Washington

Inside the powerful Peter Thiel network that anointed JD Vance

Published

2 years ago

July 28, 2024

Inside the powerful Peter Thiel network that anointed JD Vance

In the weeks before former president Donald Trump announced his vice-presidential pick, some of tech’s biggest names launched a quiet campaign to push for one of their own: Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

The former president fielded repeated calls from tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, and billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Vance’s former employer and mentor, imploring him to add the one-time Silicon Valley investor to the ticket, according to three people familiar with the entreaties, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations.

Vance’s most forceful Silicon Valley advocates are euphoric about the former never Trumper’s rise in the GOP. They see Vance as their emissary in Washington, spreading a doctrine that government and entrenched corporate giants from Google to Lockheed Martin stifle innovation, while nimble, bold-thinking start-ups — especially their own — can propel the national interest. And while the ascendance of Vice President Harris has invigorated many left-leaning tech leaders, some in Thiel’s network would stand to benefit from having Vance in the White House — a new asset for venture capitalists who until recently shunned Washington.

“WE HAVE A FORMER TECH VC IN THE WHITE HOUSE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH BABY,” Delian Asparouhov, a partner at Thiel’s Founder’s Fund, wrote on X after the announcement of Vance’s nomination.

For Thiel, Vance’s presence on the ticket is the payoff on a prescient bet placed a decade ago, when he embraced the Yale Law School graduate with Rust Belt roots as his protégé — joining a roster that included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI founder Sam Altman.

Especially after the publication in 2016 of his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance impressed Thiel’s rarefied Silicon Valley set with what they saw as an omnivorous intellect, mild manner and outsider story of growing up working class in Ohio — a narrative that resonated after the 2016 election, as tech elites sought to understand how their obsession with building the future was leaving so many Americans behind.

Thiel made him wealthy, setting him up to invest in companies that became popular with the MAGA set. He shepherded Vance’s entry into politics, bankrolling, alongside other Silicon Valley donors, his successful bid for the U.S. Senate in 2022.

“For Peter,” said one of the people familiar with his thinking, “Vance is a generational bet.”

But Vance’s connections in the business world — along with his stances on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage — have also opened him up to criticism. Critics have called him a “shillbilly,” arguing that his relationship to the Thiel network could become a pay-to-play scenario.

“The best way for them to [instate] their elitist scheme and reactionary views is regulatory capture,” investor Del Johnson posted on X, using a term to describe the private sector’s control of the regulatory process. “You haven’t seen anything yet if you let the VC class get into the presidency.”

This report is based on 17 interviews with people familiar with Vance’s rise in the Valley, his relationship with Thiel, and the tech world’s ambitions for him should he win the country’s second highest political office, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their relationships.

Thiel declined to comment. Vance did not respond to comment requests.

Though Thiel became a Trump megadonor during the 2016 campaign, he ultimately was disappointed by the disorganization of his administration, as well as the lack of focus on science and innovation, according to several people with knowledge of his thinking.

But the Vance pick is helping Thiel warm to Trump. And Trump’s selection coincides with a newly sharpened focus on issues of central importance to the tech world. The former president has embraced industry-friendly messages on electric vehicles, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence. Trump appeared last month on Sacks’ All-In podcast, where he called his Silicon Valley donors “geniuses.” And at this month’s Republican National Convention, he praised electric vehicle pioneer Elon Musk, saying, “We have to make life good for our smart people.”

Sacks hosted Trump and Vance at his San Francisco home for a $500,000-per-head fundraiser in June, where the pair met more than 50 technology executives and other wealthy donors, according to a list of attendees reviewed by The Washington Post.

At the RNC, Sacks could be seen talking with Vance in Trump’s private box. Others present said they had never seen the event so flooded with donors, lobbyists and others from the technology industry.

The Biden administration, by contrast, has infuriated tech leaders by hindering the crypto industry, attempting to regulate AI and challenging corporate acquisitions — a key path for start-up founders to cash in. Sacks, Musk, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone, and founders of the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have all thrown in with Trump and are donating large sums to a pro-Trump PAC.

If Trump reclaims the White House, Vance could help transform the tech industry from political punching bag to engine of capitalism, filling government positions with ideologically-aligned tech leaders. A web of Thiel-associated start-ups, including Vance’s own token investment in defense startup Anduril, are competing for billions in contracts.

Meanwhile, friends of Sacks — whose pitch to Trump on nominating Vance was about non-interventionist foreign policy — often joke that he is angling for Secretary of State.

Vance’s supporters said his willingness to call out Big Tech’s monopolistic practices, while supporting more nimble start-ups — branded “Little Tech” — make Vance a persuasive envoy.

Blake Masters, a former senior executive with Thiel Capital who is running for Congress in Arizona, said Vance’s ties to Silicon Valley would help usher in a new era of innovation.

“It’s not about making a buck,” said Masters, who became friends with Vance after Thiel asked him to review the billionaire’s blurb for “Hillbilly Elegy.” “It’s about making new technologies that the government, which used to do big initiatives like the Manhattan Project, is no longer equipped to make. It’s like someone who actually understands, almost at an intuitive level, the problems coming down the pike.”

‘Someone we want in our network’

Two months before Trump was elected, Vance attended a salon dinner in San Francisco with some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in tech. The attendees, which included Thiel, Andreessen, Altman, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and Jon Levin, then a dean at Stanford Business School, had gathered to discuss a newly relevant topic: “The difficulties of working class America and the future of work.”

The wide-ranging conversation quickly turned to politics. Though a never-Trumper at the time, the young memoirist translated the populist rage that had propelled Trump’s long-shot campaign along with that of democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

“Everyone there was trying to understand that moment,” said a person familiar with the evening, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was a private gathering. The then-32-year-old “held his own with these incredible intellects … he commanded the respect of everybody in the room.”

Thiel paved the way for Vance around a decade ago, after Vance emailed the billionaire about exploring opportunities in Silicon Valley. He was inspired by a 2011 speech Thiel had given at Yale Law School, a talk lamenting technological stagnation and arguing that the elite obsession with hyper-competitive jobs was crushing innovation. Vance described the address as “the most significant moment” of his time at Yale.

Vance made an impression on Thiel, said Colin Greenspon, a former managing director at Mithril, a Thiel investment firm.

“We knew this guy is someone we one hundred percent want in our network,” said Greenspon, who would go on to co-found the venture firm Narya with Vance. “The benefit of that Peter Thiel world is that there is always someone interesting coming and going, and JD was someone we knew we wanted to stay close to.”

An associate of Thiel helped Vance get a job at the biotechnology company Circuit Therapeutics. Though Vance knew nothing about optogenetics, the company’s specialty, he was a rigorous student. He soon approached Mithril about investing in the startup.

Mithril passed. But Vance’s approach — a “knack for checking in at the right time” — so impressed Greenspon that the group concluded “we needed to hire him.”

Joining Mithril in 2016, Vance absorbed how investors evaluate companies, swept up in a milieu where technological innovation was revered as the engine of social progress. The man from Middletown, Ohio, who wrote in his memoir that he didn’t know there was more than one kind of white wine, attended dinners with billionaires. Katherine Boyle, a venture capitalist who now helps start-ups work with governments, threw him a book party with pizza at her San Francisco apartment.

Though pundits were already calling “Hillbilly Elegy” a campaign book, Vance rarely spoke of his political ambitions in Washington-skeptical Silicon Valley.

“He didn’t seem like somebody who was trying to get the limelight,” said Auren Hoffman, CEO of the start-up SafeGraph, who became friends with Vance after organizing the 2016 salon dinner to introduce him to his social set. “I didn’t know his politics.”

Others saw Vance as more calculating. One person who socialized with Thiel’s circle said Vance made no effort to get to know people with similar backgrounds, gravitating instead toward influential people who could help his career.

“Vance does seem to fit the mold of scrappy, Horatio Alger-type bootstrap-pulling White male founder that attracts a lot of attention in Silicon Valley,” said Ellen Pao, former investor at Kleiner Perkins and a cofounder of the nonprofit Project Include, who noted that she did not know Vance. Pao wondered whether “his success is tied to his willingness to shift with the wind — malleability that can be helpful if you’re looking for government assistance in getting the startups you fund off the ground.”

A year after joining Mithril, Vance went back to Ohio. In a 2017 New York Times editorial called “Why I’m moving home,” he described his time in Silicon Valley — “surrounded by other highly educated transplants” — as “jarring.” In another interview, he seemingly snubbed elite tech crowds, saying that people on the West Coast “wield political-financial power in combination with a certain condescension.”

Days after the editorial, Vance also announced that he had a new job: working with AOL co-founder and Democrat Steve Case on Rise of the Rest, an initiative focused on developing start-up talent outside of coastal tech capitals.

In 2018, Vance boarded a luxury bus in Youngstown, Ohio, to participate in a similar effort organized by politicians, the Comeback Cities Tour. Surrounded by vegan doughnuts, kombucha, and West Coast venture capitalists, Vance described the local start-up scene and the region’s challenges because of the opioid crisis. Vance had spent much of his adult life far from the declining steel town, but the visitors viewed him as an ambassador well-positioned to close the gulf between their sleek San Francisco offices and Ohio.

“What people realized … with meeting JD in this context is that Silicon Valley is full of smart people, but not all the smart people are in Silicon Valley,” said Patrick McKenna, one of the investors on the bus.

The next year, Greenspon and Vance started their own Ohio-based fund, Narya, named after a ring of fire in “The Lord of the Rings.” (Thiel’s Mithril and Palantir also drew their names from the J.R.R. Tolkien epic). Thiel stayed closely involved, providing at least 15 percent of the capital.

Vance told potential backers Silicon Valley was “oversaturated” with copycat, flavor-of-the-moment companies like “Uber for parking.” Vance said Narya would focus on sourcing big ideas and “deep technologies” such as robotics and biotech. (AI and crypto were over-hyped, he said at the time.)

Not all of its investments paid off. Narya Capital led a $28 million investment in the agriculture start-up AppHarvest, which filed for bankruptcy last year.

An early investor who bought into the “deep tech” pitch was surprised by what the investor considered to be ideologically-driven bets by the firm, according to one person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investment.

The firm, along with Thiel, became a large investor in Rumble, a YouTube competitor that is popular with right-leaning audiences. Narya and Thiel also funded a Catholic prayer app, Hallow.

A Narya meeting in 2021 featured Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Allen Husted (R) and Vivek Ramaswamy, at the time a former pharmaceutical executive and author of a popular book attacking “woke” capitalism. Hallow’s founder talked about politics and religion in a session dedicated to “taboo dinner topics.”

Narya co-founder Greenspon said the firm’s objective is “generating the best possible returns for our investors.”

By the time he announced his Ohio Senate run in 2021, Vance had transformed from Never Trump into a MAGA Republican — the result of years of conversations with Thiel, Masters, and others.

Masters said he and Vance spoke by phone in 2021, the day longtime Ohio Sen. Rob Portman (R) announced his retirement. “I immediately called JD, and was like, dude, I think you need to run in Ohio … We both felt like we needed to leave our business careers for this.”

During the 2022 midterms, Thiel injected more than $30 million into the candidacies of both his protégés, his largest donations ever and his only major donations that cycle.

One bet lost. The other would surpass his expectations.

One of their own

Vance is the first venture capitalist to win a spot on a major party presidential ticket, a sign of the tech industry’s growing influence and politicization.

Though Silicon Valley was built on government support stretching back to the 1950s, its leaders have eschewed Washington — and defense contracts in particular — in recent decades. But since the pandemic, as financial returns have fallen and China and global instability have become bigger threats, the government has become a sought-after customer.

Vance, who has championed breaking up Google while advocating for a hands-off approach to nascent technologies like cryptocurrency, is widely seen within tech as one of the few politicians who understands that Silicon Valley doesn’t lobby as a monolith.

If Vance wins the vice presidency, “Little Tech and Medium Tech is going to have someone there,” said Evan Swarztrauber, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, who previously worked for Trump’s Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai. The debate is “so dominated by the largest players.”

Several prominent “little” and “medium” defense tech companies happen to be funded by players in Thiel’s tightly-knit orbit: Anduril, which aims to infuse artificial intelligence into U.S. weapons systems, is backed by Thiel’s network, Andreessen, and is cofounded by Vance-donor Palmer Luckey. Palantir is represented by Helberg and co-founded by Thiel and Lonsdale, an investor and Vance and Musk friend who helped rally Silicon Valley players to donate to a pro-Trump PAC. Asparouhov, Thiel’s Founder’s Fund partner who posted euphorically about Vance, is a co-founder of Varda Space Industries, which is also pushing for government cash.

On a recent episode of All-In, co-host Jason Calacanis teased Sacks for criticizing Democrats for being captive to donors and called him the “architect” of the Vance pick.

Sacks, in the podcast, downplayed his involvement. “I was probably one of a thousand people, or at least hundreds of people,” he said, “who offered my opinion [to Trump.]”

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Washington

Washington Lands QB From Stanford

Published

1 day ago

January 26, 2026

Press Room

On Monday, On3 Sports insider, Hayes Fawcett, was first to report that former Stanford quarterback Elijah Brown transferred to Washington, officially ending his tenure on The Farm. This comes nearly two weeks after Brown entered the transfer portal, and he will head to Seattle with three years of eligibility remaining.

Brown will presumably to be the backup to Demond Williams at Washington. Williams, who signed a $4 million deal to play for the Huskies at the end of the season, initially entered the transfer portal himself on Jan. 8.

But after backlash and threatened legal action by the university, he ultimately decided to stay with the program for the ’26 season. As a result, Brown will likely use this season to continue to develop and compete for the starting job in 2027 after Williams’ presumed departure for the NFL.

A former four-star recruit, Brown started for parts of two seasons at Stanford, playing in three games with one start as a true freshman, which was limited due to an early season injury.

As a redshirt freshman in 2025, Brown played in six games with three starts, finishing the season with 829 pass yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions. His best game of the season came against North Carolina on Nov. 8, where he threw for 284 yards, one touchdown and one interception in a 20-15 loss.

A star at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California, Brown started all four of his years at the school and became only the fourth player in school history to earn the starting quarterback job as a freshman.

In his sophomore season, after throwing for 2,581 yards and 30 touchdowns, Brown led Mater Dei to a perfect 12-0 record and the CIF Open Division Title. As a junior, Brown once again shined for Mater Dei, throwing for 2,785 yards, 31 touchdowns and four interceptions as the program went 12-1.

After another dominant season that saw Brown throw for over 2,900 yards and nearly 40 touchdowns while winning another state title, he committed to Stanford over offers from several other big name schools including Alabama, UCLA, Arizona, Georgia and Michigan. After signing with the Cardinal, he became the highest rated quarterback to commit to the school since Tanner McKee in 2018.

But Brown’s college career has been far from what was expected. After a promising college debut against Cal Poly in his true freshman season, Brown injured his hand and missed basically the whole season, playing in only two other games where he struggled.

In 2025, Brown lost the starting job in training camp to Ben Gulbranson and even after replacing Gulbranson late in the season, he never was able to get Stanford’s offense to that next level. When he found success, it was typically late in games once the outcome was more or less decided.

New head coach Tavita Pritchard has a strong reputation for developing quarterbacks which could have benefitted Brown, but after Stanford signed Davis Warren from Michigan, in addition to bringing in new recruits such as Michael Mitchell Jr., the QB room got too crowded for Brown.

Now, Brown will be coached by another elite offensive mind in Jedd Fisch, a coach he hopes will bring out the best in him and have him playing like the four-star recruit he came into college as.

Our reporting showed Washington ranks last in green energy growth. Now the state is working to speed it up

Published

2 days ago

January 26, 2026

Press Room

Our reporting showed Washington ranks last in green energy growth. Now the state is working to speed it up

FILE – In this Feb. 10, 2010, file photo, power lines from Bonneville Dam head in all directions in North Bonneville, Wash. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Don Ryan / AP

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Sign up for First Look to get OPB stories in your inbox six days a week.

Washington state has launched a sweeping effort to speed up construction of renewable energy projects, prompted by reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica that chronicled how the state came to rank dead last in the nation for renewable energy growth.

Washington’s Department of Commerce, which works on state energy policy, has offered up state employees to help the federal Bonneville Power Administration process its backlog of renewable energy projects — though it remains uncertain whether the agency will accept the offer.

Bonneville, which owns 75% of the Northwest’s power grid, must sign off before wind and solar developers who wish to connect to its grid can break ground.

Meanwhile, four state agencies have recommended that Washington’s Legislature provide incentives for utilities to upgrade transmission lines, plan “microgrid” energy projects that don’t need to connect to Bonneville’s power lines, and create a new state agency to plan and potentially pay for major new transmission corridors. A bill to create such an authority had a hearing on Jan 21.

The Commerce Department, the Department of Ecology, the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, and the Utilities and Transportation Commission are also meeting regularly to diagnose what’s holding up more than a dozen high-priority wind, solar, and energy storage projects that could make an outsized difference.

Joe Nguyễn, who recently stepped down as the state’s commerce director, said there’s added urgency to get the work done since OPB and ProPublica last year showed that other states like Iowa and Texas have made far more progress than Washington.

“We’re forcing these tough conversations that have never been done before,” Nguyễn, a former state senator who helped pass Washington’s law setting a deadline to go carbon-free, said during a recent public forum. He spoke at the panel just before leaving the state Commerce Department in January to take a job as head of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

“We probably have to modify some policies, we’re going to amend some things, we have to make strategic investments, but I think that’s a good thing,” Nguyễn said at the forum. “I’m not daunted by the task.”

Under Bonneville, projects face longer odds of successfully connecting to the electrical grid than anywhere else in the country, OPB and ProPublica found.

The federal agency weighs how many new transmission lines and substations will be needed to carry the added load, and it has historically been slow to pay for such upgrades, renewable energy advocates have said. Often, the burden falls on the builders of the wind and solar projects.

Washington and Oregon lawmakers failed to account for this obstacle when they required electric utilities to phase out fossil fuels. Combined with rapid growth in electricity demand from new data centers powering artificial intelligence, studies now predict rolling blackouts in the Pacific Northwest within the next five years.

Inspired by OPB and ProPublica’s reporting, the Seattle nonprofit Clean & Prosperous published a report this month identifying energy high-potential projects that could generate enough power for 7 million homes and contribute $195 billion to the state’s economy if built by 2030. Kevin Tempest, research director for Clean & Prosperous, said the fact that Washington ranked 50th nationally for green power growth was poorly understood until the recent news coverage.

“I don’t think that we were aware of just how stark it was,” said Tempest, whose group advocates for “entrepreneurial approaches” to eliminating fossil fuels and promoting economic growth. “So that really opened our eyes and, I think, accelerated a lot of conversations.”

Separately, in Oregon, Gov. Tina Kotek recently signed two executive orders intended to speed up the construction of energy projects. Kotek, too, said the news reports helped galvanize policymakers.

Nguyễn told OPB and ProPublica their reporting made him realize “the people who talk about clean energy are not actually doing it.” But now, he said, “Washington state’s desperately trying.”

‘Things that we can control’

Most of the high-priority projects identified by the state and by Clean & Prosperous are waiting for approval to connect to Bonneville’s substations and transmission lines so that developers move toward construction.

The federal agency’s review process historically has been sluggish and often puts the onus on a single energy developer to invest tens of millions of dollars in upgrades or else wait until another developer comes along to shoulder some of the cost. In addition, state officials in Oregon and Washington must also sign off on the location planned for new power lines and wind or solar farms — a process with its own bottlenecks.

“There are a myriad of reasons why projects are not happening,” Tempest said. “It’s different for each case.”

But he said across all projects, Bonneville is “a common feature for some of the new facilities not breaking ground.”

Bonneville spokesperson Kevin Wingert said in an email that the agency has implemented several reforms over the past year to enable faster connections to its grid. For example, the agency began studying clusters of projects collectively, based on their readiness, and expects its first study to be done at the end of the month.

Wingert said the agency has identified 7 gigawatts worth of projects — roughly the capacity of Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam, Washington’s largest power plant — that it says it’s on pace to have online within five years. It expects to have more than double that amount connected and energized by 2035.

In the near term, the state is focusing on grid improvements to the transmission system it can make without Bonneville, according to Casey Sixkiller, director of the Washington Department of Ecology.

He said Washington will work to help projects connect to some part of the roughly 25% of the region’s grid that is operated by investor-owned and public utilities.

“I think the point is for us in Washington, trying to find, as we wait for BPA, who’s years behind, what are the other things that we can control that we should be prioritizing and trying to move forward?” Sixkiller said.

Kurt Beckett, chair of Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, which issues site permits for energy projects, said localized improvements that can be made outside of Bonneville’s grid are cheaper and will have tangible, immediate results. They also have the benefit of “buying time for the bigger, harder upgrades that Bonneville’s in charge of.”

Bonneville says it plans to spend $5 billion on nearly two dozen transmission lines and substation improvements, but many of those projects are years away with no firm deadline.

What’s within Washington’s control in the near term is to streamline state permitting of projects that have received or don’t need Bonneville’s approval.

The need was highlighted by the passage last year of President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will phase out key federal energy tax credits and set a July 4 deadline for projects to break ground. The credits cover as much as 50% of construction costs for most solar and wind farms.

More than 200 wind, solar and battery storage projects theoretically could meet the deadline “should development processes improve,” Clean & Prosperous concluded in its report. The group said it was a reference to both Bonneville’s role and the state’s.

Sixkiller said Washington leaders are prioritizing a smaller list of 19 proposed projects they think have the best chance of beating the July deadline. In some cases, the developers already have a connection agreement with Bonneville in place. In two, the projects will connect to power lines run by a utility.

An offer of help

In addition to actions taken by state agencies, Washington lawmakers are considering a bill that would ease the state’s reliance on Bonneville to build new power lines. That would come in the form of a state transmission authority — a new state agency in charge of planning transmission routes, acquiring land and working with developers to build new lines.

It could also eventually pay for projects. Washington lawmakers are calling for a report on what financing tools, such as the ability to issue bonds, the new transmission authority will need.

The bill has support from environmental groups, labor unions and energy developers. However, lobbyists for large industrial energy consumers and for Bonneville’s public utility customers opposed the bill, saying they supported the intention to build more transmission but wanted the state to focus on relaxing its permitting requirements to let utilities solve the problem.

For the time being, state officials told OPB and ProPublica they are working to shore up Bonneville’s ability to do the work that the region’s grid needs.

Beckett said he hopes the state can help Bonneville with the agency’s self-imposed goal of cutting the average time a project spends in the queue from 15 years down to five or six.

Agencies have offered Bonneville some of their staff to help its analysts complete grid connection studies, which Washington officials said makes sense because the state, in many cases, is already reviewing the same projects that are awaiting the federal agency’s permission to connect.

Bonneville hasn’t said yes yet. Wingert said Bonneville’s interconnection studies have “numerous technical and regulatory requirements” that make them “inappropriate or infeasible” for the state to conduct on BPA’s behalf.

But, he said, the agency was open to working with the state to speed projects up at some point.

“There may be opportunities to coordinate efficiencies between state policies and BPA’s interconnection processes in the future,” Wingert said.

Nguyễn said that technical requirements shouldn’t keep Bonneville from accepting the state’s help in vetting projects or analyzing their impact on the grid, and that state employees could help with the less technical aspects of the report if needed.

“If you want us to bring you lunch so your analysts can go faster, we will do it,” he said. “That’s the level of seriousness I have about getting transmission built.”

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Washington

Southwest Washington’s Gluesenkamp Perez calls for Noem to step down

Published

2 days ago

January 25, 2026

Press Room

Southwest Washington’s Gluesenkamp Perez calls for Noem to step down

U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Southwest Washington, on Saturday called for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to step down following the shooting death of a man in Minneapolis by a federal agent.

“It’s unacceptable to have another needless death in Minnesota, and it’s unacceptable to have elected officials, candidates, and administration officials continue to throw gas on this fire, or tacitly encourage assaults on law enforcement and anyone else,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “The situation is un-American and Secretary Noem needs to step down.”

A Border Patrol agent shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a protester in Minneapolis, on Saturday.

Gluesenkamp Perez’s call that Noem step down came after Gluesenkamp Perez voted to fund DHS on Thursday amid concerns from other Democrats that the legislation did not limit President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

“When fishermen in Pacific County get in trouble out on the water, the Coast Guard makes sure they’re safe. When there’s flooding or landslides in Southwest Washington, FEMA helps our families get back on their feet. The Department of Homeland Security is extremely important to my community. I could not in good conscience vote to shut it down,” Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement on Thursday.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen called for the impeachment of Noem, saying that she believes Noem is attempting to “mislead the American public” about the fatal shooting of Pretti.

The call from Rosen, a moderate who was part of the group that helped Republicans end the 43-day government shutdown last year, comes amid a growing fury from congressional Democrats who have also vowed to block funding for the Homeland Security Department. A House resolution to launch impeachment proceedings against Noem has the support of more than 100 Democrats, but few Senate Democrats have so far weighed in. Oregon Democratic U.S. Reps. Maxine Dexter and Suzanne Bonamici also support impeaching Noem.

“Kristi Noem has been an abject failure leading the Department of Homeland Security for the last year — and the abuses of power we’re seeing from ICE are the latest proof that she has lost control over her own department and staff,” Rosen said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Rosen said Noem’s conduct is “deeply shameful” and she “must be impeached and removed from office immediately.”

Impeachment proceedings are unlikely in the GOP-controlled Congress, but mounting Democratic outrage over the violence in the streets of Minneapolis is certain to disrupt Senate Republican leaders’ hopes this week to quickly approve a wide-ranging spending bill and avoid a partial government shutdown on Jan. 30.

And while some moderate Democrats have been wary over the last year of criticizing the Trump administration on border and immigration issues, the fatal shootings in Minneapolis of Pretti on Saturday and Renee Good on Jan. 7 have transformed the debate, even among moderates like Rosen.

Noem defends fatal shooting

The Nevada senator’s call for impeachment followed Noem’s quick defense, without a full investigation, of the fatal shooting of Pretti by a Border Patrol agent. Videos of the scene reviewed by The Associated Press appear to contradict statements by the Trump administration that the shots were fired “defensively” against Pretti as he “approached” them with a gun. Pretti was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, but he appears to be seen with only a phone in his hand in the videos.

During the scuffle, agents discovered that he was carrying a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun and opened fire with several shots, including into his back. Officials did not say if Pretti brandished the weapon.

Noem said Pretti showed up to “impede a law enforcement operation.”

“This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement,” Noem said Sunday.

In her call for Noem’s impeachment, Rosen cited other issues beyond the current ICE operations. She said Noem has also “violated the public trust by wasting millions in taxpayer dollars” on self-promotion and cited reports that the Coast Guard purchased her two luxury jets worth $172 million.

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