Minneapolis' fragile stitches held for 17 days before the wound ripped back open with a federal agent's fatal shooting of a 37-year-old nurse yesterday morning, Axios Twin Cities' Torey Van Oot writes.

• For the second time in less than a month, a U.S. citizen was killed by federal law enforcement while protesting an immigration operation that has roiled Minnesota.

📱 As with the killing of Renee Good in early January, cell phone videos of the deadly encounter between agents and Alex Pretti instantly spread online.

• Video shows that Pretti was stripped of a gun during the scrum before he was struck by multiple gunshots.
• An N.Y. Times analysis found that verified videos on social media "appear to contradict the Department of Homeland Security's account … Footage shows Mr. Pretti was clearly holding a phone, not a gun, before the agents took him to the ground and shot him." (Gift link)

💡 The big picture: This is the definition of a war by choice, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write.

• Trump chose to use ICE to expand immigration enforcement beyond clear-cut violent criminals. He chose to recruit new ICE agents and rush their training.
• He chose to target Minnesota — then chose again and again to escalate.
• He chose to downplay incidents where ICE beat or killed U.S. citizens.
• He chose to let top officials make unverified accusations that contradict reality.

Pretti, an ICU nurse at a VA hospital, had a concealed gun on him when he began to struggle with Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis' Whittier neighborhood.

• Pretti was a U.S. citizen, born in Illinois. Family members said he had a permit to carry a concealed handgun in Minnesota.

📝 Being there: Tense standoffs and clashes between protesters and law enforcement in the immediate aftermath of the shooting gave way by the evening to solemn vigils. Residents gathered in parks and on street corners in the frigid cold to light the night with candles.

🔦 The Department of Homeland Security will lead the investigation into the incident, Secretary Kristi Noem announced.

• Just as with the Renee Good investigation, Minnesota officials decried federal agencies casting aside state investigators.
• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the state will conduct its own investigation into the killing: "They're telling you not to trust your eyes and ears."

The officer who shot the man is an eight-year Border Patrol veteran.

• According to a post on X from DHS, Border Patrol officers were carrying out a targeted immigration enforcement operation when the incident began.

🕯️ Michael Pretti, Alex's father, told AP that his son "cared about people deeply, and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset."

• "We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so [to] go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically," Michael Pretti said. "And he said he knows that. He knew that."

How it happened ... Latest from Axios Twin Cities.

Within hours of the shooting, the Trump administration and Minnesota authorities provided wildly divergent narratives of the shooting.

• Why it matters: Americans' understanding of this month's killings in Minnesota depends on which government they believe.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller both accused Pretti of being a domestic terrorist and suggested he intended to harm agents with a gun.

• Greg Bovino, the official in charge of Border Patrol agents deployed to Minnesota, said: "This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."

Videos from the scene appear to show that Pretti's gun wasn't drawn during the confrontation.

🎥 What we know: Video recordings appear to show Pretti filming the scene with a cell phone before attempting to help a woman who was shoved and pepper-sprayed by agents.

• Several agents then wrestle him to the ground. As they're pinning him on the ground, at least one shot rings out.
• At least one agent then appears to fire multiple shots toward the man as he lies on the ground.

More photos.

Sen. Ted Cruz torched Vice President Vance and ridiculed President Trump's tariff policy during private meetings with donors, according to recordings obtained by Axios' Alex Isenstadt.

• Why it matters: In these meetings, Cruz — who is eyeing a 2028 White House run — leveled some of the harshest criticisms of Trump and Vance by a fellow Republican since they took office a year ago.

The recordings — nearly 10 minutes in total — provide an unvarnished look at how Cruz is positioning himself as a traditional free trade, pro-interventionist Republican ahead of a possible 2028 primary campaign against the less-hawkish Vance.

• The recordings of Cruz were provided to Axios by a Republican source. They were made last year, after Trump announced his plan for sweeping tariffs.

In one recording, Cruz warns donors that Trump's tariffs could decimate the economy and lead to his impeachment. He tells them that after Trump introduced the tariffs in early April 2025, Cruz and a few other senators had a call with Trump in which they urged him to stand down.

• Cruz says the lengthy call, which stretched past midnight, "did not go well," and that Trump was "yelling" and "cursing."

"Trump was in a bad mood," Cruz tells the donors. "I've been in conversations where he was very happy. This was not one of them."

• Cruz says he told Trump: "Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people's 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10-20% at the supermarket, we're going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath."
• "You're going to lose the House, you're going to lose the Senate, you're going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week."
• Trump's response, according to Cruz: "F**k you, Ted."

♟️ During his talks, Cruz cast Vance as a pawn of conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson.

• Cruz repeatedly brings up Vance in the recordings, tying him to Carlson and accusing him of advancing the podcaster's anti-interventionist foreign policy.

A Cruz spokesperson said the senator is "the president's greatest ally in the Senate and battles every day in the trenches to advance his agenda."

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More than half of the U.S. population is staring down a winter storm that's expected to plague a 2,000-mile stretch of the country between the southern Rocky Mountains and New England.

Snow, sleet and freezing rain are knocking out power and blocking major roads. Nearly three-quarters of the 165,000 reported power outages were in Louisiana and Texas, according to poweroutage.us.

14,000 weekend flights have been canceled across the U.S.

• 2,000 have already been canceled for tomorrow.

Today's U.S. cancellations (9,990+) are the most for any single day since COVID, AP reports from aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Companies aren't doing much hiring or firing these days, and AI looks like a big part of the reason, Axios' Emily Peck writes.

• Why it matters: Employers can become more productive without increasing headcount. But for anyone looking for a job, it's brutal.

🖼️ The big picture: Economists are calling it a no-hire, no-fire labor market.

• Federal data show hiring rates among U.S. employers are at levels last seen a decade ago, when the economy was emerging from a recession.
• Despite predictions of an AI job apocalypse, firing rates are also still relatively low. The unemployment rate in December was a not-terrible 4.4%.

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President Trump told the New York Post that a secret weapon that neutralized Venezuela's arsenal was critical to the Nicolás Maduro raid.

• "The Discombobulator. I'm not allowed to talk about it," Trump said. "They never got their rockets off. ... We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing worked. They were all set for us."

Keep reading.

The Washington Post won't send journalists to next month's Winter Olympics in Italy, Kimi Yoshino, a managing editor, told staff in a two-sentence note.

• The Post typically sent 10–20 staff to cover the Olympics and had 14 credentials this year, The New York Times reports. A Post employee told The Times the paper had already paid for flights, housing and office space in Italy, with housing alone costing $80,000.

Post reporters tell me layoffs are believed to be imminent.

• Keep reading (gift link).

World-renowned architecture firm Zaha Hadid Architects has answered President Trump's call to overhaul Dulles Airport — and proposed a new grand terminal named after him, Axios D.C.'s Cuneyt Dil reports.

• Why it matters: If realized, the plan would turn the current Eero Saarinen-designed main terminal largely into a temple of luxury retail.

In response to the Transportation Department's call for bids to reimagine Dulles "at the speed of Trump," the agency received 21 submissions.

• See more proposed designs ... Get Axios D.C.