Galen, you used the exact right word, which is nuance. And I'm just trying to keep a very open mind and be very cautious about this because I think also to me, it's not clear to me that Americans would necessarily think about this issue, about these shootings, when they are answering a question about approval rating on immigration. Right. Because I think it is perfectly valid for Americans to be like, yeah, well, I think that, you know, you should have strong border security and you should have even strong immigration enforcement within the country and more deportations, but they shouldn't be shooting people. So I just, I'm not sure the degree to which this will affect that. I guess it sounds like the Renee Goode shooting did, did affect it, but. Well, correlation isn't causation.
- [15:55]
B
Yeah. I mean, to that point, Nathaniel, if you, if you like, look a little closer at some of the questions that are trying to get more at this issue about enforcement activity. There's a number of pollsters that have been asking a version of this question. Do you think Donald Trump or the Trump administration has gone too far, has been about right or not gone far enough when it comes to immigration enforcement, deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally? There's lots of ways people ask this question, but like, broadly speaking, the an across different pollsters, the responses look fairly similar. So, for example, from CNN's January poll, 52%, a majority of Americans, say that Trump has gone too far when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally. 31% say it's been about right, and 16% say not gone far enough. But 52% saying gone too far is quite a lot. And when you drill down into looking at this by bipartisan identity, even among independents, the swingiest voters, you see 57% saying gone too far. So even higher than the overall numbers. So I think there is some nuance here where Republicans certainly still support deporting everyone living here illegally in poll after pollution. But Americans are looking at what they're seeing and they're saying this is too much. And this is before this news of this weekend.
- [17:13]
C
Exactly right. And I think that, you know, to be clear, like, I do think that the evidence is pretty clear that Americans don't even, you know, if Renee Good and Alex Preddy were still alive, I think it's pretty evidence, it's pretty clear that Americans don't support the degree to which Trump has cracked down on immigration. And we knew this, frankly, even before the 2024 election. Right. We knew that in polls, Americans were like, yeah, like, you know, violent criminals, get them out of here. You know, which is what Trump was saying on the campaign trail. But ob, Obviously, he's gone a lot farther than that. And even before the 2024 election when Americans were very much in a very conservative mood on immigration, they were still saying, yeah, find a path to citizenship for the, you know, undocumented immigrants who are, you know, not nonviolent criminals.
- [17:54]
B
Especially if you. I mean, the more attributes you give them, the more people support finding a pathway to citizenship rather than deportation. Nonviolent. Been here for a long time. Pay their taxes, every attribute you get, support for keeping them goes up.
- [18:07]
C
Right. And this is why immigration is obviously such a nuanced issue. And it is tricky when talking about which party has the advantage on it, because I think that different part to you guys point earlier, some of the aspects of the Republican platform are popular, like the border enforcement, and then some parts of the Democratic platform are popular, like finding a path to citizenship.
- [18:23]
A
Yeah, polling is pretty tricky on that. I mean, I will say that there were polls in the final months of the 2024 election that showed Americans supporting deportation of everyone living in the country illegally. But it also often comes down to what choices do you give people in a poll? And actually, I want to ask about how Alex Paredi's killing might change all of this. But maybe we can start with how Renee Good's killing changed some of this. The New York Times did a very good piece. It was Ruth Agelnik, friend of the pod, along with Christian Jiang, who wrote this story called why Polls about the Killing of Renee Goode Are so Hard to Parse. And they go through the three reasons that they give are that the questions about whether or not the shooting was justified spanned a spectrum of different ways of asking and how much context you gave and got very different answers. For example, in some polls, Americans were evenly split about how justified the shooting was. For example, when the choices were the woman killed was mostly responsible for her shooting because she was threatening towards ICE agents, 43% of Americans agree with that. When you give them the option of the agent acted irresponsibly and was never really in danger, 44% of Americans agree with that. When you just ask sort of outright, was this justified or not justified? The shooting of the Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent, 28% of Americans said justified, 54% of Americans said not justified. They go on down in terms of other nuances and that polls can skew towards the highly engaged. You know, in. In one Quinnipiac poll, which actually we cited on this podcast, when I talked to Lenny brauner about it, 82% of Americans said they had seen the video footage of the ICE shooting. But there's reasons to believe that Quinnipiac was reaching a more engaged part of the electorate and that in fact, 82% of Americans have not seen the video. That was the sort of second nuance that they brought in and then which.
- [20:20]
C
To be clear, is not a knock on Quinnipiac. That's just people who take polls tend to be more engaged.
- [20:24]
A
Yeah. And there are ways to try to.
- [20:26]
B
Mitigate this, but Quinnipiac's particular methodology might have that problem be even more exacerbated.
- [20:31]
C
Okay.
- [20:32]
B
But anyway.
- [20:33]
A
And then lastly, the other issue they bring up is that questions that provoke partisan gut reactions leave out more nuanced views. So when you ask should the United States abolish ICE or not abolish ice, you're provoking a partisan response. It's pretty clear sort of which side is left, which side is right. And that may end up meaning different things to different people. But post Renee Good's shooting, is it clear how much of that had changed or where America was? Just post Renee Goode.
- [21:07]
B
So I mentioned at the top that you can see some decrease in Trump's net approval on immigration in the, the last few weeks. So since Renee Goode's killing, the New York Times story that you're citing here, Galen did pull out some interesting questions from YouGov that were asked after Renee Goode's shooting that, that really picked at specifics about what, what people might want to see with ICE in the future. And I think that is probably the better version of this polling than just like, do you want to abolish ICE? Yes. No. So in that YouGov poll, there were seven different specific policy items that they asked if Americans would support. So, for example, you see net support of 51 points for creating stricter recruitment requirements for ICE agents. You see by 12 points, people do not want to keep ICE in its current form, but there's a bunch of, like, different kinds of ways of getting at this. So I think what that polling shows is like, in the post Renee Goode shooting environment, people are looking at ICE fairly critically, but it's a little more difficult, I think, to look at, like, hey, in the few weeks prior to that event, how were people looking at ice? Because we don't necessarily have the polls that were drilling into these topics just before then.
- [22:30]
A
Yeah. And, you know, I know we're getting sort of in the weeds here and being quite wonky on an issue that can feel very sort of visceral and emotional. And I'll just acknowledge that, that we're, we're talking about human lives here. To take it a step further, you know, an addendum to that story was Data for Progress tried to drill down on what Americans, when they say that they're open to abolishing ice, because this got play on this podcast and in, you know, across the political landscape that for the first time since YouGov had been pulling this question, they found a plurality of Americans open to eliminating ice. Data for Progress, which is a progressive polling outfit, tried to figure out what Americans mean when they say that. And the options that they gave were abolish ICE means that ICE should be fully eliminated as a federal agency along with all of its functions. The next option was abolish ICE means that ICE should be fully eliminated as a federal agency, and its functions and funding should be reallocated to other existing agencies. Then the third option is abolish ICE means that ICE should be replaced with a new immigration enforcement agency that is more functional. Now, Republic, a majority of Republicans say abolishing ICE means getting rid of the agency and all of its functions. But when you ask Democrats who are the ones who, you know, tend to support this more than anyone else, they're split a third, a third, A third. So to a third of Democrats, it means getting rid of all of the functions. Like, I guess this is the, the most permissive of Democrats would say get rid of immigration enforcement in many ways. A third say that the funding should be reallocated to existing agencies, and a third say that create a new agency that is more functional. So I think that adds a lot of needed context to this broader conversation about people saying abolish ice, don't abolish ice, whatnot.
- [24:36]
C
Right. And I think this is obviously a really important question going forward because I think you are obviously, as we are seeing in the data and in the real world, you are seeing more backlash to ICE and to increased immigration enforcement. And I think it's a really interesting and important question, like how Americans are going to react to that and whether they're Democrats in particular. Obviously, there's going to be pressure from the progressive side to, you know, you've already seen, you know, some more progressive people, even not that progressive people or people you don't think of as, you know, Bernie Sanders and AOC say that we should abolish ice, but it's like, what does that mean? And how are Americans going to react to it? And I don't think you can look at those polling. So, like, for instance, like, YouGov had a poll, like a flash poll in the immediate aftermath of the Alex Preddy shooting that found support for abolishing ICE at 46% versus 41% opposition. So it's, it is now, at least on paper, popular to abolish ice. But I I think Galen, your. Both Galen and Mary, both of your. The more nuanced polling that you just cited shows that that isn't necessarily. It's not necessarily true that Americans agree with kind of what AOC thinks of. Actually, I don't know what AOC thinks of when she says abolish ice. So I shouldn't put words in her mouth. But like the. I. I guess maybe I should say the like, Republican caricature of abolishing ice, which is just like, let's get rid of all immigration enforcement. I don't think that that is what Americans are saying that they support, but I also think it's a it. Like there are nuanced ways to make this argument to the American people because obvious, they are receptive to it, but it isn't necessarily going to be. Not everybody's going to agree on it. So I think basically breaking news, like, without anything else, it's easy to be against something. It's harder to come up with a policy like a concrete solution that everybody can agree with.
- [26:15]
B
Yeah, I think Democrats have this tendency to, like, have these slogans that indicate action items that are really vague, like abolish ice.
- [26:26]
A
Well, I was just gonna say def on the police.
- [26:28]
B
Yeah. And I think that actually, that actually is something of a trap for them because if you have these slogans that indicate action items, but the action items are vaguely defined, then the opposition to your party has the opportunity to shape that into whatever they want it to be. Right. You can see in the Data for Progress poll, as Galen said, that a majority of Republicans believe that abolish ICE means basically getting rid of immigration enforcement in the interior of this nation, which is two thirds of Democrats don't think that's what it means. So I think that is like a trap that Democrats like to put them into, put themselves into. Whereas if you think about, like, the big Republican slogans over the last decade, it's make America great again, which means nothing at all.
- [27:16]
A
Today's podcast is brought to you by you, the listeners. Without paid subscribers, GD Politics wouldn't exist. Your support means that we can continue making an independent podcast and cover difficult news like today's news in a rigorous and curious way. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and can join the paid subscriber chat. You can also connect your personal feed to your favorite podcast player so you get the full version of every episode. Wherever you listen to podcasts, Support us in 2026 by becoming a paid subscriber at GDPolitics.com I did want to bring up the Defund the police slogan because we were looking for historical parallels before. And you also mentioned, Nathaniel, that there was a spectrum of Democrats who are getting behind the abolish ICE idea, including I mentioned on a previous podcast Ruben Gallego, who is seen as more of, as far as Democrats go, somewhat hawkish on the border of being a senator from Arizona. And, you know, defund the police felt appropriate for many Democrats, Democrats in leadership positions during the George Floyd protests in a way that Democrats later came to regret. When we're talking about where we go from here in the aftermath of Alex Preddy's shooting, I have a sense that both there will be an increasing intensity of opposition to ICE and that there will also be a bunch of Democrats who remember what happened with Defund the police. So my question is maybe unknowable, but how do we know whether we're in one of those moments where emotions run high, things that feel appropriate now may bite you in the ass later.
- [29:00]
C
Yeah. To up there. Your point, Caitlin? I think we're already seeing that because I think you've seen there was an article, I think like maybe like a week ago, so after Renee Goode's shooting, that was about like all the high profile Democrats who are actively saying, hey guys, let's not say abolish ice. Like there's like in addition to the anger that is surging on the left to say, yes, let's abolish ice, there's also been, I think, a pretty strong backlash against that because, yeah, I think they are really terrified of getting tagged with this again in an election. To your question about whether we know we're in that moment, obviously, like, we don't. You know, you need the benefit of hindsight for that. One thing that I think is a potentially instructive comparison point though, is like polling of gun control issues after school shootings. Right. This is something that we have unfortunately, a lot of data about. And we wrote about this far too often at 5:38, which was that in the aftermath of big school shootings or mass shootings in general like Las Vegas or the Pulse shooting, support for gun control measures goes up and you might even see some legislative action on that front. So, you know, coming back to the conversation about turning points, but in the polling after the kind of the shooting fades from the headlines and people kind of like forget about it after a couple of months, it tends to settle back down at the baseline that it was at before. So I think that it is quite plausible that you could see the same type of thing happen. I think that any polling taken in the immediate aftermath of people, you know, watching this terrifying video of Alex Preddy's shooting is liable to get a lot of people have a, an emotional reaction to it and say, yes, we should abolish ice or, you know, we should tamp down immigration enforcement. It is no guarantee that to hold going forward. Right. Thermostatic public opinion, like, it giveth and it taketh, as we mentioned, and we don't know what the environment's going to be in the 2028 election. It's definitely possible that somebody takes an abolish ICE position now that then, you know, becomes the subject of ads when JD Vance is running against them in August of 2028. That said, you know, I'm not, I'm not obviously advocating for one position or the other. I think, as the polling shows, even before these shootings, there was a lot of discontent with the degree of immigration enforcement. And I think that there are probably, there are ways to market it to Americans that are more. Going to be more popular and then there are ways to market it to Americans that are less popular. Essentially the same policies. And I'm thinking about some of the statements that we saw from moderate Democratic senators like Jackie Rosen, Catherine Cortez Masto after Preddy's shooting that said, I'm not going to support this government funding bill with the current levels of immigration enforcement funding. Nowhere in those statements did say abolish ice, but it had a lot of those same sentiments sense.
- [31:38]
B
Yeah. And I think what Democrats are looking for, when we look at the funding fight, they're not trying to abolish ICE in that funding fight. What they are trying to do is pass some guardrails around ice's behavior. Right. So like they're taking the reform ICE stance, at least as of now. Things like enforcing body cam requirements. They want to make it illegal for ICE to wear masks while they're doing enforcement operations. So things like that, they're, they're looking.
- [32:07]
A
Pepper spraying.
- [32:08]
B
Exactly. They're looking to put guardrails around the behavior of the, of the organization rather than like abolish ICE approach, at least as of now, with a Republican in the White House.
- [32:20]
C
Well, they're also looking for less funding, though, which is why, like, right to your point about slogans like defund could mean less funding, it could mean no funding. Like it's, it's vague.
- [32:30]
B
Yeah. I mean, they are looking for less funding. I guess I want to say, I think that's a bit pretextual for the approach that they're taking right now in terms of this DHS funding bill, because we discussed before and Galen mentioned earlier, there's like an enormous amount of funding for ICE that has already been passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And so, like, whether or not they pass this DHS funding bill, ICE has got the money already, right?
- [32:55]
A
Yeah. So to add a little detail to what the debate is right now within the Democratic Party and well within the Senate over funding, the House has already passed the bill, but the United States is looking at a partial government shutdown if the Senate does not pass with 60 votes, funding bills for health, education, labor, transportation programs, State Department, as well as the Department of Homeland Security, that is the housing agency for ICE. There's in particular $10 billion in this funding allocated to ICE, as we discussed on previous podcast, there are several tens of billions of dollars and a more than 100% increase in ice funding in the One Big Beautiful Bill act that is already available. And so earlier on, you heard Democrats saying, well, okay, we got some guardrails in this bill around ICE behavior, which is why we want to pass it, because even if we don't pass it, ICE will not be impeded in terms of its ability to perform its functions because it already can draw on all of that funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And so. So you had a general sense, and there were, I think, seven Democrats in the House who joined Republicans to pass us, you know, more sort of the moderate type of Democrats, Jared Goldin, Marie Glus and Camp Perez, for example. And I think there was a general sense that we were not headed towards another shutdown or partial shutdown because of that argument. Now, after Alec Perddy's shooting, the calculus has seemingly changed in that it doesn't matter. Those details don't matter so much anymore as well. We have to do something. We have to show that we don't support this. We're not going to get bogged down by some of these minor arguments. Something bigger needs to be done on immigration enforcement and Susan Collins, for what it's worth, obviously she's not representing your median Republican in the Senate, but probably a key vote for whatever ends up happening ultimately said, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna see if we can break out even, you know, the Department of Homeland Security funding or the ICE funding from the rest of these bills. Try pass the rest of these bills. Whereas in another environment, you might see Republicans saying, no, these are all staying together. We're not going to give you the opportunity to vote on these funding bills separately. And if Democrats want to say they don't support enforcing American immigration laws, they can put that on the record. That doesn't. Well, I'm sure some Republicans will say that, but we're seeing a lot more tentativeness, I think this right now than we would have otherwise seen.
- [35:31]
B
Yeah, I think that's right. I think if, if you had asked me last week, are we going to see a shutdown next week, I would have said pretty definitively no. And if you ask me today, are we going to see a shutdown this week, my answer is I'm not sure yet. Or at least a partial shutdown.
- [35:46]
A
Yeah. So at the very least, I think Americans attention or political attention is going to be focused on immigration enforcement and Alex Preddy's killing in the near term. And this debate over the shutdown is going to focus folks attention accordingly. But you said something early on in the conversation, Mary, that suggested you may have doubts about how enduring this conflict is when it gets to the midterms. You said that ultimately it is still likely the economy and inflation that is driving disapproval of Trump more than immigration. You know, do we think that this could change that and maybe change it in, in an enduring way? And the sort of more detailed questions are like, how much do Americans care about immigration today? Of the people who care a lot about immigration, who are those people? Are those people still Republicans as we saw in, you know, 2022, or is it now Democrats who care a lot about immigration and might be voting on this issue as well?
- [36:45]
B
Yeah, that depends a little bit on how you ask the question about what Americans care about.
- [36:49]
A
I had a nickel for every time I heard that.
- [36:53]
B
I wanna say it is absolutely still in the mix as a high priority among Americans. So, for example, in Emerson College's January survey, when voters were asked from a list to pick the most important issue, Immigration was in third place at 17%. Economy was still at the top at 32%. And threats to democracy was in second place at 24%. But immigration was the top issue number one among Republic Republican voters in that survey, 32% versus the economy at 30%. So this is absolutely still a concern that Americans care about and among Republicans apparently care about quite a lot. There was also an interesting survey from a Canadian pollster, Angus Reid, that was also conducted in January. A lot of pollsters did their, like Trump one year surveys in January. So we have a wealth of delicious January data to go through. This one I found really, really interesting because they asked again like a, they had a list and this is practically polling malpractice. So there's 17 issues on their long, long list of what are the most important issues FAC Americans, which is a lot for respondents to read through. Respondents were able to pick up to three of those issues as their top priorities, but they had split out two issues that are dealing with the topics we're discussing today. One was immigration and border security, and the other was ICE enforcement actions in major cities. They included that as among the things people could select as their top issues. Interestingly to me, both of those things made it into the top five issues that Americans selected on this survey. So both of those things are things that people are caring about. And when you drill down a little bit more, those two issues among partisans, so people that identify as Republican or Democrat, not independents, the like correctly partisan coded response was in the top two issues for all partisans. So Democrats second place issue was ICE enforcement actions in major cities. And Republicans, they split off MAGA versus non MAGA Republicans. Among MAGA Republicans, immigration and border security was tied for number one. 50% of Republicans that identify as MAGA said that this is among their top three issues, along with cost of living and inflation. Among non MAGA Republicans, it was their second place issue issue all three had, their top issue is cost of living and inflation. So while we do see that cost of living and inflation still topping the list sort of across the board, this stuff is really still playing among partisans. And the idea that the second most important issue to Democrats is ICE enforcement actions in major cities at this time means maybe this could end up having an impact. Now, on the other hand, you may recall not even a month ago, we were here talking about how Trump's capture of Maduro in Venezuela was going to impact the midterms. And we've already memory hold that. So I mean, my honest read on this situation in Minneapolis is that probably in a couple of weeks, Trump's gonna pull ICE out of Minneapolis because this situation is untenable and the administration is gonna say, hey, mission accomplished, we did it. We he arrested all these bad guys and then they'll go do something else and we will all forget about this because something else is going to happen that we're all going to be yelling about, right?
- [40:21]
C
So I think obviously the news cycle moves incredibly fast these days and we always talk about, oh, is X going to affect the midterms six months in advance? And it usually doesn't because the news cycle moves on. I return to the mass shootings kind of analogy. I think those things again, you know, for Better or for worse, they tend to fade from the headlines pretty quickly. I think if you're asking me, will the shootings of Alex Preddy and Renee Goode specifically affect the midterms? I think no, for the reasons that, that Mary said. But I think if, you know, Trump is still doing this level of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis or in other cities in the fall, it'll still very much be a live issue and that that will kind of affect the general mood that people have going into the ballot box. As you guys know, I tend to believe in kind of more structural factors and don't necessarily think that people are being like, oh, this one issue, yes, this is my, the thing I to vote deciding my vote on. But yeah, I think like Venezuela, frankly, like, I think that when we had that discussion, I don't think we were like, oh yeah, it's definitely going to affect the midterms. It was like, well, like, if this is the beginning of like prolonged American involvement in Venezuela, then that will be a campaign issue. But if this is all it is and it was one strike and then we, you know, for all forget about it, then, then it wouldn't be. So. I think it kind of is similar here.
- [41:36]
A
I'm not just doing this for the sake of providing conflict on this podcast, but I think I disagree because this is not, we already know that this is not a singular event. Right. Concerns about immigration enforcement had already been on the increase and approval of Trump's handling of immigration had already been on the decline for a year heading into this event. Already, immigration enforcement had been relatively high profile. Already we'd seen backlash among, for example, Donald Trump did very well for a Republican with Latino voters in 2024. Already we had seen that amongst Latino voters, they had turned against him and turned against him harshly on the issue of immigration, although not border security. And so a lot of these trends, I think were already in the works. And this is a high profile, focusing event that will become representative of a broader failure of the Trump administration. More likely like hurricane, you know, I don't, whatever. We always come back to these historical analyses, but like Hurricane Katrina did not tank Bush's approval rating because of a one off horrible natural disaster event that, yes, had a bad federal response. It was a focusing event that became emblematic of what Americans had already seen as the failures of the Bush administration in Iraq and in the economy wherever. And so this is a particular instance where, I mean, we got a question from a listener that I'll just read for the sake of maybe emphasizing this point. Stephen says, I'm recalling the discussion you had recently on the pod about how nurses were viewed as the most trustworthy profession and how damaging the victim blaming and the predi shooting by high ranking admin officials could potentially be. So, yes, on a previous podcast we Talked about how 75% of Americans view nurses as having high levels of, of, you know, ethical standards and being trustworthy. That's a great point. Now that's just one piece of this. This also incorporates Second Amendment rights, First Amendment rights. You have the NRA pushing back, saying, no, we need to do a full investigation. Just because you're armed, especially he was legally carrying his firearm, he had a permit to carry. Just because you're armed and you're at a protest does not mean that you are breaking the law. I mean, we mentioned a couple Republicans who are pushing back, but, but we're seeing also from across the conservative pundit landscape, people also pushing back on the administration in this instance. I mean, this person is a highly sympathetic character. You've already seen videos of him reading memories about providing care for veterans at the VA hospital in Minneapolis. So I think that this is not a capture Maduro type event that seems to land on us out of nowhere just as we're coming back from the holidays. This is a, a long running trend that all of a sudden has an extremely sympathetic symbol of sort of what has gone wrong. And so I'm inclined to think that is this going to be American's number one issue in November of 2026? No, like, I, I mean, I doubt it. Whatever. I have no idea what's going to happen between now and then. Will this, I think, become emblematic of like, the withdrawal from Afghanistan when, when really the bottom started to fall out for Biden, for example? I, I am inclined to think that it's possible.
- [45:00]
B
Look at Galen being the least cynical one.
- [45:06]
C
Yeah, that was compelling, I think. Yeah. I mean, we ultimately don't know. And I do think so much will depend on what the kind of issue environment is in the fall. But yeah, you're right. You know, I think that it could be one of those focusing moments that that is, you know, maybe not. I don't think again that literally people are going to be thinking about, well, some people will be thinking about, you know, this particular month of shootings when walking into the voting booth. But it could, it could create the environment in which it's difficult for Trump to come back on, on immigration.
- [45:42]
A
All right, well, I'm inclined to just end the podcast there since you, since you, you agree with my take.
- [45:48]
C
I'm, I'm saying I'm, I'm open to. Yeah, but, yeah, good point.
- [45:54]
A
All right. Well, of course, as with all of these stories, we will continue to cover them, but I want to say a big thank you especially to Nathaniel and Mary who engaged with me on Sunday to come together to cover this story and also agreed to start recording at 8:30 in the morning. So it would work with all of our schedules. You know, there's only two, there's only two people I think to go to when, when big news is happening, happening and you guys are it. So thank you so much for joining me, especially on a difficult topic to discuss.
- [46:21]
C
Thanks, Galen.
- [46:22]
B
Thank you, Galen.
- [46:23]
A
My name is Galen Drouke. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and can join in the paid subscriber chat and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. Most importantly, you ensure that we can keep making a podcast that press prioritizes curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. Also, be a friend of the podcast and give us a five star rating, maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.