Nearly two dozen Democratic lawmakers, congressional candidates, and advocacy organizations have tied fundraising pleas to messages about the deaths of anti-immigration activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti, a Washington Examiner review of campaign emails has found.
Democrats who included fundraising pleas in emails regarding the killings of Good and Pretti included Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, the Arizona Democratic Party, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, and congressional candidate Bushra Amiwala of Illinois. Organizations aligned with the Democratic Party, among them MoveOn, Mark Elias’s Democracy Docket, and Indivisible, also used the deaths to encourage their supporters to give them money. Both Good and Pretti died this month after confrontations with federal officials while obstructing immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis.
“ICE agents shot and killed Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, in Minneapolis,” an email from the Arizona Democratic Party sent on Monday reads, although Pretti was in fact shot by a Border Patrol agent. Two sentences later, after accusing the Trump administration of “tainting” the investigations, the party invites readers to “chip in” to “flip the state blue so we can fight back against ICE” alongside a donation link.
The email featured a second donation link at the bottom of its message.
Democrats who were physically closer to killings were no more reluctant to leverage them for campaign dollars.
“I am heartbroken,” Flanagan, who is currently running for Senate, wrote in a Jan. 15 email sent just after midnight. “You’ve probably seen the videos of ICE’s violence and chaos coming from every corner of Minnesota. The horrors of this last week in Minnesota have made one thing crystal clear: we need Senators who will stand up for what’s right all the time, not just when it’s politically expedient.”
The “horrors of last week” alluded to by the lieutenant governor was a reference to the killing of Good, which happened roughly a week prior.
Flanagan closed out her fundraising plea by saying that she will “always stand with Minnesota” and that she would appreciate if the person reading her message could “spare $5 or $10 today to stand with me.”
MoveOn, one of the largest progressive political operations in the country, was similarly direct in connecting the deaths to a fundraising pitch.
“Yesterday, ICE murdered another person in Minneapolis,” a Jan. 25 email from the group reads. “MoveOn is mourning the loss of yet another life at the hands of ICE and continuing to mobilize to drive ICE out of our communities. Here is the email we had planned to send you before yesterday’s senseless tragedy.”
The group asked supporters to “start a monthly donation of $5 to MoveOn to support our sustained campaign against ICE’s atrocities.” The email also leveraged the allegation that “ICE killed Renee Good in cold blood” to showcase what the organization has done since then to oppose the agency, in turn using those actions to entice donations.
“Readers of the Examiner are welcome to join our efforts to support Minnesotans who have been directly impacted by Trump’s murderous ICE and CBP forces,” a spokeswoman for MoveOn told the Washington Examiner, not addressing why they used the deaths of Good and Pretti in a fundraising pitch.
Some donation solicitations do come with the veneer of supporting a greater cause. In at least one case, a liberal organization sought to profit directly from disseminating information about the deaths. Democracy Docket, a legal media outlet founded by Democratic super lawyer Marc Elias in 2020, pasted multiple links imploring readers to become paid subscribers in between writing about the Minneapolis killings.
“Our journalism holds the Trump administration accountable for its turn away from democracy and toward authoritarianism, and that’s exactly why our members value our coverage,” Democracy Docket Managing Director Allie Rothenberg told the Washington Examiner.
In other instances, the individuals or groups did not make fundraising requests in the body of their messages regarding the killings but included a donation link at the bottom of their emails about them. For these cases, it’s possible that communication staffers used an email template to draft the messages, which would automatically include a fundraising link.
Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, for instance, wrote a heartfelt message that was sent to supporters on Monday.
“On Saturday, all of us witnessed, from multiple angles, federal agents murder and gun down Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis,” the message from the Senate candidate reads. “It makes me emotional. It makes me incredibly angry. This was an ICU nurse at the VA who dedicated his life to helping veterans and helping his community. And then he was killed protecting his neighbors. Murdered. Shot down by the state. Executed in the street.”
At the bottom of the email, right under Platner’s name, was a sizable red button that read “Donate.”
An individual close to the Platner campaign confirmed that they used a template for that email, however, the person did not disclose whether the campaign intentionally declined to remove the donation button at the end of the message. The person also pointed out that Planter has used his campaign emails to raise funds for the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition — an organization that the Washington Free Beacon reported is under congressional investigation over alleged Medicaid fraud.
The Washington Examiner reached out to other campaigns that sent similar messages to see if the inclusion of the fundraising link was intentional but received no response.
Other liberal individuals and organizations that, similar to Platner, did not directly ask for money in the text of their emails but included donation links at the end nonetheless. These included Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), congressional candidate Bobby Pulido, the Brady Campaign, the Women’s March, and several others.
Some Democrats did not have donation links in their emails when reaching out to their supporters about the deaths of Pretti and Good, likely to avoid the appearance of attempting to profit from death.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), activist David Hogg, and the gun control group March for our Lives all sent emails to their supporters about the killings without donation links stuck to the bottom.
The killings of Good and Pretti have been the subject of national controversy as immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota garnered increased attention from the media for what people have been calling aggressive tactics.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Good as she was driving a vehicle toward him after his colleagues attempted to detain her for blocking a roadway. Critics of the agent’s behavior contend that he was not in danger as she was turning away from him at the time she was shot. Defenders of the law enforcement officer argue that in the split second when the shooting occurred, the agent could reasonably believe his life was in danger.
In Pretti’s case, he was shot by a Border Patrol agent while a number of law enforcement officers were attempting to detain him. The Department of Homeland Security maintains that he “violently” resisted attempts to disarm him. Available video evidence shows Pretti did not draw his weapon, though he seems to resist arrest.
