Analysis
Donald Trump has signalled he will scale down the contentious deportation operation in Minnesota. (Reuters: Jonathan Ernst)
Donald Trump's presidency is increasingly being described as at a turning point that compels the Congress to take action to restrain him.
The political mishandling of an escalating ICE crisis in Minneapolis — on top of a series of foreign policy threats and reversals — resulted in a poll by The Economist/YouGov finding an extraordinary 71 per cent of Americans reporting they felt like the country is "out of control".
More than 60 per cent say the country is on the wrong track, and 58 per cent are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working.
And just in case you think this might simply reflect one side of politics in an increasingly bitterly divided America, 50 per cent of those saying they felt things were out of control identified themselves as conservatives.
What is more extraordinary is that these findings were compiled between January 16 and January 19 — before the killing of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Snap polling taken since Pretti's killing shows public opinion only turning further against the Trump administration's tactics.
Outrage over the shooting death of a Minnesota protester
The Trump administration initially adopted a bellicose approach to Pretti's shooting, which saw Trump and his officials asserting the nurse had been shot in self-defence.
That's despite multiple videos challenging that account.
But on Monday, Trump had to blink in the face of outrage across the country.
The shock of events in Minneapolis has brought to a head the growing crisis over a presidency that has sent federal border protection agents into Democratic states, acting as Trump's paramilitary operatives, besieging cities governed by political opponents at home, and an overreach of imperialistic foreign policy forced into retreat over Greenland.
The latter has had lasting damage to relationships with Europe and many other longstanding allies.
If sufficient damage had not been done over Greenland, Trump then suggested in a television interview that NATO allies had stayed back from the frontline in Afghanistan.
It was a claim that sparked white-hot outrage in the United Kingdom and other NATO and allied countries.
Not only has Trump been forced to send a special envoy to Minneapolis, concede to the city's mayor that things could not continue as they were, and reportedly see the removal of Border "Commander at Large" Greg Bovino from the city, but the state of Minnesota has taken the federal administration to court seeking the forcible removal of ICE agents from the state.
America's 'inflection point'
If there was one policy area that was at the centre of Trump's win in 2024, it was immigration.
It has now become mired in controversy, and even muddied by the disquiet of the gun lobby over the Trump administration's arguments suggesting that Pretti had been carrying a gun — for which he was licensed — and that this was a reason for him being shot dead.
Alex Pretti was shot by a federal officer in Minneapolis on Saturday, local time. (Supplied via AP Photo: Michael Pretti)
Tim Waltz, the governor of Minnesota (and Kamala Harris's vice-presidential running mate in last year's presidential election) told voters:
"You know what you saw, and then you heard the most powerful people in the world … narrate to you what you were looking at, that this was a domestic terrorist," Walz told a press conference.
He noted federal agents closed the crime scene, "sweeping away the evidence".
Someone needs to be held accountable for the shooting, he added, and renewed calls for Trump to get ICE agents out of Minneapolis.
"This is an inflection point, America," he said.
"If we cannot all agree that the smearing of an American citizen and besmirching everything they stood for and asking us not to believe what we saw, I don't know what else to tell you."
The US faces another possible Congressional shutdown as the Democrats — apparently galvanised into action by the shooting — say they will not pass legislation that would inject another $US10 billion into the ICE network.
The questionable legal issues around Pretti's death, as in the Goode case — the withholding of evidence from state officials and police — as well as attempts to launch investigations into both the Democrat State Governor Tim Walz and city mayor, now all seem like dangerous overreach.
Losing control of the media cycle
Beyond the Pretti murder, Trump is also facing potential threats to his use of tariffs from a Supreme Court ruling and pushback from financial markets and the world's central bankers over his attempts to prosecute US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.
The US Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell. (Reuters: Carlos Barria)
A presidency that has worked heavily on a political strategy of "flooding the zone" with an ever-accelerating dump of controversies and sound grabs, now appears to have lost control of the media cycle.
Media outlets from The New York Times to USA Today and even Fox News have expressed their outrage at Pretti's murder.
And this has occurred as Americans — as well as the international community — have been reeling from Trump's erratic foreign policy moves over Greenland last week, and his rambling 80-minute speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
That speech prompted national leaders of traditional US allies to signal a shift away from America and into a new world of middle power blocs.
And financial markets sent a shot across the president's bows, slicing over 2 per cent of the S&P500, before he reversed his position.
The Davos speech — and Trump's continually shifting positions — have also fed into a narrative about his mental acuity amid his mix-ups of Greenland and Iceland, and vision of him repeatedly falling asleep in meetings.
Even if the White House is able to restore some sense of equilibrium around the immediate domestic and international crises, the bellicose agenda underlying both continues to frame the approach of the 47th presidency.
For example, a new US national defence strategy, released late in the night over the weekend, further downgraded the apparent value of alliances to Washington, with direct implications for Australia.
"In the Indo-Pacific, where our allies share our desire for a free and open regional order, allies and partners' contributions will be vital to deterring and balancing China", the strategy said.
"In Europe and other theatres, allies will take the lead against threats that are less severe for us but more so for them, with critical but more limited support from the United States."
Troop controversy stirs different responses
The Albanese government has been doing a quiet crab walk away from the Trump administration since US inauguration day last January, even as it has remained staunchly committed to the AUKUS defence alliance.
While some in the government are increasingly alarmed about the unravelling of logic and coherence in Trump's foreign policy positions, it appears determined — as it did before the successful meeting with the US president in Washington in October — to fly as much under the radar as possible.
On Sunday, Albanese continued to emphasise "the AUKUS relationship is central to our relationship with the United States".
Anthony Albanese was asked about Trump's comments about NATO troops on Sunday. (ABC News: David Sciasci)
On the weekend, the prime minister refrained from repeating British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's criticism of Trump's assertion that NATO troops had stayed back from the frontline in Afghanistan.
"They'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and they did," Trump told Fox News.
"They stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines."
Trump's comments provoked outrage in Britain — with everyone from the King and Prince Harry to Rod Stewart intervening to seek an apology.
Things were no better among all the other NATO countries that had contributed to the campaigns in Afghanistan, including Denmark, which suffered a higher per capita toll in the conflict than the United States.
Australian troops, of course, also served in Afghanistan.
Albanese was asked for his response to the president's comments on Sunday and replied:
"They're not acceptable and I note that President Trump has made a new statement overnight as well, in which he's acknowledged the contribution," he said.
(In fact, that statement only referred to British troops and he did not apologise).
The prime minister said the families of the 47 Australians killed in Afghanistan "will be hurting by these comments".
"They deserve our absolute respect, our admiration, the bravery that was shown by 40,000 Australians who served in Afghanistan.
"They were certainly on the frontlines in order to, along with our other allies, to defend democracy and freedom and to defend our national interests. They deserve our respect."
(Presumably, they also deserve the US president's respect).
Pressed to endorse Starmer's response that Trump's comments were "insulting" and "appalling" and required an apology, Albanese declined, simply saying the comments "certainly [were]" those things but would not repeat them.
He repeated that the US president's subsequent comments "indicate a very different position".
Is Trump's control starting to fracture?
For many of the rich and powerful assembled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, watching a full 80-minute ramble from Trump would have been a new and shocking experience.
His speech last Wednesday seems to have made a profound impression, on top of his various erratic policy positions on Greenland, the NATO alliance, Iran and his proposed Board of Peace.
Donald Trump had been insisting Greenland would need to belong to the United States. (Reuters: Marko Djurica)
Trump promised less foreign policy interventions and a focus on the domestic agenda, but has appeared to use repeated foreign policy adventures to distract from the Epstein files and from an economy that has not delivered the falling prices and greater growth he promised.
The plummeting poll ratings suggest the American public's tolerance for these adventures may now be worn out, while alarm about the actions of ICE agents has grown into outrage.
Beyond the vision of masked agents shooting bystanders is the dystopian experience of watching Trump and senior figures in his administration telling the public that they are not seeing what they have just seen.
"The Trump Administration is lying to our faces," The New York Times opined on Sunday. "Congress must act.
"Separate analyses by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, CBS News and other organisations all concluded that the videos contradict the Trump administration's description of the killing," it said.
"The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. [Homeland Security secretary Kristi] Noem and [Border Control 'commander at large' Greg] are lying in defiance of obvious truths.
"They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power."
The Washington Post editorialised that "the unjust killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse in Minneapolis, marks a turning point in President Donald Trump's second term".
"His mass deportation campaign has been a moral and political failure, leaving American citizens feeling outraged and unsafe," it said.
USA Today reported that "already the repercussions are threatening a fragile agreement for the Senate to approve a bipartisan spending package that happens to include $US10 billion for ICE".
Trump has always been a master of the story.
The problem is there are now too many threads of that story running amok for anyone to easily control, let alone the real-world chaos they represent.
Already this month, there have been attempts by Congress to rein in his actions in Venezuela and Iran.
As the mid-term elections get ever closer, and Republican representatives and senators focus on the polls and their own futures, the question will be whether Trump's final area of control — over his party — will start to fracture.
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