In December, ICE agents began arriving in Minneapolis under the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge.” As of late January, 3,000 agents are on the ground in the city, outnumbering local police officers three-to-one, pursuing a campaign defined by its cruelty: ICE has abducted children as young as two, and agents have used those children as bait to draw out and arrest their families. To counter these efforts, locals have organized vast mutual aid and rapid response operations, with block-by-block networks mobilizing to deliver supplies and run errands for undocumented people who can’t leave their homes without fear of detention. These locals have been met with violence. On January 7th, Renee Good, a mother and poet, was shot in the face by an ICE agent while she attempted to turn her car around. On Saturday—one day after a general strike brought tens of thousands to the streets in subzero temperatures—Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, was murdered while observing ICE, with agents firing at least ten shots at close range.

On this episode of On the Nose, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel speaks with three organizers on the ground in Minneapolis: Lily Cooper from UNIDOS’s rapid response team, which has conducted legal observer trainings for almost 30,000 people across Minnesota; Kandace Montgomery, a local organizer, trainer, and movement strategist who co-founded Black Visions in 2017; and Jesse Meisenhelter, an organizer with Minneapolis Families for Public Schools, whose current campaign aims to build sanctuary school teams across the state. They discuss the legacies of local organizing since George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the opportunities for the left-liberal coalition in this moment, and navigating the steep risks involved in this resistance work.

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Articles Mentioned and Further Reading

“Organizing for Abolition in the Spotlight,” Kandance Montgomery and Hahrie Hahn, Hammer & Hope

“Ten years ago, killing of Jamar Clark prompted wave of Twin Cities activism,” Danny Spewak,...

On Christmas, director Josh Safdie released his new film, Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet as a young table-tennis player bent on global recognition. Like Safdie’s previous film—Uncut Gems, co-directed with his brother Benny Safdie—Marty Supreme focuses on an American Jewish antihero and unfolds in a deeply Jewish milieu. But while Uncut Gems takes place in present-day New York, Marty Supreme transports us back to the Lower East Side of 1952, examining American Jewish ambition in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and amid assimilation into whiteness. This mid-century setting is complicated by various anachronistic elements, including a soundtrack rooted in the ’80s and, perhaps most notably, Chalamet’s conspicuous lack of a period-accurate accent. On this episode of On the Nose, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel, senior editor Nathan Goldman, contributing editor David Klion, and contributing writer Mitch Abidor discuss what, if anything, the film has to say about American Jewishness then and now.

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Media Mentioned and Further Reading

Uncut Gems, dir. Josh and Benny Safdie

“An Unserious Man,” Jewish Currents

“Marty Supreme’s Megawatt Personality,” Richard Brody, The New Yorker

What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg

Erik Baker’s Letterboxd review

Marie Antoinette, dir. Sofia Coppola

Anti-Semite and Jew by Jean-Paul Sartre

“Marty Supreme Is the Moment, With Josh Safdie!,” The Big Picture

Tough Jews by Rich Cohen

Mari Cohen on Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, Jewish Currents Shabbat Reading List

“Demon Doubt,” Vivian Gornick, interview by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, Boston Review

“Is This Anything?,” Mitchell Abidor, Jewish Currents

On Saturday, January 3rd, President Trump announced that a military raid on Caracas had captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and brought him back to the US to face drug charges. The operation followed months of deadly US strikes against boats purportedly ferrying drugs from Venezuela and a military buildup off its coast. But even after Maduro was seized, the administration still could not, or would not, clearly explain its intense interest in Venezuela any more than it could explain its plans for the country. And beyond the practicalities of “running” Venezuela, as Trump said the US would be doing, are even more disturbing questions about what comes next under the “Donroe doctrine”—the administration’s update of the 202-year-old Monroe Doctrine, which was used to justify generations of US interventions throughout the Western Hemisphere.

This episode of On the Nose turns to a foremost expert on US interference in Latin America, Greg Grandin, to help us understand the historical context of Trump’s surge—and what it may suggest about his military adventures going forward. A Pulitzer Prize-winning history professor at Yale, Grandin has written several books on the tangled history of the US and Latin America, including his sweeping 2025 chronicle, America, América: A New History of the New World. Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart asks Grandin to break down the political situation in Venezuela and the history of its nationalized oil reserves—and to explain what Trump’s new doctrine of pure power may hold in store for the US and the Americas.

This episode originally appeared on The Beinart Notebook on Substack. Thanks to Daniel Kaufman for editing help and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Books Mentioned and Further Reading

America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin

Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Making of an Imperial Republic by Greg Grandin

The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin

“What the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ is and where Trump could use it next,” Rebecca Falconer and Julianna Bragg, Axios

“After Venezuela, Trump Offers Hints About What Could Be Next,” David E. Sanger, The New York Times

“The Trump Doctrine,” Patrick Iber, Dissent

Transcript forthcoming.