MILAN — Maxim Naumov typically trembles as he waits in his opening position before the music begins. But on Tuesday, the 24-year-old U.S. figure skater stood firm at center ice with the Olympic rings beneath his feet and his right fist raised. A white gold ring with a single diamond on his ring finger glittered in the light.
It was his father’s ring.
A year after his parents, Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, were among 67 people killed in a Washingon, D.C. plane crash, Naumov carried their strength during his Olympic debut and delivered an emotional season’s best 85.65 in the men’s short program that qualified him for the free skate.
U.S. teammate Andrew Torgashev also scored a season’s best in his Olympic debut, qualifying for Thursday’s free skate with an 89.94. His coaching team, which includes Irvine-based Rafael Arutyunyan, fist-bumped after Torgashev hit the final combination jump of his program. Skating to “Maybe I Maybe You” by the Scorpions, Torgashev flashed the rock-and-roll symbol to the crowd as he saluted.
Instead of the raw emotion Naumov released after the U.S. championship that clinched his Olympic spot last month, he smiled purely and breathed deeply while the crowd at Milano Ice Skating Arena showered him with applause. He looked toward the rafters and spoke to his parents.
“Look what we just did,” Naumov said. “We did it.”
Maxim Naumov holds a photo of his parents after competing during the men’s free skate at the U.S. championships.
(Stephanie Scarbrough / Associated Press)
The elder Naumov and Shishkova were three-time world pairs skating medalists and two-time Olympians. The 1994 world champions coached at the Skating Club of Boston and remained at the 2025 U.S. championships in Wichita, Kan., after the competition to coach a development camp.
Maxim Naumov, who had finished fourth at the U.S. championships for the third time in a row, returned home immediately after the competition. In one of their last discussions as a family, Naumov’s father laid out the plan to ensure they could reach the Olympics in one year. The talk lasted about 45 minutes. After the first 30 minutes, Naumov said he was rolling his eyes the way children often do, but he understood the message: They were going to work together and revamp everything they do.
After the crash on Jan. 29, 2025, Naumov struggled to leave the house. He couldn’t bear to tie his skates. Going to the rink felt unimaginable.
At every moment, Naumov wanted to lay in bed and rot. He instead chose to find the thing that felt like the most difficult task and attack it. At first it was simply waking up. Then it was getting out of bed. Then it was going to work and coaching his parents’ former students. Now they’re his students.
“The only way out is through,” Naumov said. “Everyone has the ability to do that: to remain strong in your mind, have willpower and do things out of love instead of fear. I think if you’re able to do that, whatever it is that you’re going through, however big or small, you can have small wins every single day, and you can do things that you never thought that you could.”
Naumov earned his Olympic spot by finishing third at last month’s U.S. championships. The emotions of the national competition that would decide the family’s dream were so heavy that after he finished his free program, he found a secluded corner in the tunnel and sobbed.
Finally on the Olympic stage, Naumov felt nothing but stillness. Naumov said he felt his parents’ presence and the support of the entire figure skating community “like a hand on my back pushing me forward.”
Looking at old videos can still be painful for Naumov. But he mustered the strength to look through the family’s large photo album ahead of the U.S. championships and pick out several photos he brought to the competition. His parents had always been in the kiss-and-cry with him. With his spot on the Olympic team at stake, he wanted them there again.
Waiting for his score in Milan, Naumov flashed a photo he picked. He is flanked by his parents standing on the ice for the first time at about 3 years old.
Two decades later, he was stepping off Olympic ice.
“To be able to just have 2 minutes and 50 seconds to show what you’ve been working on for 19 years, and to be able to make it happen when it matters and when it counts, there’s no feeling like it at all ever,” Naumov said, still breathless from the emotional performance more than 30 minutes after he nailed the final note. “I just hope that I made everyone proud.”
U.S. flags waved on every side of the rink as he saluted the crowd. He knows his mother would have not been there watching in person because she was too nervous to attend. Refreshing the online score tracker to keep up with Naumov’s program, she would always find a way to send a message of support to her son.
Before his program, Naumov sent a message of his own.
“Mom and dad,” the videoboard in the arena read, “this is for you.”
Successful romances star at least one looker. I don’t mean someone attractive. I mean an actor who gazes at their scene partner with such delight that we swoon, too. Clark Gable was a looker. Diane Keaton was a looker. The combined eyeball voltage of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone is so powerful that it’s turned silly scripts into hits.
Harry Melling is a late-blooming looker. Onscreen most of his youth as the Muggle brat Dudley Dursley in the “Harry Potter” franchise, Melling is only just now getting to show off that talent in the funny-kinky “Pillion,” which puts him on his knees beaming up at Alexander Skarsgård’s 6-foot-4 biker as though this blond hunk was the sun. His Colin, a shy gay man who sings the high notes in a barbershop quartet, is so visibly infatuated licking Skarsgård’s leather boots in a dark alley that you believe he lusts for humiliation. Colin has only just discovered that fact about himself. He’s yet to even learn this man’s name. (It’s Ray.)
Perhaps you’d like to be taken to dinner first, but “Pillion” is about Colin’s needs — specifically his need to please — and first-time feature filmmaker Harry Lighton challenges us to root for his bliss. This fetishy adventure is a minimalist romantic comedy in which submissive meets dominant, and submissive explores his physical and emotional vulnerabilities. Marriage and a baby carriage are off the table; the journey matters, not the destination.
“Pillion” is what motorcyclists call the passenger seat, at least in suburban England where this is set. It’s a passive position compared to the driver, but still a cooler upgrade from where Colin starts the movie riding in: the rear of a sedan. Out the car’s back window, he sees Ray zoom by in white Stormtrooper-looking gear and, by happenstance, bumps into him that night at a pub where Colin’s mother, Peggy (Lesley Sharp), has set up a blind date with a nice bloke. That guy gets forgotten the instant Ray slips Colin a note with a time and place to meet.
Peggy isn’t panicked by her son’s alpha-male predilections. “I think a biker sounds exciting,” she says with a grin. His father, Pete (Douglas Hodge), just wants him to wear a helmet. Neither parent is privy to the fact that Ray simply isn’t very nice. Ray controls the gobsmacked Colin quietly, calculating the bare minimum of kindness required to have a house boy willing to cook dinner, tend to his Rottweiler and sleep on the floor. He withholds his approval to keep the paler, smaller man anxious.
That Rottweiler contended for the Palm Dog at last year’s Cannes, a prize for the festival’s best canine. Frankly, Melling himself should have won. His performance is pure puppy, from the way he silently studies Ray’s silent cues to the eagerness with which he leaps up to fetch Ray a beer. When Ray lavishes attention on another biker’s pet pillion, Kevin (Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters), Colin sulks until his master unzips his trousers and gives him a treat.
Flexing his abs in shiny Motoralls, Skarsgård uses his own appeal to expose an unattractive wrinkle in human behavior: Ray is so gorgeous that everyone just takes it as fact that Colin is lucky to be near him. When a coworker asks this scrawny geek how he bagged a hunk like Ray, Colin brags that he has “an aptitude for devotion,” which includes wearing a padlock around his neck and shaving his Byronesque curls so that he looks like a zealot — which in a way, he is.
Over and over, Colin takes stock of his own debasement. But then he looks at his model-handsome lover and calculates that his suffering is worth it. He’s good at compartmentalizing; he’s a parking violations attendant who tickets angry people all day. When he needs an excuse to cry, he finds one (and it hurts to watch).
Lately, it’s been a thrill to see queer stories confidently leapfrog over coming-out narratives to the trickier question of whether two individuals in particular are a decent match. Lighton leaps further than that — he goes full Evel Knievel by daring to ask how we feel about a relationship that’s indecent, but still has worth as a set of training wheels for a wobbly young man learning what he wants.
It’s a more optimistic take on Colin and Ray’s coupledom than was in the book that inspired the script, Adam Mars-Jones’ 2020 novella “Box Hill,” which was subtitled “A Story of Low Self-Esteem.” A study of the psychology of abuse, that story’s more brainwashed version of Colin finds him decades older looking back on the affair and pining for a relationship that reads as horrible between the lines.
Lighton isn’t oblivious to the power imbalance, but he’s made a movie about going forward, not being stuck. He trusts his naif with more agency, and so “Pillion” is freer to play its insults for laughs. You’ll giggle a lot. That gleam in Melling’s eyes makes it feel like a comic fantasy, although who knows? Perhaps there really are BDSM biker gangs hosting afternoon picnics with serving boys tied spread-eagled on a buffet table. That bucolic scene is filmed in a slow pivot around the park, cinematographer Nick Morris getting a chuckle from how the image shifts from Georges Seurat to “Hellraiser.”
Eventually, Colin’s parents will be more flinchy about his new boyfriend, leading to a beat or two that don’t land with the impact they could. Oddly, Lighton might be too restrained himself. Like his leads, he prefers to say everything with a look.
But while Melling is always endearingly open and responsive, Skarsgård stays unreadable. His Ray always seems to be hiding behind a motorcycle visor even when he’s not and when he deigns to speak, the words trail off in a huff of exhaustion. The only thing we know about Ray’s life are the names of his two previous dogs, and that’s only because he has them tattooed on his chest.
Any more personal facts about Ray — his own job or family or romantic history, even his favorite movie — would risk us clinging onto it too tightly as an explanation of what he gets out of this himself. Serving Ray’s pleasure is Colin’s focus. And our focus is on Colin’s pursuit of that.
Yet with subtle skill, Skarsgård reveals that Ray is thinking about Colin more than he’s willing to let on. Curiosity flickers across his face when his submissive surprises him. He stays gruff, of course, but you sense that Ray is as manacled by his authoritarian role as Colin literally is in his hungry, slurping devotion to his master. Puny and pathetic as Colin appears, he begins to seem like the braver of the two. It takes courage to map your own boundaries — then to cross over that line and get hurt, and get back up and out there. Lighton’s biker BDSM rom-com might sound niche, but free yourself to see it and you’ll discover it’s a universal romance.
MINNEAPOLIS — For weeks, administrators at this charter high school have arrived an hour before class, grabbed neon vests and walkie-talkies, and headed out into the cold to watch for ICE agents and escort students in.
Lately, fewer than half of the 800 sudents show up.
“Operation Metro Surge,” the immigration crackdown in Minnesota that led to nationwide protests after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, has had students, parents and teachers on edge regardless of their immigration status.
Signs of a fearful new normal are all over the school. Green craft paper covers the bottom of many first-floor windows so outsiders can’t peer in. A notice taped outside one door says unauthorized entry is prohibited: “This includes all federal law enforcement personnel and activities unless authorized by lawful written direction from appropriate school officials or a valid court order.”
Students at a Minneapolis high school classroom with many empty seats on Jan. 29, 2026.
Staff coordinate throughout the day with a neighborhood watch group to determine whether ICE agents are nearby. When they are, classroom doors are locked and hallways emptied until staff announce “all clear.”
Similar tactics have been utilized by schools in other cities hit by immigration raids across the country. The Los Angeles Unified School District established a donation fund for affected families and created security perimeters around schools last summer.
But it appears nowhere have students felt the repercussions of local raids more than in Minneapolis.
Many schools have seen attendance plummet by double-digit percentages. At least three other, smaller charter schools in Minneapolis have completely shut down in-person learning.
At this high school, which administrators asked The Times not to identify for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, 84% of students are Latino and 12% are Black. Staff and students are being identified by first or middle names.
A balloon sits in a hallway at the high school.
Doors and windows are covered at the school so outsiders can’t see in.
Three students have been detained — and later released — in recent weeks. Two others were followed into the school parking lot and questioned about their immigration status. Several have parents who were deported or who self-deported. Latino staff said they have also been stopped and questioned about their legal status.
“Our families feel hunted,” said Noelle, the school district’s executive director.
Students returned from winter break on Jan. 6, the same day 2,000 additional immigration agents were dispatched to Minneapolis to carry out what Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons called the agency’s “largest immigration operation ever.” The next day, an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three.
“I describe that day as if you’re on an airplane and it’s really bad turbulence, and you have to keep your cool because, if you don’t, you lose the entire building,” said Emmanuel, an assistant principal. “It felt like we went through war.”
Attendance dropped by the hundreds as parents grew too afraid to let their children leave home. School leaders decided to offer online learning and scrambled to find enough laptops and mobile hotspots for the many students who didn’t have devices or internet. Some teachers sent packets of schoolwork to students by mail.
A teacher at the Minneapolis high school that administrators asked The Times not to identify for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. Teachers and students there also asked not to be identified.
Noelle said in-person attendance, which had dropped below 400 students, increased by around 100 in the third week of January. Then federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, and attendance plummeted again.
Rochelle Van Dijk, vice president of Great MN Schools, a nonprofit supporting schools that serve a majority of students of color, said many schools have redirected tens of thousands of dollars away from other critical needs toward online learning, food distribution and safety planning. For students still attending in person, recess has frequently been canceled, and field trips and after-school activities paused.
Even if students return to school by mid-February, Van Dijk said, they will have missed 20% of their instructional days for the year.
“A senior who can’t meet with their college counselor right now just missed support needed for major January college application deadlines. Or a second-grader with a speech delay who is supposed to be in an active in-person intervention may lose a critical window of brain plasticity,” she said. “It is not dissimilar to what our nation’s children faced during COVID, but entirely avoidable.”
At the high school, administrators said they tried to create “a security bubble,” operating under protocols more typical of active shooter emergencies.
Gym class at the Minneapolis school, where many students are so afraid of ICE that they won’t go to the campus.
If agents were to enter the building without a judicial warrant, the school would go into a full lockdown, turning off lights, staying silent and moving out of sight. That hasn’t happened, though ICE last year rescinded a policy that had barred arrests at so-called sensitive locations, including schools.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said that blaming ICE for low school attendance is “creating a climate of fear and smearing law enforcement.”
“ICE does not target schools,” McLaughlin said. “If a dangerous or violent illegal criminal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee, there may be a situation where an arrest is made to protect the safety of the student. But this has not happened.”
Alondra, a 16-year-old junior who was born in the U.S., was arrested after school Jan. 21 near a clinic where she had gone with a friend, also 16, to pick up medication for her grandmother.
She said that as she was about to turn into the parking lot, another car sped in front of her, forcing her to stop. Alondra saw four men in ski masks with guns get out. Scared, she put her car in reverse. Before she could move, she said, another vehicle pulled up and struck her car from behind.
Alondra shared videos with The Times that she recorded from the scene. She said agents cracked her passenger window in an attempt to get in.
“We’re with you!” a bystander can be heard telling her in the video as others blow emergency whistles.
She said she rolled her window down and an agent asked to see her ID. She gave him her license and U.S. passport.
“Is it necessary to have to talk to you or can I talk to an actual cop?” she asks in the video. “Can I talk to an actual cop from here?”
“We are law enforcement,” the agent replies. “What are they gonna do?”
In another video, an agent questions Alondra’s friend about the whereabouts of his parents. Another agent is heard saying Alondra had put her car in reverse.
“We’re underage,” she tells him. “We’re scared.”
A sign directs students to line up for their school bus route. Bus pickups are staggered, with one group of students escorted outside at a time. This way, the children can be taken back inside the school or onto the bus more easily if ICE arrives.
A Minneapolis Public Radio reporter at the scene said agents appeared to have rear-ended Alondra’s car. But Alondra said an agent claimed she had caused the accident.
“It’s just a simple accident, you know what I mean?” he says in the video. “We’re not gonna get on you for trying to hit us or something.”
“Can you let us go, please?” her friend, visibly shaken, asks the agent at his window.
Alondra and her friend were handcuffed and placed in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle as observers filmed the incident. At least two observers were arrested as agents deployed tear gas and pepper spray, according to an MPR report.
The agents took the students to the federal Whipple Building. Alondra said the agents separated the friends, looked through and photographed her belongings and had her change into blue canvas shoes before chaining her feet together and placing her in a holding cell alone.
“I asked at least five times if I could let my guardian know what was happening, because I was underage, but they never let me,” she said.
Finally, around 7 p.m., agents released Alondra — with no paperwork about the incident — and she called her aunt to pick her up. Her friend was released later.
Meanwhile, school administrators who saw the MPR video called Alondra’s family and her friend’s.
Alondra said officers didn’t know what had happened to her car and told her they would call her when she could pick it up. But no one has called, and school administrators who helped her make calls to Minneapolis impound lots haven’t been able to locate it either.
Though Alondra could attend classes online, she felt she had to return to campus.
“I feel like if I would have stayed home, it would have gone worse for me,” she said, her lip quivering. “I use school as a distraction.”
The backstage of the auditorium, dubbed the bodega, has been turned into a well-stocked pantry for families who are too afraid to leave their homes.
A volunteer organizes donated items for distribution to families at the Minneapolis high school.
A teacher makes a delivery to a family in Minneapolis.
Teachers and volunteers sort donations by category, including hygiene goods, breakfast cereals, bread and tortillas, fruit and vegetables, diapers and other baby items. Bags are labeled with each student’s name and address and filled with the items their family has requested. After school, teachers deliver the items to the students’ homes.
Noelle said some students, particularly those who are homeless, are now at risk of failing because they’re in “survival mode.” Their learning is stagnating, she said.
“A lot of these kids are — I mean, they want to be — college-bound,” Noelle said. “How do you compete [for admission] with the best applicants if you’re online right now and doing one touch-point a day with one teacher because that’s all the technology that you have?”
On Thursday afternoon, 20 of 44 students had shown up for an AP world history class where the whiteboard prompt asked, “Why might some people resort to violent resistance rather than peaceful protest?”
Upstairs, in an 11th-grade U.S. history class, attendance was even worse — four students, with 17 others following online. The topic was what the teacher called the nation’s “first immigration ban,” the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Students head to their bus at the high school.
Morgan, the teacher, asked the students to name a similarity between the Chinese exclusion era and current day.
“Immigrants getting thrown out,” one student offered.
“Once they leave, they can’t come back,” said another.
“The fact that this is our first ban on immigration also sets a precedent that this stuff can happen over and over and over again,” Morgan said.
Sophie, who teachers English language learners, led the effort to organize the online school option. She is from Chile and says she has struggled to put her own fear aside to be present for the students who rely on her. Driving to school scares her, too.
“It’s lawless,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that I have my passport in my purse. The minute I open my mouth, they’re going to know that I’m not from here.”
Sophie said she once had to call a student’s mother to say her husband had been taken by immigration agents after another school staffer found his car abandoned on a nearby street.
“Having to have that conversation wasn’t on my bingo card for that day, or any day,” she said. “Having to say that we have proof that your husband was taken and hearing that woman crying and couldn’t talk, and I’m like, what do I say now?”
Close to the 4:15 p.m. dismissal, administrators again donned their neon vests and logged on to the neighborhood Signal call for possible immigration activity.
Students walk to a bus Thursday. Dismissal used to be a free-for-all, with large numbers of students rushing outside as soon as the bell rang.
Dismissal used to be a free-for-all — once the final bell rang, students would rush outside to find their bus or ride or to begin the walk home.
Now pickups are staggered, with students escorted outside one bus at a time. Teachers grab numbered signs and tell students to line up according to their route. If ICE agents pull up, administrators said, they could rush a smaller group of students onto the bus or back inside.
In yet another example of how the immigration raids had crippled attendance, some buses were nearly empty. On one bus, just two students hopped on.
Hollywood heavyweights are joining a mounting wave of resistance against Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal agents on Saturday fatally shot intensive care nurse and U.S. citizen Alex Pretti.
The shooting occurred in Minneapolis, where protests erupted over the weekend after an ICE agent earlier this month shot and killed another Minnesota resident, Renee Nicole Good, 37, during an enforcement operation. Similar demonstrations started cropping up in weeks prior as the Department of Homeland Security launched a sweeping immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.
Although government officials have claimed that Good and Pretti were both aggressors in their altercations, footage captured by bystanders appeared to contradict those claims.
Olivia Rodrigo, Pedro Pascal and other film, television and music industry notables condemned ICE on social media in the wake of its operations in Minnesota and across the country. (Likewise, attendees at the Sundance Film Festival, including Edward Norton and Olivia Wilde, criticized ICE’s actions and lauded the public for protesting them.)
Here is a list of celebrities who have spoken out.
Olivia Rodrigo
The pop rock singer slammed ICE in an Instagram story on Sunday, writing that the agency’s “actions are unconscionable, but we are not powerless.”
“Our actions matter,” Rodrigo continued. “I stand with Minnesota.”
The “Vampire” songstress also reposted a call to action by political commentator and digital creator Ben Sheehan, which called ICE a “murderous federal agency terrorizing an American city.”
“If you support this, you’re on the wrongest side of history you could possibly be on,” Sheehan wrote, urging social media users to call their senators and encourage them to filibuster an upcoming Homeland Security appropriations bill that would keep ICE funded at $10 billion for the rest of the fiscal year.
Pedro Pascal
“The Last of Us” star has shared several anti-ICE posts to his Instagram feed and stories. Earlier this month, Pascal described immigration enforcement activities as “unspeakable s— after unspeakable s—.”
Following Pretti’s shooting death, the actor wrote on Instagram, “Truth is a line of demarcation between a democratic government and authoritarian regime. Mr. Pretti and Rene Good are dead. The American people deserve to know what happened.”
Jamie Lee Curtis
The Academy Award winner has repeatedly condemned ICE’s actions in Minnesota, writing Saturday on Instagram, “Let the ICE storm of resistance ring loudly.”
Curtis also shared a statement from Pretti’s parents, which pleaded with readers to “get the truth out about our son.”
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting,” the statement said.
“Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact.”
Katy Perry
The pop singer in a Monday Instagram post encouraged her followers to “turn anger into action” by calling their senators.
“The power is in your hands,” the post read, followed by a script encouraging senators to block the DHS funding bill.
Billie Eilish
The “Birds of a Feather” singer this week called out her industry peers’ silence on the immigration crackdown. Eilish herself has regularly reposted anti-ICE statements on her Instagram story.
“Hey my fellow celebrities u gonna speak up?” she wrote in an Instagram story Monday.
Eilish also shared a video from her brother and frequent collaborator, Finneas, in which he called the government hypocritical for allegedly shooting Pretti because he had a gun despite yearslong defense of gun owners’ rights.
“You’ve spent 30 years straight telling us that children have to die so that we’re allowed to legally carry weapons everywhere in the United States,” the artist-producer said. “This guy was being beaten to a pulp on the ground, he didn’t draw his weapon. He had a weapon on him legally.”
Eilish also spoke out against immigration enforcement earlier this month while receiving the 2026 MLK Jr. Beloved Community Environmental Justice Award.
“We’re seeing our neighbors being kidnapped, peaceful protesters being assaulted and murdered, our civil rights being stripped, resources to fight the climate crisis being cut for fossil fuels and animal agriculture destroying our planet, and people’s access to food and health care becoming a privilege for the wealthy instead of a new basic human right for all Americans,” the singer said.
“It is very clear that protecting our planet and our communities is not a priority for this administration,” she continued. “And it’s really hard to celebrate that when we no longer feel safe in our own homes or in our streets.”
Florence Pugh
The “Thunderbolts” star in a Monday Instagram story reshared a post from NBC News listing the people who have been fatally shot by DHS since September.
“1 person being murdered is harrowing enough. 12? Killed by masked people with guns,” Pugh wrote. “Morals. Even that seems too light a word to use when it’s actually ‘are you okay with people being killed or not’?”
“No matter which way you voted, what you politically believe, is death truly the option that you support?” she wrote.
Mark Ruffalo
In a pair of Bluesky posts, Ruffalo called Pretti a “hero.”
“Cold blooded murder in the streets of the USA by an occupying military gang, creating havoc,” the actor-activist wrote. “We have fought wars in other countries for less than this.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda
The “Hamilton” creator on Sunday collaborated with his parents, Luz Towns-Miranda and Luis A. Miranda Jr., on an Instagram post translating Pretti’s parents’ statement into Spanish.
“This cowardly violence cannot remain silent. We share his parents’ words en español because they deserve to be understood by everyone. Alex was a hero. And we demand justice,” the caption reads.
Glenn Close
The veteran actor in a Sunday Instagram post said she is “outraged and sickened” by the Trump administration’s actions: “The sickening hypocrisy, the blatant manipulation of facts and now the cold-blooded murder of American citizens.”
“I have felt for a long time that there are thousands and thousands of American citizens with cellars full of guns,” Close said. “I fear that ICE is giving them the excuse to pull the trigger.”
The “Fatal Attraction” star said the country is “waking up” to the threats posed to American democracy: “Mark my words: there will be hell to pay.”
Kerry Washington
The “Scandal” alum in a Monday Instagram post encouraged viewers to call their senators as she modeled the behavior on camera.
“The time to take action is now,” Washington captioned her video. “Let’s do it together. Because if you think what’s happening in Minneapolis cannot happen in your city or your state, it can.”
Cynthia Nixon
The “Sex and the City” star on Saturday claimed that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was spreading “morally reprehensible and disgusting lies” about Pretti and his killing.
Nixon also shared the statement from Pretti’s parents and encouraged viewers to do the same.
Busy Philipps
Philipps in a Saturday Instagram post reshared statements demanding justice for Pretti as well as the defunding of ICE.
“They will just keep murdering people and lying as long as they can,” the “Girls5eva” actor said, encouraging her followers to “take to the streets” and “boycott the businesses and people that support this.”
Martha Stewart
The television personality shared Monday on Instagram that her 14-year-old granddaughter — who is “sensitive to what is going on in our country as we all should be” — over the weekend messaged her, “I’m not sure it’s excusable to not be speaking up right now.”
Stewart said she took the sentiment to heart, writing, “I am disheartened and sad each and every day that we cannot demonstrate our sympathy for the beleaguered, that we are told immigrants, which most of us are or descended from, are unwelcome, that we cannot show our frustration in peaceful demonstrations and that we can be attacked and even killed by federal troops.”
“Things must and have to change quickly and peacefully,” she wrote.
Hannah Einbinder
The “Hacks” star in a Tuesday Instagram story said, “I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I have such a deep seated resentment towards people who haven’t used their platform to speak up against ICE.”
“I think it’s because, as a Jewish American in the diaspora, my entire life has been in the shadow of the Holocaust. I was given an in-depth education of exactly how a thing like that happens,” Einbinder wrote.
“I am watching the beginning of what took place in Germany before the Holocaust here in America and I take it incredibly personally when I see people with massive platforms refrain from using their voice to organize and rally their followers to try and stop it,” she continued, encouraging her industry peers and followers alike to stand up for immigrants.
The Chicks
“It’s happening right in front of us. They are killing Americans, disappearing human beings, and breaking up families,” country band the Chicks captioned a photo of a protest sign referencing their song “Not Ready to Make Nice.” (The group penned the ballad after lead singer Natalie Maines was widely slammed for criticizing then-President George W. Bush during a concert.)
“We cannot stand by and watch democracy disintegrate,” the band wrote. “Human decency isn’t Republican or Democrat. It’s American.”
Jonathan Van Ness
The “Queer Eye” star in a Saturday post on Threads wrote, “They charged tax payers $85 BILLION for ice to terrorize America. Tear gassing, beating, detaining innocent protestors / people, and they just killed another human being.”
Kristen Schaal
In an X post thanking fans for birthday well wishes, the comedian and “Bob’s Burgers” voice actor wrote, “I will remember this birthday as the day that Alex Pretti was held down on the street by 6 ICE agents and murdered. Shot to death. After he was sprayed in the face.”
Schaal continued: “I will remember @realDonaldTrump & everyone who works for & worships him saying this didn’t happen.”
Matt Rogers
The “Las Culturistas” co-host in a Monday Instagram story called for the abolishment of ICE: “This is too much collective pain for us to handle. It must stop.”
“Stop the terror and violence now,” Rogers wrote.
Kate Berlant
Berlant, who has previously spoken against ICE action in her native L.A., in a Tuesday Instagram story encouraged her followers to boycott the federal agency’s corporate collaborators, including Amazon, Whole Foods and Palantir.
Walton Goggins
“The White Lotus” star shared several anti-ICE posts over the weekend, writing in one Instagram story, “Alex Pretti was murdered. Renee Good was MURDERED. This isn’t about what political party any of us are affiliated with. This is about Humanity… this is … wrong.”
Mandy Moore
The “This Is Us” actor reshared media coverage of the events in Minnesota, writing, “We have eyeballs. We’ve seen the video. They executed someone else. I’m not sure how this ends. This is terrifying territory.”
Others including Ariana Grande, Jennifer Aniston, Amanda Seyfried, Hilary Swank and Justin Theroux have reshared anti-ICE content and resources for protesters on social media.
