Renee Excellent and Alex Pretti, two white Minneapolis citizens killed in January 2026 through federal brokers whilst protesting the Trump management’s immigration coverage, have turn into family names. Nationwide media retailers proceed to concentrate on their deaths and the instances round them.
Neither of them used to be the primary particular person to be shot and killed through immigration enforcement officers over the last yr. There were a lot of shootings and a few deaths.
In September 2025, Silverio Villegas González used to be killed in Chicago underneath instances very similar to Excellent’s loss of life. Ruben Ray Martinez used to be shot a couple of occasions through Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers in Texas in March 2025, however their involvement used to be no longer printed till just about a yr later. Neither Martinez nor Villegas González has turn into a family identify, and their fatal encounters with federal brokers have no longer drawn just about the similar stage of media consideration as Excellent’s or Pretti’s.
As a media historian, I’ve been struck through the similarities between the media’s protection of Minneapolis and its protection of Selma, Alabama, in 1965, when balloting rights protests ended in violence that left 3 folks useless, together with two white sufferers.
I’ve written in regards to the Selma marketing campaign, in addition to the media’s remedy of white feminine activists killed all over racial justice protests, in my books “Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement” and “Making #Charlottesville: Media from Civil Rights to Unite the Right.”
Those two occasions expose that the deaths of white activists continuously draw and maintain way more consideration than the deaths of Black or Latino folks in identical contexts. However the Selma and Minneapolis occasions additionally display that female and male white activist sufferers aren’t essentially handled the similar method.
Remembering Selma
Video pictures of legislation enforcement beating and gassing marchers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge stays an iconic visible report of the Civil Rights Motion. John Lewis, who later changed into a congressman, used to be an activist on the head of the march on March 7, 1965, and used to be crushed within the head on the base of the bridge through Alabama state soldiers. However he used to be no longer a family identify in 1965, and media protection on the time didn’t determine him.
Newshounds additionally didn’t pay a lot consideration to what had motivated the march: the killing of Black balloting rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson through an Alabama state trooper all over a midnight march per week previous.
Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a eulogy in Selma, Ala., for James Reeb, a fellow minister who used to be crushed to loss of life.
AP Picture
Nonetheless, the prime-time tv broadcast of pictures from “Bloody Sunday” on the Pettus Bridge stunned American citizens, simply as pictures from Minneapolis has in a similar fashion distressed and disturbed many of us lately.
In 1965, a small collection of white American citizens from across the nation, together with a lot of contributors of the clergy, descended on Selma to face with the brutalized balloting rights activists. They incorporated James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Massachusetts, and Viola Liuzzo, a spouse and mom of 5 from Michigan.
Reeb, following a 2nd aborted march around the Pettus Bridge two days after Bloody Sunday, used to be viciously crushed through a gaggle of white racists and left mendacity at the flooring, mortally wounded. His beating and next loss of life won abundant media consideration.
President Lyndon B. Johnson contacted Reeb’s widow. She gave media interviews about her husband. Johnson additionally extolled Reeb initially of his joint deal with to Congress calling for powerful balloting rights regulation, 4 days after Reeb’s loss of life. Johnson by no means discussed Jackson’s loss of life.
The Vote casting Rights Act handed 5 months later.
Smearing the sufferer
So how does protection of Reeb and Liuzzo echo the portrayals of Pretti and Excellent? And why does it topic?
Preliminary media remedy of Liuzzo concerned with her standing as a spouse and mom. She used to be characterised as courageous, striking the rights of others above her personal. “Mrs. Liuzzo ‘Felt She Had to Help,’” used to be the headline of a New York Occasions profile.
Excellent’s standing as a loyal mom and spouse additionally characterised preliminary media reporting following her loss of life. This type of framing can continuously defend “nice white ladies,” as student Jessie Daniels has termed them, from the derogatory remedy that girls of colour have continuously continued within the public area.
However in each instances, even supposing separated through six a long time, condemnation, disparagement and misogyny quickly adopted. Executive officers, commentators and far-right forces framed those girls and their activism in darker phrases. Liuzzo used to be smeared through a KKK grand wizard who blamed her for her personal loss of life, announcing, “If this woman was at home with her children where she belonged she wouldn’t have been in any jeopardy.” Liuzzo used to be falsely accused of getting sexual members of the family with a Black guy, thereby being characterised as a traitor to the white race.
In 2023, a Detroit monument honoring Viola Liuzzo, who used to be killed through the Klan, and Sarah Evans, who raised Liuzzo’s youngsters, used to be unveiled.
AP Picture/Corey Williams
This type of racist vitriol would possibly have stayed at the fringes, however FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover amplified the tales, whilst a Detroit police officer’s document on Liuzzo, which incorporated extremely non-public knowledge and hypothesis about her psychological well being, used to be shared with segregationist Sheriff Jim Clark of Selma.
The fabric ended up in The New York Occasions, and Liuzzo’s posthumous recognition used to be marred. When Women’ House Magazine polled its readers about Liuzzo, 55% spoke back that she must have stayed house together with her youngsters.
Echoes of the previous
Professional executive and legislation enforcement responses to Excellent’s loss of life echo the Liuzzo case; in truth, the responses have arguably been magnified. Vice President JD Vance blamed Excellent for her personal loss of life, claiming it used to be a “tragedy of her own making.” President Donald Trump characterised her as “disorderly” and harsh. Fatherland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem and different management officers classified Excellent a home terrorist.
This try to affect the media’s framing of Renee Excellent obviously had an have an effect on, since a lot of the early media protection concerned with questions on her movements and motives, with the New York Publish derisively labeling her an “‘ICE Watch’ ‘warrior’ who trained to resist feds before shooting,” prior to consideration shifted to Pretti’s killing.
Excellent, like Liuzzo, used to be additionally derided as a race traitor, someway betraying white American citizens through supporting nonwhites. Podcaster Matt Walsh disparaged her for giving her existence “to protect 68 IQ Somali scammers,” a smear that made its method into mainstream media, together with its look in an opinion piece through The New York Occasions’ columnist David French that criticized inflammatory MAGA rhetoric.
Walsh and different right-wing commentators, along side comic Ben Bankas, underscored Excellent’s sexuality to additional demean her.
It’s other for males
Males were handled in a different way in each press protection and political reaction. Reeb, a father of 4, by no means confronted the extent of condemnation heaped on Liuzzo. Southern white segregationists undoubtedly puzzled the motives of the numerous clergy contributors who descended on Selma. The ones sentiments, then again, didn’t flow into a lot outdoor of segregationist press. Reeb’s standing as a minister, along side being a white guy, can have shielded his recognition.
Right here’s the place there are some similarities to the reaction to Pretti’s loss of life. To start with, Trump management officers introduced out the similar playbook they’d used with Excellent. Noem and Stephen Miller, the White Space place of origin safety adviser, known as Pretti a home terrorist. Greg Bovino, the chief of Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, along side a Fatherland Safety spokeswoman, claimed Pretti meant to “massacre law enforcement.”
Such fees briefly unraveled as media retailers puzzled them. It helped that the video pictures of Pretti’s killing used to be clearer than that of Excellent’s.
Like Excellent, Pretti changed into the objective of vitriol in far-right media platforms. However little of that has gotten a lot acquire in mainstream media, simply because the segregationist contempt for activist clergy contributors in Selma used to be no longer amplified.
Pretti’s standing as a certified gun proprietor who used to be exercising his 2d Modification appropriate to undergo palms, in addition to his First Modification rights to protest, may additionally have assisted his posthumous recognition. Proper-wing critics who condemned a lesbian who used to be no longer adhering to a collection of requirements relating to femininity had a miles more difficult time condemning a person authorized to hold a gun.
Liuzzo, Reeb, Excellent and Pretti all put their our bodies at the line and made without equal sacrifice on behalf of susceptible nonwhite folks. Liuzzo and Excellent suffered vital personality assassination that their male partners-in-protest have shyed away from.
Whiteness would possibly lend a hand convey large media consideration, however being a useless white girl doesn’t essentially convey respectful remedy. For some, particularly those that put their our bodies at the line for nonwhite communities, they’re simply “AWFL,” the present right-wing acronym for “affluent, white, liberal women” who step out of bounds.
