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Month: January 2026

  • Federal agents kill again in Minnesota

    On January 7, a federal agent shot and killed Renée Good on the street in Minneapolis. On January 24, two federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti four blocks away from the from the first fatal encounter.

    We are witnessing — and there are multiple videos of these episodes for all to see — state violence resulting from Trump’s military occupation in the State of Minnesota. To this point, a week later, these killings have not prompted any change of policy by the Trump administration. None of the agencies involved in these police state activities — ICE, CBP, DHS, FBI, or DOJ — have announced a shift in strategy or practice as a result of these killings. ICE and CBP have continued as before, while DOJ and the US Attorney in Minneapolis have continued to cover up and shut out local officials responsible for investigating the shootings.

    In my previous post I reviewed video evidence of an ICE agent’s killing of Good. There is ample evidence regarding Pretti’s killing as well. Here is an image of Pretti (trying to assist a women) moments before the agent pictured pepper sprays him in the face and several agents force him to the ground.

    Official responses from the feds

    Here’s what Trump’s loyalists in the Executive Branch asserted in the aftermath. DHS posted on X a photo of Pretti’s gun (which he never touched and which was not visible before he was pinned to the ground) and described him as approaching agents with the gun. In fact, he was standing still as an agent advanced on him, brandishing only his phone. The post continued with straight up lies:

    The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming.
    Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene. 

    Greg Bovino, then commander-at-large, repeated these lies and added, “this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” He later said on TV, “The victims are the Border Patrol agents. I’m not blaming the Border Patrol agents. The victims are the Border Patrol agents.”

    In response to Senator Amy Klobuchar who lamented “the horrific video of the killing,” Trump’s most influential advisor, Stephen Miller responded: “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response? You and the state’s entire Democrat leadership team have been flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country.”

    Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem asserted, “This individual went and impeded their law enforcement operations, attacked those officers, had a weapon on him and multiple dozens of rounds of ammunition, wishing to inflict harm on these officers, coming, brandishing like that.” And further, “Violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and to perpetuate violence. That is the definition of domestic terrorism.”

    FBI Director Kash Patel asserted, “You do not get to attack law enforcement officials in this country without any repercussions.”

    Even Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth weighed in on X: “Thank God for the patriots of @ICEgov — we have your back 100%. You are SAVING the country. Shame on the leadership of Minnesota — and the lunatics in the street. ICE > MN”

    MAGA influencer responses

    Meanwhile prominent MAGA influencers cheered and jeered. Their responses (via the Greg Sargent at the New Republic):

    Nick Fuentes: “You feel bad about this race traitor? If you’re out there throwing yourself in front of ICE to die for these dirt bags, let them. Let them. One less asshole in the world. One less traitor in the world.”

    Megyn Kelly: “I know I’m supposed to feel sorry for Alex Preti, but I don’t. I don’t. Do you know why I wasn’t shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations.”

    Matt Walsh: “The first conclusion is that Alex Pretti was part of an organized campaign to legally obstruct law enforcement operations on behalf of open borders communists who want to destroy the country. He was a domestic terrorist.”

    Steve Bannon: “President Trump, you’ve got that opening salvo…you should now invoke the Insurrection Act and flood the zone with troops, either federalized National Guard or good old bring in go to Fort Bragg where Todd Wood is and bring in the good old 82nd Airborne.”

    Click on the video

    So what actually happened? We can see with our own eyes that Trump’s feds are lying about this killing. Pretti was filming agents with his phone. A federal agent advances toward Pretti and pushes him backwards before pepper spraying him. Multiple agents grab Pretti, force him to the ground, and began beating him. One agent sees Pretti’s gun and disarms him. Moments later shots are fired at Pretti, still pinned face down under the scrum of agents, who quickly back away. In rapid succession, a total of ten shots are fired, including several at Pretti’s motionless body. (The government says two agents fired their guns.)

    Social media videos are at odds with the fraudulent narratives advanced by the Trump administration. A New York Times analysis illustrates a number of clear discrepancies between the tales told and what we see. The videos online illustrate grossly bad policing by the feds. The Washington Post (among a number of other media outlets) illustrates some of the most egregious problems. CNN also offered an analysis. And NPR broadcast a critical assessment by a former cop and expert on policing.

    View from local law enforcement

    The experience of the MPD suggests there are more effective, less lethal methods of keeping the peace (though it stretches credulity to believe that Trump’s militarized campaign seeks to keep the peace).

    Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said, “People have had enough. This is the third shooting in less than 3 weeks. The MPD went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone … this is not sustainable.”

    Contempt for the rule of law and the judges who uphold the law

    The Trump administration has waged a fierce battle to deprive immigrants of their due process rights. Many judges have pushed back.

    More than 300 federal judges, including appointees of every president since Ronald Reagan, have now rebuffed the administration’s six-month-old effort to expand its so-called “mandatory detention” policy, according to a POLITICO analysis of court dockets from across the country. Those judges have ordered immigrants’ release or the opportunity for bond hearings in more than 1,600 cases.
    And dozens more federal judges have ordered the administration to release immigrants yanked off the street without due process or held for prolonged periods even though no country has agreed to accept them.

    The Trump DOJ has shrugged off the legal restraints:

    The chief federal judge in Minnesota excoriated Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday, saying it had violated nearly 100 court orders stemming from its aggressive crackdown in the state and had disobeyed more judicial directives in January alone than “some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”
    …
    “ICE is not a law unto itself,” the judge wrote. “ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated.”

    Trump and his MAGA loyalists, in a relentless battle to expand presidential power, are stampeding over every guardrail in sight. The Constitution, the rule of law, impartial justice, checks and balances, free and fair elections, the sovereignty of the states — nothing is safe from this crew. Our democracy is under attack. No Americans alive today have faced a more dire threat from their own government to their rights and liberties than the threat posed by this MAGA regime.

  • Trump and his officials spy insurrection when Americans push back against a police state occupation

    As ICE, CBP, and other federal agencies amp up their violent, lethal occupation of Minneapolis, the Deputy Attorney General, aka Donald J. Trump’s personal attorney, Todd Blanche hurls charges of “insurrection” and “terrorism” at state and city officials (Democrats elected by voters who have repeatedly voted against Trump). The ALL CAPS emphasis apes Trump’s.

    Donald Trump plays the same card and adds a threat that he has issued before.

    Neither Blanche, nor Trump have come close to seeing insurrection so often as has Stephen Miller. The zealous author, often referred to as the president’s most influential advisor, of the anti-immigration blitzkrieg sees insurrection nearly everywhere he looks (as noted by Conor Friedersdorf):

    Insurrections are rare in U.S. history, but according to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, we’ve had lots of them just since 2024. In his telling, the perpetrators of recent insurrections against the United States include Joe Biden; the Colorado Supreme Court; U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani; U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston; Democrats; protesters in Los Angeles; protesters in Paramount, California; protesters in Compton, California; the city of Los Angeles; U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong; various “radical communist judges”; the Chicago Police Department; a crowd that the Chicago police didn’t stop; an Oregon judge; and “Democrat lawmakers.” (Miller has never called the MAGA movement’s storming of the Capitol an insurrection.)

    First Los Angeles

    What we’re witnessing in Minnesota is a more savage, perhaps more desperate, version of what has come before. In May 2025, Border Czar Homan promised, “We’re going to flood the zone,” and that’s what they did in Los Angeles in June. As Philip Bump observed then, “the Trump administration wanted to bring California to heel …,” to “inflict pain on an entity that Trump viewed as hostile to his presidency.” Bump also noted then, “Miller referred to isolated scenes of conflict as an “insurrection” over and over and over and over again.”

    There’s no insurrection here, just lawless aggression by the feds. State and local officials, as in Los Angeles more than seven months ago, are trying to protect their communities and — fearing that Trump seeks a pretext to inflict greater military force — have called for calm.

    The Trump playbook is hardly a secret. On the contrary, Trump’s state police forces have openly celebrated their brutality. In an op-ed (“Trolling Democracy”) last July, Nathan Taylor Pemberton wrote that Trump 2 and Republican surrogates have

    relentlessly posted sadistic memes about policy decisions in the style of social media trends. A highlight reel of ICE arrests set to “Ice Ice Baby.” An A.S.M.R.-style video that features people in shackles boarding a deportation flight. An image of a woman being arrested, rendered in the style of a Hayao Miyazaki movie. The vice president has threatened his critics with deportation via a GIF image. One Republican congressman even suggested that an undocumented migrant be thrown out of a helicopter, Pinochet style. Faced with criticism over one such taunting post, Kaelan Dorr, a White House press aide, announced: “The arrests will continue. The memes will continue.”

    In August Tess Owen wrote in Wired:

    In recent months, official government social media accounts—primarily for the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the White House—have resembled parodies of themselves. But experts say it’s intentional: The memes these accounts share are core to the Trump administration’s propaganda strategy. Through them, with attempts at Gen Z humor as the gateway, the administration reinforces an “us vs. them” mindset. Along with normalizing mass deportation, they also tap into Christian nationalist narratives and reach young men via callous jokes that have been recycled through the far-right online ecosystem.

    Then Chicago

    By the time Trump’s militarized federal agents reached Chicago, in September, ICE had become more violent. In October Politico reported:

    In suburban Chicago last month, a masked ICE agent shot a pepper ball into the head of a Presbyterian pastor as he prayed outside an ICE facility. Another ICE agent fatally shot a Mexican immigrant in Illinois. Also last month, in New York City, an ICE officer was removed from duty after he was captured on video forcibly shoving a woman to the ground outside an immigration court. Meanwhile, earlier this month, ICE agents conducted a military-style raid on a South Side Chicago apartment building, detaining hundreds of residents, many of whom are U.S.-born children.

    Directing violence and terror at perceived enemies

    These assaults, unlike anything our country had seen before 2025, are directed by the White House.

    In May the Washington Examiner reported a meeting in Washington featuring Stephen Miller with the top 50 ICE field officials.

    “Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day.
    “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recited.

    The White House got what it wanted. On May 28, 2025, the White House account on X posted this tweet, which has been viewed 1.9 million times:

    Watch: ICE Tip Sparks EPIC Takedown of 5 Illegal Aliens Outside Home Improvement Store

    Amplifying the threats to create fear far and wide

    For the White House, amping up violence and terrorizing communities wasn’t enough. High federal officials articulating lies and slander wasn’t enough. The Trump administration sought to amplify the threats to immigrants and citizens alike so the message was crystal clear and hard to miss. In December, the Washington Post reviewed thousands of internal messages to tell the story (“IT’S A WAR – Inside ICE’s media machine”).

    Seeking to satisfy White House demands, ICE responded frantically. From the Post’s story:

    “To feed the beast” ICE scrambled to hire videographers to record the arrests and deportations. They worked overtime, filming day and night, to make the White House happy.

    ICE added soundtracks (often violating copyright laws) to boost the likelihood of going viral.

    To make the clips more frightening and “action-packed” ICE distorted what was happening on the ground. Many detainees had no criminal records; ICE simply crafted increasingly aggressive narratives. To mislead, they used video clips from distant cities taken months earlier. They edited women out of deportation videos, so the folks portrayed seemed scarier.

    One official advised: “If the truth of the operation does not match the narrative of the ‘worst of the worst,’ it’s going to be killed.” Meaning: the video clip won’t be posted on social media.

    We’ve learned from other sources — here and here and here and here and here, for instance — that ICE has deployed white nationalist, white supremacist, and Nazi language, graphics, books, and songs in its campaigns as well. All the better to demonize immigrants.

    ICE gave exclusive access to its operations and video clips to rightwing influencers who could rouse up their followers with “wild scenes.”

    ICE officials celebrated when the White House posted their clips (like the one immediately above this section). “White House just ran with it!” It didn’t take long for ICE to hit its stride with divisive, violent clips that pleased the White House.

    On June 10, after hearing from the White House demanding highlights of the “worst of worst LA arrests across relevant accounts/channels,” ICE’s media machine went into overdrive posting 38 tweets over 11 hours.

    The White House directive around the L.A. protests forced the agency to play more of an “attack-dog” role online to keep up with the administration’s demands, one former worker on the DHS media team told The Post.
    “That was the turning point to get even more aggressive with their messaging, and to paint pictures of these places as war-torn,” he said. “There was a much more blustery edge, and a need to put stuff out as quickly as you can. You’re steamrolling everything.”

    Minnesota and Minnesotans under fire

    We’ve learned that(consistent with standard operating procedure when law enforcement uses lethal force) the FBI opened an investigation of the ICE shooting of Renee Good, but officials have shut it down. We also know that the feds have refused to share evidence of the shooting with Minnesota officials, have opened up an investigation of Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz, and that DOJ officials are pushing for an investigation of Good’s partner.

    Yesterday we learned that DOD has placed 1,500 soldiers from the 11th Airborne Division at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska on standby for possible deployment to Minneapolis.

    An out of control president, acting on resentment and whim, threatens us all.

    Americans are confronting democratic erosion far beyond anything previously experienced in our lifetimes. We are witnessing a wannabe authoritarian — without an appreciation of, much less a commitment to democratic institutions — using the levers of power to dominate the country, enrich himself, and sow vengeance. The liberties guaranteed us by the Constitution, the separation of powers, the rule of law, the impartial administration of justice — all are at risk.

  • State violence, slander, and lies that contradict what we can plainly see with our own eyes

    An ICE agent shot a Minnesota woman in the face last week, a killing caught on video by the agent himself and numerous bystanders. Almost immediately, she was defamed by the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and others, who added a malicious fabricated tale about the circumstances of her slaying.

    Violence and lies weaved together are defining features of Donald Trump’s presidency. The Big Lie — that Trump won the 2020 election — and the conspiracy built around it to undo the results of the 2020 election, led to the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol. That was the capstone of Trump 1.

    Trump 2 has injected violence (primarily in Democratic-led cities) directed against anyone who stands in the way of Trump’s domestic police force. This militaristic campaign led to the killing of a mother, who had just dropped off her 6-year old at school, shamelessly smeared as a “political terrorist” within two hours of her death at the hands of an ICE agent.

    January 6 indictment

    First, a look back at Trump 1 with the December 31 release of the testimony of Special Counsel Jack Smith before Congressman Jim Jordan’s Judiciary Committee. [YouTube video; redacted House transcript.] In this brief exchange the committee counsel poses questions(Q) and Smith responds (A):

    Q: Now, people with different views than you can say the Special Counsel’s Office is only interested in prosecuting President Trump because an election is coming up and he is — he’s going to be the Republican nominee. And the special counsel works for a Democratic President, the special counsel works for a Democratic Attorney General. And so the special counsel’s laser focus on President Trump is simply to prevent him from, you know, either being the party’s nominee or being a successful party’s nominee — or, at the very least, keeping him off the campaign trail. How do you respond to that?

    A: All of that is false, and I’ll say a few things.
    The first is the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit.
    The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.
    So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the Presidential election.
    I would never take orders from a political leader to hamper another person in an election. That’s not who I am. And I think people who know me and my experience over 30 years would find that laughable.

    Q: So did you develop evidence that President Trump, you know, was responsible for the violence at the Capitol on January 6th?

    A: So our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it and that it was foreseeable to him.

    Q: But you don’t have any evidence that he instructed people to crash the Capitol, do you?

    A: As I said, our evidence is that he in the weeks leading up to January 6th created a level of distrust. He used that level of distrust to get people to believe fraud claims that weren’t true. He made false statements to State legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts and was aware in the days leading up to January 6th that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol.
    Now, once they were at the Capitol and once the attack on the Capitol happened, he refused to stop it. He instead issued a tweet that without question in my mind endangered the life of his own Vice President. And when the violence was going on, he had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything to quell it. And then even afterwards he directed co-conspirators to make calls to Members of Congress, people who had were his political allies, to further delay the proceedings.

    Lies and gaslighting by government fiat

    On the first day of Trump 2, the president issued blanket pardons and commutations for the whole January 6 crew (folks he called “unbelievable patriots”) as reported by AP on January 21, 2025:

    President Donald Trump has pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including people convicted of assaulting police officers, using his clemency powers on his first day back in office to undo the massive prosecution of the unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.
    Trump’s action, just hours after his return to the White House on Monday, paves the way for the release from prison of people found guilty of violent attacks on police, as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of failed plots to keep the Republican in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

    On the fifth anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot, the Trump administration unveiled a website that rewrote history to fit Trump’s lies.

    [Donald Trump as portrayed on his revisionist history webpage.]

    The New York Times reported:

    On the fifth anniversary of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, the Trump administration created a new page on the official White House website that represented the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility.
    The site blames Capitol Police officers, who defended lawmakers that day, for starting the assault; Democrats, who were the rioters’ main targets, for failing to prevent it; and former Vice President Mike Pence, who rejected falsehoods about the 2020 election, for allowing the results to be certified.

    On the same day the White House posted the fraudulent narrative, dozens of January 6 rioters marched in Washington with a list of demands, including financial restitution. Said Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, echoing Trump: “Retribution is what we seek.”

    Military occupation of Democratic cities

    With his infusion of federal agents — masked, equipped with assault rifles and full military gear — into Los Angeles last summer, followed by the federal takeover of the California National Guard and then the arrival of the United States Marines, Trump launched a war on Democratic cities (led by Democrats put into office by citizens who voted overwhelmingly against Trump). The aggressive tactics of these agencies (celebrated in official government social media posts and emphasized in recruiting pitches) and the disdain of constitutional and legal restraints, belie any pretext of evenhanded justice under the law.

    Rather, from the beginning it has been clear that the intent has been to provoke a violent response. As I wrote on June 11, 2025:

    The Trump White House … craves a violent confrontation, which city and state authorities are doing their best to ward off. Trump’s actions have escalated the situation, rather than calmed things down. Deliberately. That’s not law and order; this is an authoritarian assault directed at political enemies and at constraints on a rogue White House.
    Even if Trump doesn’t get the explosion of violence he is egging on, and the fig leaf of a plausible excuse for violent suppression by the military, he has already damaged the Constitution, federalism, state sovereignty, checks and balances, and the rule of law.

    The state sanctioned killing in Minneapolis

    First of all, what happened? Watch:

    The New York Times provided a clear, simple analysis of the video evidence, posted by an NBC senior reporter on Bluesky:

    The New York Times states it plainly in display type:Videos Contradict Trump Administration Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis

    — Mike Hixenbaugh (@mikehixenbaugh.com) 2026-01-08T12:40:50.403Z

    What did Trump and Executive Branch officials say?

    First off, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

    [Noem responds in Dallas to Minneapolis shooting. Video on YouTube. Transcript at Minnesota Star Tribune.]

    “It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was our ICE officers were out on an enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis. They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.”

    Then the president weighed in:

    Noem’s statement is at odds with what we see in the video; it is a blatant lie. Donald Trump’s response on Truth Social is a bunch of blatant lies strung together with additional defamatory rhetoric (nor does the video in his post come close to salvaging what he falsely reports).

    The president and his DHS secretary are both spreading lies, while slandering an American citizen who opposed Trump’s militaristic crusade targeting immigrants and political opponents and who should not have lost her life for her views (or apparent panic to escape the scene). There is absolutely no reason to believe, based on what we have seen and learned, that her actions posed a threat to any agent or that she intended to cause harm to anyone.

    Noem and Trump cannot be trusted. Nor can Vice President JD Vance, who has outdone himself in pushing to the front of the MAGA pack. As David Frum has observed, “More than Donald Trump, more than Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, more than anyone in ICE’s leadership, J. D. Vance has made himself the lead defender of the killing in Minnesota.”

    The vice president, who has (in Frum’s words) always had “a strong whiff of cynical calculation and inauthenticity” about him, has found his comfort zone in spewing fabrications. (Recall his tale about Haitian immigrants eating pets. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”)

    Dismissing the video evidence and going on the attack, Vance has called Good “a deranged leftist” who tried to run over the ICE agent who shot her, acting as part of a “broader leftwing network,” and he has accused the press of being part of the conspiracy. “There’s an entire network – and, frankly, some of the media are participating in it – that is trying to incite violence against our law enforcement officers.”

    [Y]ou people in the media – not everybody in this room, but many people in this room – have been lying about this attack. She was trying to ram this guy with her car. He shot back. He defended himself.

    That’s their story and they’re going to stick with it. They also intend to ensure that there will be no credible investigation to establish what actually happened.

    The coverup is coming into place

    Last week we learned that the U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis had blocked Minnesota officials from evidence collected on the ICE shooting.

    “The investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said in a statement.
    It had been decided that the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension would investigate Good’s shooting death along with the FBI, but that later was changed by the U.S. Attorney’s office, according to Evans.

    This is fundamentally contrary to established practice and procedure, as the FBI website explains in an online FAQ:

    If a crime is committed that is a violation of local, state, and federal laws, does the FBI “take over” the investigation?

    No. State and local law enforcement agencies are not subordinate to the FBI, and the FBI does not supervise or take over their investigations. Instead, the investigative resources of the FBI and state and local agencies are often pooled in a common effort to investigate and solve the cases. In fact, many task forces composed of FBI agents and state and local officers have been formed to locate fugitives and to address serious threats like terrorism and street violence.

    A couple of days ago, we learned that the DOJ experts on police shootings would be blocked from investigating the Minneapolis shooting.

    “When you put that together with the state authorities being excluded from even access to the evidence — like shell casings, the car — I don’t have any confidence that a use-of-force investigation is actually even happening when it comes to the death of Renée Good,” said Keith Ellison, the Democratic attorney general of Minnesota.
    …
    President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem have all declared the shooting justified, despite an investigation not being completed and video footage that challenges parts of their narrative.

    Use-of-force investigations are handled within DOJ by the Civil Rights Division, which has shed more than half of its 400 attorneys since the Trump 2 takeover a year ago. The decision to exclude the division’s investigators prompted the announcement that at least six attorneys within the division, most of whom were supervisors, are departing.

    This was followed by news that six prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota (including the second in command, Joseph H. Thompson) have resigned.

    Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent on Wednesday.
    Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.

    That’s right: DOJ intends to investigate the widow of the woman killed by the ICE agent.

    A 37-year old woman died. Killed at the hands of law enforcement. The last words we heard her speak, with a gentle smile, were, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” That’s consistent with her friends and family’s description of her as a devoted Christian.

    Yet Trump and Vance and Noem and others in the MAGA camp have directed so much hatred her way. They will not countenance a fair-minded investigation into her senseless death. They are resolute in their determination to besmirch her, her family and friends, and every American who shares her opposition to the twisted version of our country that Trump 2 seeks to impose on us.

    The corruption of the Trump regime couldn’t be clearer. Such is the country we live in now. Blaming the victim isn’t enough. Trump and his minions have already decreed her guilt in her own killing. Now to broaden the blame to the victim’s widow. And — as we have seen already — to every American who opposes Trump.