Dark money for soft power: How durable was the America First backlash that manifested in debilitating cuts to foreign aid last year? Well, according to exclusive new polling from G.O.P. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’s Iowa swing district, 52 percent of self-identified “very conservative” voters now support international aid to combat diseases like Ebola and malaria, and sustain programs such as Food for Peace. So does the same share of Trump ’24 voters. These are the very kinds of programs that were eliminated or sharply curtailed by DOGE and the dismantling of USAID—moves conservatives once heartily applauded.

A MESSAGE FROM ANTHROPIC

Al data centers shouldn't raise your bills. 

Anthropic will cover electricity price increases from its data centers and invest in grid optimization tools, helping keep prices lower for  

ratepayers.  

Learn more 

This seeming reversal did not arise organically. It followed a targeted campaign of digital, cable, and text messaging funded by the Trumpily named dark-money group Campaign for America First International Assistance, which spent $175,000 to influence voters across three swing districts. In Miller-Meeks’s district, the result was that support for international aid rose by 25 points among “very conservative” voters and nearly 12 points among Trump voters, according to Trump’s longtime pollsters, McLaughlin & Associates.

CAFIA hopes to convince voters—then ultimately lawmakers and the White House—to restore the international assistance that Republicans have gutted. “We are highlighting incumbents who are helping to support international aid programs and are encouraging the administration to make sure funding is there for key programs,” said Nate Soule, former chief of staff to G.O.P. Rep. Mike Lawler and now executive director of CAFIA. To that end, the group has already placed ads in five of the most vulnerable Republican districts—including those of Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn (Iowa), Gabe Evans (Colorado), Juan Ciscomani (Arizona), and Ryan Mackenzie (Pennsylvania)—and plans to spend at least a million dollars on ads in a dozen more.

And now, here’s John with Jacob Frey…

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey vaulted onto the national stage on January 7, in the chaotic, mournful hours after Renee Good was killed by ICE agents in his city. Standing at the podium, he delivered a blunt, unsparing directive to federal authorities: “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” For many Americans, it was their first encounter with Frey. But what followed in the ensuing weeks and months showed the nation what it actually looks like to stand up to the Trump administration’s authoritarian overreach from the ground up. In Minneapolis, the message was unmistakable: If you come for one of us, you come for all of us.

A MESSAGE FROM ANTHROPIC

Al data centers shouldn't raise your bills. 

Anthropic will cover electricity price increases from its data centers and invest in grid optimization tools, helping keep prices lower for  

ratepayers.  

Learn more 

But there’s much more to Frey’s story. At 44, now in his third term, he has the profile and résumé of a mover whose ambitions extend beyond the Twin Cities. A Northern Virginia kid who fell hard for Minneapolis, he got obliterated in his first political race, in 2012, but he regrouped and won a city council seat the following year. Minneapolis elected him mayor in 2017, and he has since steered his city through a succession of crises, any one of which would severely test any officeholder: the murder of George Floyd, the global pandemic, and a months-long federal occupation that left two people dead and the city shaken.

In the process, Frey has become a central figure at the crossroads of some of the country’s most combustible political fights—immigration enforcement, police reform, the rule of law, and the practical meaning of resistance in the Trump era.

We covered all of it on a recent episode of my Impolitic podcast. As always, this transcript has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, but you can catch the whole thing here.

John Heilemann: Did you ever imagine that the thing people would know you for nationally is telling ICE to get the fuck out?

Jacob Frey: There are more than a few things that happened over these last five to six years that I would have never imagined. In 2017, when I first ran for mayor, I don’t think anybody even said the word “pandemic” the whole campaign. Perhaps we were wrong in not anticipating it. And perhaps we all should have been raising the flag that Trump was going to do the things that he said he was going to do. Frankly, once Trump took office again, and the rhetoric was ramping up, and Minneapolis was more and more being discussed as this focal point of Democratic politics and activism, we were prepared for something like that to happen earlier.

So was I surprised when Donald Trump came to town with a whole bunch of federal agents? No. Was I shocked by the conduct? Absolutely. You want to believe in America. You want to believe in this great nation, and to have that kind of conduct on the streets—blatant violations of the Constitution—we should all expect better.

You mentioned Covid and Trump and ICE, but not George Floyd—whose murder changed the city in pretty profound ways. Every time I saw a Minneapolis cop on television during the ICE occupation, I was impressed. The contrast between your police officers and your police chiefs, and ICE, was so stark. How much did the reforms inspired by George Floyd change the police culture in the city?

We’ve been doing a ton of work on changing the culture and building trust since George Floyd was murdered—we had a hell of a lot of work to do. The police department has made great strides. The people coming in who want to be cops right now, they want to be in because they want to set an example for others to follow, and they want to be the change. And then these federal agents came in, and people throughout the community were seeing the juxtaposition between the way they were treated by an ICE agent and the way they were treated by a Minneapolis police officer. But some of the biggest critics of policing in general, and specifically MPD, were praising how Minneapolis police were conducting themselves.

Our chief gives the example of the MPD taking something like 900 or 1,000 guns off the street in sometimes very dangerous circumstances, and the police never shot a single person this last year. ICE was here for a matter of weeks, shot three people. What does that tell you?

Walk me through how dark that period actually was—the shootings, the threats, all of it.

You got the shooting of Renee Good after a month and a half of our police chief and me saying, “Somebody’s going to get killed or badly injured based on the way that ICE is conducting themselves.” We warned people about this. We warned the federal government about this. Then you’ve got this second shooting, which has not been covered widely [of Julio C. Sosa-Celis, whom an ICE agent shot and injured, falsely claiming he’d attacked the agent with a shovel—an account ICE later retracted]. You’ve got this attempted cover-up where they’re changing the narrative entirely. [ICE suspended two agents who lied about the incident in court.]

You’ve got Alex Pretti’s killing where everybody, from people who love the 10th Amendment to people who love the Second Amendment, are all standing up and pissed off, rightfully so. But on top of that, you have 1,500 troops stationed in Alaska [who were placed on standby for deployment to Minneapolis after Good’s killing], you have Trump threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, you’ve got these businesses all through Lake Street that are shutting down, people terrified to go outside, a potential humanitarian crisis because people aren’t able to either pay the rent or get food. You’ve got the Trump administration going after me criminally, utilizing the Department of Justice as a weapon. Obviously, I know we did nothing wrong. I am proud of the way that we conducted this administration through some of the most difficult circumstances. But I’d be lying if I told you I had no consternation about the federal government coming directly after me and, indirectly, my family.

Was there ever a moment where you thought Trump and the D.O.J. would actually conduct an honest investigation of the ICE killings?

Very briefly, yes. After Renee Good’s shooting, there was certainly discussion [between state and federal law enforcement] about who is conducting the investigation. Traditionally, when we have an officer-involved shooting, it goes to the B.C.A.—the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. It’s an independent entity, I have no control over them—and by the way, this is not some lefty radical organization. It’s basically cops and lawyers and people who have expertise conducting investigations. And they were going to do it, along with the F.B.I. I had some level of at least hope that this would be legit.

But within a very short period of time, you’ve got heads of agencies saying the shooter was acting purely in self-defense. You have Kristi Noem saying Renee Good was a domestic terrorist. And then you have the F.B.I. boxing out the B.C.A. from important pieces of evidence. So, very quickly, it became apparent that the federal government had no interest whatsoever in conducting a full and fair investigation of the facts.

Do you think ICE is reformable, or does this village need to be burned down and rebuilt from scratch?

You can’t reform it under this leadership. You can’t change it to the extent it needs to be changed with a Trump administration, where they’re practically cheering for this horrible conduct to take place. On the Democratic side, I think we’re talking [past] each other on this one. If the argument is that you need a top-to-bottom transformation in the way that ICE operates, the answer is yes. If you’re saying we need to get out all of these horrible actors who have treated people unconstitutionally, and with complete lack of human dignity, I’m 100 percent on board. If you’re saying we need to change out the leadership, change the structure, absolutely. I’ve heard an interesting argument that ICE should be moved from the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Justice—I think there’s some merit to that.

But if the argument is that we should have immigration laws on the books and not have any immigration enforcement whatsoever, I disagree. The quickest way that you erode trust in government is to pass laws that you’re not going to enforce. I’ve been through a similar dynamic before, with Defund the Police. There were 2,000 people that came to my home and demanded that I defund the police, and I said no. We had a lot of people who were purporting to speak for communities of color, and then you talk to communities of color, and they are not saying the same thing.

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10006