I Wake Up Angry

Like so many others in America today, I’ve been waking up angry most mornings lately. That’s not healthy, and I don’t want it. But I don’t think any of us are wired to bear the burden of knowledge of all the things that are happening around us. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you might just stop reading now, because not much of what I say is likely to resonate with you. But if you’ve been paying attention to anything the Trump administration has done and is doing—where would I even begin to summarize? Accepting a new Air Force One from Qatar in an obvious quid pro quo; issuing a slew of unjustifiable pardons to (his fellow) dangerous felons; imposing tariffs that all but slammed the brakes on the Biden administration’s economic recovery trajectory; attempting to reclassify thousands of civil servants as loyalists (effectively dismantling the independence of federal agencies); alienating our allies while aligning himself with dictators; causing massive labor shortages through mass deportation; grifting; gaslighting the American people—and that’s just the recent stuff.

Not to mention firing FBI Director James Comey and attempting to influence the Mueller investigation; trying to overturn the 2020 election; inciting the January 6th insurrection through lies and debunked conspiracy theories; or—lest we forget—his sexual abuse of women and (allegedly) children and his refusal to release the Epstein files. Honestly, his lies about the number of people who attended his first inauguration ceremony should have been enough to raise concerns that we might have a compulsive liar in office. It turns out that someone willing to lie about something so petty and easily falsifiable was willing to lie about almost anything after all.

But, of course, the reason I’ve been waking up angry lately is because of what’s happening in Minneapolis right now. Federal immigration enforcement has deployed thousands of agents to the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area as part of an operation known as Operation Metro Surge, a large “immigration enforcement initiative” marked by secrecy, aggressive tactics, masked neighborhood patrols, and mass arrests. During this deployment, two U.S. citizens were murdered by federal agents: Renée Nicole Good, 37, who was shot by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026, as she was driving away during an enforcement encounter; and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, who was killed on January 24, 2026, after federal agents pepper-sprayed and subdued him during a street confrontation, then shot him multiple times after he was already on the ground and restrained. We have eyewitness accounts and video evidence proving these were murders. But, of course, the same guy who lied about inauguration attendance has his cronies lying for him now as well. We’ve all seen the video with our own eyes, and people are still defending the actions of Trump’s forces.

I have to recognize my own white privilege here—and my white fragility. 

My outrage, and the encouraging outrage of so many others across the country, raises an important question: would I be so outraged if Renée Good and Alex Pretti weren’t white? What if they didn’t look so much like friends of mine? From all I’ve heard about them, they very well could have been. And why am I just now waking up angry? Hasn’t this been happening for a long time to people of color and immigrant communities? Shouldn't I have been waking up angry since the Reagan administration? 

Communities of color have been experiencing oppression and violence from law enforcement for a long time, and yes, the government has lied about it plenty of times before. They have also been far more resilient than I have. This is my white fragility. I confess that.

I do remember standing up against Barack Obama’s immigration policies in 2006 and 2007. I remember signing petitions and joining protests to protect immigrants back then. I remember the “new sanctuary movement” and the lengths to which churches in Los Angeles and San Diego went to protect immigrants from INS deportations and family separation. I remember, in particular, when law enforcement was unleashed on a community garden in Los Angeles and friends of mine joined a sit-in to protect the people who had plots there—being arrested in their place to protect them from deportation. I remember being outraged at the tactics used by law enforcement back then. I remember speaking about Barack Obama’s acquiescence to cruelty in enforcing policies he had signed off on.

But even acknowledging the cruelty of Obama’s deportation policies, I must say that those concerns pale in comparison to what’s happening now. They are not the same.

It now seems almost silly to describe Obama’s policies as “cruelty,” because while they were cruel indeed, cruelty was not the point of deportation policy in the pre-Trump era. Now, cruelty is the point. Part of the reason ICE agents are so poorly trained and so aggressively protected by their government overlords is so they can instill fear and predictable unpredictability.

One pastor (a U.S. citizen, in case that matters to you) who was detained by ICE reported that as he was being tossed into an unmarked van by Trump’s forces, he was asked, “Are you afraid yet?” After being left alone in the van for some time, another agent returned—this one carrying an assault rifle—and asked again, “Are you afraid yet?”

The cruelty is the point.
The fear is the goal.

It has been reported that there are more federal agents in the Twin Cities than there are local law-enforcement officers. It has also been reported that ICE has more funding than any military power in the world other than China and the United States. What do we expect them to do with all that funding once they discover there aren’t nearly as many people to deport as they promised their voters? What do we think they’ll do once they’re done enforcing “illegal” immigration? Why should anyone expect them to stop there, when the people in charge—including J.D. Vance, Stephen Miller, and Pete Hegseth—have made it clear that immigration, not just illegal immigration, is their concern? Their priority is white hegemony.

This is white supremacy in action.

But what angers me more than the fact that this is happening at all is that this is what Americans voted for. So many people voted for this. And if they didn’t know this is what they were voting for, they weren’t paying attention. Trump promised mass deportations. He promised more deportations than there are undocumented immigrants, and far more than there are criminal immigrants. He ran on that. So it is no lie to say he was elected with a mandate for cruelty. That part isn’t a lie. And now so many people are pleading innocence when they should be apologizing—if they truly disagree with the policy of murdering protesters in the street. Trump promised to use violence against protesters before he was elected. So even those who claim they voted for him because they thought he’d “fix the economy” (the economy he broke during his first chance in the White House, the economy that Biden—faults and all—was stabilizing) either knew, or chose not to know, that it would come with exactly this: this racism, this violence, this lawless authoritarianism.

And what angers me most, I think, is that I feel powerless.

That powerlessness comes with the territory of modernity. Once we evacuate transcendence, once we marginalize the idea that there is a God who acts, the only actors left are us—and what can we do? What can we do when the problems are this large and this self-inflicted? What can I do? I am a pastor—called to love and be a pastor to not only those who are agree with me and angry too, but also those who defend, celebrate, or remain silent about the violence. I have a global responsibility—a prophetic one—to speak truth to power, no matter whom it angers. But I also have another responsibility, one I have always tried to hold higher: a local, pastoral responsibility.

I’ve long lived in the tension between my local and global callings—between being a pastor to the people right in front of me, whether they are “leftist lunatics” like me or radical MAGA Republicans, and my responsibility to speak to the larger injustices around us, to defend the powerless even when it risks alienating those nearest to me. This tension has always been difficult, but right now it feels like torture. Yes—again—my white fragility. Poor me.

So you see why I wake up angry.

But now what? What can I do? I have long been a student of Jürgen Moltmann, who taught that we cannot live without hope, and that hope does not emerge from optimism but from hopelessness—the very ground on which the cross of Christ stands. So I look with hope not so much for the power to change the world (that’s God’s work—and She had better get on it!), but to those who bear in their bodies the same hope and courage that took Jesus to the cross for us. I look with hope to those placing their bodies between the oppressed and the oppressor. And I pray that God gives me that same hope and courage.

I am praying—in my hope and in my anger—that God will act, and that God will show me when to be pastoral and when to be prophetic. I am praying for all who long for justice, equity, diversity, and compassion to rule the day. I am praying the prayer Jesus taught us to pray:

Father in heaven, let your name be the name above every name. Bring your reign to bear upon this broken world and upon the lives of those who are being trampled. Let your good and perfect will be done here and now, just as it is in the world that is to come. Give everyone what they need, and let no one starve so that someone else can have more than enough. Forgive us, God, for our complicity and participation in breaking the world you love. Make us gracious and forgiving, so that even the oppressors may be liberated from their oppressive ways. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory belong to you—yours alone—forever. Amen.