For Good?
As Minneapolis mourns, GOP scrambles to steer story of shooting
The fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis this week was a tragedy for which the only appropriate justice would be that it had not happened and she had gone home to her family that day.
Even the man who killed her must – surely – be wishing for such an outcome now. But sadly, that’s not possible. Instead, his actions in that angry, adrenaline-heightened, broad daylight moment have served to exacerbate the stark gulf in concepts of right and wrong among a nation already sorely divided.
And it has focused the minds of people all across the country on Donald Trump’s policy regarding immigration enforcement; how it is manifesting itself on America’s streets and what that means for accountability, credibility and trust in government.
This was the ninth shooting by immigration officers in the past four months, across five states plus the District of Columbia. As The New York Times reports:
“All of the individuals targeted in those shootings were, like the woman killed on Wednesday, fired on while in their vehicles. In each case, officials have claimed that the agents fired in self-defense, fearing they would be struck by the vehicle.
“At least one other person died as a result of those shootings.”
On Thursday there was yet another shooting involving ICE, this time in Portland, Oregon, when a man and woman were wounded in a vehicle, apparently in the parking lot of a hospital. Self-defense was the official line.
Almost immediately after the Minneapolis incident, a typically performative public statement by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem cast the blame on Ms Good, calling her a “domestic terrorist”. Noem’s description of events was in turn described by the city’s Mayor, Jacob Frey, as a “garbage narrative”.
President Trump’s own, largely erroneous, statement followed, and those talking points then echoed all the way down the Republican hierarchy and were amplified on social media by his supporters.
JD Vance called Good’s death a “tragedy of her own making,” for which he was promptly excoriated by no less a voice than the National Catholic Reporter.
“In times past, a politician might offer thoughts and prayers, encourage those reacting to wait for the full results of the investigation and generally try to lower the temperature. A leader might take the opportunity provided by a fresh day to soothe the broken heart of a nation and appeal to the better angels among us.
“JD Vance went in a different direction.”
Meanwhile, the GOP line quickly hardened around the initial falsehoods even as they grew increasingly unsustainable.
Border “czar” Tom Homan, after saying that the “investigation should play out” later did an abrupt u-turn as the wagons circled.
At Fox News and elsewhere, TV shows and their guests were mobilised to define the victim and use their chyrons to reinforce GOP talking points (although subsequently, Sean Hannity’s man-on-the-ground clearly picked the wrong protester for a vox pop…).
Florida Rep. Randy Fine went on air to deliver a classic FAFO defense: “If you impede the actions of our law enforcement as they seek to repel foreign invaders from our country, you get what’s coming to you. I do not feel bad for the woman that was involved,” while Alabama Sen. Katie Britt even said “This is what America voted for.”
According to Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt, “The bottom line is this: when a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life”.
So much for Don’t Tread On Me, I guess.
Michelle Goldberg wrote at The New York Times that by killing Renee Good, “ICE sent a message to us all.”
“In the imagination of some on the right, Good quickly came to stand in for all the grating Resistance moms they’d like to see crushed. Fox News sneered that Good was a “self-proclaimed poet” — she’s the winner of a prestigious poetry award — “with pronouns in her bio.” The conservative radio host Erick Erickson described her as an “AWFUL,” or “Affluent White Female Urban Liberal.”
“It’s entirely possible that had Good lived, the Trump administration might have tried to prosecute her.”
After what is understood to be video from the shooter’s own phone – held in his left hand as he fired with his right – surfaced on Friday it did not, as JD Vance asserted, “exonerate him”.
With every pronouncement, Vance appears to be sinking deeper into a morass – ironically of his own making – that’s not going away anytime soon. As Molly Jong-Fast posted, making his VP the face of defending ICE is “probably the smartest thing Donald Trump has done in his second term because he must know that this whole thing is in the process of blowing up.”
As tensions on the streets grew, the administration said 100 further Customs and Border Protection agents would be sent to Minneapolis at least through the weekend. On Saturday a large crowd of protesters gathered in the city, part of an estimated 1,000 planned protests across the country.
There’s still plenty we don’t know about what happened on Wednesday. There needs to be an intensive, independent investigation and legal accountability. But local prosecutors appear to be excluded from the process as the Trump administration said any investigation would be handled by the FBI, which, as Glenn Thrush writes at The New York Times,
“is overseen by a director, Kash Patel, who has described President Trump as an unerring boss, and even a king.”
“Mr. Trump had already declared the shooting justified. Vice President JD Vance has asserted that federal agents had “absolute immunity” from prosecution. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, has spoken about the incident as if it were a closed case.”
All told, it was probably inevitable that this incident would become some kind of ideological Rorschach test. But no matter what we saw, or think we saw, or even what we’re told we saw, we must never lose sight of the fact that one of our fellow human beings was killed. Renee’s wife Rebecca said:
“We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness.”
When George Floyd died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, Darnella Frazier’s eyewitness video was famously crucial to the state’s case, as well as to the world’s understanding of what had happened.
If it was not for bystander video from Minneapolis this week, those initial claims by the administration would likely be near-impossible to counter. There has, as yet, been no video from Thursday’s Portland incident, hence the official narrative has remained unchallenged. Oregon has started its own investigation, to “look into whether any federal officer acted outside the scope of their lawful authority.”
David Allen Green writes at Prospect:
“In theory and on paper, the US has a constitution that confers on Congress and the Supreme Court the power to check and balance abuses of power by the executive. Those checks and balances are still technically available, but the federal government is confident they will not be used.
“And so we are in a situation where the US government can kill people on the high seas, in other lands and on its own streets—and nothing will be done to stop it. The US is now a gangster state at home and a rogue state abroad, just because it can be.
“This is not only because of any constitutional or other legal immunity, but also because of the cultural immunity conferred by the willingness of the government’s supporters to push fake narratives about what is being done.”
In another excellent column, Garrett Graff writes about the collective “weight of Trumpism” on all of us right now. In a section related specifically to immigration enforcement, he writes:
“Before last year, if you were a fully documented legal US citizen, there was effectively a zero percent chance that a masked, armed federal officer would accost you walking on the street and demand “your papers, please,” and then arrest you.
“Now that chance is at least non-zero — it has in fact happened to more than 170 people.”
Finally, at The New Republic, Michael Tomasky writes:
“The real lunatic fringe in this country is the one that sanctions the execution of a citizen and then spends days smearing her and that imagines itself to be at war with its own people and precipitates these kinds of confrontations in the first place. That fringe is doubling down, and hiring and hiring and hiring. This is going to get much worse.”
See Also:
Masquerading (From August)
‘Pure Political Theater’ (From June)
Boots on the Ground (From September)
Enemies Within And Without (From October)
Sweet Home Chicago? (From October)
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The Only Restraint Is ‘My Own Morality’
The president spoke this week of his desire to increase the US defense budget to $1.5trillion – an increase of 50 per cent over this year’s record expenditures – saying the increased costs would be covered by revenue from tariffs.
“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,” he posted.
This week, five Republican Senators broke with the president to vote in favour of a War Powers resolution that could limit his military operations in Venezuela by requiring congressional approval. As Politico reports:
“The Senate still needs to debate and pass the resolution that was advanced Thursday, and even if the House passes it, which is unlikely, Trump could still veto it. But the surprising procedural vote contributed to a narrative that Trump is losing his grip on congressional Republicans after running roughshod over potential GOP renegades in 2025.”
In a showpiece interview with The New York Times this week, Trump made clear that he alone would be the arbiter of any limits to his powers as Commander-in-Chief, not international law or treaties.
This coming week may see a typically Trumpian moment of ego-driven pettiness, with the president expected to meet in Washington with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, saying he would accept her Nobel Peace Prize if she offered it to him.
It promises to be a pantomime that demeans everyone involved – even to the point where the Nobel Committee felt it had to issue a statement on Friday saying its prizes are “non-transferable”.
Trump had reportedly not included Machado in plans for the future governance of the country due to her winning the prize he coveted last year – even though she “dedicated” it to him. Now, he says, it would be “a great honor” to take it from her.
Meanwhile, it sounds like US energy companies and investors may be getting cold feet about committing to the level of outlay that would be required to revive Venezuela’s oil industry. At a White House meeting on Friday, the CEO of Exxon went as far as to call the country “uninvestable for now”.
Rogé Karma at The Atlantic writes on how ‘Big Oil knows Trump’s Venezuela plans are delusional’ and that “Restoring Venezuela’s oil industry is completely unrealistic in the short term, and might not be in America’s economic and geopolitical interests at all.”
The Guardian outlines what could go wrong with Trump’s gamble, while according to the Financial Times, “’No one wants to go in there when a random f*cking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country,’ said one private equity investor who specialises in energy.”
While Phil Hoad in The Guardian thinks that with the Venezuela adventure, Trump has “achieved his dream of making his own 80s action movie,” George Packer writes at The Atlantic that the president is doing improv - “Iraq Was Bad. This Is Absurd.”
Also this week, the president ordered the US withdrawal from dozens of international organizations that “no longer serve American interests” – among them several groups that work towards a global effort to confront climate change.
German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged world leaders not to let the world order disintegrate into a “den of robbers” where the unscrupulous take what they want.
Sound advice. Yet also in Europe this week, a headline you probably never thought you’d see…
Meanwhile, in what’s probably the biggest foreign policy story of the week that the US hasn’t gotten involved in - yet - Iran has seen some of the worst protests for many years against the ruling regime.
With dozens dead and an internet blackout in place, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the anti-government protesters “troublemakers” who are “trying to please the president of the US”.
Oh dear. Now you’ve done it. See the irony, much?
See Also:
Nice Country You Have Here (From March)
Everlasting Consequences (From June)
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A Healthy Economy?
On Thursday, 17 Republicans joined with Democrats to force through legislation that would extend health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act for three years.
The House measure may be revised when it goes to the Senate but the vote, and the number of Republicans prepared to rebuke party leadership, reinforces that “affordability” looks set to remain a dominant issue as the midterm campaign picks up steam.
The Washington Post reported that the GOP’s opening campaign message appears “muddled” between the domestic economy and the president’s overseas adventuring; “with Trump making clear that he has no plans to back down from a growing list of foreign entanglements, while the White House tries to assure voters that the president is delivering on promises to make life more affordable.”
The December jobs report – the first since the government shutdown – was worse than expected, showing that the economy added just 50,000 jobs, ending the weakest year of job growth since the pandemic. For all of 2025, employers added 584,000 jobs – compared to 2 million new jobs in 2024.
If the news itself wasn’t bad enough, it turned out the president leaked part of the data the night before, posting a graph that was included in the BLS report for the following day. The White House “brushed it off” but said it will “review protocols”.
With the Supreme Court poised to rule – likely next Wednesday – on the legality of Trump’s “emergency” tariff regime, the White House is actively exploring alternative means to “get to the same place”.
Further out (and circling back), with Congress looking at a Jan 30 deadline to avoid another partial shutdown, some Democrats are pressing for changes to federal funding for the budget for DHS and ICE; but their party leadership doesn’t seem enthusiastic to tie funding to specific rule changes. For example, Sen Chris Murphy wants a ban on face masks, a requirement to show warrants prior to arrests and for “border patrol to remain at the border”.
As The Guardian reports:
“Many Democrats are loath to trigger another shutdown fight after a protracted and bruising showdown last year over healthcare subsidies. Some Democrats remain skittish on the issue of immigration, having argued that progressive slogans like “Abolish ICE” helped Trump climb back to power by promising a sweeping crackdown.
“But public opinion has shifted as Trump escalates what has become an increasingly violent federal enforcement campaign, and as images circulate of masked agents with rifles arresting immigrants at car washes, courthouses and even residential buildings.”
See Also:
‘Are You A Trustworthy Person?’ (From September)
Shooting The Messenger (From August)
Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn (From April)
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When I started this project in 2022, I simply did not think how wildly out of whack things in the political world would become; all while sports continue to show the face of a society functioning with what passes for “normality”.
As for how all of this ends – and what might come after – I have no idea. And if anyone tells you they do, they’re wrong. Unpredictability at home and abroad has become the touchstone of how we have decided to govern ourselves and there will be plenty of collateral damage before the dust clears.
The two links in the above paragraphs change with each weekly column – all the pieces are definitely worth reading. So far, they’ve been:
“Normality”
Donald Trump Suggests Re-naming NFL in ‘Football vs Soccer’ Debate, by Tom Gotti, in Sports Illustrated.
The State of Venezuelan Baseball is Strong, by Antonio Matheus, in Caracas Chronicles.
In a Year of Violent Tumult, the Sports World was Silent, by Dave Zirin, in The Nation.
Palm Beach Frozen Iguanas to make Class A baseball debut in 2026, in The Palm Beach Post.
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“What might come after”
Rebuilding America After Trump, by Pete Buttigieg, in The New York Times.
What Comes After Trump’s Age of Monsters? by CJ Polychroniou and Alexandra Boutri, in Common Dreams.
What will happen once Trump leaves office? It’s not good, by Dace Potas in USA Today.
Trumpism After Trump – The Future of the Right by Gladden Pappin and David Leonhardt, in The New York Times.
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During the regular season I aim to write a baseball-related post midweek and a politics wrap at weekends. As you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other.
You can find a full States of Play archive here.
I’m back to a roughly once-a-week post now throughout the off-season, when I’m hoping to feature some more Q&A write-ups and produce some new content for the site.
Let me know what you’ve enjoyed or what you haven’t? And if you think you might like to take part and talk about your memories of baseball and politics, drop me a line?
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