Letter From An American by Heather Cox Richardson

January 7, 2026 (Wednesday)

This morning, a federal agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good as she was driving away from ICE agents on a residential street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to Minneapolis leaders, Good was a legal observer: a volunteer trained to observe police conduct in case of future legal action.

Three videos taken at the scene show a maroon SUV perpendicular on a snowy street. A silver SUV driving up the street stops. Two officers wearing badges that say “police” and body armor get out of the vehicle and walk toward the maroon car.

One of them says, “Get out of the f*cking car,” and the other reaches through the open driver’s side window while trying to open the door. The driver backs up the vehicle, and straightens the wheel as if making a three-point turn. Then she starts slowly to accelerate along the street.

A third officer who has been standing on the side of the road pulls out a gun as the car is turning away. He shoots three times. The maroon car does not hit anyone as it rolls up the street, hitting another vehicle and then a utility pole. The shooter walks briskly away, apparently uninjured. 

Seen in slow motion, a video shows the wheels of the maroon vehicle were fully turned away from the shooting officer, who made no effort to jump away, clearly suggesting he did not feel as if he were in danger. His first shot went through the windshield; the next two went through the driver’s side window as the car moved past him. An onlooker shouted “What the f*ck?!”

Video taken by another eyewitness shows ICE agents refusing to allow a self-identified physician to tend to the victim and telling him to back up. Although there is no one tending the clearly visible woman in the car, an agent says: “We have medics on scene. We have our own medics.” When another bystander screams: “Where are they? WHERE ARE THEY?!” an agent tells her, “Relax.” “How can I relax?” she shouts. “You just killed my f*cking neighbor.”

Yesterday the Trump administration deployed federal agents and officers to Minneapolis for what they called the largest federal immigration operation ever carried out, eventually planning to deploy 2,000 agents. The administration has been attacking Minnesota’s Somali community, and Homeland Security Kristi Noem was present at an ICE arrest yesterday, telling a man in handcuffs, who Homeland Security later said was from Ecuador, “You will be held accountable for your crimes.”

Rebecca Santana and Michael Balsamo of the Associated Press reported that Minnesota governor Tim Walz called the deployment “a war that's being waged against Minnesota.” “You’re seeing that we have a ridiculous surge of apparently 2,000 people not coordinating with us, that are for a show of cameras,” he said. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) insists that its actions are protecting American citizens from “the worst of the worst” criminal immigrants, so the shooting of a young white woman, the mother of a young child, and how that would look, made it appear eager to smear Good. 

It immediately put out a statement that looked much like what it said after officers shot 30-year-old Chicago teaching assistant Marimar Martinez in October when it claimed she had “ambushed” agents, ramming their vehicle before an agent shot her five times. Footage showed that, in fact, the agents had rammed her car, and after the shooting one had sent a text message bragging: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” The Department of Justice dropped the charges it had filed against her, asking a judge to “dismiss the indictment and exonerate” Martinez and her passenger.

Today, DHS posted on social media that “ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism. An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers. The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries. This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement who are facing 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.”

Trump jumped in with his own fact-free post lying that the shooter had been run over: “I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot at her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe that he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”

That both DHS and Trump posted false accounts of the shooting even as there are four videos circulating that reveal those accounts to be lies shows they no longer are making any attempt to justify their actions. Instead, they are demanding Americans abandon reality in favor of whatever the administration says. If this works, it would be a demonstration of totalitarian power, the ability to control how people think. Accepting that lie is a loyalty test.

But it is not working.
 
First of all, Sarah Jeong of The Verge noted that the reason there are so many videos is because “people cared enough to show up where ICE was and record them. It wasn't just one or two legal observers, and when Good was shot, they didn't abandon her.” 

Second, elected Democrats are pushing back. “I’ve seen the video,” Governor Walz wrote. “Don’t believe this propaganda machine. The state will ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice.” To reporters, he said: “We’ve been warning for weeks that the Trump administration's dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday I said exactly that. What we're seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines, and conflict. It's governing by reality TV and today that recklessness cost someone their life. I've reached out to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and I’m waiting to hear back.” 

He told Minnesotans that, like them, he was angry, but “they want a show. We can’t give it to them. We cannot. If you protest and express your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully as you always do. We can’t give them what they want…. To Americans, I ask you this. Please stand with Minneapolis.” 

Walz prepared to call out the Minnesota National Guard if necessary, demonstrating that there would be no need for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in troops. He reminded Minnesotans that the Minnesota National Guard does not wear masks and that it is theirs, not Trump’s.

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey told reporters that the DHS statement was “bullsh*t. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.” “To the family, I’m so deeply sorry,” Frey said. “There’s nothing that I can say right now that’s going to make you or your relatives, friends of the victim feel any better.” To ICE and other federal agents deployed in Minnesota, he added: “Get the f*ck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart…and now somebody is dead.”

But something else was also going on today. At the same time the administration was pouring gasoline on the domestic fire ICE had sparked and the international fire it had set with its attacks on Venezuela and threats against Greenland, it was quietly making a number of major financial moves. 

The smallest of those moves was that today Trump asked Fulton County, Georgia, for a $6.2 million payout in attorneys’ fees and costs after the criminal charges against him in Georgia were dismissed. Trump had been indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by pressuring Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensberger to “find” 11,780 votes to give him a victory in the state of Georgia. In November 2025 a new special prosecutor dropped the charges, citing the difficulty of prosecuting a case against a sitting president. Trump boasted on social  media of his victory over an “illegal, unconstitutional, and unAmerican hoax,” and continued to push the lie that Democrats stole the election.

Vicky Ge Huang of the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial today applied for a national banking license from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, part of the Treasury Department. A banking license would integrate the Trump family’s cryptocurrency more fully into mainstream finance.

If the Treasury Department issues the license—a potential outcome that critics say reveals a major conflict of interest for the president—the president and chair of the new company would be Zach Witkoff, whose father is the son of Trump’s envoy to Russia Steve Witkoff, who the Wall Street Journal recently reported had been handpicked for his role by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The younger Witkoff started World Liberty Financial in 2024 with Trump’s sons Don Jr., Eric, and Barron.

Today, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told an audience at a Goldman Sachs energy industry event in Miami, Florida, that the United States will take control of all oil from Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Lisa Desjardins  and Nick Schifrin of PBS NewsHour reported this afternoon that Trump administration officials have told lawmakers that they plan to put the money raised from their seizure of Venezuelan oil into bank accounts outside the U.S. Treasury. Desjardins clarified that “[s]ources said they understood these as similar [to] or decidedly ‘off-shore’ accounts.” 

Yesterday, Trump announced that, as president of the United States, he would control the money from the sale of Venezuelan oil.
 
And then, this afternoon, Trump’s social media account first threatened the defense contractor Raytheon, saying that “[e]ither Raytheon steps up, and starts investing in more upfront Investment like Plants and Equipment, or they will no longer be doing business with Department of War.” 

Then, the same account posted: “After long and difficult negotiations with Senators, Congressmen, Secretaries, and other Political Representatives, I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars. This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe. If it weren’t for the tremendous numbers being produced by Tariffs from other Countries, many of which, in the past, have ‘ripped off’ the United States at levels never seen before, I would stay at the $1 Trillion Dollar number but, because of Tariffs, and the tremendous income they bring, amounts being generated, that would have been unthinkable in the past (especially just one year ago during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, the Worst President in the History of our Country!), we are able to easily hit the $1.5 Trillion Dollar number while, at the same time, producing an unparalleled Military Force, and having the ability to, at the same time, pay down Debt, and likewise, pay a substantial Dividend to moderate income Patriots within our Country!” 

Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles wrote: “Trump has gone completely mad.”

January 9, 2026 (Friday)

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!” 

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.” 

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said. 

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.” 

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”  

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques: 

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.” 

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.” 

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

 “Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”

January 10, 2026 (Saturday)

Yesterday, in an apparent attempt to regain control of the national narrative surrounding the deadly shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Vice President J.D. Vance led the administration in pushing a video of the shooting captured by the shooter himself, Jonathan Ross, on his cell phone. 

The video shows Ross getting out of a vehicle and walking toward a red SUV where Good sits in the driver’s seat. Sirens blare as he walks toward her. She smiles at him and says: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” As Ross walks alongside the car, she repeats: “I’m not mad at you.” As he reaches the back of the vehicle, another person, presumably Good’s wife, Becca, says: “Show your face.”  As he begins to record the vehicle’s license plate, the same person says: “That’s okay, we don’t change our plates every morning,” referring to stories that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) switch out plates to make their vehicles hard to track. “Just so you know, it’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later.” Ross’s camera pans up to show the person recording him on her cell phone. 

She continues: “That’s fine. U.S. citizen. Former f*cking veteran.” As she walks to the passenger-side door, she looks at him and says: “You wanna come at us? You wanna come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead.”

Another officer approaches the driver’s side of the vehicle and says to Renee Good: “Out of the car. Get out of the f*cking car.” 

As the passenger calmly reaches for the passenger-side door handle, the police officer on the driver’s side again says: “Get out of the car!” Other videos indicate that he had then put his hand into the car and was trying to open the door. Good quite clearly turns the wheel hard away from the police officers to head down the street as the passenger yells: “Drive, baby! Drive! Drive!”

Someone says “Whoa!” as the car moves down the street. Ross’s camera shows his face and then sways—remember, he has been filming all this on his phone. There are three shots and the houses on the side of the street swing back into view on Ross’s camera, indicating he did not drop it. As the car rolls up the street, Ross says, “F*cking bitch!” just before there is the sound of a smash. 

What is truly astonishing is that the administration thought this video would exonerate Ross and support the administration's insistence that he was under attack from a domestic terrorist trying to ram him with her car. The video was leaked to a right-wing news site, and Vance reposted it with the caption: “What the press has done in lying about this innocent law enforcement officer is disgusting. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.” The Department of Homeland Security reposted Vance’s post. 

As senior editor of Lawfare Media Eric Columbus commented: “Do Vance and DHS think we can’t actually watch the video?” Multiple social media users noted that Good’s last words to Ross were “That’s fine. I’m not mad at you,” while his to her, after he shot her in the face, were “F*cking b*tch!”  

The release of this damning video as an attempted exoneration reminds me overwhelmingly of the release of the video of the murder of Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in February 2021 in an attempt of one of the murderers to prove they had acted in self-defense. 

In that case, the district attorney for that circuit told police that the video showed self-defense and declined to prosecute. When the story wouldn’t go away, one of the murderers apparently thought that everyone else would agree that the video exonerated the killers. His lawyer gave the video to a local radio station. The station took the video down within two hours, but the public outcry over the horrific video meant the killers were arrested two days later. A jury convicted them, and they are now in prison, two for life without possibility of parole, one for life with the possibility of parole after 30 years, when he will be about 82. 

In the case of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, the murderers and their protectors were clearly so isolated in their own racist bubble they could not see how regular Americans would react to the video of them hunting down and shooting a jogger. 

In the case of the murder of Renee Good, the shooter and his protectors are clearly so isolated in their own authoritarian bubble they cannot see how regular Americans would react to the video of a woman smiling at a masked agent and saying: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” only to have him shoot her in the face and then spit out “F*cking bitch” after he killed her. 

The thread that runs through both is the assumption that an American exercising their constitutional rights must submit, without question, to a white man holding a gun. 

This is the larger meaning of federal agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol in U.S. cities. While they are attacking primarily people of color, the message they carry is directed at all Americans: you must do what the Trump administration and its loyalists demand. 

Another recording from the past few days shows a federal agent walking toward a woman recording him. She tells him: “Shame on you.” He answers: “Listen. Have you all not learned from the past couple of days? Have you not learned?” She responds: “Learned what? What’s our lesson here? What do you want us to learn?” He begins: “Following federal agents….” and he knocks the phone out of her hand. Hours after Good’s death, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem appeared in Manhattan behind a podium emblazoned with the words: “ONE OF OURS, ALL OF YOURS.”

After doubling down on their false narrative, the administration pulled 200 Customs and Border Patrol agents from a crackdown in Louisiana to send them to Minnesota, where administration officials already had deployed 2,000 federal agents—more than three times the number of police officers in Minneapolis. There they are cracking down, apparently indiscriminately. Yesterday, Gabe Whisnant of Newsweek reported that ICE has detained four members of the Oglala Lakota Nation, a federally recognized tribal nation of the Indigenous peoples who were in North America long before European settlers arrived. 

In November, as Sarah Mehta of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) noted at the time, the administration replaced almost half of ICE leaders across the country with Border Patrol officers. Border Patrol, a subagency of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is the agency responsible for acting on President Donald J. Trump’s policy of taking children from their parents during his first term, and it remains at the center of complaints of cruelty, racism, and violation of civil rights. This is the agency led by Greg Bovino, and the one behind the attack on a Chicago apartment building led by agents who rappelled into the building from a Black Hawk helicopter.

Although ICE currently employs more than 20,000 people, it is looking to hire over 10,000 more with the help of the money Republicans put in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act of July. That law tripled ICE’s budget for enforcement and deportation to about $30 billion.

On December 31, Drew Harwell and Joyce Sohyun Lee of the Washington Post reported that ICE was investing $100 million on what it called a “wartime recruitment” strategy to hire thousands of new officers. It planned to target gun rights supporters and military enthusiasts as well as those who listen to right-wing radi0 shows, directing ads to people who have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fights or shopped for guns and tactical gear. It planned to send ads to the phone web browsers and social media feeds of people near military bases, NASCAR races, gun and trade shows, or college campuses, apparently not considering them the hotbeds of left-wing indoctrination right-wing politicians claim. 

This afternoon, Kyle Cheney, Ben Johansen, and Gregory Svirnovskiy of Politico reported that the day after Good’s murder, Noem quietly restricted the ability of members of Congress to conduct oversight of ICE facilities. The policy came out in court today after ICE officers denied Democratic Minnesota Representatives Ilhan Omar, Angie Craig, and Kelly Morrison entry to a detention facility in Minneapolis. Last month, a federal judge rejected a similar policy.

Trump and his allies have singled out Minnesota in large part because of its large Somali-American population, represented in Congress by Omar, a lawmaker Trump has repeatedly attacked, from a population Trump has called “garbage.” As Chabeli Carrazana explained in 19th News, shortly after Christmas, right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video that he claimed showed day care centers run by Somali Americans were taking money from the government without providing services. 

The video has been widely debunked. In 2019, a state investigation found fraud taking place in the child care system and charged a number of people for defrauding the state. After that, the state tightened oversight, and state investigators have conducted unannounced visits to the day cares Shirley hit in his videos, where they found normal operations. Shirley claimed fraud when the centers would not let him in, but child care centers lock their doors and obscure the windows for the safety of the children, and would not let a strange man inside the facility to videotape.

But Trump used the frenzy to justify cutting $10 billion in antipoverty funding to five states led by Democrats—California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York—only to have a federal judge block his order yesterday. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins promptly announced she was withholding $129 billion in federal funding from Minnesota, alleging fraud. Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison responded: “I will not allow you to take from Minnesotans in need. I’ll see you in court.”

When Kaitlan Collins of CNN asked Trump yesterday if he thought the FBI should be sharing information about the shooting of Renee Good with state officials, as is normally the case, Trump responded: “Well, normally, I would, but they're crooked officials. I mean, Minneapolis and Minnesota, what a beautiful place, but it's being destroyed. It's got an incompetent governor fool. I mean, he's a stupid person, and, uh, it looks like the number could be $19 billion stolen from a lot of people, but largely people from Somalia. They buy their vote, they vote in a group, they buy their vote. They sell more Mercedes-Benzes in that area than almost—can you imagine? You come over with no money and then shortly thereafter you're driving a Mercedes-Benz. The whole thing is ridiculous. They're very corrupt people. It's a very corrupt state. I feel that I won Minnesota. I think I won it all three times. Nobody's won it for since Richard Nixon won it many, many years ago. I won it all three times, in my opinion, and it's a corrupt state, a corrupt voting state, and the Republicans ought to get smart and demand on voter ID. They ought to demand, maybe same-day voting and all of the other things that you have to have to safe election. But I won Minnesota three times that I didn't get credit for. I did so well in that state, every time. The people were, they were crying. Every time after. That's a crooked state. California's a crooked state. Many crooked states. We have a very, very dishonest voting system.”

Trump lost Minnesota in 2016, 2020, and 2024. 

Protesters took to the streets today across the United States to lament the death of Renee Good and demand an end to ICE brutality.  At Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris reported that ICE’s approval rating has plummeted in the past year, from +16 to -14. The day ICE agent Ross shot Renee Good, 52% of Americans disapproved of ICE while just 39% approved. In February, 19% of Americans held a strongly unfavorable opinion of ICE, while today 40% do. There is, Morris notes, “a growing and intense, angry opposition to [ICE] across America.”