The public execution of Alex Pretti by federal agents on a Minneapolis street is a watershed moment.

I don't say that because it is unprecedented in either recent or American history—Pretti is at least the seventh person killed by federal agents since Trump returned to power one year ago.¹ But this killing is different. The victim was, by all accounts, a beloved veterans’ intensive-care nurse. The shooting itself, captured on video, was unprovoked—it came while Pretti was lying prone and unarmed, and continued after he had been mortally wounded. Those factors, and the characteristic shamelessness with which Trump officials are lying about it, have shaken something loose in a sclerotic national debate.

Republican senators and the National Rifle Association are breaking with the administration to call for a full investigation into the killing. Terminally accommodationist Democrats are refusing to fund not only ICE but the entire Department of Homeland Security, even if it means another government shutdown. Even right-wing pro-gun influencers aren’t buying the Trump line. This is being driven from below: Regular people, from NFL meme accounts to fitness posters to duck painting enthusiasts, are speaking out against the shooting in particular and the oppressive federal crackdown in general. It is finally dawning on people who never asked before that ICE and CBP’s primary mission is no longer immigration enforcement but rather stifling dissent.

We need to abolish ICE and, frankly, the entire Department of Homeland Security — a bad idea from the start whose legitimate functions would be better served by assigning its mishmash of sub-agencies (why do disaster response, airport security, the Coast Guard, bioweapons defense, and immigration services need to be in a single aggressively postured department?) to their original homes.

But that isn’t going nearly far enough. Restructuring federal agencies isn’t sufficient when the heads of all the other departments are weaponizing themselves against the people as well. There are plenty of agencies that can step in as militarized oppression if ICE is gone. (To wit, initial reports are that Pretti was shot to death not by ICE but by agents of Customs and Border Protection). If you get rid of DHS, you’re still left with a Department of Defense whose war-crimes-enthusiast secretary responded to Pretti’s murder by spiking the football. Impeach Kristi Noem, yes. But Hegseth would have no qualms about finishing the exploding network of detention centers — centers that Andrea Pitzer rightly notes meet the historical definition of concentration camps.

No, if you want to prevent more killings like those of Alex Pretti, Renee Good, and Silverio Villegas González, if you want to stop the unraveling of our society and prevent the descent into full authoritarian takeover and/or civil war, there’s only one option. Donald Trump must be forced to resign.

I know it sounds far-fetched, but that’s just because enough people aren’t talking about it yet. Think about it: Twice in a month, the president of the United States has lied profligately about the killing of U.S. citizens by his own federal agents. Trump claimed, falsely, that Good “viciously ran … over” ICE agent Jonathan Ross, that it was “hard to believe he is alive,” and that he was “recovering in the hospital,” none of which was true. Immediately after the murder of Pretti, Trump went to Truth Social again, calling the victim “the gunman” and saying “that ICE had to protect themselves — Not an easy thing to do!”

If the people of Minnesota were not so diligent about filming every interaction with ICE and CBP they come across, those lies may have been allowed to stand. So what about the things he claims that we do not have independent video or journalistic evidence for? If he’ll lie about the murder of American citizens on American soil, he’ll lie about anything. You can shrug it off as the ramblings of a nearly 80-year-old man feeding on a poisoned media diet, but that isn’t a safe situation for a country to be in either. Everyone in power should be asked about this. Not just procedural questions about investigations or where they stand on the president’s lies. But the core question: When will he resign?

Mr. Secretary, the president flew to Europe to threaten our NATO allies, then seemed to confuse Denmark with Norway and kept calling Greenland “Iceland.” When will he resign?

Mr. Majority Leader, the president invaded Venezuela after lying to Congress about his plans and is now hiding Venezuelan oil money in an opaque bank account in Qatar. When will he resign?

Mr. Speaker, the president is profiting from massive crypto scams in the Oval Office to the tune of over $800 million. He is likely enriching himself by demolishing part of the White House to build an imperial ballroom (a ballroom he could not stop talking about even while Pretti’s body lay cold in the street). He is pardoning fraudsters while dismantling the FBI’s anti-corruption unit, then turning around to justify a murderous authoritarian crackdown on the streets of Minnesota on the pretext of rooting out fraud cases that had already been successfully prosecuted by the Biden administration. And he is doing that because much (but not all!) of the fraud in the latter case involved members of a nonwhite, non-Christian immigrant group whose country of origin he keeps bombing to smithereens, whereas many of the fraudsters he is pardoning have been donors to his campaigns.

He keeps “joking” about canceling elections.

Sir, ma’am, everyone … when will he resign?

You might think that Republicans will never give up the presidency, even if J.D. Vance keeps it in their hands, at least until the next election. But they might if they see disaster on the horizon — if the alternative is a wipeout, especially one that would involve real accountability. It’s happened before: Richard Nixon was a would-be tyrant who weaponized intelligence agencies against his perceived enemies, headed a network of corruption, and arguably committed treason against the United States. When the country turned on him, senior Republicans told him it was time to go.

We live in a different world now — a world filled with media and attitudes created by Republicans specifically to prevent being held accountable for another Watergate. But Trump’s crimes are already leagues worse, and the damage he could do to the country and the world with another three or more years in the White House is hard to fathom. Yes, the machinery of repression is clicking into place. Yes, it may already be too late. But millions are standing up. We won’t know if we don’t try, and we can’t try if we don’t start talking about it, loudly and regularly. So say it with me: When will he resign?