Minneapolis: Officer Training, DHS Funding, & the American Brand 1/26/26

0:00Your data lives everywhere. On-prem, in the cloud, across apps. Bring it all together with EverPure, the platform that acts like a living system, delivering the latest in data performance, security, and innovation without ever slowing you down. Sophisticated enough to anticipate your ever-changing data needs, yet simple enough to feel like second nature. Tame your data chaos with EverPure and make storage and data management the simplest part of your business. Visit everpuredata.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.

0:47Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. Bring in show music, please.

1:25After that shooting, funding for the Department of Homeland Security prompts a standoff on Capitol Hill. CNBC's Emily Wilkins reports. Senate Republican leadership, they are not planning to remove DHS funding from this larger package that increases the chances of a partial government shutdown. How the unrest at home is affecting America's reputation abroad and what business leaders are doing about it. Author and history professor at Tulane, Walter Isaacson joins us. This is affecting America around the world. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also shares his own perspective. The question should not be, should we take a pause and give additional training?

2:08Maybe a president should bring in more assets. But really the question is, Tim Walsh, what are you doing? Plus, digging travelers out of a winter storm around the country. It's Monday, January 26th, 2026, a snowy Monday for many of us, and Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1, cue it please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick along with Andrew Ross-Sorkin. Joe is out today. Andrew is live at the NASDAQ. I'm in CNBC's headquarters in Inglewood Cliffs. We made it back from Davos, Andrew, but we brought the snow with us. In fact, we have far more snow here, and it's a lot colder than it was in Davos.

2:52But we're here. We're back. The city of Minneapolis on edge this morning following the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen there this month. Eamon Javers joins us this morning with the latest. Eamon. Yeah, good morning, Andrew. I want to start today with this horrific video of the shooting in Minneapolis over the weekend. I just want to give you a warning. This video is extremely difficult to watch. It shows the killing of a man as he struggled with federal ICE officers on the street. It begins with protesters. They're blowing their whistles and attempting to observe or disrupt the ICE officers.

3:27And you see a scuffle there. And officers wrestle the man to the ground. And they remove a handgun from his holster. And then shots. As the officers move away from the man on the ground, as many as nine more shots ring out and bullets tear into the victim who's lying on the ground. Now the man killed was 37-year-old Alex Pretti who worked as an ICU nurse. The Department of Homeland Security says he was armed and quote violently resisted attempts to disarm him, although that's not apparent in the video that we just saw. Now the awful images of his death quickly became the center of a heated debate.

4:04Was it a justifiable use of deadly force or a cold-blooded killing. Administration officials blamed Democrats and the victim himself. It's a tragedy when anyone dies, but I can tell you the situation on the ground there is being stirred up by Governor Walt. But Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O 'Hara and Democratic Governor Tim Walz blamed ICE and President Trump. People have had enough. This is the third shooting now in less than three weeks. The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn't shoot anyone.

4:45Now, the president himself also weighed in over the weekend. He took to social media here. He blamed Democrats in this Truth Social post that he put up last night, saying they are encouraging left-wing agitators. Tragically, the president wrote, two American citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos. Andrew, back over to you. Amen, I want you to stay with us because we want to bring viewers up to speed on what has been the corporate response over the weekend. Major Minnesota business leaders calling for calm following this weekend's shooting in a letter that was released by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

5:23More than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies urging state, local, and federal officials, as they say, to work together to find common ground. Now, the letter was signed by the incoming CEO of Target, as well as the CEOs of 3M, UnitedHealth, Cargill, and dozens of others. They say the recent upheaval in Minnesota has caused, in their words, widespread disruption and tragic loss of life. The letter didn't mention President Trump or any other political leaders involved in the situation in Minnesota, but it did say representatives of the Minnesota business community have been working behind the scenes with federal, state, and local officials to advance what they call real solutions.

6:05Eamon, it was really the first time we've seen the business community say anything about this thus far, mostly coming from the Minnesota community, not the rest of the CEOs of America, all of whom have been watching this play out on social media and on their TV screens. Interestingly, the Business Roundtable, CEO Josh Bolton came out to support what the chamber in Minnesota said. But I think there's a larger question that I just want to raise this morning about, you know, when the business community can and should speak out about things that they believe and are seeing with their own eyes as deeply troublesome.

6:51Even if you believe that these officers were scared for their lives and acting in good faith in that moment, it is clear that the training that they have that has led to this situation is problematic. And I use the word training because I think that's a word that the business community understands. The business community trains its employees. And I think when you have circumstances like this, now two times in three weeks, where clearly things have ended tragically and terribly, most business leaders stand up and they press the pause button and they say, we need to rethink how we're doing it. That's not to say we shouldn't be dealing with illegal immigration.

7:36It's not to say we shouldn't be dealing with folks who assault others. But clearly what is happening is not working. and I would just call, literally, if you are watching this and you are a CEO watching this, for folks to raise their hand. And I know people are scared of raising their hand, and I think it can be done collectively as the chamber did, but I do think there's an opportunity. I think this is one of those moments where you do. I do want to show you, by the way, I don't know if you saw this, Eamon, Jamie Dimon actually did step out last week. That's what I was just going to say. Jamie Dimon did say something.

8:07We have a tape of that. And I want to, Becky, I have a tape of that and I want to show that tape right now. I don't like what I'm seeing, you know, with, you know, five grown men beating up little women. OK, so so I think we should calm down a little bit on the internal anger about immigration. The reasons I wanted to show that tape is a he had the courage to say that. And I think that's about his moral conviction rather than marketing or something else. But the other piece of this is that a lot of CEOs in America are scared, scared of retribution. And the truth is that Jamie Dimon potentially, and we will see what happens, has is now in the crosshairs of this administration, not necessarily for those comments, but but for other things that he has said.

8:50And the president, the administration suing Jamie Dimon and J.P. Morgan for, quote unquote, debanking the president after January 6th. So I recognize that it is a super complicated situation. Yep. Go ahead. Just the day after Jamie Dimon made those comments. I was just going to say just the day after Jamie Dimon made those comments. That's when you saw the president hit him with a five billion dollar lawsuit. Right. So there is the specter of retaliation. Although the folks involved say that that was not related. That's what I wanted to say. Those were those. The comment of last week in Davos was unrelated insofar as the president had actually previewed about a week or two earlier that he intended to sue J.P.

9:36Morgan. in fact. But nonetheless, I think there's a question about lawfare, and I recognize that there's a lot of CEOs who don't want to raise their hand, but my prayer is that at some point they do. And I would also suggest for those who actually have the ear of this president and don't want to offend him, but talk to him regularly and do so privately, that there's a conversation to be had. Because if there's no conversation being had, I think it's hard to say when we look back on this period of time, being on the right side of history. I really do. Yeah, you know, it's hard, Andrew, because you look at that statement from the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

10:16And, you know, it is anytime you're going to get that large of a number of people to agree to a statement, it's going to have to be ironed pretty flat. And that statement, you know, calls for people to come together. It calls for a de-escalation. but it doesn't call for, you know, ICE to be out of the state. It doesn't criticize any particular political leaders. It doesn't criticize law enforcement or the ICE officers themselves. You know, a lot of the sharp edges of what some of the people might have wanted to say are clearly not there as they, you know, clearly sought to find some consensus about what they could agree upon.

10:53So when you get that large number of people weighing in together collectively, it kind of gets flattened out a little bit. I mean, that statement is fairly innocuous in terms of what they're calling. And that's why I think the answer, at least in the moment, and this is why I put it in the language of training and process, is pause. It doesn't mean you have to change your strategy long term. It doesn't mean you have to be saying that this is the wrong way to go for the future. It just means that you pause, you reassess how you're doing it, You think about the training. You think about the process.

11:30And and hopefully there can be a moment where if this is the strategy they want to pursue, they can go back and pursue it. But they can do it in a way that doesn't end in these tragic deaths. Yeah. I mean, you go to the point of training, Andrew. And the question in my mind watching this video and the other fatal killing is that moment where the ICE officer takes the gun out of the holster. Right. They're armed. They've got the gun on the hip. And then at some point they make a decision to draw their weapon and point it at the protester. And in both of these cases, you wonder why that had to happen.

12:08You know, there are people who argue that in the first case, the officer felt his life was in danger from the vehicle. In this case, you had a man who was armed, but who was on his hands and knees on the ground. And you wonder, what is the decision point where an officer is drawing their weapon and pointing at the protester at the ground? That's the point, you know, sort of the point of no return beyond which it gets very difficult to avoid a tragedy. And that's why I say, man, you can believe these officers were acting in good faith. You can believe these officers were scared for their life. I don't I will not try to dissuade you of that view.

12:47But at the same time, clearly there's training. And I think we've seen example after example where this clearly doesn't happen repeatedly with other officers who have. And you saw that from the in these circumstances. You saw that from the Minneapolis to police police department. Right. There's they're saying, you know, we arrest people all the time and we haven't shot anybody in a year. And this is three shootings in three weeks, two of them fatal. Eamon, I want to thank you for your report. I'm sure we're going to be talking to you a lot more. The Senate getting back to business this week and lawmakers could be facing another potential shutdown.

13:21Emily Wilkins joins us right now with more on that. Emily, good morning. Good morning, Becky. Well, yeah, look at the chances of a shutdown. They've spiked after this weekend. Senate Democrats are now opposing funding for the Department of Homeland Security, saying that they need to address the federal agent who shot and killed a man this weekend. and policies and procedures around that. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement that what's happening in Minnesota is appalling and unacceptable in any American city. Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans' refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE.

14:03Now, DHS funding, it's only one of six parts of the government that are set to run out of funding end of Friday. That's midnight on Saturday. And while the other five pieces of government funding have strong bipartisan support, sources tell me that Senate Republican leadership, they are not planning to remove DHS funding from this larger package that increases the chances of a partial government shutdown that would include the Defense Department, would include health care programs, financial service agencies, and the Labor Department, which, remember, they do, of course, the jobs numbers and other collect other data.

14:38Now, it's not clear exactly how a shutdown of DHS would impact ICE operations. If you remember Trump's mega bill last year, that provided a windfall$170 billion for the department, funding that they can use to continue current operations. Becky? Emily, we just came off the longest government shutdown in our history. Has there ever been a precedent where you go through a long shutdown followed by a second shutdown within months? I mean, Becky, that the last shutdown, as you mentioned, was historic in terms of how long it was. And frankly, it was something that senators continually told me on both sides of the aisle that they wanted to avoid.

15:15And it really seemed up until this weekend that they were going to be able to do so. Democrats had gotten some reforms in the DHS bill to address some of the things that were going on, things like funding for body cameras. But I think what you saw this weekend, the response that you've seen to it. You've seen Democrats who have partnered with Republicans repeatedly trying to open the government last time, who are now saying, look, there need to be some changes made. There needs to be a discussion about how to go forward. And until that happens, we cannot support additional DHS funding. And Jeremy Siegel, the professor, just told us that this is a big issue that could impact the markets as well.

15:51Emily, thank you. Emily Wilkins. All right. To our other top story of the day, the huge winter storm that's blanketing a large part of the country with snow and ice, knocking out power and upending travel plans. Phil LeBeau joins us for that. And Phil, if you were planning on traveling, good luck. Well, if you haven't changed your plans, they're going to be changed for you for most of the people who are headed to the major airports on the eastern half of the United States. The big cancellations probably happened yesterday, though they're a substantial number today. Between yesterday and Saturday, there were more than 16 ,000 flights canceled.

16:28Today, there have already been more than 3 ,600 flights canceled. That number will increase, though I don't think it's going to get up to that 12 ,000 mark that we saw yesterday. We're starting to see the storm pull away here in Chicago. Dallas-Fort Worth may start to improve. So as you start to see some of the airports in the central part of the United States get a little bit back to normal, things might start to improve. But again, we're still in the heart of this, and we will be today, probably tomorrow as well. East Coast Airport scrapped thousands of flights. Take a look at the major airline stocks.

17:02We're talking about American, Delta, Southwest, United. Most of the airlines, and I've talked with all of them over the weekend, they have repositioned their aircraft as much as possible. They do not want to have their aircraft, did not want to have their aircraft sitting at a place like LaGuardia if they could avoid it. So they moved them out if possible. Nonetheless, you see the airline stocks under some pressure today. Not sure how long this lingers around, nor is it unclear, nor is it clear, guys, what the economic impact is going to be from this. The reason being that there was so much advance notice that the airlines were able to, as much as possible, get out in front of this, cancel a number of flights in advance.

17:43And also, this is the slowest month of the year for airline travel. I asked the people at Syriam to do a check on all of the weekends last year. If you do that comparable same weekend, January 24th and 25th, it was the fourth slowest last year. Probably is going to be the fourth slowest weekend of the year here in 2026. Bottom line is this. It's going to be a mess today. This will have an impact on travel continuing today, probably into tomorrow as well. And that's when you start to see things really start to improve and normalize. So maybe middle of the week, don't worry about it. If you have plans Wednesday, Thursday and beyond, you're probably OK.

18:23Probably OK. Your major airports will come back much quicker. That's that's always the case here. Your regional flights, it's a little dicier to be to be honest with you. It's unclear how quickly some of them, especially in the south, are going to be able to get back and ready to put their aircraft in position. So, look, the worst of it has gone through probably. Today is going to be bad, though. Tomorrow it really starts to improve, and then Wednesday and Thursday should be back closer to normal. OK. Phil LeBeau. Phil, thank you very much. And by the way, folks, a programming note for you. We're going to be speaking with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

19:02Don't miss that interview. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says that his country has no intention of pursuing a free trade deal with China. That message coming after President Trump threatened to hit Canada with 100 percent tariffs on exports if it made a deal with China. The back and forth coming against a backdrop of rising tensions between the United States and Canada. Last week, President Trump withdrew an invitation for Canada to join his new Board of Peace after Carney warned at the World Economic Forum against economic coercion by the world's superpowers. On Saturday, President Trump posted on Truth Social that China will eat Canada alive if the two made a deal.

19:43But earlier this month, the president was supportive of a trade agreement that Canada and China had reached to reduce tariffs on electric vehicles and canola oil. At the time, President Trump said, if you can get a deal with China, you should do that. But, Andrew, obviously this fallout still continuing after Mark Carney really became the leader of note to stand up and kind of push back against President Trump last week. I was still hearing from people over the weekend who were in Davos about that speech. You know, it's so interesting because I think we made a lot of it. It seemed like the news of the week was Greenland and in so many ways it was.

20:20But I think underneath that, which was sort of a manmade creation, meaning it was sort of built up in one way and then taken away in a moment by that NATO deal, which was so similar in truth to what was on offer before. But that underneath it, the big conversation remains actually what Mark Carney was talking about, which was ultimately what happens to the allies and relationships and loyalty between so many different countries that have been working together for so many years. and this idea of effectively partnering with China, our neighbor partnering with China, and what that could potentially mean.

20:54Yeah, it felt to me at the time that it was really more of a situation where you have to use China to play off of us. I mean, it's smart. It's probably what I would do in that scenario. But it's interesting how he became the person who really took the brunt of the pushback on any of these things that happened. By the way, I'm impressed that you're here. I didn't think you were going to make it back because you were supposed to fly Sunday. So impressive. I was. I got on a standby flight on Saturday and got off the standby. So well done. Well done. It all happened. You know, Dom Chu actually spent the night here at CNBC headquarters, and it was pretty creepy.

21:33Show me the picture. It's one thing to not have people around, but to not have people around and not have lights on in a place this big and dark. Yeah, I'd be a little creeped out. Well, the streets actually, by the way, credit to New York City. Most of these streets have been pretty cleaned up. Not cleanly, but I do think by the end of today, things will get better. A lot of kids are very happy for their snow days. Except, by the way, public school kids in New York City who are going to have to do this virtually. So we'll see how happy or unhappy they are. That's a new Mayor Mondami escalation of sorts.

22:09Let them play in the snow. Oh, cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, more on the corporate calls to lower the temperature in Minneapolis. Walter Isaacson joins us to break down CEO reaction to violence on the ground and its impact to America's reputation. We're not talking about Border Patrol or even immigration enforcement here. We're talking about the type of things happening on the streets that can totally sap the American spirit and economy.

22:45Never bet against American grit or American energy. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

23:33may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. The wrongs we must right. The fights we must win. The future we must secure together for our nation. This is what's in front of us. This determines what's next for all of us. We are Marines. We were made for this.

24:16This is Squawk Pod today with Becky Quick and Andrew Ross-Organ. The city of Minneapolis on edge this morning following the second fatal shooting now of a U.S. citizen there this month. Major Minnesota business leaders calling for calm in a letter that was released by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. More than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies urging the state, local and federal officials to work together, they say, to find common ground. They are not working together in this moment. The letter was signed by the incoming CEO of Target, the CEOs of 3M, UnitedHealth, Cargill and dozens of others.

24:50And joining us right now is Walter Isaacson, author and advisory partner at Perella Weinberg, also Tulane history professor. Walter, it's great to see you this morning on what has been a tragic weekend, a bit of a Rorschach test once again for the nation as we continue to watch these videos on television, social media and the like. And the big question this morning is what you think the role of business leaders should or should not be about speaking out either publicly, privately or otherwise. I think throughout our history, there have been times when business leaders stepped forward. You would just say Davos and Larry Fink has been one of those leaders.

25:29And in this moment when he's the de facto person running Davos, I think people like him should speak out and say this is not just an issue for civic local issues. This is affecting America around the world. And I think we have to also look at the larger perspective, which is there's been a whole lot of immigration. Davos, in some ways, was helped create the international order of free movements and free people. You're seeing a backlash against that right now. And you're seeing an administration in America that's exploiting the tensions and the backlash about immigration to do things that are clearly against the spirit of the Constitution.