Tuesday, January 13, 2026

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Scumbag-in-Chief Donald J. Trump Is Also A Vicious Misogynist and Uber-Pimp Who Uses His Utter Contempt For Women and Endless LIES To Hide, Excuse, and Maniacally Justify and Rationalize Any and All Crimes He Attempts to Provide Despicable Cover for and/Or Cowardly Defend–Including Murder…

Trump Has Another Justification for the Shooting of Renee Good: Disrespect

President Trump suggested that Renee Good’s “highly disrespectful” attitude toward law enforcement played a role in her fatal shooting by an ICE agent.

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PHOTO: Mr. Trump’s shifting remarks have raised questions about whether the administration will put any limits on the tactics ICE agents may use. Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times

by Luke Broadwater and Katie Rogers
January 12, 2026
New York Times

[Luke Broadwater and Katie Rogers are White House correspondents. They reported from Washington.]

President Trump has added another justification for the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minnesota: She behaved badly.

“At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening.

In the days since Ms. Good, 37, was shot and killed by Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent, Trump administration officials have used a variety of arguments as they have tried to justify the episode. They have called it an act of self-defense, and Mr. Trump has falsely claimed Ms. Good “ran over” the agent. JD Vance, the vice president, has argued that Mr. Ross has “absolute immunity.”

While Mr. Trump still says the ICE agent was acting in self-defense, his latest comments suggest that disrespecting law enforcement could help to justify the killing. The comments raise serious questions about the use of force by those carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration, and they underscore the extent to which Mr. Trump’s impulse is to condemn anything done by his critics and to defend the actions of his supporters.

Asked by a reporter if he believed deadly force was necessary in this case, Mr. Trump said: “It was highly disrespectful of law enforcement. The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement.”

The federal government has defended the shooting as lawful and necessary, while local officials have dismissed that narrative. Mr. Trump referred to a “crunch” he heard in footage of the shooting to buttress his claim that the ICE agent was in danger.

“It seems like the big picture is to control the narrative and suggest to the public that she was in the wrong, and they were in the right,” said Barbara L. McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and a law professor at the University of Michigan. “And also, I think, to send a message that the public needs to obey law enforcement on the streets, and to intimidate protesters.”

She added: “If people are afraid they’re going to be shot or arrested for observing or peacefully protesting, or even for mouthing off, I think the thought is that will cause people to self-censor or chill their behavior, cause them to stay home.”


PHOTO: People gathered to lay flowers at a makeshift memorial for Renee Good last week in Minneapolis. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

Mike Fox, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice, said that even if Mr. Trump’s allegation that Ms. Good was a “professional agitator” were true, that would not justify her killing.

“As far as I can tell, they’re not professional agitators,” Mr. Fox said. “She’s just a local woman who lived in the community. But it doesn’t really matter, right? You don’t get to kill someone because they engage in conduct that you disagree with or find distasteful or deplorable. If cops could just kill people any time they get annoyed or frustrated, my God, we would be in trouble.”

In the moments before the shooting Wednesday in Minneapolis, Ms. Good tells the agent that she isn’t mad at him, and Mr. Ross begins to circle her vehicle. She reverses as he crosses in front of her S.U.V., then she starts to move forward, and turns to the right. Mr. Ross is near her left headlight when he opens fire three times, killing her.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Ms. Good’s killing was one of 13 episodes in which federal immigration agents have used deadly force against civilians in vehicles since July.

Aboard Air Force One, Mr. Trump said ICE agents have faced their own hardships.

“These people have been harassed and threatened every day,” the president said. “They had bands out playing so they couldn’t sleep at the hotel. I see what they’re doing to them. They’re threatening them constantly.”

Like Mr. Trump, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, defended the actions of ICE on Monday, denigrating the protesters who oppose the agents’ actions.

“This administration will continue to stand wholeheartedly by the brave men and women of ICE, including that officer in Minneapolis who was absolutely justified in using self-defense against a lunatic who is part of a group, an organized group, to interject and to impede on law enforcement operations,” Ms. Leavitt said.

Vanita Gupta, a former associate attorney general who oversaw both the civil rights division that can prosecute federal agents and the civil division that can defend them, called the administration’s rush to disparage Ms. Good “unprecedented.”

“Being ‘disrespectful’ does not warrant the use of deadly force,” Ms. Gupta said. “The immediate public efforts by the White House to spin the facts, including denigrating the victim, does not change federal law.”

Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, contrasted Mr. Trump’s treatment of Ms. Good with his praise and support for the hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and attacked the police.

On Jan. 6 this year, the Trump administration made a page on its website that accused the Capitol Police of instigating the riot, and said a pro-Trump rioter whom the police killed during the mayhem was “murdered.”

“Trump just pardoned nearly 1,600 insurrectionists,” Mr. Raskin said, “hundreds of whom violently attacked police officers and called them everything from traitors to pigs to racial epithets, and ruthlessly taunted them and maligned them for hours.” He added that “Donald Trump’s very dubious characterization of Renee Good as having been disrespectful is not only factually suspect, but it’s legally irrelevant.”

“The police do not have the right to shoot people in the head because they consider them having acted in a disrespectful way,” Mr. Raskin said. “That legal standard would have led to a slaughter on Jan. 6.”


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:


Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.

See more on: U.S. Politics, Donald Trump\


More on the Minnesota ICE Shooting:


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FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Scumbag-in-Chief Donald J. Trump Is Nothing But A Vile White Supremacist Demagogue, Notorious Criminal, Sexual Predator, Pathological Liar, And Raging Psychopath--Always Was, Always Will Be

“...“It’s very simple,” said Mr. Trump, who has carved out exceptions to his crackdown on refugee admissions for mostly white South Africans. “I want people that love our country,” he said.

Carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was formed in 1965 under the Civil Rights Act. The commission’s chair, Andrea Lucas, issued a striking video message last month underlining the agency’s new posture.

“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?” Ms. Lucas said in the video posted on X. “You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the E.E.O.C. as soon as possible. Time limits are typically strict for filing a claim.”

“The E.E.O.C. is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL forms of race and sex discrimination — including against white male applicants and employees,” she said.

In the video, Ms. Lucas pointed white men to the commission’s F.A.Q. on “D.E.I.-related discrimination,” which notes that D.E.I. “a broad term that is not defined” in the Civil Rights Act.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the nation’s primary litigator of workplace discrimination, and for decades has been a resource for minorities, women and other groups who have historically faced discrimination. But Ms. Lucas has endeavored to make it one of Mr. Trump’s most powerful tools against D.E.I., with a particular focus on remedying perceived harms against white men…”
—Erica Green, “Trump Says Civil Rights Led to White People Being ‘Very Badly Treated’, New York Times, January 11. 2026 
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trump-interview-white-people-discrimination.html

Trump Says Civil Rights Led to White People Being ‘Very Badly Treated’

President Trump’s comments were a blunt distillation of his administration’s racial politics, which rest on the belief that white people have become the real victims of discrimination in America.
 
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President Trump has equated diversity with incompetence and inferiority, and cast himself as the protector of white people both at home and abroad.Credit: Eric Lee for The New York Times

by Erica L. Green
January 11, 2026
New York Times 

[Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent. She reported from Washington.] 


President Trump said in an interview that he believed civil rights-era protections resulted in white people being “very badly treated,” his strongest indication that the concept of “reverse discrimination” is driving his aggressive crusade against diversity policies.

Speaking to The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Trump echoed grievances amplified by Vice President JD Vance and other top officials who in recent weeks have urged white men to file federal complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

When asked whether protections that began in the 1960s, spurred by the passage of the Civil Rights Act, had resulted in discrimination against white men, Mr. Trump said he believed “a lot of people were very badly treated.”

“White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university to college,” he said, an apparent reference to affirmative action in college admissions. “So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases.”

He added: “I think it was also, at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people — people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination.”

Mr. Trump’s comments were a blunt distillation of his administration’s racial politics, which rest on the belief that white people have become the real victims of discrimination in America. During his campaign for president, Mr. Trump harnessed a political backlash to the Black Lives Matter and other protests, saying there was “a definite anti-white feeling in this country,” and he joined his base in denouncing what he deemed to be “woke” policies.

The Trump administration has claimed that eradicating policies that promote diversity would shepherd in a “merit-based” society. But for civil rights leaders, Mr. Trump’s remarks showed that the perceived plight of white men was the true focus.

Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, said there was “no evidence that white men were discriminated against as a result of the civil rights movement, the Civil Rights Act, and efforts to rectify the long history of this country denying access to people based on race in every measurable category.”

Within hours of taking office, Mr. Trump ordered the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion offices that were responsible for addressing systemic discrimination against minorities and women, and last year he ordered federal agencies to halt enforcement of core tenets of the bedrock Civil Rights Act.


He has gone on to equate diversity with incompetence and inferiority, and cast himself as the protector of white people both at home and abroad. Asked on Wednesday whether his immigration agenda was aimed at making the country whiter, Mr. Trump said he wanted people “that love our country.”

“It’s very simple,” said Mr. Trump, who has carved out exceptions to his crackdown on refugee admissions for mostly white South Africans. “I want people that love our country,” he said.

Carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was formed in 1965 under the Civil Rights Act. The commission’s chair, Andrea Lucas, issued a striking video message last month underlining the agency’s new posture.

“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?” Ms. Lucas said in the video posted on X. “You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the E.E.O.C. as soon as possible. Time limits are typically strict for filing a claim.”

“The E.E.O.C. is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL forms of race and sex discrimination — including against white male applicants and employees,” she said.

In the video, Ms. Lucas pointed white men to the commission’s F.A.Q. on “D.E.I.-related discrimination,” which notes that D.E.I. “a broad term that is not defined” in the Civil Rights Act.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the nation’s primary litigator of workplace discrimination, and for decades has been a resource for minorities, women and other groups who have historically faced discrimination. But Ms. Lucas has endeavored to make it one of Mr. Trump’s most powerful tools against D.E.I., with a particular focus on remedying perceived harms against white men.

PHOTO: Andrea Lucas, the chair of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in her office in Washington last month. Credit: Kevin Mohatt/Reuters

Ms. Lucas’s tweet was boosted by Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, and Mr. Vance, who shared the video in a series of tweets railing against D.E.I. last month.

The vice president also shared an essay that blamed diversity initiatives for depriving white men of opportunities. “A lot of people think ‘DEI’ is lame diversity seminars or racial slogans at N.F.L. games,” Mr. Vance wrote last month on X. “In reality, it was a deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men.”


Labor and civil rights lawyers said Ms. Lucas’s video was an escalation in the administration’s tactics to use civil rights laws to remedy what it sees as the disenfranchisement of white men, rather than to help groups that have historically faced discrimination.

“I’ve never seen, in the history of an agency, a blanket request to only one racial group and gender to contact the chair’s office directly to raise concerns about discrimination,” said Jenny R. Yang, a former chair of the commission. “That raises significant concerns.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.

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FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Elie Mystal On ICE and the Real Meaning Of the Deadly Ongoing Crisis of State Sanctioned Violence in Minnesota, Portland, and Throughout the United States

"...Every authoritarian regime throughout history has employed a roving band of armed thugs who operate outside the law to enforce its strongman’s will. Caesar had his Praetorian Guard, Francios Duvalier had his Tonton Macoutes, Hitler had his Gestapo.

Donald Trump has ICE. ICE is functionally a paramilitary organization, armed and empowered to harass citizens, brutalize opposition, and murder people who get in their way. Like any paramilitary apparatus, its chief aim is to strike fear in the population. It does this not only through feats of violence, false imprisonment, and kidnapping but also by repeatedly showing us it can’t be held accountable for its actions. ICE agents can seemingly do anything they want, and no one is allowed to stop them: They know it, and they want us to know it.

When we look at the historical record, the horrifying reality of these thug paramilitaries is that they do not naturally melt away when the strongman is finally deposed. They stay on. They align themselves with the next strongman, or the strongman who wants to overthrow the republican government that deposed the previous strongman. The next guy in office tends to want to keep them around anyway, because having a terrorist apparatus able to operate outside the law is something that leaders of nations consistently find useful.

These paramilitaries can be dismantled, but only when the people demand it, over and over again, and refuse to support any politicians or regimes who would keep them in place. ICE can be stopped, but we do not elect people to power who actually want to stop ICE; we tend instead to elect people who want to “fund” ICE, control it, and use it for their own purposes. And that is why we fail.

ICE must be abolished, root and stem, by the next Democratic administration. As a stopgap, it must be defunded by the current collection of Democrats, should the party take power in the upcoming election. ICE is the one true litmus test for an incoming post-Trump administration. The Democrats will likely not be inclined to do this. Again, paramilitary thugs have their uses to leaders the world over, and Democrats are traditionally afraid of looking “weak” on immigration or actually dismantling the tools of the enemy. Democrats, if they’re going to do this, must be forced to do this, by the people whose support they seek."
--Elie Mystal,  "Abolish ICE or GTFO", The Nation,  January 9, 2026
 
 
FBI takes over case of ICE agent killing US woman and cuts Minnesota’s access to evidence
 
Minneapolis remains on edge, with several protests planned after shooting of Renee Nicole Good

People protest against the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Photograph: Tim Evans/Reuters
 
8 January 2026 
 
The FBI has taken full control of the investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) officer in Minneapolis, it emerged on Thursday.
 
In a statement, the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said it was initially called upon to help investigate the shooting before federal officials “reversed course” and said the case would be “solely led by the FBI”. With its access to the case materials, witnesses and evidence revoked, the BCA said it had to “reluctantly” withdraw from the investigation.
 
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem denied that the BCA had been cut out of the investigation and said it was a matter of jurisdiction. “They have not been cut,” she said. “They don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation.”
 
But Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, told a news conference that “Minnesota must be part of this investigation. It feels very, very difficult that we will get a fair outcome. And I say that only because people in positions of power have already passed judgment.”
 
Indeed, the reversal from federal law enforcement comes as the Trump administration continues to justify Wednesday’s deadly shooting by accusing Good of engaging in “an act of domestic terrorism” and claiming that the ICE agent who shot her was acting in “self-defense”, alleging she had tried to run him over.
 
That narrative is at odds with video footage of the incident, which has been widely shared online. It shows Good reversing her car and letting at least one ICE vehicle pass before an officer tells her to get out of the car; she then tries to turn and drive away. An agent shoots her multiple times, remains on his feet and walks away apparently uninjured as her car crashes into a lamp-post and parked vehicle.
 
The agent was identified independently by the Guardian as Jonathan E Ross, a Minnesota resident and 10-year veteran of federal law enforcement. Noem continued on Thursday to defend the federal agent – whom she described as “an experienced officer” that was “following his training” – and said he had been treated in hospital after the incident. Both she and the vice-president noted that Ross had been injured in an incident six months ago when an undocumented immigrant resisted arrest in a vehicle.
 
Vance also defended the shooting, repeatedly claiming, baselessly, that Good was part of a “leftwing network” of people who are trying to “incite violence against our law enforcement officers”.
 
He told the White House press briefing without evidence that the young mother was “a victim of leftwing ideology” and had been “brainwashed”, and doubled down on the administration’s claim that the officer had acted in self-defense. Good, 37, was “dead because she tried to ram somebody with her car”, Vance said.
 
The deadly incident, which occurred less than a mile from the spot where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020, escalated tensions that have been building for weeks in Minnesota amid ramped-up federal immigration enforcement operations and fraud investigations by the Trump administration.
 
Authorities in Minneapolis had canceled school classes across the city on Thursday amid safety concerns and rising political tension after the US citizen and mother of three was killed during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation the day before.
 

 
Dozens of clergy members from all faith backgrounds gathered with hundreds of people at the site of the shooting in south Minneapolis at noon to show that the city was unified in its response. “Renee Good stood for her neighbors. We now must stand for her,” said JaNaé Bates, a co-executive director of the interfaith group Isaiah.
 
The crowd chanted “ICE out now” throughout the event, against visible signs of the tragedy: red paint in the snow read “ICE kills”, and writing on the street called for ICE to leave.
 
But emotions remained high in the city, and across the US, as the basic facts of the incident remain the subject of fierce debate.
 
Ilhan Omar posted on social media Thursday morning that thousands of people had gathered to honor Good last night, and that “ICE needs to get out of Minneapolis”.
 
“We will never accept that a single federal agent can be judge, jury and executioner in our streets,” the Minnesota representative said.
 
Minneapolis residents hold vigil for woman fatally shot by ICE agent – video
 
Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, also made several appearances on television networks on Wednesday night calling for peaceful protests and doubling down on his comments at a press conference earlier in the day in which he called for ICE “to get the fuck out of Minneapolis”.
 
“People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized, and now, somebody is dead,” Frey said.
He said the homeland security department was already “trying to spin this as an action of self-defense”, a claim he said was “bullshit”.
 
Some Republicans seized on Frey’s comments as incendiary, with Nancy Mace, a South Carolina representative, calling for the resignations of the mayor and Walz.
 
Despite local officials’ calls for federal law enforcement to leave the state, the New York Times reported on Thursday that the Trump administration will deploy more than 100 US Customs and Border Protection agents and officers to Minnesota following the fatal shooting of Good.
 
The agents will be redirected from operations in Chicago and New Orleans. The deployment is expected to last until Sunday, the newspaper reported, citing documents it obtained.
 
Noem also stated that ICE operations would continue in Minneapolis, which saw a surge of about 2,000 federal agents this week to target immigrant populations.
 
This story was amended on 8 January 2026 to correct the name of the ICE officer who shot Renee Nicole Good, which is Jonathan E Ross, not Jonathan David Ross. Also, an incorrect reference to Ross being a resident of Minneapolis was removed.
 
US border patrol agents shoot two people in Portland
Police say pair are in hospital but condition not known, 
as mayor urges ICE to pause operations
 
by Robert Mackey in Portland
9 January 2026
The Guardian  (UK) 
 
US border patrol agents shot two people outside a hospital in Portland, Oregon, a day after an ICE officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.
 
The Portland police bureau (PPB) said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that two people were in hospital after a shooting involving federal agents, adding that the conditions of those shot were not known.
 
Police initially responded to reports of a shooting outside the Adventist hospital campus in east Portland, the department said, before learning “that a man who had been shot was calling and requesting help” about 3 miles (5km) away.
 
“Officers responded and found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds. Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel. The patients were transported to the hospital,” the police said.
“Officers have determined the two people were injured in the shooting involving federal agents.”
 
Authorities have not confirmed the condition of the injured, but emergency dispatch audio obtained by FOX 12 Oregon indicated that the 911 call came from a man who said he was shot twice in the arm and his wife had been shot in the chest.
 
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement that US border patrol agents had stopped a vehicle to search for a man they suspected of being an undocumented immigrant connected to a Venezuelan gang. According to the agents, they opened fire when the driver of the vehicle tried to run them over, the statement said. “Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired a defensive shot. The driver drove off with the passenger, fleeing the scene,” McLaughlin said.
 
Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said at a news conference:
 
 “We know what the federal government says happened here. There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time is long past.”
 
Bob Day, the Portland police chief, said: “This is a federal investigation. It’s being led by the FBI.”
 
Taking place a day after a federal immigration officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, the shooting sparked sharp condemnation and raised fears of increasing tensions in a city that had been galvanized by anti-immigration enforcement protests late last year.
 
Maxine Dexter, the Democratic representative for the district where the shooting took place, who is also a doctor, said both of the injured people “are alive, but we do not know the extent of their injuries.”
 
She also called on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave the city.
 
“ICE has done nothing but inject terror, chaos, and cruelty into our communities,” Dexter said. “Trump’s immigration machine is using violence to control our communities – straight out of the authoritarian playbook. ICE must immediately end all active operations in Portland.”
 
Dexter also demanded a local police investigation. “We must allow our local law enforcement to do its work,” she said. “There must be a comprehensive investigation without Trump’s interference.”
 
Wilson, the mayor, echoed Dexter’s call for a pause on immigration enforcement in the city. He said: “We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts. Portland is not a ‘training ground’ for militarized agents, and the ‘full force’ threatened by the administration has deadly consequences. As mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed.”
 
Kayse Jama, an Oregon state senator who lives in the neighborhood where the shooting took place, said at an evening news conference that the “welcoming” city he arrived in as a refugee from Somalia decades ago did not need aggressive federal immigration enforcement. Addressing the federal agents, he said: “This is Oregon. We do not need you, you are not welcome and you need to get the hell out of our community.”
 
Zakir Khan, a Portland civil rights advocate, called on the hospital, which is part of Oregon Health and Science University, to release any security-camera footage of the incident it might have “as soon as possible”.
 
A man who was at the medical building told the Oregonian he saw federal officers follow a Toyota pickup truck into the parking lot of the office building and try to corner it. One officer pounded on the window, he said. The driver then backed up and moved forward at least a couple of times, striking a car behind them, before turning and speeding off.
 
There were months of protest in Portland last year centered on an ICE processing facility in the city’s south waterfront. Donald Trump tried to deploy national guard members to the city in response, but the deployment was blocked by a federal judge who said the president’s claim that the city was “war-ravaged” as a result of small-scale protests “was simply untethered to the facts”.
 
Jeff Merkley, one of Oregon’s two Democratic senators, urged protesters to remain calm in light of the shooting. “Trump wants to generate riots,” he said in a post on X. “Don’t take the bait.”
 
The Portland police chief echoed those pleas. Bob Day said: “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”
 
A banner at the top of the Portland city government website late Thursday advised residents: “Respond with calm and purpose.”
 
Early in the evening, about a hundred protesters gathered outside city hall in downtown Portland to chant: “Abolish ICE!” A smaller number of protesters also returned to the ICE facility in south Portland, many of them dressed in the animal costumes that have helped defuse tensions in recent months. Later, police used force to clear protesters from the street outside the facility, arresting six, including a young man who usually wears an inflatable frog costume to protests but was in street clothes when detained on Thursday night.
 
Tensions remain high across several major cities in the US following the shooting of Good in Minneapolis.
 
On Thursday, the FBI took control of the investigation into that shooting, and the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said its access to the case materials, witnesses and evidence had been revoked.
 
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, denied that the BCA had been cut out of the investigation and said it was a matter of jurisdiction.
 
Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, told a news conference that the state “must be part of this investigation”.
 
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continued to justify the deadly shooting by accusing Good of engaging in “an act of domestic terrorism” and claiming that the ICE agent who shot her had been acting in “self-defense”. That narrative is at odds with witness video of the incident, which has been widely shared online, and shows the driver had turned the wheels of her vehicle away from the agent before he shot her three times as she attempted to drive away.
 
Explore more on these topics

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https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/newsletter-abolish-ice-conway/

Politics

Abolish ICE or GTFO

In this week’s Elie v. US, The Nation’s justice correspondent makes the case to get rid of ICE, explores George Conway’s congressional campaign—and shares his New Year’s resolution.


by Elie Mystal
January 9, 2026
The Nation

PHOTO: Demonstrators in Minneapolis protest the murder of Renée Good. (Victor J. Blue / Bloomberg via Getty Images)


[This is a preview of Nation Justice Correspondent Elie Mystal’s new weekly newsletter. Click here to receive this newsletter in your inbox each Friday.]

Every authoritarian regime throughout history has employed a roving band of armed thugs who operate outside the law to enforce its strongman’s will. Caesar had his Praetorian Guard, Francios Duvalier had his Tonton Macoutes, Hitler had his Gestapo.

Donald Trump has ICE. ICE is functionally a paramilitary organization, armed and empowered to harass citizens, brutalize opposition, and murder people who get in their way. Like any paramilitary apparatus, its chief aim is to strike fear in the population. It does this not only through feats of violence, false imprisonment, and kidnapping but also by repeatedly showing us it can’t be held accountable for its actions. ICE agents can seemingly do anything they want, and no one is allowed to stop them: They know it, and they want us to know it.

When we look at the historical record, the horrifying reality of these thug paramilitaries is that they do not naturally melt away when the strongman is finally deposed. They stay on. They align themselves with the next strongman, or the strongman who wants to overthrow the republican government that deposed the previous strongman. The next guy in office tends to want to keep them around anyway, because having a terrorist apparatus able to operate outside the law is something that leaders of nations consistently find useful.

These paramilitaries can be dismantled, but only when the people demand it, over and over again, and refuse to support any politicians or regimes who would keep them in place. ICE can be stopped, but we do not elect people to power who actually want to stop ICE; we tend instead to elect people who want to “fund” ICE, control it, and use it for their own purposes. And that is why we fail.

ICE must be abolished, root and stem, by the next Democratic administration. As a stopgap, it must be defunded by the current collection of Democrats, should the party take power in the upcoming election. ICE is the one true litmus test for an incoming post-Trump administration. The Democrats will likely not be inclined to do this. Again, paramilitary thugs have their uses to leaders the world over, and Democrats are traditionally afraid of looking “weak” on immigration or actually dismantling the tools of the enemy. Democrats, if they’re going to do this, must be forced to do this, by the people whose support they seek.

Current issue

I’ve liked to think of myself as a single-issue voter, with that issue being Supreme Court expansion. But no longer. Abolish ICE, or GTFO of my primary.
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