President Trump is putting on a clinic about how to break the United States.
There are few things in American life more divisive than controversies over police violence. The racial reckoning of 2020 and the protests and riots that followed George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a police officer are still fresh in our minds. We also remember the unrest and violence that followed the police shooting of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.
The last time a president invoked the Insurrection Act and deployed active-duty troops to American streets was at the request of the mayor of Los Angeles and governor of California in 1992, during the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of four officers on charges, including assault and the use of excessive force, after their severe beating, crucially videotaped, of Rodney King.
The King case was a preview of our modern dilemma. How do political leaders respond when video evidence causes the public to make up its own mind — regardless of what any judge or jury might have to say?
The terrible divisiveness of police violence is why responsible leaders respond to every incident with extreme care. You lament the lives lost, you promise a fair and thorough investigation, and you call for calm. You do not prejudge the case. You do not set up an expectation that justice will be done only if your side’s interests are vindicated. And you definitely don’t send out allies and subordinates to whip up public anger.
Even if you follow that playbook perfectly — you say the right words, you do the right things — violence can still erupt. That’s how fraught the issue is.
But Trump isn’t a responsible leader, and he’s at his absolute worst in a crisis. He lies. He inflames his base. And — most dangerous of all — he pits the federal government against states and cities, treating them not as partners in constitutional governance but as hostile inferiors that must be brought to heel.
That’s exactly what has happened in the hours and days since an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good on the streets of Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Instantly, the administration’s narrative locked in. In a Truth Social post published mere hours after Good’s death, Trump said that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.” He said that it was “hard to believe” that the ICE agent (who was recorded walking around after the incident, apparently unharmed) was alive.
Statements from senior administration officials were even worse. Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, said that Good committed an act of “domestic terrorism.” Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, referred to Good as a violent rioter and said she “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism.”
Not to be outdone, Vice President JD Vance called the incident “classic terrorism.”
But if you watch videos of the shooting, one thing is clear: No fair-minded person could watch that incident and conclude that Good was a “domestic terrorist” on a mission to run down ICE agents. The administration’s claims of terrorism are false — absurdly so.
Good’s SUV was blocking part of a road, and she appeared to signal for other traffic to go around her when an ICE vehicle approached. Multiple agents approached her car. One said, “Get out of the car,” using an expletive. An eyewitness, however, said that she heard conflicting instructions — one agent telling Good to get out of the car, while another agent told her to drive away.
As one of the agents places his hand on Good’s door handle, she backs up slightly, turns her wheels away from the police, in a direction to leave, and starts driving forward. At that moment, an agent who had positioned himself in front of her vehicle sidesteps around the vehicle and fires what sounds like three quick shots at Good.
What Good was doing hardly qualifies as “domestic terrorism,” and this becomes especially clear when you compare the videos from Minneapolis with video of actual terror attacks — “classic terrorism,” to use the vice president’s phrase.
Many of us have seen footage, for example, of the horrific ramming attack in Nice, France, in 2016 that killed 86 people — or of the domestic terror attack in Charlottesville, Va., the following year, where a white supremacist drove directly into a crowd of “Unite the Right” counterprotesters, killing a woman, Heather D. Heyer, and injuring dozens of others. In both cases, the murderous intentions of the men driving the vehicles — deploying them as weapons — was unmistakable. Their goal was to inflict pain and death on as many people as possible.
The Minnesota videos show that it was never necessary for the officer to open fire. If a first shot is taken only after an officer is out of the path of the vehicle, that shot is not necessary to save his life.
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In fact, dodging a vehicle rather than attempting to stop it with gunfire is the preferred course of action for federal law enforcement. Bullets, after all, do not stop cars. They kill drivers and render the car rudderless, not immobile, which is exactly what happened here.
Still, the fact that a shooting is unnecessary or immoral does not mean it is criminal. A shooting can be unnecessary and immoral without being illegal, and the legal standard can be quite complex.
Last May, in an analogous case called Barnes v. Felix, the Supreme Court ruled that evaluations of police shootings must consider the “totality of the circumstances” of a shooting, not simply the precise moment of the perceived threat.
The Barnes case involved an officer who jumped onto a moving car after it fled from a traffic stop. With his life in mortal danger, the officer shot and killed the driver.
The question in that case was whether courts should evaluate the shooting only on the basis of the seconds that the officer was in danger, or whether courts should take a broader view and ask, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a unanimous court, about “all the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the climactic moment.”
That means a frame-by-frame analysis of a shooting doesn’t come close to resolving its legality.
Even video that appears to have been taken from the shooter’s angle (which emerged Friday) doesn’t resolve this particular controversy. It shows Good smiling at the agent and telling him that she’s not mad at him. It shows her moving her car toward him as someone (possibly her wife) tells her to “drive.” And it also shows the shooter sidestepping the car even as he opens fire.
But we don’t yet have video from the other agents. We don’t know why the agent moved in front of the vehicle rather than staying to the side as the other agents did. We don’t know the training the agent received.
We simply cannot and should not prejudge the agent’s case — if it even becomes a case.
But that brings us back to this administration’s malice and recklessness. There is zero indication that it intends to conduct a rigorous investigation. All of its public energy is directed toward demonizing Good and defending the agent. Even worse, the federal government has been taking steps to impede the state of Minnesota’s investigation of the shooting.
It can be difficult for a state government to prosecute a federal agent who commits a crime while on duty. But it’s not impossible. At the very least, there is a strong state interest in investigating the incident to provide the public with a thorough, accurate — and complete — account of Good’s death.
It’s important to understand that the shooting in Minnesota is exceptional only because Good died, not because the administration lied. In fact, for the Trump administration, lying is the norm.
In November, for example, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a comprehensive 233-page opinion that exposed a series of administration falsehoods about ICE operations in Chicago. Time and again, she exposed discrepancies between administration accounts of riots and video evidence. She accused Gregory Bovino, the commander of the U.S. Border Patrol, of “outright lying” in his deposition testimony.
In many ways, the Trump administration is reversing the injustice of the Civil Rights era. Then, it was the states who violated the Constitution, and federal power offered a solution. Now, the federal government is trampling the Constitution, and many states are attempting to resist.
But they face a decisive disadvantage. Under our constitutional structure of government, the federal sovereign is supreme. That means federal power can offer a solution to state injustice. But there is no easy state solution for federal oppression. A president hellbent on oppression, reinforced by his pardon power — and effectively immune from conviction even if he is impeached — will be able to get his way, at least for a time.
This produces the kind of tension that can break a nation. When a government oppresses its citizens and cuts off access to justice, it places an unbearable strain on the system.
On Wednesday, JD Vance posted on X, “You can accept that this woman’s death is a tragedy while acknowledging it’s a tragedy of her own making.”
But it was not a tragedy of Good’s own making. She did not shoot herself, and the ICE agent did not have to shoot her to save himself. The fact that a woman does not comply with police commands (especially when she may have been hearing conflicting instructions) does not mean that her life is forfeit.
Matt Walsh, the popular right-wing podcaster, wrote, “This lesbian agitator gave her life to protect 68 IQ Somali scammers who couldn’t give less of a shit about her. The most disgraceful and humiliating end a person could possibly meet.”
That’s how much parts of MAGA devalue human life. That’s how much they despise their political opponents.
We should certainly respect law enforcement officers, but we are not their subjects. We are not Trump’s subjects, either. But that’s not the president’s mind-set, and that’s not what parts of MAGA believe.
To the worst parts of MAGA — including people who exert immense power over American life — your worth is defined by your obedience. And those who don’t obey? Well, they deserve to die, and no one should mourn their death.
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