The New Yorker Radio Hour · WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The City of Minneapolis vs. Donald Trump

January 30, 2026·49 min·3 clips

A detained ICE observer describes a woman sobbing on a toilet behind a two-way mirror inside a Minneapolis detention facility.

The opening is grave and blunt. David Remnick starts with Donald Trump's remark that sometimes a dictator is needed, then ties it to threats involving Greenland, Denmark, and the post-war order. Minneapolis becomes the local case. The city is under federal pressure, with agents demanding identification, detaining people, and escalating even after deaths and injuries. Remnick does not leave the politics implied. He presents the federal tactics as part of a view that treats democracy and law as barriers to executive will. Then Ruby slows it down. She explains how Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara responded to ICE conduct after an incident involving a woman pulled forcefully from a car. His criticism is careful, which makes it hit harder. In Ruby's telling, one law-enforcement leader is breaking down another agency's actions in unusually severe detail. The tension is practical as much as political. Minneapolis police seem unsure what federal agents are trying to accomplish and disturbed by the methods in front of them. O'Hara's training matters. Ruby says his decades in policing seemed to tell him that the movements, weapons, and force in the incident did not add up. His background gives the critique weight. The episode then reaches back to Newark, where O'Hara spent his career and worked in police reform before coming to Minneapolis in 2022. Minneapolis was already fragile: short on officers, under reform pressure, and trying to rebuild trust. The segment keeps circling legitimacy. The force of it is a police chief questioning federal enforcement as a failure of judgment, training, and public order.

As heard by us

A tense report on Minneapolis, federal force, and a police chief uneasy with what he is seeing.

The New Yorker Radio Hour treats Minneapolis as a test of what federal power looks like when it arrives at street level. David Remnick opens with Donald Trump's remark that "sometimes you need a dictator," then connects that language to agents demanding identification, detaining…

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Why you'd press play

When you want politics framed as a democracy-and-rule-of-law crisis, not a shouting match.

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