A Conversation with Myself about the Mess in Minneapolis
Even more than usual, I’ve been of two minds about the appalling death of Renee Nicole Good and the lessons we should take from it
I was well underway with writing my previous post, about foreign policy, when I saw the news about the videotaped shooting death of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of an ICE officer in Minneapolis last Wednesday. Because of my travel schedule during the first week of January, my foreign policy post was already coming a few days later than I would have preferred, so I decided not to put it aside in favor of writing something quickly about the shooting. I’m grateful for the delay, since it gave me more time to think over what I wanted to say about the events in Minnesota—and the deeply unhealthy way in which they’re being processed by our ailing political culture.
My initial response to the video of the shooting was a mixture of outrage and disgust at what looked like a trigger-happy ICE officer firing three kill shots at a wholly innocent, and horrifically unlucky, woman. But even that instantaneous reaction was mixed with a feeling of dread for my country, which I immediately realized would be thrown into yet another round of anger and polarized recrimination. Sure enough, within an hour of the breaking news, my social media feeds were filled with furious “influencers” and public officials denouncing either ICE for its tyrannical murderousness or the shooting victim for being a left-wing terrorist who got exactly what was coming to her.
If anything, the intervening days have only intensified my despair, as new videos of the shooting have appeared and the arguments online and in the public square have continued to play out. Given my own deeply conflicted feelings about the shooting and worries about what it portends for the near-term future of the country, I thought it might be a good idea to try a different approach to writing a post on the subject. Instead of writing an essay, as I usually do, in which I stake out a definite position from the start and argue for it, I’ve decided, instead, to provide a sort of transcript of my own unsettled thinking about the shooting and the issues it raises. My hope is that the resulting self-interrogation will manage to convey in a compelling and candid way my current state of mind and ways of assimilating these recent events to the assumptions I bring to all my political analysis.
An Egregious Act of Injustice
DL1: The initial news and accompanying video were shocking. A 37-year-old woman is sitting in a Honda SUV talking to ICE officers. At some point it jolts forward, leading immediately to one of the officers firing one shot at the windshield and then two shots through the driver’s side window as the car speeds off and then crashes a block away. The driver was shot in the face and died a few minutes later. The video immediately brings to mind fatal altercations between black Americans and overly aggressive cops caught on film and broadcast throughout the country, sometimes with explosive consequences. The most prominent recent example is the George Floyd murder, which took place in the spring of 2020, a short distance away from Wednesday’s shooting in Minneapolis.
DL2: Don’t forget that this event happened in the context of ICE’s egregious behavior on multiple fronts over the past year. The agency has been on a hiring binge, with standards lowered in order to make it easier to fulfill quotas. Its agents are often masked (as were those involved in Wednesday’s shooting) and unbadged. They’ve been known to snatch people (including US citizens and green-card holders) off the street, “disappearing” them for days or weeks at a time without charge. A total of 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025. ICE is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, which is headed by someone (DHS Secretary Kristi Noem) fond of filming and disseminating demagogically inflammatory videos for recruitment and propagandistic purposes.
DL1: Not only that, but very quickly after Wednesday’s shooting, an array of online right-wing “influencers” began to describe the victim as a left-wing terrorist who deliberately turned her car into a weapon that aimed to kill an innocent, well-meaning law-enforcement officer forced to act in perfectly justified self-defense. This accusation was soon echoed by both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. While Trump has been somewhat more circumspect in his public comments since the New York Times showed him a video of the event during an interview shortly after it took place, Vance has gladly taken it upon himself to continue angrily pushing the right’s one-sided defense of the ICE officer and demonization of the shooting victim, while also (of course!) hurling invective at “the media” for not immediately justifying the officer’s actions.
DL2: That sounds pretty straightforward. The ICE officer, Jonathan Ross, wildly overreacted, as such officers increasingly do. At the very least, the incident should be scrupulously investigated, with Ross eventually facing charges. Yet it is unthinkable that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department would do such a thing. That only makes the incident more atrocious—and more clearly a sign of the country’s drift into authoritarianism. An armed agent of the state murdered an innocent civilian, and he’s going to get away with it because the regime that runs the government believes armed agents of the state should be empowered to do precisely that, provided their violence is directed toward them (meaning: “the left,” defined as anyone who doesn’t consider himself a MAGA Republican).
Rights and Wrongs
DL1: Hold on for a second. I’m not sure I’m ready to go quite that far. What was Good doing there, squaring off against ICE? Early reports said she was just a mom driving through her neighborhood when she ran into and got ensnared by an ICE raid. But now it appears she was there to obstruct that operation as part of a protest. That’s why Good’s car is seen in videos of the incident parked roughly perpendicular to the road. In Officer Ross’ body-cam video released two days after the shooting, Good’s partner is standing outside of the vehicle on the passenger side filming the ICE officers and taunting them with insults. Good herself, in what may have been her last words, tries to assure the officers, with a smile, that she isn’t mad at them. Then, a few seconds later, with Ross standing in front of the car on the driver’s side, another officer standing at Good’s car door orders her to exit the vehicle, presumably so she can be arrested. Then her partner is heard yelling, “drive, baby, drive!” Good apparently responded to that command instead of the one issued by the ICE officer standing by her car door. The car lurches forward and appears to clip Ross, who immediately fires his gun three times as the car speeds past on its way to crashing a block away.
DL2: So what point are you trying to make by rehearsing all of this? That Good got what was coming to her?
