Mark Shanahan, University of Surrey

Federal immigration agents in the city of Minneapolis are accused of having wrestled a 37-year-old intensive care nurse called Alex Pretti to the ground and then shooting him dead. The killing took place just over a mile from where another American citizen, Renee Good, was allegedly fatally shot by federal agents weeks earlier.

The latest incident prompted angry protests from people in Minneapolis who want the immigration enforcement operation in their city to end. We spoke to Mark Shanahan, an associate professor of political engagement at the University of Surrey, to address several key issues.

Why has sending in federal immigration agents caused such trouble in Minnesota?

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, the national guard has been deployed to several US cities to quell what have generally been Donald Trump-inflated crises, with illegal migration among the most prominent. However, in December, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump did not have authority for such deployments.

So, since then we have seen federal agents with US Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement taking the battle largely to minorities in cities with Democratic party leadership as part of the president’s violent attack on illegal immigration, a situation he has described as “the greatest invasion in history”.

Minneapolis is a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-led state. The governor is Tim Walz who ran for vice-president on the Kamala Harris ticket against Trump in the 2024 election. Walz has faced allegations, which he denies, of overlooking alleged widespread fraud in the financing of public safety net programmes, supposedly involving segments of the Somali-American community.

While most of these allegations have been refuted, they gave Trump reason to send in federal agents. This has ramped up tensions between state officials and the administration, causing brutal and unnecessary deaths in the community and pitting ordinary Minnesotans against federal government officials.

How does the situation in Minnesota reflect the second amendment right to bear arms?

It’s a reversal of virtually all of the second amendment debates that have been seen in recent years. The second amendment was introduced to the US constitution in 1791 through the Bill of Rights due to a deep mistrust of centralised military power and a desire to ensure that the newly formed federal government could not disarm the populace.

The founding fathers envisaged a “natural right of resistance and self-preservation”. Trump’s actions in sending in armed federal agents to conduct enforcement operations in various states appear to fulfil the founding fathers’ concerns.

The agents are trampling all over not only citizens’ second amendment right to bear arms (officials seemingly connected Pretti’s killing to him carrying a weapon) but also their first amendment right to freedom of assembly.

How have the fatal shootings affected Trump’s popularity?

Trump’s popularity is on the decline. His failure to deliver on the economic promises outlined in his election campaign, scatter-gun approach to international relations and the widening gulf between rhetoric and achievement have all damaged his standing in the polls.

In a CNN poll published on January 16, almost six in ten respondents described Trump’s first year back in office as a failure with the president focused on the wrong priorities.

And what support he does have is ebbing rapidly as federal immigration agents appear out of control, targeting many more documented citizens than illegal migrants, spreading fear and operating as if they are above the law.

With what looks like high levels of gaslighting coming from Homeland Security officials, voters are turning against the increasing autocracy of this administration, believing in the evidence widespread across the media rather than highly contentious statements from Trump’s lieutenants.

Is it unusual for former presidents to speak out the way Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have?

It certainly is. There is a longstanding tradition in the US of, and implicit agreement among, former presidents to avoid public criticism of the incumbent. Such reticence to speak is generally a sign of respect for the office and an acknowledgement of the unique and difficult challenges of the presidency.

But Trump 2.0 is no normal presidency. The 47th president’s style is both combative and retributive, and there seems to be an increasing feeling of it being out of step with the desires and best interest of the country he leads.

Trump’s march to autocracy creates crises where he regards himself as the hero the country needs to overcome its ills. His predecessors take a different view.

Whether it’s Obama calling out the assault on core American values or Clinton’s condemnation of the “horrible scenes” in Minneapolis as “unacceptable” and avoidable, Democrat past presidents have not held back. Notably, the only living previous Republican president, George W. Bush, has so far kept his own counsel.

What can be done to prevent further violence?

Most simply, Trump could end the deployment of federal immigration agents to Minneapolis and refrain from similar actions in the future. He is clearly looking for an off-ramp and sending his “border czar”, Tom Homan, to Minneapolis to direct operations could be the first step to de-escalation. But Trump abhors being called out as wrong and, at least beyond Minneapolis, is far more likely to double down on the immigration enforcement activities.

Realistically, the most likely de-escalator is Congress showing some teeth and refusing to fund further federal immigration enforcement activity. Democrats could force another government shutdown over the issue, and need just a handful of Republicans to flip in order to refuse to sanction a 2026 budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

At a public level, the greater the scrutiny of immigration enforcement agencies, the closer the fact-checking of official statements and the more cohesive the opposition to Trump’s deportation policy, the greater the chance of effectively opposing it.

It is midterm year – and the greater the public pressure, the more likely Republican legislators are to cleave away from the Trump line. While he currently controls the levers of power, that control remains fragile. Even Trump may soon realise that overt, violent, coercive autocracy is not a vote winner.

Mark Shanahan, Associate Professor of Political Engagement, University of Surrey

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Francesco Grillo, Bocconi University

Donald Trump’s newly launched “Board of Peace” presents itself as a bold attempt to break with what its founders describe as decades of failed international diplomacy. Its charter opens with a declaration that few would openly dispute: “Durable peace requires pragmatic judgment, common-sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed.”

It is true that the world urgently needs to overcome decades of inertia to reform its international organisations. It is true that new institutions are needed to solve global problems rather than merely managing never-ending crises.

This is perhaps why Donald Trump decided to hold the signing ceremony for his new board on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Here, more than any other place, is where results-oriented global business leaders supposedly gather. At the signing of the charter, a jubilant Trump was among 20 heads of state and prime ministers (of the 60 who had been invited).

The “most prestigious board ever formed” so far includes the presidents of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the prime ministers of Mongolia, Armenia and Pakistan. Rightly, representatives of the governments more directly involved in the “Gaza peace plan” are also present, including Israel, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.

From south-east Asia we have Indonesia and Vietnam and from South America, President Javier Milei from Argentina. Hungary, Bulgaria and Kosovo are the only European countries to join so far.

The board’s charter goes on to set out a “partnership” that would be even less accountable than the old United Nations security council and even less democratic than any publicly listed company whose CEO is attending Davos.

It has potential as an instrument for building peace in Gaza, but risks failure if its scope becomes too diluted. And Davos itself risks losing credibility as a place where people “make sense of global challenges and move the world forward together”, if the search for a new world order becomes the celebration of one single man.

I have been to Davos several times. It’s certainly not one of the most prestigious ski resorts of the Swiss Alps. And this year, more than ever, I have felt increasingly sceptical about its capacity as a forum for generating the ideas that the world desperately needs to make sense of those global challenges.

Out of about 3,000 delegates, less than one out of ten seems to be under 30, to my eye. The gender balance is not good either. There are lots of Americans and most pay expensive attendance fees. It’s a world in which power lines are not clearly drawn unless you are in the know.

The Board of Peace is far more transparent when it comes to asserting where the power lies. Trump is expressly nominated by the charter as the chairman for life. He is the only one who can invite states to become members – and revoke their membership. He alone nominates his successor. He holds a veto over any decision.

At the security council, this is a power held by the five nations that won the second world war. Trump may continue to serve even if he is no longer president of the US. Nobody may, of course, seek to dismiss the chairman, although the charter graciously acknowledges that a removal may happen in case of “incapacity” of the supreme leader, if the other members of the board agree unanimously.

This is more power than most modern dictators can claim. Putin has to win elections, and Xi Jinping is nominated by a party. It is more power than even Roman emperors, who were formally designated by the senate (and in reality chosen by the army). Trump has proposed a document that hands him powers of which Augustus himself could not even dream.

What is striking is that most EU member states are “considering” the invitation to join. Some are even said to be trying to work out how they would navigate conflicts such a move would present with their own national constitutions or with the EU treaties (it should be obvious to any student of law that there is no such possibility for a self-declared liberal democracy).

It would be catastrophic if they did. They would be agreeing that an international organisation based on the unaccountable leadership of one single individual could be a starting point for constructing a new world order.

Trump’s advisers are right when they write in the charter that “too often the approaches to most of the global problems foster perpetual dependency, and institutionalise crisis rather than leading people beyond it”. We need to make sure that international organisations are rewarded according to their ability to solve problems and not just manage them endlessly. Yet this requires more accountability and participation – not less. We need proposals that are creative but serious.

I am sure that many have doubts about the World Economic Forum becoming the stage for the never-ending show of the producer of The Apprentice.

Francesco Grillo, Academic Fellow, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ali Mamouri, Deakin University

Since the outbreak of the current wave of protests in Iran, two sharply competing narratives have emerged to explain what is unfolding in the streets.

For the ruling establishment, the unrest is portrayed as a foreign-engineered plot. They argue it is an externally-driven attempt to destabilise the state through manipulation, infiltration, and psychological operations.

For the opposition, the same events are framed as a nationwide uprising rooted in long-standing grievances. They argue the protests signal a rupture between society and the political system.

How the “story” of a conflict is told is a key component in warfare. The Iran protests are offering two very different stories.

Narrative crafting as psychological warfare

In the digital age, psychological warfare has moved beyond conventional propaganda into the realm of what academics Ihsan Yilmaz and Shahram Akbarzadeh call Strategic Digital Information Operations (SDIOs).

Psychological operations function as central instruments of power, designed not only to suppress dissent but reshape how individuals perceive reality, legitimacy, and political possibility. Their objective is cognitive and emotional:

• to induce fear, uncertainty, and helplessness
• to discredit opponents
• to construct a sense of inevitability around a certain political scenario.

These techniques are employed not only by states, but increasingly by non-state actors as well.

Social media platforms have become the primary theatres of this psychological struggle. Hashtags, memes, manipulated images, and coordinated commenting – often amplified by automated accounts – are used to frame events, assign blame, and shape emotional responses at scale.

Crucially, audiences are not passive recipients of these narratives. Individuals sympathetic to a particular framing actively reproduce, reinforce, and police it within digital echo chambers. In this way, confirmation bias flourishes and alternative interpretations are dismissed or attacked.

Because of this, narrative control is not a secondary dimension of conflict but a central battleground. How an uprising is framed can shape its trajectory. It can determine whether it remains peaceful or turns violent, and whether domestic repression or foreign intervention comes to be seen as justified or inevitable.

The Iranian regime’s narrative

The Iranian regime has consistently framed the current uprising as a foreign-engineered plot, orchestrated by Israel, the United States and allied intelligence services. In this narrative, the protests are not an expression of domestic grievance but a continuation of Israel’s recent confrontation with Iran. This, it argues, is part of a broader campaign to overthrow the regime and turn the country into chaos.

Two weeks after the protests began, the state organised large pro-regime demonstrations. Shortly afterward, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared these rallies had “thwarted the plan of foreign enemies that was meant to be carried out by domestic mercenaries”.

The message was clear: dissent was not only illegitimate but treasonous. Those participating in it were portrayed as instruments of external powers rather than citizens with political demands.

Demonising dissent serves a dual purpose. It is not only a method of silencing opposition, but also a tool for engineering perception and shaping emotional responses.

By portraying protesters as foreign agents, the regime seeks to manufacture compliance, discourage wavering supporters, and project an image of widespread popularity. The objective is not simply to punish critics, but to signal that public dissent will carry heavy costs.

To reinforce this narrative, pro-regime social media accounts have circulated content that blends ideological framing with selective factual material. Analyses arguing that events in Iran follow a familiar “regime change playbook” have been widely shared, as have Israeli statements suggesting intelligence operations inside Iran. Cherry-picking expert commentary or isolated data points to justify repression is a common feature of this approach.

The timing and amplification of such content are also significant. Social media networks are deployed via “algorithmic manipulation” to make the regime’s framing go viral and marginalise counter views.

As this digital campaign unfolds, it is reinforced by more traditional forms of control. Internet restrictions and shutdowns limit access to alternative sources of information. This allows state media to dominate communications and thwart challenges to the official narrative.

In this environment, the regime’s story functions not merely as propaganda, but as a strategic instrument. It aims to redefine the uprising, delegitimise dissent, and preserve authority by controlling how events are understood.

The opposition narrative

The opposition is divided, but two main groups have appeared active in framing the opposition narrative: those who support an Iranian monarchy, and dissenting armed group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). Despite their differences, the two have contributed to the same story.

They have crafted a persuasive narrative, framing the uprising as a moral emergency requiring external intervention, particularly by the United States and Israel. This narrative does not represent all opposition voices, but it has gained visibility through social media, exile media outlets, and activist networks. Its core objective is to bring international attention to the conflict and put the case for, then bring about, regime change in Iran.

One central technique has been the legitimisation and encouragement of violence. Calls for armed protest and direct confrontation with security forces mark a clear shift away from demand-based, civilian mobilisation toward a violent uprising.

A high number of state forces casualties – reportedly more than 114 by January 11 – is an example of the effectiveness of this technique. This escalation is often justified as necessary to “keep the movement alive” and generate a level of bloodshed that would compel international intervention.

According to external conflict-monitoring assessments, clashes between armed protesters and state forces have in fact resulted in significant casualties on both sides.

A second technique involves the strategic inflation of casualty figures. Opposition platforms have claimed the death toll to be far higher than figures cited by independent estimates.

Such exaggeration serves a clear psychological and political purpose. It is intended to shock and sway international opinion, frame the situation as genocidal or exceptional, and increase pressure on foreign governments to act militarily.

A third element has been the use of intimidation and rhetorical coercion. In some high-profile media appearances, opposition figures have openly threatened pro-regime commentators, warning of retribution once power changes hands.

This language serves multiple functions. It seeks to silence alternative viewpoints, project confidence and inevitability, and present the situation as one of good versus evil. At the same time, such rhetoric risks alienating undecided audiences and reinforcing regime claims the uprising will lead to chaos or revenge politics.

These practices reveal how parts of the opposition have also embraced narrative warfare as a strategic tool. This narrative is used to amplify violence, inflate harm, and suppress competing interpretations. It aims to redefine the uprising not merely as a domestic revolt, but as a humanitarian and security crisis that demands foreign intervention.

In doing so, it mirrors the regime’s own effort to weaponise storytelling in a conflict where perception is as consequential as power.

In different ways, both narratives ultimately sideline the protesters themselves. They reduce a diverse, grassroots movement into an instrument of power struggle, either to legitimise repression at home or justify intervention from abroad.

Ali Mamouri, Research Fellow, Middle East Studies, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.