The federal government’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Minnesota was the focus of national attention this weekend, after Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis on Saturday shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse who worked at the city’s VA Hospital.

The incident, 18 days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, has further inflamed tensions between national and local leaders, prompting Minnesota-based businesses to call for change.

What happened: The Department of Homeland Security initially said in a post to X that “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and that “officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted.”

Since then, bystander video of the incident from multiple vantage points has circulated widely and been verified and analyzed by multiple news outlets:

• According to the Wall Street Journal’s analysis, the footage showed Pretti assisting a woman whom ICE agents had pepper-sprayed and then being tackled by multiple agents while holding only his phone in his hand.
• The WSJ says the videos show that an agent discovered Pretti’s concealed gun and disarmed him before he was shot multiple times by agents. Pretti was a US citizen who the Minneapolis police chief said had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and no criminal record.

Federal and local officials yesterday continued to recount differing accounts of what led to the shooting.

Civic and business officials respond

More than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies, including Best Buy, Target, General Mills, the Mayo Clinic, and US Bancorp, issued a joint statement urging deescalation of tensions and for “state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called on President Trump to withdraw federal law enforcement from the state. Meanwhile, Trump administration officials accused Walz and Minneapolis’s mayor of exacerbating tensions.

Trump conducted a five-minute phone interview with the WSJ yesterday in which he “didn’t directly answer when asked twice whether the officer who shot Alex Pretti had done the right thing,” and said, “We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination.”

And in Washington…the federal government is heading toward a partial shutdown, as Senate Democrats have said they’ll refuse to pass a funding package that includes money for the Department of Homeland Security until the Trump administration consents to establishing reforms for ICE, which falls under DHS jurisdiction. The funding deadline to keep those services operating is Friday.—HVL

Winter Storm Fern impacted 200+ million people in the US. More than 200 million people were under winter storm threats yesterday, as Storm Fern worked its way from New Mexico and Texas through the Northeast. Snow is expected to continue for the East Coast through this morning. This weekend saw the most flight cancellations since March 27, 2020, during the Covid pandemic. Total cancellations into, within, or out of the US on Sunday reached almost 13,000, according to FlightAware data, and delays exceeded 20,000. Almost 900,000 people were without power as of last night, according to PowerOutage.us, with over 550,000 in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Several deaths related to hypothermia and auto accidents have been reported, and the number is likely to increase over the coming days. Temperatures in most areas impacted by Fern are expected to remain below average this week.

Trump threatens Canada with 100% tariff over its potential trade deal with China. In a post to Truth Social on Saturday, President Trump said that Canadian PM Mark Carney is “sorely mistaken” if he thinks he can forge a trade alliance with China in light of the widening rift in US–Canadian relations, saying, “If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A.” While Carney denied he is pursuing an open trade agreement with China, Trump may have been responding to Carney’s state visit to China earlier this month. Also, in his Davos speech last week, Carney made an oblique reference to the US when he said “great powers” were using “tariffs as leverage,” and called on “middle powers” like Canada to stick together. Following that speech, Trump rescinded an invitation for Carney to join the “Board of Peace.”

Super Bowl LX is set. We know who’s headed to Super Bowl 60: The Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots will face off on Feb. 8 at Levi’s Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area. New England beat the Denver Broncos 10–7 in Denver during the snowstorm. And the Seattle Seahawks won against the Los Angeles Rams at home, 31–27. This marks the first Patriots trip to the Super Bowl in the post-Tom Brady era. And Seattle was last in the Super Bowl in 2015, but they lost to…the New England Patriots. If your favorite team didn’t make it in, maybe check out the entertainment. Bad Bunny will headline the Apple Music Halftime Show, Charlie Puth will sing the national anthem, Brandi Carlile will perform “America the Beautiful,” and Coco Jones will sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”—HVL

If you’re looking for this year’s code word, it’s vibe. “Vibe coding,” the practice of using AI tools to turn plain language into computer code, has created a whole new class of app-makers and website developers without the traditional tech know-how.

Good vibe-rations. From 2022 to 2024, Apple’s app market was frozen in place. Then, developers suddenly started cranking out more apps than The Cheesecake Factory:

• In December, new iOS apps were up 60% year over year, closely mapping with the rise of vibe-coding tools, according to venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
• Earlier this month, startup Replit launched an Apple-specific feature that helps users create an app in minutes.

Will it eat the software world? Anthropic cast a net into white-collar waters earlier this month when it launched Claude Cowork, a vibe-coding tool for data analysis and file management, putting pressure on legacy software companies like Adobe and Salesforce, whose stocks are down more than 30% over the past year.

Human programmers say, beware the vibe hype. DIY apps can have issues and security flaws that a human developer is more likely to catch. Plus, it still takes business sense to launch a successful product, an area where established players have a head start. As a digital marketing director told Pymnts, “The winners in this new landscape won’t be the best vibe coders, they will be the best marketers and systems builders.”—BC

Will the Fed cut interest rates again on Wednesday? Probably not. According to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, there’s about a 97% chance the Federal Reserve will hold interest rates steady this week. After three straight cuts, the central bank likely wants to see where the economy settles. The meeting will also be a chance for the public to hear from Chairman Jerome Powell, more than two weeks after his forceful defense of Fed independence in a video statement announcing he was under federal investigation. According to Powell, the probe revolves around testimony he gave to Congress about renovations of the Fed’s headquarters, but he said that’s a pretext to intimidate the central bank into cutting rates.

Earnings get Magnificent this week: Despite the superhero moniker, many of the “Magnificent Seven” megacap companies are looking remarkably human lately. Four of them report earnings this week, starting with Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla on Wednesday, followed by Apple on Thursday. Tesla investors will be eager for updates on the progress of its robotaxi program and other areas of growth, while Meta, Microsoft, and Apple will have some ’splaining to do on AI, as Alphabet takes the lead in the space.

Tax season officially opens today: It’s time for CPAs to put their eye black on and put the W in W-2: The most taxing part of the calendar is upon us, with the IRS expecting about 164 million individual returns to be filed this year. There are some new credits and deductions to consider, so be sure to double-check if you qualify, especially if you are 65 and over, bought a car last year, received tips, or worked a lot of overtime. You have until April 15 to file. Good luck and Godspeed.

Everything else:

• Southwest Airlines says goodbye to open seating, officially making the switch to assigned seating tomorrow.
• All eight episodes of Marvel’s new Wonder Man miniseries hit Disney+ tomorrow.
• This Thursday, thaw out from the recent winter weather with a steamy new season of Bridgerton on Netflix.
• Pop star Charli XCX’s mockumentary film, The Moment, comes out on Friday, along with first lady doc Melania, horror film Send Help starring Rachel McAdams, and a new Jason Statham movie, Shelter.
• The producer price index (PPI) report for December—delayed because of last year’s government shutdown—will be released on Friday.
• The Australian Open serves up women’s singles finals on Friday and men’s singles finals on Saturday.

Reuters reported that power prices spiked in Northern Virginia’s data center alley on Sunday, as the deep freeze took hold. According to the outlet, wholesale electricity prices rose from $200 per megawatt-hour (MWh) on Saturday morning to $1,800 per MWh about 24 hours later. NoVa houses the world’s largest assemblage of data centers.

But that may not be the worst of it. Prior to Sunday’s spike, PJM Interconnection, the regional grid that provides electricity to 13 states and Washington, DC, forecast that an all-time winter demand record would be broken tomorrow, partly due to the needs of data centers. It predicts that 147.2 gigawatts will be consumed, superseding the prior high of 143.7 gigawatts set last January.—HVL