By Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin
In Minneapolis, two recent fatal encounters with federal immigration agents have produced not only grief and anger, but an unusually clear fight over what is real.
In the aftermath of Alex Pretti’s killing on Jan. 24, 2026, federal officials claimed the Border Patrol officers who fired weapons at least 10 times acted in self-defense.
But independent media analyses showed the victim holding a phone, not a gun, throughout the confrontation. Conflicting reports about the earlier death of Renée Good have similarly intensified calls for independent review and transparency. Minnesota state and local officials have described clashes with federal agencies over access to evidence and investigative authority.
That pattern matters because in fast-moving crises, early official statements often become the scaffolding on which public judgment is built. Sometimes those statements turn out to be accurate. But sometimes they do not.
When the public repeatedly experiences the same sequence – confident claims, partial disclosures, shifting explanations, delayed evidence, lies – the damage can outlast any single incident.
It teaches people that “the facts” are simply one more instrument of power, distributed strategically. And once that lesson sinks in, even truthful statements arrive under suspicion.
And when government stories keep changing, democracy pays the price.
Lying in politics
This is not a novel problem. During the U.S. Civil War, for example, President Abraham Lincoln handled hostile press coverage with a blunt mix of repression and restraint. His administration shut down hundreds of newspapers, arrested editors and censored telegraph lines, even as Lincoln himself often absorbed vicious, personal ridicule.
The Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s brought similar disingenuous attempts by the Reagan administration to manage public perception, as did misleading presidential claims about weapons of mass destruction in the 2003 leadup to the Iraq War.
During the Vietnam era, the gap between what officials said in public and what they knew in private was especially stark.
Both the Johnson and Nixon administrations repeatedly insisted the war was turning a corner and that victory was near. However, internal assessments described a grinding stalemate.
Those contradictions came to light in 1971 when The New York Times and The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers, a classified Defense Department history of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam. The Nixon administration fiercely opposed the document’s public release.
Several months later, political philosopher Hannah Arendt published an essay in the New York Review of Books called “Lying in Politics”. It was also reprinted in a collection of essays titled “Crises of the Republic.”
Arendt, a Jewish refugee who fled Germany in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution and the very real risk of deportation to a concentration camp, argued that when governments try to control reality rather than report it, the public stops believing and becomes cynical. People “lose their bearings in the world,” she wrote.
‘Nobody believes anything any longer’
Arendt first articulated this argument in 1951 with the publication of “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” in which she examined Nazism and Stalinism. She further refined it in her reporting for The New Yorker on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, a major coordinator of the Holocaust.
Arendt did not wonder why officials lie. Instead, she worried about what happens to a public when political life trains citizens to stop insisting on a shared, factual world.
Arendt saw the Pentagon Papers as more than a Vietnam story. They were evidence of a broader shift toward what she called “image-making” – a style of governance in which managing the audience becomes at least as important as following the law. When politics becomes performance, the factual record is not a constraint. It is a prop that can be manipulated.
The greatest danger of organized, official lying, Arendt warned, is not that people will believe something that is false. It is that repeated, strategic distortions make it impossible for citizens to orient themselves in reality.
“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie,” she wrote, “but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world … [gets] destroyed.”
She sharpened the point further in a line that feels especially poignant in today’s fragmented, rapid and adversarial information environment:
“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer,” she wrote. “A lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history … depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge.”
When officials lie time and again, the point isn’t that a single lie becomes accepted truth, but that the story keeps shifting until people don’t know what to trust. And when this happens, citizens cannot deliberate, approve or dissent coherently, because a shared world no longer exists.
Bettman/Getty Images
Maintaining legitimacy
Arendt helps clarify what Minneapolis is showing us, and why the current federal government posture matters beyond one city.
Immigration raids are high-conflict operations by design. They happen quickly, often without public visibility, and they ask targeted communities to accept a heavy federal presence as legitimate. When killings occur in that context, truth and transparency are essential. They protect the government’s legitimacy with the public.
Reporting on the Pretti case shows why. Even as federal government leaders issued definitive claims about the victim’s allegedly threatening behavior – they said Pretti approached agents while brandishing a gun – video evidence contradicted that official account.
The point isn’t that every disputed detail in a fast-moving, complicated event causes public harm. It’s that when officials make claims that appear plainly inconsistent with readily available evidence – as in the initial accounts of what happened with Pretti – that mismatch is itself damaging to public trust.
Distorted declarations paired with delayed disclosure, selective evidence or interagency resistance to outside investigations nudge the public toward a conclusion that official accounts are a strategy for controlling the story, and not a description of reality.
Truth is a public good
Politics is not a seminar in absolute clarity, and competing claims are always part of the process. Democracies can survive spin, public relations and even occasional falsehoods.
But Arendt’s observations show that it is the normalization of blatant dishonesty and systematic withholding that threatens democracy. Those practices corrode the factual ground on which democratic consent is built.
The U.S. Constitution assumes a people capable of what Arendt called judgment – citizens who can weigh evidence, assign responsibility and act through law and politics.
If people are taught that “truth” is always contingent and always tactical, the harm goes beyond misinformation. A confused, distrustful public is easier to manage and harder to mobilize into meaningful democratic participation. It becomes less able to act, because action requires a shared world in which decisions can be understood, debated and contested.
The Minneapolis shootings are not only an argument about use of force. They are a test of whether public institutions will treat facts and truth as a public good – something owed to the community precisely when tensions are highest. If democratic life depends on a social contract among the governed and those governing, that contract cannot be sustained on shifting sand. It requires enough shared reality to support disagreement.
When officials reshape the facts, the damage isn’t only to the record. The damage is to the basic belief that a democratic public can know what its government has done.
Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin is Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs at Boise State University.
Greg says
Selective reporting. The press did not care when Biden lied about mostly everything. So tired of selective reporting. We need reporting like it was years ago. Most are too young to even know when the news was reported as it was. All the news, good and bad, republican and democratic news, all of it, the good and the bad. No bullshit, just reporting the truth as it happened.
Rchie Santo says
In response to Greg: The news NOW is the most accurate it has ever been. Do you ever remember the press exposing JFKs affairs? Do you ever remember the press covering lynchings in the south? Do you think the press reported accurately about the Japanese internment camps?
Of course, Biden lied, all presidents do (as well as most people), BUT never before in history has a president and his administration lied so overtly. In Trumps first term, his lies were documented (and that was fact checked) to be over 40,ooo!
So don’t try to hide your trump loving self in a post about truth in reporting. Videos don’t lie, so quit lying to yourself.
Pierre Tristam says
Nothing like evidence-based perspective that doesn’t stop at yesterday’s tweet. Thank you Mr Santo. I hope you’ll comment again.
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
I don’t agree. I think Greg’s mostly right about the press’ relationship with the Biden admin, but for the wrong reasons. Trump would probably enjoy exactly the same relationship provided his admin wasn’t openly hostile to the press. It’s a good thing for us in that we’re seeing more unbiased news than before if only because there’s a vendetta between some news outlets and the current admin.
Sherry says
Thank You Rchie Santo . . excellent comment and right on!
PaulT says
Yet Greg,g your comment seems to be a ‘selective judgement’ and you show your bias by repeating a right wing trope that ‘Biden lied all the time’.
You want ‘only the truth’? Stay away from cable TV news which has declined into political commentary which favors one side or the other.
Yes MSNBC is outrageous in it’s bias but so are Fox, Newsmax and OANN so for the ‘truth’ turn them off. And all those radio talk shows and podcast, there’s no ‘truth as it happens’ on offer there…
Reuters, AP and the BBC are less biased news outlets though you’ll have to read not watch or listen. And you’ll be surprised to find valuable reporting at Al Jazeera and the Jerusalem Post for perspective.
But are you sure the ‘truths’ you used to read in newspapers was true? Can you be sure that reports of the 1950’s McCarthy investigations were’n’t biased, that the 1960’s press wasn’t misled by the Kennedy administration over the Cuban revolution? And we all know the press reported the 2001 Bush – Cheney administration’s lies about Saddam Hussein’s WMD’s which led to the second Iraq war.
But why not face it, throughout the ages the government in power has manipulateded the news to control opinion. In the forum, by the town cryer’s narrative and in houses of worship before the news sheets then radios, TV’s and home computers.
At least for now we have contradicting opinions to sift through and we can try to work out what ‘the truth’ really is..,
Sherry says
@greg. . . Either post “credible FACTUAL evidence” for your ridiculous claims regarding President Biden or we will all continue to know that you are Maga cult indoctrinated and all you are capable of is posting FOX BS talking points.
Deborah Coffey says
@ Greg
Guess you didn’t see all the videos of Mr. Pretti being murdered. Can you please give us a numbered list of when “Biden lied about mostly everything” so that we are able to defend him with the FACTS? You know the saying: None are so blind as those that WILL NOT see.
Tired of it says
Well, if reporting the truth is what you want…stop waching FAUX, Newsmax and OAN. Did you forget how much they had to pay for reporting llies and misinformation during Pres. Biden’s election?
Feddy says
Nicholas Sandmann, does that ring a bell?
Pogo says
@The entire history of the current nadir of truth and common decency
… as stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=current+nadir+of+truth+and+common+decency
Welcome to the AmeriKKKa that has been the continuous project of right wing ideology, religious fanaticism, xenophobia, and racism; its litter bearers: the Republican Party of the United States of America, and the spoilers that made the critical difference — time after time.
Eat up, it’s all there is.
Ray W. says
Before news outlets monetized their archives, I often picked a date at random to look for an entire edition of a newspaper to read what was happening long ago in various cities. I also would look for current day English-language newspapers in foreign cities to read the editorial sections.
In the thirties, one of my favorite scouring decades, weekday newspaper editions in major cities might run well over 150 pages. It was a time when hundreds, if not thousands, of reporters scoured the streets for news of all kinds.
I commonly breakfast with an old friend. He recently talked of a time in the sixties when Pittsburgh was home to six newspapers.
But there never was a time in America when a single news outlet reported all the news. Those six competing Pittsburgh newspapers catered to their readers, in full awareness of who buttered their bread.
The Chicago Tribune was America’s flagship conservative voice during the Depression; it famously editorialized that the Social Security Act was a ploy by the Democratic Party to communize America. Does anyone think the Tribune covered all the news? Fairly and without bias?
When our founding fathers published what is now our Constitution, some newspapers published what now are called the anti-federalist papers; they declined to print the Federalist Papers. Other papers published only the federalist view.
Today, Mr. Tristam strives and struggles to grow his news outlet in Flagler County, an outlet that reaches an ever-larger audience, a rarity in a world of growing news deserts. No one can dispute these facts.
But there are more than 135,000 residents in the county, and Mr. Tristam is only one person. No one person could ever keep up with the antics of that many people. To think it possible is delusional.
Let’s face facts. I oppose the vengeful among us, the liars among us, the lie launderers among us. I didn’t even comment to FlaglerLive until shortly after I learned of the Flagler County elected Republican official who took to the radio to ask just when it would be time to begin beheading Democrats. If there ever was a time for anyone to begin commenting, that was it. But there is no possible way for me to respond to all of the vengeful, hate-filled lies that are laundered by supporters of one of our two political parties on the FlaglerLive site. I pick my subjects. I choose the timing of my responses.
Greg describes a time when all news outlets covered all the news all the time, honestly and without bias, a time that never once has existed in America. Nostalgia can have that effect. We have always had to work on our own to better understand what was happening around us.
Keep up the hard work, Mr. Tristam! I don’t always agree with you, but I appreciate your efforts.
Marge says
Would like to remind all that Trump did not create these problems. Racism has been used by the left for decades to win Democrat elections. ICE would not have to go to Sanctuary cities and states if we had not been lied to by Biden and his administration.
And schools used to teach history and government accurately. Today we graduate students who cannot read, write or pass math. I am unsure where that arose, but it cannot continue.
Sherry says
@ marge. . . either post “credible FACTUAL evidence” for your ridiculous claims, or we will all know that you have nothing to say except FOX BS “talking points’! Thanks!
PaulT says
Marge.
Trump didn’t invent racism but his rhetoric has somehow unleashed a mass of previously suppressed bigotry together with misrepresentation and hate. Along with that came a raft of quite absurd conspiracy theories. Trump has taken this country back to a time where innuendo and carefully planted rumors dominate the collective mind of the descendants of our seething immigrant masses.
Minority representation has been an issue since the C19th migrant surge and of course the conclusion of the Civil War thoug how Biden caused Sanctuary Cities escapes me. .
Support for a liberal, caring and inclusive society isn’t racism though it appears to be a ‘Devis Incarnate’ to you.
The fact it that for at least half the people in this country it is a noble cause, many are uninterested while only your minority group fear an inclusive multi-racial future. it.
Laurel says
Ooooo, remember this?
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/kellyanne-conway-sean-spice-shared-alternative-facts-in-trump-s-crowd-size-149455941738
I do.
Sherry says
@ Laurel. . . I most certainly do!
At the time, I must admit that I mistakenly thought very few Americans would do anything but laugh as such “stupidity”.
Boy was I completely wrong! Look where we are now. . . “alternative facts has gone mainstream”! The result is that millions in our country have been indoctrinated and now live in a trump worshipping, hate filled cult that is completely unhinged from any kind of factual reality!!!
Laurel says
Trump had an alternative electorate. Thank goodness that flopped. But, he will continue to cheat.
kennan says
Easily far and away the most corrupt leadership in the history of the United States. How many markers do we need?
Donald Trump, Christie Knome, and the Department of Homeland Security have lied to the American public from day one. Their unfettered, in your face constant narrative changes and brutality have proven thst we no lomger live in a “FREE COUNTRY.’ We have descended into one lower rung after another when it comes to immigration policy.
First they were rapists and murderers pouring from our Southern border. Next they are not qualified as quality workers to come into our country. No vetting. No evidence of any of these sweeping dystopian claims.
Vetting….Evidence…. This is what the American people have in spades. A overwhelming “TREASURE TROVE” of video and paper trails that not only expose, but in many ways convict this Administation and it’s desperate attempts to escape criminality.
America is under attack. I beleive the majority of Americans can not stomach the blatant racism by a Federal “arm and hammer” that attacks, Somalis in Minnesota and other states as well. The unbrideled attacks on Americans documented or not. The unhinged attacks on American citizens. American citizens called agitators simply because they are acting on their 1st amendment rights under the constitution. A constitution that means nothing to this Administration. Let me make it clear. At this point in time the constition does not exist.
White House chief of staff Stephen Miller is running it all. He has been the Deputy Chief of Staff of policy and Homeland Security advisor since 2025. With the help of Christy Knome; now protesters are Domestic Terrorists. This is the bi line they are using to justify the killing of Americans like Rene Goode and Alex Pretti in Minnesota. Again….No vetting. No evidence. None needed. ICE will continue to arm masked morons to hide from the law as the budget for ICE explodes to 85 billion dollars from 8 billion 10 years ago.
United States border patrol NAZI Greg Bovino is now being replaced by another NAZI. Tom Homan. Trumps Border Czar will now be in Minnesota and continue the rank stupidity and evil in cities like Minneapolis, and all over a country i no longer recognize.
One could continue to bring fact after fact after fact to bear witness to the atrocities Trump, Miller, and Knome inflict on this country. The atrocities will surely come faster than i or anyone can write.
We as Americans feel betrayed and helpless when the law means nothing to the’LAW AND ORDER PARTY’ Administration.
What we now must do is SHUN. Anyone who thinks this is ok, or defending the indefensible by saying Rene Goode and Alex Pretti would be alive if they stayed home??? YOU ARE EVIL. Evil for giving anyone, especially in a mask carte blanche to kill whoever they please while impersonating an officer. What is happening is well beyond A BLOODY RED LINE IN THE SAND. This is not about policy or opinion. This is about good and evil. MAGA if you find this to be America First??? You are SHUNNED. We have to SHUN these people. SHUN them in public and SHUN them in private. There is no more common groun when it comes to this. You have no core values. You are MORALLY BANKRUPT. This is the single most aggressive and inscessent attack on this countries freedom since World War II.
I will make it make it my mission in life to fight this kind of cowardly, racist, and AUTHORITARIAN wrecking ball.
The Administration will double down on a country that has been built by the type of people it is harassing, hurting, and murdering.
MEANWHILE: Melania Trump is taking ‘BRIBE MONEY” from Jeff Bezos to greenlight a film many would call “I MAKE FUCK FOR GREENCARD”.
Priceless!!
Sherry says
Thank You Keenan!
Sherry says
The “Fascist” trump administration MUST LIE so that their Maga base remains indoctrinated and supportive while they DEMOLISH our rights:
In recent years, the Trump administration has enacted numerous policies and executive orders that critics and advocacy groups argue have significantly curtailed civil, reproductive, and environmental rights.
CIVIL RIGHTS AND EQUALITY
DEI Programs:
*A day-one executive order in 2025 mandated the termination of all federal diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs and offices.
* Federal Contracting: The administration rescinded Executive Order 11246, a 1965 order that prohibited federal contractors from discriminating in hiring.
* Disparate Impact Analysis: Federal agencies were ordered to stop using “disparate impact” analysis, a tool used to identify and challenge policies that are neutral on paper but disproportionately harm marginalized groups.
*Language Access: The administration declared English the nation’s official language and repealed requirements for federal agencies to provide meaningful access for people with limited English proficiency.
LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
* Gender Identity Recognition: A 2025 executive order mandated that the federal government only recognize “biological sex” as assigned at birth on official documents like passports.
* Transgender Military Service: The administration moved to ban transgender and non-binary individuals from serving in the military and paused gender-affirming care for active members and veterans.
* Healthcare Protections: The administration eliminated LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination provisions under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.
* Education (Title IX): Federal guidance was amended to exclude sexual orientation and gender identity from protections against discrimination in schools.
REPRODUCTIVE AND HEALTHCARE RIGHTS
* Abortion Access: Executive orders were signed to revoke prior protections for medication abortion and emergency abortion care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).
* Birth Control Mandates: Rules were expanded to allow more employers to refuse to provide birth control coverage based on religious or moral objections.
*Medicaid Funding: Proposals were introduced to prohibit Medicaid and CHIP funding from covering gender-affirming medical care for minors.
ENVIRONMENTAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH RIGHTS
* Clean Water Protections: The administration repealed the 2015 Clean Water Rule, significantly narrowing the number of water bodies protected by federal law.
* Climate Regulations: The administration withdrew from the Paris climate accord and replaced the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which did not set firm caps on carbon emissions.
* Scientific Data: References to “climate change” were scrubbed from various government websites, and environmental justice offices were shuttered.
IMMIGRATION AND LABOR RIGHTS
* Asylum and Citizenship: Executive actions sought to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants and restrict the right to asylum.
* Union Rights: Collective bargaining rights were eliminated for tens of thousands of federal employees under the guise of “national security concerns”.
* Alien Enemies Act: The administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to
facilitate mass deportations, which critics argue allows for arrests without due process.