About two months after the last federal government shutdown ended, another funding lapse looms — this one caused by a battle between Republicans and Democrats over funding for immigration enforcement.
Lawmakers in both parties worked collaboratively in recent weeks to extend government funding, trying to avoid any snags that could cause a new impasse after the record 43-day shutdown in fall 2025.
Six of 12 funding bills passed both chambers and were signed by President Donald Trump in November and January. Agencies covered by these bills now have up-to-date funding streams and are not at risk of shutting down.
Agencies funded by the other six bills, however, are now at risk of a shutdown. The fight centers around the Department of Homeland Security, but other affected funding in the bill involves defense; financial services; labor, health and human services and education; state and foreign operations; and transportation and housing and urban development.
The House on Jan. 22 approved measures to extend funding for these remaining six bills, sending them to the Senate. (Bills like this that consolidate several spending measures are nicknamed a “minibus” — a play on “omnibus,” which typically consolidates all or nearly all 12 regular spending bills.)
Most observers expected the Senate to quickly send the legislation to the president for his signature. That changed Jan. 24, when federal immigration enforcement agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
An altered political environment after Pretti’s shooting death
Pretti’s shooting happened on a weekend just before the Senate was to consider the spending bill. It inflamed existing political tensions, drawing widespread criticism of DHS’s tactics and imperiling the department’s funding, which totals $64.4 billion.
Senate Democrats, responding to voters’ concerns about immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis, said they would not approve DHS funding without an agreement to curb certain immigration enforcement policies.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., laid out several elements he said were needed to secure Democratic support: Ending “roving patrols”; improving coordination with state and local law enforcement; implementing a standard code of conduct and independent investigations to enforce adherence to it; requiring agents to wear body cameras; and requiring agents not to wear masks.
Negotiators from both parties in the Senate met this week to try to reach an agreement that would free up the spending bill for a vote. Late on Jan. 29, newsreports said lawmakers struck a deal that would give negotiators time to reach a more permanent agreement, following a relatively short shutdown.
A shutdown is likely, but its duration remains in question
A government shutdown seems likely, but it could be brief — and therefore have a more limited impact on the public.
The reason a shutdown is all but inevitable is the Senate cannot simply strip out the Homeland Security portions of the bill, approve the rest in a vote, and send the portions approved by both chambers to the president for his signature. Instead, the entire bill needs to be passed in both chambers before moving to the president.
The deal announced Jan. 29 would tee up a vote to approve new spending for agencies other than homeland security, along with a measure that would extend homeland security funding for two weeks. Lawmakers would continue to negotiate immigration enforcement policies.
Any measure that passes the Senate would have to be passed in the House next. The House is not in session until the week of Feb. 2.
The best-case scenario is that the portion of the government covered by the pending bill would shut down over the weekend and into early the following week. Weekend shutdowns are generally less problematic because most government employees aren’t working; areas unaffected by a spending lapse would include agriculture, commerce, justice, science, energy and water development, the interior, the legislative branch, military construction and veterans affairs.
Still, challenges could remain: House members from either party could be unhappy with what the Senate passed and could vote against a new Senate bill, preventing it from passing and effectively extending the shutdown.
The public health numbers were cause for celebration: U.S. overdose deaths fell for a second year in a row.
After two decades of rising deaths, fatal overdoses killed 21.4% fewer people from August 2024 to 2025 than the year prior, the U.S. government reported in January.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly attributed the decline to President Donald Trump’s policies at the southern border, military strikes on alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, and Trump’s work to stop chemicals used to make fentanyl from being imported from China.
A year prior, the Biden administration gave different reasons for the start of the overdose deaths decline, describing its work to distribute more of the opioid-overdose reversing drug naloxone, increase access to addiction treatment medications and support of harm reduction programs.
The short answer for why drug overdose deaths are falling nationally: It’s a lot of reasons.
Experts on overdoses and drug markets told us that no single intervention can fully explain the significant drop. It might have more to do with the drug supply than public health interventions meant to reduce overdoses.
Rising overdose deaths are “a complex societal problem requiring a multitude of solutions,” said Regina LaBelle, a Georgetown University professor of addiction policy. It can also be hard to pin down what works when research on the solutions is sometimes hindered by stigma about drug use, she said.
Here are what some of the researchers say is likely contributing to the measured declines.
Lummi Nation crisis outreach supervisor Evelyn Jefferson looks down at her shirt as she stands at the grave of her son, who died due to an overdose of street drugs containing the synthetic opioid carfentanil, at the Lummi Nation cemetery on tribal reservation lands, Feb. 8, 2024, near Bellingham, Wash. Jefferson had to wait a week to bury her son due to several other overdose deaths in the community. (AP)
There’s less fentanyl in the U.S. drug supply
Fentanyl became less available in the U.S. in 2023, researchers wrote in the journal Science in January.
The synthetic opioid is a leading cause of overdose deaths in both the U.S. and Canada. Experts on illicit drugmarkets say that illegal fentanyl in both countries stems from precursor chemicals imported from China.
Although the Chinese government often obscures its actions, its official statements show that in late 2023 China began taking action against manufacturers of fentanyl precursor chemicals, the Science study said. The crackdown partly followed Biden administrationpressure to take action against fentanyl.
Peter Reuter, a University of Maryland public policy and criminology professor and one of the study’s authors, said the purity of fentanyl seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration began to decrease around the same time as overdose deaths started to decline in the U.S. and Canada in 2023.
“It’s very likely that (the change in purity) has something to do with precursor supply, because that’s what the two markets share,” Reuter said.
David Guthrie, a senior research chemist at the Drug Enforcement Administration, stands near chemical precursors that can be used in the manufacture of fentanyl at a DEA research laboratory on Tuesday, April 29, 2025, in Northern Virginia. (AP)
The pool of people at risk of overdosing may have gotten smaller
Several factors might help explain why fewer people are at risk of overdosing.
These factors include the fact that more people are aware of opioids’ risks, CDC overdose prevention researchers wrote.
Additionally, many people who were once at the highest risk for overdose have already died of overdoses, CDC researchers said.
Opioid sales and prescriptions are also declining, which means fewer people are misusing opioids or developing opioid use disorder.
A JAMA Psychiatry study also pointed out that even though public health interventions meant to prevent overdose deaths are uneven, overdose deaths decreased nationally.
Jonathan Dumke, a senior forensic chemist with the Drug Enforcement Administration, holds vials of fentanyl pills at a DEA research laboratory on Tuesday, April 29, 2025, in Northern Virginia. (AP)
Overdose-reversing naloxone is increasingly available
Experts on drug use and addiction policy also attributed the decline in overdose deaths to the increased availability of naloxone, also known as Narcan.
April Rovero, National Coalition Against Prescription Drug Abuse founder and executive director, said her organization provides education on prescription drug safety and simultaneously distributes naloxone kits that include fentanyl test strips.
“When we train (people), we say, ‘Okay, if you save a life with this kit, you need to let us know,’” Rovero said. “We’ve had a number of those call backs or email messages letting us know that our kit saved literally a life.”
Joe Solomon, co-director of Charleston-based Solutions Oriented Addiction Response, holds a dose of the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan in Charleston, W.Va., on Sept. 6, 2022. (AP)
From 2014 to 2024, the number of naloxone products dispensed from pharmacies jumped from about 6,000 to 1.97 million, according to the American Medical Association. Naloxone became available over-the-counter in 2023, but some research showed limited sales.
The National Harm Reduction Coalition’s executive director Laura Guzman emphasized the importance of sending naloxone where it is most beneficial. California’s Naloxone Distribution Project says its kits have reversed more than 407,000 overdoses.
Organizations that used naloxone kits as one aspect of their overall harm reduction programs — programs based around safer drug use, management and abstinence strategies — credited those kits as being responsible for nearly 221,000 California overdose reversals, or about 54%.
Naloxone can also give people more time to consider or pursue addiction treatment.
William Perry, founder of This Must Be The Place, right, gives free naloxone medication to concert goers at the Governors Ball Music Festival on Sunday, June 9, 2025, at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in the Queens borough of New York. (AP)
Access to treatment has improved
Increased treatment availability is another factor experts cited for declines in overdose deaths.
Starting on a medication such as buprenorphine or methadone that treats opioid use disorder can protect people from overdoses.
Several studies show that medication treatments, sometimes referred to as opioid agonist treatment, increase the likelihood a person with opioid use disorder will remain in treatment and reduce theirrisk of overdose.
Guzman said the availability and access to treatment when someone voluntarily seeks it out is crucial.
“Forcing or mandating treatment will not have the same results,” she said.
Data shows that people forced into treatment involuntarily — such as through a drug court — are more likely to die of an opioid-related overdose or a substance use-related cause than those who entered treatment voluntarily.
“People go in and out of treatment a lot,” Rovero said. Sometimes people relapse after being sober for many years. She said she encourages people to consider addiction “a chronic illness that can be treated successfully.”
Experts said that despite signs of progress, it’s too soon to say if overdose deaths will continue to decline. The federal numbers run through August 2025, because the government shutdown delayed the data. Other available data shows some slight regional overdose rate increases in early 2025.
Ultimately, they recommend a multi-faceted approach toward reducing drug overdose deaths — one that includes public health interventions, overdose education, addiction treatment and efforts to reduce the drug supply.
“Public health research focuses on interventions while criminal justice focuses on disrupting the drug supply and criminalizing drug use,” said Lori Ann Post, a Northwestern University emergency medicine professor who studies overdose deaths. “The solution is somewhere in the middle.”
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump has lauded the United States’ position in its artificial intelligence race against rival China.
“We’re leading China by a tremendous amount,” he said Jan. 13 in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil.
“The AI is unbelievable, what’s happening there. We’re leading China by a lot,” he said Jan. 16 in Mar-a-Lago. And during his Jan. 21 speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he said it again: “We’re leading the world in AI by a lot. We’re leading China by a lot.”
China is a formidable competitor in other areas, including the quality of its workforce and electricity generation that powers data centers.
By some measures, the two countries are neck-and-neck, and recent changes in U.S. export policy may benefit China. But Trump has also whittled down industry regulation, empowering U.S. AI companies to expand with fewer restrictions.
Experts told PolitiFact that China is just months behind the U.S. on AI. White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks said in June that Chinese AI models are “three to six months behind” the U.S.
On Jan. 21 at the World Economic Forum, when asked how he views the AI race now, Sacks said, “I still think that the U.S. is in the lead. I think that our models are better, our chips are better. But they do have other advantages,” including its power generation.
Matt Sheehan, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Asia program, estimates after a U.S. company releases the “best new model,” a Chinese company will match it in roughly six to 18 months.
Key AI industry leaders have offered similar assessments. In September, Jensen Huang, CEO of U.S. chipmaker Nvidia, said China is “nanoseconds” behind the U.S. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Jan. 20 that Chinese models are six months behind.
How the U.S. leads China on AI chips
President Donald Trump listens as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks during an event about investing in America in the Cross Hall of the White House, April 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP)
California-based Nvidia dominates AI chip manufacturing, becoming the world’s first company to reach a $5 trillion market value. Under Trump, the U.S. has loosened regulations to allow China access to more advanced Nvidia chips, which could narrow the gap between U.S. and China.
“There’s a really big difference, both in terms of the quality of the chips (the U.S.) can make and the quantity of the chips we can make,” said Chris McGuire, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow for China and emerging technologies.
U.S. law has regulated exports of certain advanced chips, including banning Nvidia from selling Blackwell, its most powerful chip, to China. In July, the Commerce Department altered its rules, allowing Nvidia to sell China a less advanced chip. U.S. authorities have nonetheless found people smuggling the company’s more advanced chips into China.
On Jan. 13, the Trump administration allowed Nvidia to sell China its second most powerful AI chips, H200s, with restrictions. Nvidia cannot ship more than 50% of the overall chips it sells to American customers. Trump also imposed a 25% tariff on the H200s.
Experts believe the policy change will negatively affect the United States’ lead. Selling H200 chips “erodes some of the U.S. advantage in terms of AI chips,” Sheehan said. “The overall trend toward training larger and more compute-intensive models tends to favor the U.S. because of its remaining advantage in terms of access to chips.”
The Institute for Progress, a think tank, estimated that if more advanced chips like the H200s are exported without restrictions, the U.S. advantage in computational resources would plummet. “I think export controls are the only lever that the U.S. government has to slow China down,” McGuire said.
China has kept pace and may benefit from new U.S. policies
The page for the smartphone app DeepSeek is seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP)
Chinese companies have built competitive large language models — AI models trained to mimic language and perform tasks such as summarization, translation and chat.
U.S. models include OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, xAI’s Grok and Anthropic’s Claude. Chinese companies including DeepSeek, Alibaba and Moonshot have released competitive models of their own.
One research institute analysis found that since 2023, Chinese models have trailed U.S. models by seven months on average.
Sheehan pointed to leaderboards such as LMArena, developed by University of California, Berkeley researchers, that rank large language models on how well they respond to text, image and coding prompts. U.S. models dominate the LMArena leaderboard, but Chinese models are not far behind. Ernie 5.0, developed by the Chinese company Baidu, ranked ninth overall, as of Jan. 29.
In terms of adoption, experts said it’s hard to tell which models are most favored by companies seeking to incorporate AI, as the available metrics are generally unreliable.
China has advantages on talent and electricity generation
The U.S. may have a “slight edge” on research talent, Sheehan said, but “China has a large base of domestic talent.” Researchers found that as of 2022, 57% of the most elite AI researchers worked in the U.S. But China is the top country of origin among top-tier AI researchers in the U.S.
“The U.S.’ traditional ability to attract the world’s top talent gives it powerful advantages to train and apply AI models,” said Joseph Webster, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and Indo-Pacific Security Initiative.
In his second term, Trump cut research funding and implemented a sweeping immigration crackdown that has negatively affected international students.
China also holds the advantage in electricity generation that powers data centers.
“The U.S. power grid poses major and growing challenges to U.S. AI efforts,” Webster said. Insufficient electricity can impede AI training and inference, which refers to running AI models to make predictions based on new data.
China has more open-source AI models, making it easier for companies to adopt models for free, Sheehan said. U.S. AI companies typically charge for access to their premium models.
When it comes to scaling AI, the United States’ relations with other major technology players, such as Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands, give it a boost, Webster said.
But the U.S.’ lead could be eroded. “If the U.S. sells advanced chips to (China), damages its ties with other democracies, prevents top AI talent from entering the U.S., or damages its research universities, it could surrender key technology advantages it has traditionally enjoyed,” Webster said.
Our ruling
Trump said that in AI, the U.S. is “leading China by a lot.”
The U.S. has a lead over China in model capability, but key AI industry leaders and experts say China is only a few months behind.
The U.S.’ lead is sustained by the quality and quantity of its AI chips, which are restricted for sale in China. Recently, the Trump administration loosened those controls.
China has advantages when it comes to talent and electricity for data centers.
The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.
President Donald Trump has said on multiple occasions in recent months that he takes a “large” dose of aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease. His comments could perpetuate a common misperception, so we wanted to clarify the current science and what the recommendations are.
Low-dose aspirin is recommended for people who have already experienced a cardiovascular event, but it generally isn’t recommended for those looking to avoid a first heart attack or stroke — and neither is high-dose aspirin.
Trump brought up his aspirin use in a Jan. 22 press gaggle when he was asked by a reporter about some bruising on his hand. “I would say take aspirin if you like your heart. But don’t take aspirin if you don’t want to have a little bruising,” he said. “I take the big aspirin. And when you take the big aspirin, they tell you, you bruise.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Trump’s physician said the president takes 325 milligrams of aspirin a day for “cardiac prevention.” That’s considered a high dose, compared with a typical low, or “baby,” aspirin dose of 81 milligrams.
“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump told the outlet in the same story, which drew on an October interview with the president. “I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart.”
Trump, who is 79 years old, similarly told the New York Times on Jan. 7 that he takes a “large dose” of aspirin because he wants “nice, thin blood going through my heart,” adding that he has taken aspirin for 30 years and has never had a heart attack or been diagnosed with heart disease of any kind.
Trump has expressed some awareness that his aspirin use deviates from the norm, suggesting on various occasions that his doctors have said that he istakingtoo much aspirin. It’s not clear if he knows that even low-dose aspirin is not typically recommended for people who don’t have cardiovascular disease. In his remarks, he is primarily speaking about his own case and does not appear to be giving advice to others.
Still, because his remarks could reinforce common misunderstandings about aspirin, we wanted to address the topic.
When we inquired, the White House did not clarify what Trump’s doctors have recommended, but provided a statement attributed to Trump’s physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, that said the president takes 325 milligrams of daily aspirin “to maintain his exceptional cardiovascular health.” Barbabella added that Trump’s “medical evaluations and laboratory results continue to show excellent metabolic health, and have revealed his cardiovascular health puts him 14 years younger than his age. Overall, the President remains in exceptional health and perfectly suited to execute his duties as Commander in Chief.”
Balancing Risks and Benefits
Aspirin is thought tolower cardiovascular risk by reducing blood clotting. By making platelets — the cell fragments that are involved in clotting — less sticky, clots are less likely to form. But for the same reason, aspirin also increases the risk of potentially dangerous bleeding.
While aspirin used to be more widely recommended, as early as 2014 the Food and Drug Administration concluded that “the data do not support the use of aspirin as a preventive medication by people who have not had a heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular problems, a use that is called ‘primary prevention.’”
“In such people,” the agency explained on its website, “the benefit has not been established but risks—such as dangerous bleeding into the brain or stomach—are still present.” The agency also emphasized that people should consult a doctor before starting any daily aspirin regimen.
In subsequent years, additional studies have shown that for many people without cardiovascular disease, the benefits don’t outweigh the risks.
Since 2019, the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association have said that aspirin “should be used infrequently in the routine primary prevention of [atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease] because of lack of net benefit.”
Photo by fizkes / stock.adobe.com.
“Most people without known cardiovascular disease like a prior heart attack, stroke, or blockages in major arteries, do not need aspirin,” Dr. Ann Marie Navar, a preventive cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, told us. “This will increase their risk of bleeding problems – not just bruising but bleeding in the stomach or gut.”
Instead, she advised, people should avoid smoking, eat a heart-healthy diet, get regular exercise, and focus on lowering their cholesterol and keeping their blood pressure controlled.
She added that bruising is “common” among aspirin users and that mild bruising “is not concerning.”
The details are a little more nuanced in Trump’s case, as his cardiovascular risk is somewhat elevated, but the president is also taking more aspirin than is recommended. Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, chief of preventive medicine at Boston University, told us that given past reports that Trump has plaque build-up in his coronary arteries, it “may be reasonable” to take low-dose aspirin for cardiac prevention purposes. But, he said, the high dose “is certainly not needed or indicated.”
In 2018, Trump’s physician revealed that the president completed a coronary artery calcium test — a scan evaluating the amount of plaque in his arteries — with a moderately high score of 133. Although common for a man of his age, a scoreover 100 is suggestive of heart disease. Lloyd-Jones said the score “indicates that he has atherosclerotic coronary heart disease and subclinical cardiovascular disease at a moderately advanced state.”
If Trump is unaware of the changing practices around aspirin, he wouldn’t be alone. Last year, a survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, our parent organization, found that nearly half of U.S. adults mistakenly believe that the benefits of low-dose aspirin for cardiac prevention outweigh the risks.
What’s Recommended
For people without cardiovascular disease, daily aspirin is not explicitly recommended for any population for cardiovascular disease prevention.
According to the 2019 guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association, which are the most recent, low-dose aspirin “might be considered” for people 40 to 70 years old who are at higher cardiovascular risk and do not have an increased risk for bleeding. For anyone above the age of 70 or a person of any age who has a higher risk of bleeding, the groups advise against routine aspirin use.
Similarly, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federally funded panel of independent national experts in disease prevention, advisedin a 2022 update against starting low-dose aspirin for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease in people 60 years or older. For adults 40 to 59 years old at elevated risk only, the group said the decision to use aspirin “should be an individual one,” as the net benefit is “small.”
Both guidelines were influenced by three large placebo-controlled trials that were published in 2018, which collectively involved more than 47,000 patients and helped clarify the current harms and benefits of low-dose aspirin in various groups.
The ARRIVE trial, which included men age 55 and older and women 60 and older at average cardiovascular risk, identified no cardiovascular benefit to low-dose aspirin and a small increased risk of gastrointestinal bleeding.
The ASPREE trial, which enrolled people who did not have cardiovascular disease and were mostly 70 years and older, found low-dose aspirin “resulted in a significantly higher risk of major hemorrhage and did not result in a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular disease than placebo.”
The ASCEND study, which evaluated low-dose aspirin use in people 40 years and older with diabetes but no known cardiovascular disease, did identify a reduction in vascular events, but those were “largely counterbalanced,” according to the authors, by an increase in major bleeding events.
Earlier studies had found aspirin was more effective, Lloyd-Jones told us. As he also detailed in a 2022 editorial in JAMA Cardiology, this is likely because in the past, physicians were not very good at controlling blood pressure, cholesterol or other major cardiovascular risk factors. Now, in an era with statins and blood pressure medications, and less smoking, for example, there is less “room” for aspirin to be needed or to help, he said. And because aspirin has retained the same bleeding risk, it has shifted the risk-benefit calculus.
“For patients without ischemic heart disease, there is very clear evidence from randomized controlled trials that aspirin is not associated with a clear benefit (and may be associated with harm from bleeding),” Dr. William Schuyler Jones, an interventional cardiologist at Duke University, told us in an email, referring to the type of heart disease that occurs when arteries are narrowed, usually due to plaque build-up.
Still, Navar said that there is a bit of a gray area — and that many preventive cardiologists do recommend aspirin for people “with evidence of a lot of cholesterol buildup in their heart arteries,” such as those with “very high” coronary artery calcium scores.
Experts emphasized to us that for all the confusion and discussion about the recommendations for those without cardiovascular disease, for those with disease — such as after a stroke, heart attack or after a stent — there remains a strong recommendation to take low-dose aspirin to prevent another event, or what’s called secondary prevention. Some patients, however, may not take aspirin if they are on other blood thinners or anti-platelet medications, Navar said.
A 2021 trial, which Jones led, compared high- and low-dose aspirin in patients with established cardiovascular disease. It did not find that the higher dose was more effective. And while it also didn’t find that the higher dose led to more bleeding, patients often preferred to switch to the low-dose regimen.
Jones said patients with cardiovascular disease should take the low dose.
Other trials and observational studies, Navar said, “have shown higher doses of aspirin do increase bleeding risk.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.
Turning Point USA CEO and cofounder Charlie Kirk once said: “The 2nd amendment is not for hunting, it is not for self protection. It is there to ensure that free people can defend themselves if god forbid government became tyrannical and turned against its citizens.”
Rating:
In late January 2026, a claim circulated online that Turning Point USA CEO and cofounder Charlie Kirk once said that the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment was “not for hunting” or “self protection,” but rather “to ensure that free people can defend themselves” from a tyrannical government.
The rumor spread in the wake of the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration officers in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, 2026, just two weeks after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good in similar circumstances in the Minnesotan city.
The 2nd amendment is not for hunting, it is not for self protection
It is there to ensure that free people can defend themselves if god forbid government became tyrannical and turned against its citizens
In short, the words were correctly attributed to Kirk, who posted the remarks to X (then Twitter) on March 3, 2018 (archived). The timestamp and content of his post matched the screenshot users shared in 2026.
Kirk’s statement appeared to reference events at the time. On Feb. 14, 2018, one month prior to Kirk’s post, a mass school shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which prompted a renewed focus on gun rights and the Second Amendment in the United States.
On the date of Kirk’s post, Florida held “a rare Saturday session” of the state Senate to consider “a number of gun and school safety measures” following the Parkland shooting, according to an NPR report. That same day, Reuters reported on the arrest of a man suspected of fatally shooting his parents, which could have amplified the discourse around the accessibility of guns on that particular date.
The post in question was the latest of resurfaced comments from Kirk that spread online. For example, some of his alleged posts and comments, particularly about the Second Amendment and gun control more generally, recirculated online after he was fatally shot on Sept. 10, 2025.
Snopes previously investigated a claim that Kirk once said: “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
In that report, Snopes uncovered an April 5, 2023, interview featuring Kirk at the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church that confirmed the quote but also included a statement that mirrored the content of his March 2018 X post about the Second Amendment.
During the 2023 interview, which is available to listen to on Awaken Church’s PodBean podcast feed, Kirk said (starting at 39:28): “The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government.”
Therefore, not only was the quote correctly attributed to Kirk, but there were other instances of him repeating similar statements, making his opinions on the Second Amendment clear.
Sources
Alex Pretti Articles | Snopes.Com. https://www.snopes.com/tag/alex_pretti/. Accessed 28 Jan. 2026.
“Conservative Activist Charlie Kirk Assassinated at Utah University.” AP News, 10 Sept. 2025, https://apnews.com/article/charlie-kirk-conservative-activist-shot-546165a8151104e0938a5e085be1e8bd.
Cordner, Sascha. “Florida Lawmakers Under Pressure To Move Forward On Gun Control Measures.” NPR, 3 Mar. 2018. Law. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2018/03/03/590616743/florida-lawmakers-under-pressure-to-move-forward-on-gun-control-measures.
Development, PodBean. Charlie Kirk Live in SLC | Awaken Church // AUDIO. https://awakenaudio.podbean.com/e/charlie-kirk-live-in-slc/. Accessed 28 Jan. 2026.
Kirk, Charlie. X, 3 Mar. 2018, https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/970091987104911361?s=20.
Liles, Jordan. “Charlie Kirk Once Said Some Gun Deaths ‘worth It’ in Order to Have Second Amendment.” Snopes, 10 Sept. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/charlie-kirk-gun-deaths-quote/.
“Man Is Shot and Killed during Minneapolis Immigration Crackdown, National Guard Activated.” AP News, 24 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/immigration-enforcement-minnesota-4d1499fc5962ab880f3816259e04bdbf.
“Victims of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, High School Massacre.” AP News, 21 Oct. 2021, https://apnews.com/article/education-florida-gun-politics-school-boards-nikolas-cruz-44a0da3e406f0c487e5c0a6b0855ee2e.
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In January 2026, after U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a photo (archived) circulated online claiming to show a tribute to the deceased wife and mother in Tacoma, Washington.
The photo appeared to show a container ship in Tacoma’s port loaded with red and green containers spelling “renee.” One Reddit user who shared a photo of the containers wrote that it was “for Renee Good.”
This and other photos circulated on Facebook (archived) andThreads (archived, archived). Snopes readers wrote in, asking if the photos were real and showed a tribute to Good.
The photos of the containers spelling “renee” appeared to be genuine, meaning not created using artificial intelligence (AI), according to onlineAI-detector tools(Such detectors are not always fully reliable.) The Tacoma-based newspaper the News Tribune also reported (archived) on the containers and led the report with a photo taken by one of its photojournalists.
However, as of this writing, it was unclear who arranged the containers to spell “renee” and whether they were intended as a tribute to Good. In response to a Facebook post (archived) by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in Tacoma, a user named Renee Carmona claimed (archived) the containers were arranged in Long Beach as a birthday celebration for her. She was likely referring to Long Beach, California (more on that later).
We reached out to Carmona for proof of her claim. We also contacted the ILWU and its chapters in Oakland and Los Angeles, the cities where the ship reportedly docked before Tacoma, to ask if they knew who loaded the containers to spell “renee” and whether they were meant as a tribute to Good. We await responses to our questions.
In the meantime, we leave this claim unrated.
Political message or birthday surprise?
A photojournalist for the News Tribune captured a photo of the ship with the containers spelling “renee” on Jan. 26, 2026, which was also when other images circulated online.
Other social media users postedimages (archived, archived) of the containers from different angles on the same date. These photos also passed scrutiny by online AI detectors, meaning they appeared to be authentic.
The News Tribune did not establish a reason for the container arrangement but did refer to a Facebook post by the ILWU in Tacoma. The union represents longshoremen, also known as dockworkers, who load and unload cargo ships at ports.
According to comments on that post, the containers could have been a tribute to a different “renee” than the woman shot and killed in Minneapolis.
One user named Renee Carmona left several comments on the ILWU post, writing in one, “This was done in Long Beach for my birthday! Not for Renee Good.” In another comment (archived), Carmona wrote:
Well! Heard the name is getting taken down! Because of political reasons… it wasn’t intended to be political. People are so serious. They don’t know how to have fun anymore. My boyfriend did it for my bday… thanks guys….
Carmona’s Facebook profile did not reveal whether her birthday was in January but did show she was based in Torrance, California, which is near Long Beach.
She reportedly repeated similar comments to the News Tribune, saying her boyfriend arranged the containers on the ship to spell her name on Jan. 17, when the boat was in the Los Angeles area.
Melanie Stambaugh Babst, director of communications for The Northwest Seaport Alliance, which manages Tacoma harbor, said the ship carrying the “renee” containers was the Ever Macro, which arrived in Tacoma “already loaded” on Jan. 25, 2026. Babst could not confirm why the ship’s containers were arranged that way.
According to maritime tracking site Econdb.com, the Ever Macro is owned by Evergreen Maritime Group and docked in the Los Angeles area, where Long Beach is located, on Jan. 14, 2026.
The Ever Macro then docked in Oakland, California, on Jan. 20, before making its way to Tacoma where it arrived on Jan. 25, the day before photos of the “renee” containers started circulating.
As of this writing, the Ever Macro had left Tacoma en route to Xiamen, China, where it was due to arrive on Feb. 7. It was unclear whether the containers on the ship still spelled “renee” or were rearranged.
According to a News Tribune report, a longshoreman in Tacoma said management asked workers there to rearrange the containers on Jan. 26 after they attracted attention online.
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A fundraising email from U.S. President Donald Trump featured the subject line “Are you an illegal alien?” and asked, “Are you a proud American Citizen or does ICE need to come and track you down?”
Rating:
Rumors circulated online in late January 2026 that U.S. President Donald Trump sent out a fundraising email that asked its recipients to fill out a survey and asked, “Are you a proud American Citizen or does ICE need to come and track you down?”
Both archived versions matched those of the screenshot shared in the claim. The only difference shown between the three occurred toward the end of the message.
Where Karem’s screenshot depicted an email with the line (emphasis ours) “This is your FINAL MOMENT to Prove me wrong, Brian — please,” the archived versions sent at 11:52 a.m and 11:58 a.m. replaced “Brian” with “Chris” and “PLEASE!” respectively.
The discrepancy appeared to be the result of a merge field, a tool in email programs that allows for the personalization of copy in mass emails using subscriber data. In this case, it appeared the archived version sent at 11:58 a.m. did not have sufficient data to name a specific recipient, so it used a generic word instead.
The email displayed a “from” address of contact@win.donaldjtrump.com, an official Trump-owned web domain.
The message declared it was “Paid for by Never Surrender, Inc.” Federal Election Commission records show Never Surrender Inc. is Trump’s primary leadership PAC and was formerly his principal campaign committee, Donald J. Trump for President 2024 Inc.
Both entities had the same P.O. Box mailing address in Arlington, Virginia, shown in the email and had matching FEC Committee ID numbers.
Snopes reached out to the White House press office for comment on Trump’s fundraising email and will update this article if we hear back.
Sources
Clayton, David. “What Are Merge Fields? – Campaigner Glossary.” Campaigner, 21 July 2020, https://www.campaigner.com/resources/glossary/merge-fields/.
“DONALD J. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT 2024, INC. – Committee Overview.” FEC.Gov, 15 Nov. 2022, https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00828541/.
Katz, Benjamin. “What Is the Difference Between FEC Candidate IDs and Committee IDs?” ISPolitical, 29 Apr. 2025, https://ispolitical.com/what-is-the-difference-between-fec-candidate-ids-and-committee-ids/.
Liles, Jordan. “Trump Email Asked for Donations so He Could ‘Get to Heaven.’” Snopes, 3 Sept. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/trump-fundraising-email-heaven/.
Subject: Are You an Illegal Alien? https://politicalemails.org/messages/2111528. Accessed 28 Jan. 2026.
Subject: Are You an Illegal Alien? https://politicalemails.org/messages/2111529. Accessed 28 Jan. 2026.
“Trump Signals Interest in Easing Tensions, but Minneapolis Sees Little Change on the Streets.” AP News, 28 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-immigration-enforcement-trump-ice-3a948e7e3a4d7e254e9c1fab93625953.
A few days before a massive winter storm dumped snow and ice on a large swath of the country, disrupted travel and killed more than 30 people, a Florida congressman warned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is letting disaster assistance requests pile up.
But is Moskowitz correct that the agency has the largest backlog of pending disaster assistance applications in its 47-year history?
Taken together, the current list of pending disaster applications, independent analyses and information from disaster management experts show that the backlog is larger than is typical, with applications awaiting approval for longer periods of time compared with the last several decades.
FEMA declined to answer our questions. Moskowitz’ office also did not respond to our request for evidence supporting his statement.
Disaster declaration applications face longer limbo under second Trump administration
FEMA’s daily operations briefing provides an overview of potential weather threats and ongoing disasters.
Its Jan. 28 report shows 18 pending disaster declaration requests. Eleven are more than a month old. The requests are typically submitted through FEMA regional offices before being sent to the president for final approval.
A September analysis by The Associated Press examined how the current backlog compares with the last 37 years — covering the majority of FEMA’s 47-year history. During the agency’s first decade, the disaster declaration approval process wasn’t fully implemented and large disasters were relatively few and far between.
The AP’s analysis found that, on average, it took less than two weeks for a major disaster declaration to be granted by presidents throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. During the last decade, under presidents from both political parties, that rose to about three weeks. In Trump’s second term so far, approvals are taking more than a month, on average.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the AP Trump was making sure federal dollars were “spent wisely to supplement state actions, not replace them,” during disasters.
“President Trump provides a more thorough review of disaster declaration requests than any Administration has before him. Gone are the days of rubber stamping FEMA recommendations — that’s not a bug, that’s a feature,” Jackson said.
Former FEMA officials, including people who helped process these types of declarations, told PolitiFact the backlog of pending applications is substantial, and was longer than average at different points in 2025.
The processing time is most important, said Elizabeth Zimmerman, a former FEMA administrator under President Barack Obama. “A reasonable amount of time for approval should really be no more than two weeks.”
Zimmerman said that could change with the type of request and how much money applicants are seeking, but even considering those factors, the current process is slower than normal.
There may be contributing factors that are out of Trump’s control. The process for assessing natural disasters has become more complex over time and disasters have becomemore frequent and intense because of climate change.
Still, these delays mean people have to wait to receive federal aid for temporary housing and home repairs. It can also impede recovery efforts as local governments don’t know when or whether they will receive federal reimbursements.
Significant delays in disaster payouts
News reports throughout 2025 documented a slew ofdelays, denialsandcancellations of federal disaster funds as states waited for information on new policy proposals from FEMA.
“There’s a lot of anecdotal information that things are being held up, and it’s adversely affecting these communities,” said Michael Coen, a former FEMA chief of staff in the Obama and Biden administrations. “I have heard from multiple FEMA employees who are frustrated over a lot of projects that are being held up by the secretary’s office.”
The Wall Street Journal, citing internal government documents and conversations with FEMA employees, reported in September that many of FEMA’s core functions have ground to a halt under the Trump administration, and contracts and grants haven’t been approved because of new bureaucratic hurdles.
“A wave of senior staff departed the agency when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency offered buyouts, taking decades of experience with them,” the Journal reported. Another 400 FEMA employees were routed to work at Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the administration started dismantling FEMA’s disaster-response infrastructure.
In a Sept. 15 report, FEMA said it withheld $10.9 billion in disaster payments to 45 states in the final months of fiscal year 2025, which ended Sept. 30. News outlets and local government groups said the money was to reimburse states for emergency costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
FEMA said it “shifted” the reimbursements to fiscal year 2026 but did not say when the money would be paid. In response to news stories about the funds, FEMA said in an Oct. 18 press release that disaster relief funds “do not expire” and that the outstanding payments “are actively being processed and are not canceled.”
The Hill reported in December that more than $900 million in FEMA grants and loans awaited Noem’s approval under her new policy to personally review certain expenditures. The New York Times recently reported an even larger number — $17 billion — in funds that have faced unusually long delays because of the requirement.
The bottleneck, The New York Times found, “includes money that had already been approved by regional FEMA offices for things like debris removal, and repairs to roads, bridges and water and sewer systems.”
Our ruling
Moskowitz said FEMA’s backlog of unanswered disaster assistance applications “has exploded to the largest in its history.”
We were unable to quantify whether the current backlog is the largest in agency history; publicly available data is limited, and no public database provides historical comparisons.
But the available evidence shows Moskowitz is largely on target.
As of Jan. 28, FEMA listed 18 pending disaster declarations awaiting Trump’s approval. Eleven are more than a month old and some date back to October. Disaster management experts said the backlog is particularly large compared with what’s typical and that requests are sitting longer than normal.
A September 2025 AP analysis found that over the last 37 years — which covers most of FEMA’s existence and the timeframe when it implemented its current assistance system — disaster declarations were typically approved in three weeks or less. Approvals are taking more than a month, on average, so far during Trump’s second term.
Moskowitz’s statement is accurate but needs additional information. We rate it Mostly True.
While the Trump administration insists that it is targeting the “worst of the worst” in its immigration enforcement, it has not provided information to substantiate that, and the data that is available suggests the claim has become less accurate over time.
“The Trump administration has specifically targeted the worst of the worst,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press conference in July. “The individuals that we are going after are those that are violent criminals, those that are breaking our laws and those that have final removal orders.”
While the number of monthly Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests has risen steadily over the first year of Trump’s second term, the percentage of those arrested who have no criminal convictions or pending charges has also gone up.
Our analysis of ICE arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project found a doubling over time of the percentage without criminal records, meaning neither convictions nor charges. In Trump’s first three months in office, 21.9% of those arrested had no criminal record. The percentage rose to 34.2% in Trump’s second three months, and then to 40.5% in the three months ending in mid-October.
In January, nearly 43% of those detained had no convictions or charges, according to publicly available ICE data.
Meanwhile, the percentage of those arrested by ICE who have criminal convictions — not merely pending charges — fell from 44.7% in Trump’s first three months to 31.8% in the three months ending in mid-October.
Trump administration officials claim most of those without charges in the U.S. have convictions or pending charges in their home country, but DHS has provided no data to back that up.
Moreover, while the administration has long said it is targeting the “worst of the worst” criminals, only a smallfraction of those detained by ICE have been convicted of the type of violent felony offenses often cited by the administration, according to an analysis of leaked ICE data by the libertarian Cato Institute.
“I think when you listen to senior leaders in the Trump administration, what they’re saying is that they’re arresting what they’re calling the, quote, worst of the worst. They’re arresting people that they’re referring to as murderers and rapists,” Graeme Blair, associate professor of political science at UCLA and co-director of the Deportation Data Project, told KTLA 5 News in July. “And I think that that just really doesn’t tell the story of what they’re doing.”
The Definition of ‘Criminals’
President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted — as he did in a Truth Social post on Jan. 25 — that immigration enforcement efforts are targeted at the “Tens of Millions of Illegal Alien Criminals [who] poured into our Country, including Hundreds of Thousands of Convicted Murderers, Rapists, Kidnappers, Drug Dealers, and Terrorists.”
During a briefing at the White House on Jan. 20, Trump holds up a mugshot as an example of the so-called “worst of the worst” being arrested by ICE. Photo by Saul Loeb/ AFP via Getty Images.
In early December, DHS launched what it calls its “Worst of the Worst” website. The purpose, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said, was “so every American can see for themselves the criminal illegal aliens that we are arresting, what crimes they committed, and which communities we removed them from.” The site is filled with examples of immigrants arrested by ICE during the Trump administration who have convictions for serious violent felonies, according to DHS.
Noem insists the administration’s enforcement efforts are targeting just such criminals.
“Every single individual [arrested or detained] has committed a crime, but 70% of them have committed or have charges against them on violent crimes and crimes that they are charged with or have been convicted of that have come from other countries,” Noem said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Jan. 18.
“And let’s remember the true data, the true data, 70%, approximately, it goes anywhere from 60% to 70%, of people that are arrested are criminals, bottom line,” White House border czar Tom Homan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Jan. 11.
Later on that same program, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy disputed those figures. “I heard him [Homan] say that they are undertaking targeted enforcement actions against criminals. Just not true. The vast majority of people they are rounding up are peaceful immigrants.”
DHS’ public data does not provide a breakdown of the types of crimes committed by those with criminal convictions, nor of the types of crimes faced by those with pending charges, that would allow the public to assess Noem’s claim about the percentage detained who have committed violent crimes. (Similarly, the data can’t answer whether the “vast majority” are “peaceful,” as Murphy claimed — though it is accurate that the vast majority have not been convicted of a crime in the U.S.)
“We have no way of knowing if the worst of the worst are being targeted,” Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told us. “The government is not giving us access to that kind of data.”
The administration’s 70% claim also relies on including those with pending charges as “criminals.”
“A charge is not a conviction,” Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director for justice at the Brennan Center for Justice, told us. “Just because someone is charged with a crime. … People are innocent until proven guilty.”
“Someone with a pending charge who is not convicted is not usually called a ‘criminal’ in our criminal system,” David Hausman, an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law who directs the Deportation Data Project, told us.
According to DHS data, about 29% of those detained by ICE in January had criminal convictions, down from about 54% last February.
The transition toward arresting a higher percentage of immigrants with no criminal record appears to coincide with the reported pressure from Noem and others in the Trump administration to significantly increase the number of immigration arrests.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day,” senior White House adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News on May 29.
While the number of arrests has not reached that goal, the number of those in ICE detention has risen by about 80% since May, according to DHS data. (Those in ICE detention include arrests made over an unknown period of time.)
Much of that growth, records indicate, is being driven by the arrest of people without criminal records, at least not in the U.S.
Convictions or Pending Charges
In Trump’s first year, about 36.5% of those arrested by ICE had prior criminal convictions. Another 29.8% faced pending criminal charges. And about a third had neither a conviction nor a pending charge. That’s according to our analysis of data gathered by the Deportation Data Project, a joint project of the UC Berkeley Law School and UCLA that obtains individual-level arrest data through Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits. Our analysis covers the period between Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, and Oct. 15, the latest data the project was able to obtain.
Together, those with criminal convictions or pending charges represented 66% of arrests, which the administration has rounded up to 70%. But there’s more context: the trend over time of higher percentages of arrests of people with neither a conviction nor pending charge.
As we said, in the first three months of Trump’s presidency, about 22% of those arrested by ICE had no criminal record. By the three months ending in mid-October, that had jumped to approximately 40.5%.
ICE’s public statistics also show that over time, a higher percentage of those being detained have no criminal convictions or pending charges.
Consider, in February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s second term, about 14.7% of those detained by ICE had no criminal convictions or pending charges. By September, that percentage had shot up to 34.6%, and in January it was 42.7%.
The number of immigrants detained by ICE who have no convictions or pending charges has soared, from 3,165 in February 2025 to 25,193 in January of this year.
By comparison, just 869 of those detained by ICE in December 2024 (Biden’s last full month) had no convictions or pending charges. Then, 64% of those detained by ICE had criminal convictions. In January, 2026, it was roughly 29%, according to ICE data.
Types of Crimes
David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, analyzed nonpublic data from ICE leaked to Cato, and he found that among those with criminal convictions detained by ICE, 8% were convicted of violent or property crimes (about 5% were violent criminal convictions).
“And that includes very minor assaults. I mean, not like rape and murder,” Bier said in a radio interview with KPFA on Jan. 22. “These are someone had an altercation at a bar or things like that, not serious violent criminals who committed murder and rape.”
Contrary to administration rhetoric about targeting the worst of the worst, Bier described the arrests under Trump as “indiscriminate.”
“They have removed the prioritization that was in place under the Biden administration to go after those violent criminals that they’re highlighting,” Bier said. “They got rid of that policy and replaced it on Day One with a policy of arresting people who are the most convenient to arrest.”
Cato’s findings were corroborated by a New York Times analysis of ICE data obtained through the Deportation Data Project. Between the period of Jan. 20 and Oct. 15, the Times found that nationwide, 37% of those arrested in ICE operations had any past criminal conviction. Just 7% had a violent conviction. Another 30% had pending criminal charges, and 33% had no criminal charges.
The disparity was even wider in cities and states that have been targeted for enhanced immigration enforcement. In the four areas analyzed — Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Massachusetts and Illinois, the majority of those swept up by ICE had no criminal record (convictions or pending charges). Details on the operations in Minneapolis were not available yet.
The New York Times analysis noted that while only a fraction of those arrested had been convicted of a violent crime, “The most common non-violent convictions were for driving under the influence and other traffic offenses.”
Charges in Home Countries?
Pushing back against reports of higher percentages of ICE arrests of immigrants without criminal records, administration officials have claimed that those people often have convictions or pending charges in their home countries.
Although DHS did not respond to our queries for this story, DHS’ McLaughlin has said, “Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”
But DHS does not provide any public data to corroborate how many of those arrested by ICE fit that description, or what charges they face or have been convicted of in their home countries.
It’s part of the lack of transparency that has been a problem with the Trump administration, said Putzel-Kavanaugh of the Migration Policy Institute, adding that whether the U.S. is able to obtain criminal records from an immigrant’s home country is highly country specific. Some countries are simply more forthcoming about sharing such data.
“We’re not aware of data that DHS holds, and certainly it’s not been provided in the data that they’ve shared with us about any kind of foreign criminal connections,” Blair of the Deportation Data Project said. “I think that that’s, frankly, a lot of bluster.”
Correction, Jan. 28: We corrected the date of a quote by Noem, which was in July, and added the full sentence of her remark.
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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security surged 3,000 federal immigration agents to Minnesota — a state more than a thousand miles from the southern border that’s not known for having a sizable population of immigrants in the U.S. illegally — calling it the largest such operation ever. Many people have wondered: Why Minnesota?
Vice President JD Vance, who visited Minneapolis on Jan. 22 to defend federal immigration enforcement, gave a misleading answer.
“Right now, we’re focused on Minneapolis because that’s where we have the highest concentration of people who have violated our immigration laws, and that’s also, frankly, where we see the most assault of our law enforcement officers,” Vance said during a press conference.
The vice president’s visit to Minneapolis came after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good on Jan. 7 but before a Border Patrol agent fatally shot Alex Pretti on Jan. 24. Both were U.S. citizens.
PolitiFact asked spokespersons for the White House and Homeland Security for Vance’s evidence about Minneapolis having the “highest concentration of people who have violated our immigration laws” and received no response. (We did not examine data on assault of officers by jurisdiction.)
Dozens of other U.S. metro areas have a higher concentration of immigrants in the U.S. illegally compared with the Minneapolis metro area.
Immigrant populations by metro area
There are about 130,000 immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally in Minnesota, according to 2023 Pew Research Center data, the most recent year available.
The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan group, estimated a slightly smaller number for Minnesota of about 100,000 immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
Government officials and nonpartisan groups that track immigration data do not have data showing the number of immigrants the U.S. illegally exclusively in the city of Minneapolis. Instead, they use metro area data; Pew Research Center uses a 15-county area that includes Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Jeffrey Passel, a Pew Research Center demographer, said the overall U.S. population of immigrants in the country illegally was probably slightly larger in 2025 than the 2023 data reflects, but there was not a large influx in the Minneapolis metro area.
Pew estimated about 90,000 unauthorized immigrants in the Minneapolis metro area. Dozens of other metro areas have larger numbers, Passel said.
Immigrants in the country illegally represent about 2.4% of the Minneapolis metro area’s population. That’s smaller than the 4.1% nationally, Passel said. In major metro areas such as Miami and Houston, the share of immigrants in the U.S. illegally was at least four times as big as the share in Minneapolis. Metro areas such as Provo, Utah; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Hartford, Connecticut; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, had higher percentages than the Minneapolis metro area.
Somalis are a small percentage of the Minnesota population
President Donald Trump has said the Minnesota focus is because of a fraud scandal involving dozens of Somalis. Somalis represent about 2% of Minnesota’s population. Somalis came to Minnesota starting in the 1990s fleeing a civil war, some as refugees while others were sponsored by family members or moved from other states. Most are U.S. citizens, either through naturalization or birth.
Since 2022, federal prosecutors have charged about 98 people with defrauding the federal government. The majority have been convicted while many cases remain pending.
Our ruling
Vance said, “Right now we’re focused on Minneapolis because that’s where we have the highest concentration of people who have violated our immigration laws.”
Vance provided no evidence to back up his statement.
Immigrants in the country illegally represent about 2.4% of the Minneapolis metro area’s population. Dozens of metro areas have larger numbers of immigrants in the U.S. illegally than the Minneapolis metro area, including smaller metro areas across the country.
We rate this statement False.
Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this fact-check.
Breen, Kerry, et al. 37-Year-Old Man Shot and Killed by Federal Immigration Agents in Minneapolis. Here’s What to Know. – CBS News. 25 Jan. 2026, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minnesota-minneapolis-federal-immigration-agent-shooting/.
“Homeland Security Plans 2,000 Officers in Minnesota for Its ‘Largest Immigration Operation Ever.’” AP News, 6 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/immigration-enforcement-ice-noem-minnesota-somali-db661df6de1131a034da2bda4bb3d817.
ICE Arrests Worst of the Worst Criminal Illegal Aliens During Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis Including Pedophiles, Domestic Abusers, and Gang Members | Homeland Security. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/12/04/ice-arrests-worst-worst-criminal-illegal-aliens-during-operation-metro-surge. Accessed 23 Jan. 2026.
ICE Continues to Remove the Worst of the Worst from Minneapolis Streets as DHS Law Enforcement Marks 3,000 Arrests During Operation Metro Surge | Homeland Security. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/01/19/ice-continues-remove-worst-worst-minneapolis-streets-dhs-law-enforcement-marks-3000. Accessed 23 Jan. 2026.
Lum, Devon, and Haley Willis. Videos Show Moments in Which Agents Killed a Man in Minneapolis. 24 Jan. 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/us/minneapolis-shooting-federal-agents-video.html.
News, A. B. C. ‘A Minute-by-Minute Timeline of the Fatal Shooting of Alex Pretti by Federal Agents’. ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/minute-minute-timeline-fatal-shooting-alex-pretti-federal/story?id=129547199. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026.
After TikTok in the U.S. went under new ownership in January 2026, a rumor spread that its new terms of service said the application would collect sensitive information on its users, including immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs and mental health diagnosis.
On Jan. 22, 2026, the application in the U.S. asked users to accept the new TOS and privacy policy as a condition to continue using the app. An examination of the updated privacy policy revealed the rumors were true, though a review of the app’s former privacy policy showed TikTok had collected this information for a while.
Snopes examined changes to the TOS and privacy policy, which included precise geolocation unless users opt out of it and broader rules for targeted advertising on and off the platform.
After TikTok in the U.S. went under new ownership in late January 2026, a rumor spread that its new terms of service said the application would collect some of its users most sensitive information, including immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, mental health diagnosis and more.
Several posts on Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Blueskyand X made this claim. One X user said (archived) TikTok now belonged to “Trump’s oligarchs,” suggesting they would start to track this information on behalf of the administration of President Donald Trump:
The post included screenshots of TikTok’s new supposed TOS, including a paragraph titled “Information we collect.” The image read (emphasis ours):
Information You Provide may include sensitive personal information, as defined under applicable state privacy laws, such as information from users under the relevant age threshold, information you disclose in survey responses or in your user content about your racial or ethnic origin, national origin, religious beliefs, mental or physical health diagnosis, sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information. For example, we may process your financial information in order to provide you the goods or services you request from us or your driver’s license number in order to verify your identity. We may also collect precise location data, depending on your settings and as explained below. We process such sensitive personal information in accordance with applicable law, such as for permitted purposes under the California Consumer Privacy Act.
A review of TikTok’s new privacy policy in the U.S. revealed an update was effective starting Jan. 22, 2026. Those who opened the app on or after that date saw a pop-up asking them to agree to the new TOS as a condition to continue using the app. Snopes confirmed the above paragraph was part of the updated rules.
TikTok’s collection of such sensitive information did not start on Jan. 22, 2026, however. Snopes found TikTok’s previous privacy policy, updated in 2024 and archived here on Dec. 1, 2025, included similar language:
While some of the information that we collect, use, and disclose may constitute sensitive personal information under applicable state privacy laws, such as information from users under the relevant age threshold, information you disclose in survey responses or in your User Content about your racial or ethnic origin, national origin, religious beliefs, mental or physical health diagnosis, sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information, we only process such information in order to provide the Platform and within other exemptions under applicable law. For example, we may process your financial information in order to provide you the goods or services you request from us or your driver’s license number in order to verify your identity.
One major difference between the former terms of service and the updated terms is that TikTok U.S. now made it explicit it may “collect precise location data, depending on your settings.” In other words, the app will track users’ precise locations unless they opt out of it.
The new TOS also make it clear the app will abide by state privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act, whereas before it only referred to “applicable state privacy laws.”
Other information-collecting policy
TikTok also maintained its policy of collecting information from content users import, before they save or post it, though the language changed. The old privacy policy read:
When you create User Content, we may upload or import it to the Platform before you save or post the User Content (also known as pre-uploading), for example, in order to recommend audio options, generate captions, and provide other personalized recommendations. If you apply an effect to your User Content, we may collect a version of your User Content that does not include the effect.
The updated privacy policy said:
We may collect user content through pre-uploading at the time of creation, import, or upload, regardless of whether you choose to save or publish that user content, for example, to recommend audio options, provide an effect, generate captions, and provide other personalized recommendations.
Both the former and updated terms of service said TikTok could collect information about non-users, though the new policy gave more details about how that may be the case. “Even if you are not a user, information about you may appear in User Content created or published by users on the Platform,” the old language said.
Meanwhile, the new policy read: “Even if you are not a user, information about you may appear in user content created or published by users on our apps and websites.”
In addition, the app included new rules for content generated with artificial intelligence. It prohibits the use of AI bots, among other new guidelines.
Further, it expanded its advertising rules. By using the app, users now agree to have their information used for more targeted advertising “on and off the Platform:”
You agree that we can customize ads and other sponsored content from creators, advertisers, and partners, that you see on and off the Platform based on, among other points, information we receive from third parties.
Where the content is stored
On the same day TikTok in the U.S. announced its new terms of service and privacy policy, its new owners — a consortium of investors known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC — said in a statement that U.S. user data would now be stored in “Oracle’s secure U.S. cloud environment.”
Meanwhile ByteDance, the Chinese company that founded TikTok, retained a 19.9% stake in the consortium, according to the announcement.
In the same statement, TikTok USDS Joint Venture said it would “retrain” TikTok’s algorithm to adjust content recommendations to U.S. users:
The Joint Venture will retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data. The content recommendation algorithm will be secured in Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment.
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A video authentically showed colleagues of Alex Pretti lining a hospital hallway to pay tribute to the ICU nurse who died at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis in January 2026.
Rating:
Context
A spokesperson for the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center said in an emailed statement the video was not recorded on that campus. Elements of the video appeared to suggest it was recorded at a VA medical center in Colorado during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In January 2026, after Alex Pretti died at the hands of federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, a video (archived) circulated online that claimed to show Pretti’s colleagues at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center honoring the 37-year-old nurse with a farewell ceremony sometimes referred to as an “honor walk.”
The video showed two masked people wheeling a gurney draped in the U.S. flag down a hospital hallway. Other people wearing surgical masks and scrubs, seemingly medical workers, lined the hallway.
One Instagram user who shared the video wrote, “Health professionals from intensive care units gathered to honor Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs hospital who was shot and killed by federal agents.”
The video and claims it showed colleagues paying tribute to Pretti also circulated on Facebook (archived), X (archived), Threads (archived) and Bluesky (archived). International news outlets including TRT (archived) and Al Jazeera (archived) also shared the video and claim. Snopes readers wrote in asking whether it was true that the video showed Pretti’s colleagues paying tribute to him.
However, social media users who claimed the video showed an “honor walk” for Pretti miscaptioned the clip.
A spokesperson for the Minneapolis VA Medical Center said via email that the video, “was not taken at the Minneapolis VA.” Someposts (archived, archived) said the video might show staff at a different VA hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 or 2021. Some details visible in the video appeared to suggest it could be from that time, rather than January 2026.
Online artificialintelligence detectors did not find traces of AI use in screenshots from the video. (Such detectors are not always fully reliable.)
We reached out to several Facebook users who claimed to have worked with Pretti to ask them to confirm whether the video showed colleagues paying tribute to him and await replies to our queries.
Someone trying to pass this off as Alex Pretti when it was filmed in the Rocky Mountain VA ICU. I work there and it is probably 2021, as everyone is wearing masks and we were still under a mask mandate for COVID.
Snopes reached out to Smith as well as the Rocky Mountain VA center to ask for more background on the claim.
One geotagged image from Rocky Mountain VA Medical Center showed a similar-looking hallway to that seen in the video, with identical flooring and interior features such as doors, cabinets, wall signage and a two-tiered reception desk.
(Google Maps/Instagram user @yvettenicolebrown/Snopes Illustration)
According to a map of the medical center, Building H, Floor 3 was the medical center’s intensive care unit. The geo-tagged image showing the similar-looking hallway had signs with room numbers beginning “H3” on the walls, as did the video claiming to show Pretti in Minneapolis.
One of the people pushing the stretcher in the video wore a shirt that read “Intensive Care Unit” on the back, which aligned with the map depicting “H3” as the medical center’s intensive care unit.
Masks, social distancing suggest earlier recording date
According to a Facebook user named Garrett Peterson, colleagues at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center did pay tribute to Pretti with a moment of silence (archived) on Jan. 26, 2026.
An individual with the same name and appearance as Peterson had worked for the VA for 25 years, according (archived) to the Association of Veterans Affairs Nurse Anesthetists. Peterson worked at Minneapolis VA Medical Center at least as recently as 2021, according (archived) to the association, and state records showed he had an active nursing license.
Peterson’s images did not show the flag-covered stretcher seen in the video but did show hospital staff lining a hallway. The staff in the photos did not all appear to wear masks and stood much closer together than the people in the video circulating online.
The purported video of colleagues paying tribute to Pretti showed a blue sticker with white footprints on the ground, suggesting it could have come from a time when hospitals were still using social-distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Snopes reached out to Peterson and will update this report if he provides more information.
County medical examiner reportedly held Pretti’s body
According to reporting at the time of the shooting, it appeared unlikely that federal agents or medical staff would have taken Pretti’s body to the VA hospital where he worked.
The Associated Press reported that the Hennepin County Medical Examiner told Pretti’s parents the office held their son’s body after the Jan. 24 shooting. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote on X (archived) on Jan. 25 that a federal investigation into Pretti’s death was ongoing, meaning authorities would likely hold Pretti’s body as part of this work.
The DHS wrote on X that medics pronounced Pretti dead at the scene of the shooting, meaning there was no need for further medical treatment at a hospital. It was unclear whether Pretti would have been eligible for treatment at a VA hospital, should he have needed it.
The DHS said in its statement on X on Jan. 24 that Pretti approached federal agents with a gun and “violently resisted” attempts to disarm him, resulting in an “armed struggle.” Witness video published online appeared to contradict the DHS’ account of events.
Minneapolis police Chief Brian O’Hara said during a news conference on Jan. 24 that Pretti was “a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”
Despite video evidence that Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti was holding his phone before immigration officers shot and killed him, an image spreading on social media appears to show him wielding a handgun.
The Department of Homeland Security said Border Patrol officers shot the 37 year old in self-defense after Pretti approached them with “a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.”
Retired U.S. Gen. Raymond A. “Tony” Thomas III, shared the purported image of Pretti holding a gun on X. The image shows Pretti holding something resembling a handgun in his right hand. The account shared the photo without a caption in response to Jan. 25 statementsabout the incident from Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Video evidence of the shooting shows Pretti holding his phone, not his handgun, before agents tackled him and removed his weapon. Multiple videos show differentangles of the incident where Pretti is holding a phone.
The AI version is similar to footage showing Pretti held by agents; the manipulated version may have stemmed from a user asking an AI tool to “enhance” a screenshot of the footage. (Users also enhanced images after a federal immigration agent shot Renee Good. Users asked X’s artificial intelligence, Grok, to reveal the face of the agent, creating the image of a completely different person. ) AI often distorts images in response to user requests to enhance them.
PolitiFact uploaded the image to Gemini, Google’s AI tool. It found the image contains the SynthID watermark for images created or edited by the tool. It’s not visible looking at the image, but Google’s technology can detect it.
Oren Etzioni, founder of TrueMedia, an organization that focuses on detecting false or manipulated AI content, said the image has many signs of AI manipulation.
They include:
The kneeling officer is missing a head.
The hands and fingers of the people in the image are distorted and disproportionate.
Knees, arms and torsos appear dislocated.
The clothing textures and shadows don’t fully align with the lighting direction.
The rifle on the kneeling officer appears partially embedded into the ground.
The granular asphalt doesn’t match videos of the scene that show a paved road layered with dirt and snow.
The New York Timesandother news outlets reported that authenticated footage shows an agent removed Pretti’s gun from his belt holster. The Times also said witnesses corroborated the details in the videos.
We rate claims the image shared on X is a real photo of Pretti False.
Minnesota allows individuals with a permit to carry a gun in public, concealed or not, and there is no state law against having a gun while at a demonstration. That contradicts FBI Director Kash Patel’s claim suggesting that “you cannot bring” a loaded firearm “to any sort of protest” in the state.
There are more than a dozen U.S. states with laws prohibiting the open or concealed carry of firearms at a protest or similar event. Minnesota is not one of them.
“This is completely incorrect on Minnesota law,” the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, a gun rights advocacy group, said in a social media post responding to Patel’s remarks. “There is no prohibition on a permit holder carrying a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines at a protest or rally in Minnesota.”
Patel had made his claim during a Jan. 25 interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” He was responding to Maria Bartiromo, the host of the show, who asked him what he would say to people “outraged” by Border Patrol agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti during a Jan. 24 demonstration against federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.
Patel speaks during a Department of Justice news conference on Dec. 4. Photo by Daniel Heuer/AFP via Getty Images.
“As Kristi said, you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want,” Patel said, referring to Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. “It’s that simple.”
He may have been referring to comments that Noem made in a Jan. 24 press conference about the killing of Pretti – only she didn’t say that protesters “cannot” carry guns in Minnesota.
Instead, Noem said, “I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.” She accused Pretti – who state officials said had a permit for the handgun he had on him – of being in Minneapolis “to perpetuate violence” rather than “peacefully protest.” (Patel had accurately referred to Noem’s comments questioning Pretti’s motivations earlier in his Fox News interview.)
But federal officials have provided no evidence that Pretti “arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement,” as Noem also said in her press conference.
As we’ve written, videos recorded by bystanders in Minneapolis do not show Pretti threatening law enforcement officials with the gun or removing it from his waistband during the altercation with immigration officers that led to his death. As other newsoutletsalso reported, it appears from the video available so far that an officer removes a gun from Pretti’s waistband prior to Pretti being shot.
What’s more, Patel was wrong to suggest that protesters in Minnesota aren’t allowed to carry firearms in the first place.
Minnesota is not one of the 16 states that has enacted a law prohibiting concealed or open carry at demonstrations, protests or licensed public gatherings, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Under Minnesota law, a permit is required to carry a gun in public, and the gun doesn’t need to be concealed, according to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said that the available video evidence suggests that Pretti’s actions were legal.
“It appears that he was present, exercising his First Amendment rights to record law enforcement activity, and also exercising his Second Amendment rights to lawfully be armed in a public space in the city,” O’Hara said in a Jan. 25 interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“There’s no prohibition in Minnesota statute that says you can’t carry a firearm at a protest,” Rob Doar, president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Law Center, told WCCO, the CBS News affiliate in Minnesota, in an interview.
We asked the FBI about Patel’s claim, but a spokesperson declined to comment.
Patel would later argue in a Jan. 26 interview on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program that bringing a gun to a protest that turns violent is ill-advised, even if it is allowed.
“It’s not smart to go out there with a fully loaded weapon. We’re just saying be careful and be reasonable,” Patel said, describing a “volatile” situation in Minnesota. “If you have a right to a permit for a firearm, that’s OK. But you cannot incite violence and you cannot break the law — and attack federal law enforcement officers.”
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After the fatal shooting of concealed carry permitholder Alex Pretti, debate over gun rights added a new layer to the federal government’s aggressive immigration enforcement activity in Minneapolis.
The day after Pretti was killed, FBI Director Kash Patel discussed the case on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Patel said, “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple. You don’t have the right to break the law and incite violence.”
The administration shared an image of a gun and extra ammunition it said Border Patrol agents took from Pretti on Jan. 24 on Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis.
Video footage that surfaced in the first 48 hours after the shooting does not show Pretti holding the gun in his hands or pointing it at federal agents at any point. Some footage shows agents had disarmed Pretti shortly before he was shot.
The administration said the Department of Homeland Security would conduct an internal investigation, but its scope was reportedly limited.
The shooting of a protester who had a concealed carry permit prompted criticism by gun-rights advocates, who pointed to Second Amendment protections.
“Every peaceable Minnesotan has the right to keep and bear arms — including while attending protests, acting as observers, or exercising their First Amendment rights,” the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus wrote. “These rights do not disappear when someone is lawfully armed, and they must be respected and protected at all times.”
The FBI declined to comment for this article. Patel sought to clarify his stance in a Jan. 26 interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, saying, “We are not going after people and infringing on their freedom of speech to peacefully protest. We are definitely not going after people in their Second Amendment rights to bear arms — only if you incite violence and or threaten to do harm to law enforcement officials and break the law in any other way.”
We asked 13 legal experts about Patel’s statement. They agreed that Patel was wrong about the Minnesota law, although they cautioned that some states do ban guns at protests.
In general, “There is no blanket prohibition or long-standing tradition against bringing otherwise lawfully owned and carried firearms to a protest, parade, demonstration, or other public event,” said Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “To the contrary, the default practice or tradition is that someone who is lawfully carrying a firearm may bring it to public gatherings, including protests and demonstrations.”
It hasn’t been unusual to see people carrying guns at protests in recent years, such as at a 2020 protest against Michigan’s pandemic laws at the state capitol in Lansing.
Was Pretti within his rights to carry a gun?
Experts widely agree that because the state legally permitted Pretti to carry a gun, he was within his rights in Minnesota to do so, including at a protest.
While some states’ laws restrict guns at protests, “Minnesota has no such law in place,” said Konstadinos Moros, director of legal research and education at the Second Amendment Foundation.
Eleven states and the District of Columbia ban concealed weapons at demonstrations and protests, and 11 states and the district ban open carry of weapons at demonstrations or protests, according to a tracker assembled by the anti gun-violence group Giffords. Of these, seven states and D.C. ban both.
Several gun law experts also told PolitiFact they are unaware of any states that explicitly ban something else Patel mentioned: extra magazines for ammunition.
Some social media commentators said Pretti broke the law by not physically carrying his permit or other identification. (Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former top Customs and Border Patrol official in Minneapolis Greg Bovino have alleged that Pretti carried no ID.) State law says not carrying a permit is a “petty misdemeanor” subject to a fine of up to $25. Such a violation “does not constitute a crime,” state law says.
Federal officials have said that Pretti went beyond observing and was interfering with a law enforcement activity. Experts agreed that Pretti would have been legally barred from threatening, interfering with or lying to officers. “As a general matter, peacefully observing a demonstration is different from criminally obstructing law enforcement,” said David B. Kopel, research director at the conservative Independence Institute.
Video footage that has surfaced so far does not show that Pretti criminally obstructed law enforcement, though uncertainties and gaps remain. Some footage begins as he helps a woman who had been pushed into the snow by a federal agent; he was holding a phone in his hand.
A majority of states have more expansive laws than Minnesota’s, allowing concealed carrying of guns without a permit. “In those states with broad public-carry rights, the mere fact that an individual is armed at a protest is not itself a crime,” said Darrell Miller, a University of Chicago law professor.
What have courts said about gun rights at protests?
Legal experts said the Supreme Court’s record bolsters a Second Amendment right to carry guns at protests, which are sometimes referred to in laws as “public gatherings” or “assemblies.”
The most recent notable Supreme Court decision is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen from 2022. The justices, in a 6-3 decision, found that the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense has deep historical roots, and that a “special need” is not necessary to exercise it.
The decision allowed states to ban public carry in certain “sensitive places,” such as schools and government buildings, and some states have moved to restrict the carrying of firearms at some events, such as protests, said Timothy Zick, a William & Mary Law School professor. Whether those laws would pass muster at the Supreme Court depends on whether there were similar laws during the 18th and possibly the 19th century, Zick said.
A Supreme Court case currently under review, Wolford v. Lopez, will decide whether Hawaii can restrict people’s ability to bring guns onto private property that is open to the public. As part of the previous ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down California’s ban on carrying guns at public gatherings. Moros said that victory at an appeals court that’s “pretty hostile” to the Second Amendment is notable.
In another decision released Jan. 20, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Maryland’s prohibition on carrying guns near public demonstrations is constitutional. This split between circuits could make the Supreme Court more likely to weigh in on a case that explicitly involves protests and gun rights, Moros said.
Neily agreed that based on the recent court record, it’s “quite likely that laws against carrying otherwise lawfully possessed firearms at protests and other public events would be struck down under the Second Amendment.”
Our ruling
Patel said, “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”
Some states have laws that ban guns at protests, but Minnesota’s concealed carry law does not include such a ban. Pretti had a concealed carry permit. Even if he did not have the permit or an ID on him at the time, Minnesota law considers that a minor infraction. Some states’ laws are more permissive than Minnesota, allowing people to bring guns to protests even if they don’t have a concealed carry permit, as Pretti did.
The statement contains an element of truth — the legality of bringing guns to protests depends on the state — but ignores that this incident happened in Minnesota, where the law allows guns at protests. We rate the statement Mostly False.
CLARIFICATION, Jan. 27, 2026: This version clarifies the description of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on a California law.
