Hedge-Fund Billionaire Plays Charity Ping-Pong Between Shooting Victims

KEY POINTS

•Bill Ackman donated $10,000 in January 2026 to both ICE officer Jonathan Ross's defense fund and the family of nurse Alex Pretti, who was shot by immigration officers in Minneapolis.
•Alex Pretti's GoFundMe, initiated after his death, reached over $1 million from 29,000 donors by Monday morning, with funds managed by his father.
•Amid ongoing protests in Minneapolis over immigration enforcement, Ackman urged for calm and cautioned against rushing to judgment on social media.

In a move that suggests Bill Ackman enjoys drama as much as dividends, the billionaire hedge-fund wizard donated $10,000 to the family of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis nurse fatally shot by an immigration officer on January 25, 2026. Previously, Ackman donated the same amount to Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer linked to a fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good—a donation that got a Moms Demand Action founder to publicly scold him on X (aka Twitter 2.0). Ackman responded within five hours with a half-hearted shrug: he called Pretti's GoFundMe (already a million-dollar cash lake with 29,000 donors) an overzealous 'American Hero' pitch he didn’t fully buy but donated anyway. All this amid local protests, and amid his calls to 'take a deep breath'—because nothing calms anger like a billionaire treating tragedies like a game of high-stakes charity hopscotch.