There’s a lot of noise right now telling us things are only getting worse in USA. Robert Reich’s latest post cuts through that with something rarer and more useful: grounded optimism. Writing from Minnesota, Reich describes what he sees as America’s tipping point. He doesn’t flinch from the dangers. Democratic norms are under pressure and state power is being tested in ways that should alarm anyone paying attention. But alongside that, he notices something else taking shape on the ground.

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The Trump regime never apologises. It never admits error. It simply scuttles sideways, trailing spin like ink from a startled squid.

On Saturday, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, on a Minneapolis street. Within hours, the administration’s messaging machine roared to life. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labelled him a “domestic terrorist.” Officials claimed he brandished a gun at agents. The implication was clear: he deserved what he got.

Then the eyewitness video emerged. It told a different story.

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For years, the politics of US immigration enforcement rested on an implicit bargain: this is about them, not us. The raids, the detention centres, the armed agents: these were tools pointed at a specific population. If you were a citizen, if you were white, if you were armed and law-abiding, you weren’t affected.

Minneapolis has shattered that bargain in the space of three weeks.

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From twelve thousand kilometres away, I’m watching the United States tear up its founding document in real time.

The country is in a Cold Civil War. It’s fought on two fronts: online, where narratives are deployed within minutes of a killing to pre-empt sympathy for the dead; and on the streets, where federal agents operate as an occupying force in American cities.

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“They stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”

That’s what Trump said at Davos about America’s NATO and NATO-aligned allies in Afghanistan. Two decades of sacrifice dismissed with a casual lie.

Here’s what “a little back” looks like:

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