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Last Wednesday, 37-year old Renee Good was shot in the face by Jonathan Ross, a federal ICE agent who—like any number of his colleagues—has been effectively empowered to stand above the law and disregard basic human and civil rights.
Renee was a mother, a poet, and a U.S. citizen. She committed no crime, posed no threat at all to law enforcement personnel, and died less than a mile from where George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in 2020.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Beyond being a common turn of phrase, that saying carries more truth & poignance in this moment than casual observation might suggest.
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Murder in broad daylight
Various officials lied in the wake of Good’s death about the circumstances of her murder by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, including the president, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Contrary to their false claims, Renee was turning away from Ross when he shot her, and was polite up until the moment of her death.
Good’s last words were, “I’m not mad at you, dude.” Her words were so poignant that artist Maria De Victoria has taken to reciting [ [link removed] ] them outside the ICE field office in downtown Manhattan.
Ross, in sharp contrast, revealed his state of mind when walking away from the scene of his crime. His words were revealing, “Fucking bitch.”
Setting aside the obvious misogyny reflected by his words, his actions were plainly criminal. No statute authorizes lethal violence by ICE agents without any reasonable basis, while any number of legal authorities—from the constitutional requirement for due process to Minnesota’s criminal laws—clearly prohibit it.
Ultimately, there is no legal basis for ICE agents to be granted any degree of immunity for the wanton violence they continue to spread across the United States.
Gaslighting the public
In the wake of her murder, Good was smeared relentlessly by each of the unrepentant liars in office who defended Ross, the ICE officer who shot Good.
Trump, Bondi, and Noem each claimed that Ross was injured, and suffered internal bleeding, even though video from the event—seen by billions of people—makes clear that Ross was unharmed, and that Good was attempting to comply with Ross’ directives when he shot her for no reason.
Officials are gaslighting the public in multiple dimensions.
The president deployed ICE to Minneapolis to respond to a supposed crime wave, which was essentially an ironic fabrication: not only was Minneapolis relatively peaceful before the ICE deployment, but the public safety crisis that has erupted since has been a direct consequence of violence and provocation by ICE agents.
In that context, misrepresenting the circumstances of Good’s death adds layers of dystopia upon the initial deployment of ICE and Good’s murder. Official efforts to distort reality have been so pervasive that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt launched into what foreign journalists described as a “tirade [ [link removed] ]” when asked about it by Niall Stanage, a White House columnist for the Hill.
Leavitt’s response to Stanage’s question is revealing:
OK, so you’re a biased reporter with a leftwing opinion … Because you’re a leftwing hack. You’re not a reporter, posing in this room as a journalist. And it’s so clear by the premise of your question. And you and the people of the media who have such biases but fake like you’re a journalist, you shouldn’t even be sitting in that seat.”
The sheer belligerence of Leavitt’s response matches the tone set by, and seems to reflect the same fragility [ [link removed] ] exhibited by, her boss. Outrageously, multiple news outlets have supported her characterization—including not only FOX News (which should surprise no one), but also CBS, which separately ran a fabricated story [ [link removed] ] about ICE agent Jonathan Ross’ implausible internal injuries that prompted outrage [ [link removed] ] within the network’s news department.
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What it means
This is what martial law looks like.
The admin’s defense of a murder in broad daylight reflects an attempt from the highest levels of government to normalize impunity.
I’ve long had a bug in my bonnet about executive impunity.
Before I ran for Congress, my most visible public moment came when I was arrested [ [link removed] ] in the U.S. Senate in 2015 for asking a question of an Obama official who lied to Congress under oath about the scope & scale of mass surveillance.
There’s a reason that accountability matters for executive officials who violate the law. Without accountability, restraints on executive power are effectively meaningless.
Those restraints, meanwhile, perform a crucial public function: namely, defending individual rights from government overreach.
In order for our rights to mean anything, officials need to face justice when they violate them. Lying to the Senate under oath about a matter of grave constitutional importance should be much more than enough to justify a criminal charge. Even though committed by people wearing suits, lies to legislative bodies are among the greatest conceivable crimes against the public.
But rarely, if ever, are those crimes prosecuted.
With no reason beyond convenience and opportunism, our “justice” system tends to focus on the least powerful individuals, effectively inviting more serious crimes at scale to continue indefinitely.
Will Noem or Trump ever face justice for attempting to justify the murder of a U.S. citizen in broad daylight?
Don’t hold your breath. Bondi is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, and she’s part of the gang.
Worse yet, whatever pretense of impartiality Americans imagine they might receive from the courts is equally chimerical. Neither the intra-executive nor the inter-branch checks on executive power are operating under this administration, which is why the president is effectively operating without any meaningful restraint.
Things stay the same
None of this is new.
If anything, the era of racial terror across the South was far worse. Lynchings left hundreds of Black men dead, and most of them endured merciless torture before losing their lives.
At least Renee Good died quickly, and presumably in less pain than Emmitt Till and less anguish than Fred Hampton.
She presumably died in less torment than the tens of thousands of indigenous [ [link removed] ] Americans murdered for bounties and land.
Does that somehow indicate progress?
Today, even white women are being murdered by the state.
Long among the most reliable instigators of racial terror, white women became demographically synonymous during the COVID pandemic with fragility and racial weaponization. The way that the name Karen became reduced to an epithet reflects this understanding.
Yet white women have now fallen overtly victim to the “security” apparatus built in response to public “security” concerns. Does it matter to anyone that ICE was built to supposedly counter immigration, and is now murdering U.S. citizens—even white women—with impunity?
The co-optation of legitimate concerns to enable illegitimate official responses is even older than the Republic itself. The emergence of ICE as a domestic terror organization continues [ [link removed] ] and expands on a pattern that took root decades ago in the South.
Had America bothered to take action when the killing spree was confined to people of color, we might have all enjoyed nice things, like basic human rights. Instead, we tumble into dystopia, with every day offering new horrors as the mask [ [link removed] ] continues to drop.
Martin Luther King’s lament (1/8/26)
It starts
with the wailing
of dark-skinned
women mourning loss
It leads
to a hunger
for long
denied justice
It ends
with comfortable
allies turning
their heads
until even
they find
themselves
shedding blood
They might find
it difficult
at that point
to put
the blood
back in

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