What's Going On?
Our region dug out from the massive winter storm that affected more than 235 million people in nearly 40 states. Close to one million were without power. Air and ground transportation were all disrupted.
Here in New York City, the extreme cold was being probed as the potential cause of death of six people.
Schools are closed with New York City elementary schools on remote learning.
Overnight, Al Jazeera reported Israel would allow a limited reopening of Gaza's Rafah crossing with Egypt when the operation to locate the body of the last remaining Israeli captive in the beleaguered territory is finished. Word of the limited opening came as Palestinians mourned the death of three additional people killed in the territory during the so-called Trump ceasefire in October. Well over 400 civilians have been killed since the October 10 ceasefire started.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to struggle for the basics in a region where international aid experts estimate that over 90 percent of the civilian infrastructure amidst what the International Red Cross describe as catastrophic winter conditions.
On Friday, 50,000 people marched in Minneapolis as part of a general strike to protest ICE's violent escalation.
The next day the murder by the US Border Patrol in Minneapolis of 37 year old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a Veterans Administration ICU nurse, sparked international outrage. Pretti, a member of the American Federation of Government Employees, was coming to the aid of a woman being pushed to the ground by the Border Patrol. Pretti was a licensed gun owner and had a permit to carry his gun which multiple videos show remained holstered until he was tackled and swarmed by federal agents who took his gun and shot Pretti multiple times.
Initial claims by DHS that Pretti had threatened the federal agents with his handgun were debunked by multiple videos that show the victim was holding his phone.
Pretti's broad daylight murder comes just weeks after the murder by federal agents of 37 year-old Renee Good, a mother of three, who supported community efforts to keep the Twin Cities immigrants safe.
The Trump administration is obstructing state and local law enforcement from investigating the murders and in both cases actually left the scene leaving local police to deal with the fallout.
The Trump junta surged 3,000 ICE and Custom and Border Patrol into the Minneapolis area, which only has about 1,100 local police that went through retraining after the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd.
We spoke with Sen. Cory Booker (NJ-D) about why he's refusing to sign off on a pending budget bill to fund ICE, an agency he says is lawless and sparking a Constitutional crisis.
We covered this extraordinary turn of events with our current events panel Yale Global Justice Fellow and attorney Jim Henry and labor historian Dr. Joe Wilson.
In our B Block, we got a report from Waterspirit's Rachel Dawn Davis on how local community activists helped stop a project in Holmdel that threatened the primary drinking water source for 350,000 residents in Monmouth County, New Jersey.
In our second hour we visited with NY State Senator Cordell Cleare, who represents the 30th District.
We closed out with an update on the effort to keep an ICE detention facility out of Roxbury, New Jersey with William Angus.