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11:32 am, January 10th, 2026 - 100 comments
Categories: Deep stuff, Donald Trump, making shit up, Media, media abuse, social media, spin, us politics, you couldn't make this shit up -
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In the United States of America Renee Good, a 37 year old woman and the mother of three children including a six year old boy, has been shot dead in Minnesota.
The assailant was an ICE officer. There is video of the incident from different angles. Looking at the video what happened is perfectly clear to me.
Ms Good had chosen to park her car in the middle of a suburban US street. Possibly deliberately her car was blocking a procession of ICE vehicles although it is unclear how long she had been there or what her intent was. It may have been as a protest against the presence of ICE agents.
A first ICE vehicle gets waved past by her and passes. A second vehicle stops and armed agents get out of this vehicle. They advance on her vehicle. One grabs the door handle and demands she gets out of the car. Another agent walks around the vehicle and stops by the front left of the car.
She panics and attempts to leave, and clearly steered away from the officer near the front left of her vehicle.
He then shot her three times.
Just before she was shot she said “I’m not mad at you”. Just after she was shot one of the officers called her a “fucking bitch”.
Her car did not strike the officer and she was not under arrest. She was a US citizen and ICE had no right to stop or detain her, let alone shoot her. She was returning home from dropping her youngest child at school.
But she is now dead.
To top it all off there is video of a physician identifying himself as such and begging to be allowed to treat her. ICE agents turned him down.
You would have thought that the Trump administration could hang the officer out to dry and at least charge him.
Or at least there should be formal statements about how an investigation was under way and no further statement would be made.
But the response shows how much the concept of truth and the further concept of receiving a fair trial are now under threat.
The Trump regime clearly do not want to accept any fault on ICE’s part. Their view is that they should not be held to account if poorly trained hyped up agents sent into local areas to hunt alleged immigrants misbehave. After all this will have a chilling effect on ICE’s mandate which is basically to terrify the local population whether they be immigrants or lefties. The sense of jackboots is strong.
This BBC article records the stark difference but shows the problem with current media by presenting no conclusion, instead presenting commentary from both sides as if they are both valid. But it is a helpful summary of the various responses.
Including these.
According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the driver – 37-year-old Renee Good – was to blame. As she drove away from ICE officers, she “weaponised her car” in a “domestic terror attack”, Noem said.
US President Donald Trump blamed a “professional agitator” and a “radical left movement of violence and hate” in a Truth Social post.
JD Vance has been even worse.
“The gaslighting is off the charts and I’m having none of it,” Vice-President JD Vance wrote in a post on X. “This guy was doing his job. She tried to stop him from doing his job.”
While Vance said the incident was tragic, he added that “it falls on this woman and all of the radicals who teach people that immigration is the one type of law that rioters are allowed to interfere with”.
This Pod Save America tweet captures all of the details of Vance’s rant.
Vance has also stated that the officer had absolute immunity. Which is weird because if the officer was acting in self defence he would not need to rely on immunity.
From CNN:
Vice President JD Vance’s claim Thursday that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis is “protected by absolute immunity” drew immediate pushback from experts who said the legal landscape around a potential prosecution is far more complicated.
Speaking at the White House, Vance appeared to try to stymie any efforts by Minnesota prosecutors to pursue a criminal case against the agent.
“The precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action – that’s a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job,” Vance said, echoing others in the Trump administration. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It would get tossed out by a judge.”
That assessment was quickly met with skepticism by experts who said the vice president was overstating the law around immunity for federal officials. Vance’s comments come amid nationwide protests of ICE officials and criticism of the agency’s efforts to carry out a historic deportation campaign with little to no oversight.
Online the videos are something of a Rorschach test. Progressives see unbridled and excessive police brutality, right wingers think the videos show that the action was justified.
And the cannonisation of the shooter and the demonisation of the victim has developed a great deal of steam from right wing media outlets.
The investigation into the shooting will be conducted by Kash Patel’s FBI. Local law enforcement has been excluded, nominally because the Trump administration does not trust state officials with information that emerges from the probe, and that ICE agents’ safety would be put at risk, including with potential doxxing of agents involved, two people familiar with the matter told CNN. More likely they want to manage the narrative and the decision. Expect JD Vance’s outlandish claim to be given some weight.
There is no way the shooter will be prosecuted. Even though he should be.
I challenge anyone to watch the video and conclude that the action was justified. Yet what would I know. I am a leftie and according to Vance lefties are part of a radical fringe trying to make it harder for ICE to do its job.
We clearly live in a time where dominant discourse and not truth is the most important thing. And loud voices and the exercise of might are more important than being right.
MS. Thankyou for this Post. Your heart, soul, and mind shines on throughout it.
I know there are many Americans who do not like, or respect, the fascists that have taken control….I sincerely wish them the best for their bravery. And they will need it.
Power to our American Left comrades.
[Cheers and thanks – MS]
Just on the fascist ICE….there was this, which I had linked an earlier story on The Standard…
ICE : fascist death squads?
I agree with this summary. The ICE guy seems to step slightly into harms way, the vehicle is turning right which shows the driver was trying to avoid the shooter.
What happened to old-style shooting the tyres to bring the vehicle to a halt?
The USA is slipping into an abyss.
ICE agents have the power to stop, detain and arrest people they suspect of being in the US illegally. But critically, they do not have the power to arrest US citizens except in limited circumstances, such as if a person allegedly interferes with an arrest, or assaults an officer.
Despite this, reporting by ProPublica shows that there were more than 170 incidents during the first nine months of Trump’s presidency where federal agents held American citizens against their will. These cases included Americans that immigration officers had suspected of being in the US illegally.
The killer was a 10 year ICE veteran who follows procedure (Noem)
She and TriciaMcLaughlin@HS (who stated that an American held for 25 days was a Mexican) joins her in citing the background of the killer to obtain sympathy
They claim he was a victim of injury by an unauthorised migrants (who was wanted for a crime) car during the summer.
The actual story
He smashes the window of a car door to arrest the driver (rather than shoot the car tyres to stop it being driven off).
The car is driven off at this point and he is dragged along by it & gets injuries (he may have been protected by the gloves at first, but probably got wounds from the broken window against the arm).
The above is used as an excuse for the killing.
The perp walked around the car taking phone photos, as if looking for cause. Others try and get into the car and he is standing by the drivers side of the car so a killing would be very easy.
ICE had no rights of policing in this situation.
There is no way the shooter will be prosecuted. Even though he should be.
I challenge anyone to watch the video and conclude that the action was justified. Yet what would I know. I am a leftie and according to Vance lefties are part of a radical fringe trying to make it harder for ICE to do its job.
We clearly live in a time where dominant discourse and not truth is the most important thing. And loud voices and the exercise of might are more important than being right.
Here lies the problem: democracy and respect for all individuals appears low in the USA. Reporting media are interested in kerfuffle and brouhaha and anxiety which ensures readership and more dollars for them.
Looking at the history of early Hitler days. Measures against non-supporters grew and functionaries started new practices from their own volition, not just from Hitler's mind. Under tight control, neurotic ideas could become vicious.
Look under wikipedia at early Nazi concentration camps.
The Nazis had no plan for concentration camps prior to their seizure of power. The concentration camp system arose in the following months due to the desire to suppress tens of thousands of Nazi opponents in Germany. The Reichstag fire in February 1933 was the pretext for mass arrests. The Reichstag Fire Decree eliminated the right to personal freedom enshrined in the Weimar Constitution and provided a legal basis for detention without trial…
…The number of prisoners in 1933–1934 is… estimated at 50,000, with arrests perhaps exceeding 100,000.
Eighty per cent of prisoners were members of the Communist Party of Germany and ten per cent members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany…
…In early 1934, the number of prisoners was still falling and it was uncertain if the system would continue to exist. By mid-1935, there were only five camps, holding 4,000 prisoners, and 13 employees at the central IKL office.
At the same time, 100,000 people were imprisoned in German jails, a quarter of those for political offenses. Believing Nazi Germany to be imperiled by internal enemies, Himmler called for a war against the "organized elements of sub-humanity", including communists, socialists, Jews, Freemasons, and criminals…
As well as the death of truth is the rise of fascism really fast now in the US and abroad.
Many USians on X now fear that the extreme tactics of ICE are part of a plan to incite a (allegedly) violent response so that Trump can claim it's insurrection & impose martial law – and the aim is do do that before the midterms so there will be no further elections.
Very scary times. And with the abuse of power of the likes of anti-democratic Seymour, we may see some spill over here.
This coalition has legislated against democracy, transparency and accountability.
Seymour and Peters have threatened the media.
Looks already spilt here IMO as we have a deputy PM and his party who's entire agenda appears focused on changing many areas of NZ in a way not easily reversed.
Seems pretty clear the guy should be facing charges and yes, Trump administration officials just lie completely shamelessly, there's a whiff of fascism about them and no, there isn't federal immunity for 'shot while trying to escape.'
That said, if we're talking "the death of truth," you've written a partisan piece that presents US liberal-left framing of this as Truth and any disputing of it as Untruth. Even worse is this:
If we're interested in Truth, we don't want journalists to treat only the commentary of one side of an issue as valid and tell us the conclusion we're supposed to reach about it. That really would be "The death of Truth."
I have doubts that America has ever had "truth'. The country was founded on genocide and slavery and nurtured on racist discrimination.
Every story they tell themselves about their history is based on one or more lies. They write and rewrite their history to conform to the lies required by their government of the time.
They are still lying to themselves and the world.
"Truth" is a big ask, of course. The current gold standard for establishing truth is the scientific method, but even that often leaves a lot of room for dispute.
Good luck establishing Truth in an event like this. It's a classic "Rashomon effect" case of multiple people seeing the same event and coming to opposite or contradictory conclusions, only now we have multiple people watching the exact same video of an event multiple times and coming to opposite or contradictory conclusions.
even more reason for MSM to report factually.
Indeed. The US political system and the culture it's embedded in have created and enabled Trump's rise to power, even though many Democrats will deny this: eg support of wealth, celebrity culture, belief in US exceptionalism, militarism and threats & use of guns to enforce demands, manipulation through diverse media, (from promotion of consumerism to Hollywood mythmaking), a combination of cultural, economic and militaristic imperialism, etc.
The Democrats embrace a softer version of much of what the Trump regime is now doing. They have used more subterfuge in pursuing some of their aims eg CIA induced interference in other countries, use of trade agreements to promote neoliberal capitalism and extraction of money by US corporations, etc.
And I expect, even if the Democrats regain presidential and/or Congressional power, they will wind back some of the things that the Trump regime has enforced. They will make moves towards more democratic processes, affordable health care and housing for more people etc., but they'll still be beholden to the wealthy elite, and corporate power.
That said, if we're talking "the death of truth," you've written a partisan piece that presents US liberal-left framing of this as Truth and any disputing of it as Untruth. Even worse is this:
"…the problem with current media … presenting no conclusion, instead presenting commentary from both sides as if they are both valid."
As to your second point this was aimed at the BBC article which presented faithfully a both sides synopsis. Even though one side's view was totally flawed.
My post could be accused of being partisan. But in the face of overwhelming evidence one side's view is correct and the other side's view is incorrect. If this is being partisan then we have a problem.
I know what Milt is saying. If the BBC presents only one side, or presents both sides and then sums up saying MAGA are wrong, that plays into the forces that are using division to advance fascism. The problem with the article I see is that it didn't present the information that shows the problems with ICE's actions eg that they don't have jurisdiction to make arrests, and the pointing out how this impacts on American politics and law. They don't have to reach a conclusion, they just have to report those things.
I'm also not sure that they can reach a conclusion on a legal matter either. It's taken time for what happened to become clear, and the piece was written 2 days ago.
However, I agree with you that the MSM have a particular role in not two-siding where that distorts the truth, and in a state of rising fascism, if the MSM don't act to preserve democracy, they will cease to exist.
IMO seems pretty much a slur on an Author , MS, I value and respect…
how is that a slur?
Are you riding shotgun for milt?
more like riding shotgun for debate culture on TS.
I am actually interested in how you see that as a slur rather than someone making a political point about a post. It's easy to address what Milt said (and Micky did so)
"IMO seems pretty much a slur on an Author…"
Some people do seem to take any disputing of their views as a personal insult, yes. Fortunately, Micky Savage isn't one of those people.
Competitive framing of events tends to sideline truth. What's real is a matter of perception for all involved, so folks form personal views which may or may not coalesce on common ground.
I agree with MS. What I saw on the tv news contradicts Vance's delusional posturing. If they don't prosecute the ICE agent for shooting the protestor, they will succeed in discrediting their justice system. Does the US really want to come across as Mickey Mouse on the global stage?? If so, keep doing that crass shit.
As regards PM's point about journos, there's always a fine line between reporting what you saw and interpreting it for others. At the subjective/objective interface, we do a bit of a creative dance most of the time. Social coherence tends to herd us toward a common view though. Mass hysteria is a potential in fraught situations that build toward crisis so participants go for optimal survival prospects: safety in the crowd.
Well, it was fun while it lasted, the human race's 250 year experiment with democracy.
Unfortunately, the laudable concept just couldn't overcome human nature.
R.I.P. truth and decency.
I hope you are wrong but I am afraid you might be right.
Not just democracy (which has actually had universal suffrage for only about half that 250 years).It's the whole Enlightenment thing. We seem to be on our way back to a kind of anti-rationality, post-medieval society, witchfinders-general and all.
Watch a video of a woman getting shot to reinforce 'Trump's a bad man'/'Truth is subjective'/'America is divisive'?
No thanks.
All that's wrong with our societal trajectory and the degenerate side of social media (even though it's used by the good guys to illustrate a point) wrapped up in one.
It's not how I wanted to start my Sunday.
Besides, there is no need to look at the States to make this point. Right here, numerous cops have shot people in unjustified circumstances and they aren't held culpable.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/in-depth-special-projects/story/2018834464/licence-to-kill-the-startling-truth-about-new-zealand-s-fatal-police-shootings
Sorry, no snuff movies to accompany the article.
I watched a few of the videos, in none of them did I see the woman shot. The videos I saw were of her beforehand, then trying to drive away, and the ICE officers.
ICE aren't cops, which is one of the very pertinent political points here. Another is that ICE are out of control, sanctioned by the state. They're breaking convention and law. That's incredibly serious, and little ole NZ won't be exempt from the fallout if the US goes full authoritarian.
It was cold blooded murder. Like most people, I was shocked and deeply sad. If a cop did that in NZ they would be stood down immediately, up for disciplinary action and a PCA investigation for starters. Yes I know the cops here aren't perfect, but at least they don't carry guns routinely. It is hard to imagine what an equivalent might be to ICE here, who seem to have even more power than US cops or even the National Guard. May we never see it. For a healing thing, follow the 12 Buddhist monks who are marching 2300 miles for peace with their dog Aloka across the US.
I can't see justification for the shooting. She appears to have hit one of the ICE officers with her car by mistake. How that necessitates shooting her is mind boggling. They're long out of control, and the fascists in the White House will keep using that to consolidate power.
This is clear fascist tactics.
Truth died some time ago.
The issue is what people are going to do about the fascism.
Solutions need to come from the people in the US and abroad.
There are demonstrations across the US this weekend against ICE mainly, but also vs Trump. they are very aware that Trump wants an excuse to claim insurrection & enforcement of martial law.
I think the Democrat representatives are pursuing legal options, including ways of winding back ICE by a law that would make it illegal for those with criminal convictions being recruited to ICE. I have read that the recruitment of ICE agents involves a very low bar: very low literacy levels, very short training period etc, and that the likes of Proud Boys have been recruited to ICE. As a group Proud Boys have gone very quiet during trump’s presidency.
Abroad there are calls for boycotts eg of the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup that are due to be held in the US.
Other countries are already moving away from US dollars for international trade agreements – especially those involving China & Russia.
I have been moving away from gmail to a European free email provider (will my comments here go into moderation if I start using a different email addy ?)
Plus I am hardly ever using FB, and have started checking into Mastodon & BSKY more. They don’t provide the diversity of views & debates that are currently on X, but Musk is getting very fascistic.
good synopsis of resistance, would make a good post.
Musk is not even pretending now. Last year he spoke to pro-fascist Tommy Robinson about the necessity of dissolving the British government before the next election. Because if people don't act there will be rape and murder and destruction of the country. He's bonkers, but very powerful.
https://x.com/Daractenus/status/2010015220262117404
Musk is currently repeating the call for regime change of the UK govt – because they are taking a stand against X allowing pornographic images that are abusive of women & children. he claims the UK want to censor freedom of speech.
The Trump regime is so hypocritical. It's hard core patriarchy as well as being undemocratic, extremely authoritarian, repressive, etc.
I agree this administration's so fond of the Führerprinzip and so indifferent to rule of law that it's not far off fascism, but I don't think this particular incident reflects something new.
It's been true for at least a couple of decades in the US that if armed law enforcement officers approach you in your vehicle, your life is at risk – even if you called them for assistance, as in the Christian Glass case. It may not be a big risk, given the number of drivers shot vs number of vehicle stops, but it is a risk and Americans are as reluctant as NZers to prosecute and convict police officers for bad decisions that kill people.
I tend to agree about the risk of not obeying orders from armed officers, if I were in the US I'd be cautious, if I was actively protesting a pro-fascist organisation like ICE, then much more than cautious. It's a risk to do that, and I do wonder if she was naive to the dangers to herself (no idea about her level of activist training), but I think it's also reasonable given the cultural norms to feel a sense of safety from being white (unfounded sense as it happens). So that's a change.
But, it's also not the same as previous decades precisely because the administration's so fond of the Führerprinzip. As far as I can tell ICE had no jurisdiction to stop her, they're not police. But the administration doesn't care, and worse, it wants to break the norms both of what armed officers do but also that it's ok to break laws. That's not new of course, that's been consistent since 2016.
This is a win for the fascists. ICE can shoot and kill anyone now and the administration will support them. The point of the support is to make people afraid and less likely to protest.
Personally I think the US liberal left is handing fascists this win on a plate. The US has arrived at the "fascists will" part of "If liberals won't control the borders, fascists will," so a lot of voters are very happy about what ICE is doing – and also willing to blame people who get in ICE's way for their own deaths, if X is anything to go by.
Much of the support for ICE on twitter is terrifying.
I'm not looking. But remember it's a distortion. Musk controls the algorithms and used SM manipulation, and part of that is to make it look like they're winning.
(the lefties who left twitter for bsky etc hold some responsibility for this too)
Yes I'm getting a bit of a beating there around some of my posts on Twitter….I was told that the ICE agent had told her she was under arrest and I now read that ICE agents have no right of arrest for US citizens so I don't know.
She was going relatively slowly, clearly turning away to leave and there was ample time for the agent to have moved to avoid being hit. I actually don't think he was. In fact not moving to the side, ie avoidance has been criticised by both sides as being an Officer in Jeopardy move. This is when an officer of the state does not take all steps to remove themselves from the action. The officer has been criticised for holding both a phone (ICE agents don't have body cams) and gun and in fact made a move early on in the confrontation to swap phone filming hands so as to keep his gun action hand free…so he was 'envisaging'/responding that he may need the gun. But why?
There seemed to be two officers. One at the window and one slightly ahead on the left. The slightly ahead one shot first through the front windscreen and then the one at the window followed.
Why, if she wanted to go, were they trying to detain her? Couldn't they have just sent a citation in the mail?
They seem a little/lot like bully boys and are not very well trained compared with police training.
Then there is the Twitter photo going around of an ICE officer smashing a camera being used to film at a later protest. His shoulder tags seemed to show he was out of Houston (Texas) which is a way from Minnesota
I have questions though:
Do we know why there were all those ICE agents in Minneapolis?
Is this a trend that these ill trained troops will act as shock troops moving from place to place across the States?
same dynamic in the UK. I have no idea what the end game is for most of the left now, other than that we're shit at strategising around reality so it's probably going to end badly. I hope the Democratics who held on to their wealth and power instead of leading change enjoy themselves.
Yes, Labour in the UK seems to be hopeless. Mind you – the people didn't vote Labour in the last Election because they liked them. They voted Labour because they hated Boris and the Tories and made the obvious calculation that nobody else could get them out.
yep. And look at the lines on this graph
fuck performance, UK Labour are cutting the benefits of disabled people. Not only is that shitty and anti-leftist, it's going to further erode trust in government and the centre left.
I gather from UK political blogs that the Irish fella is driving Starmer's strategy, the idea being suck votes out of Reform while it is over-bloated. I guess you have to be there to get that…
Anyway, this micro-view on the trend line is informative: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-greens-your-party-and-labours-left-challenge/
There was a Senate deal in 2023.
Trump demanded the GOP back out of it, because he wanted to run on immigration in 2024.
Why? Anti-foreigner nationalism.
1.Unauthorised migrants expulsion
2.slashing new refugees down to just South African whites
3.anti-foreigner tariffs
4.imperial rule of the Americas
5.new world Christian authoritarian government order where the secular left liberal democratic resistance is posed as unAmerican
6."God" validation for this post democratic fascism by banning pro Palestinian advocacy for foreign students, for those seeking visas and on campus.
The so called ZOG apparently enabled.
Everyone powerful can take stuff, so long as they pose as Judeo-Christian – Putin, Trump and Netanyahu (Arab autocrats protected if part of Abrahamic accords).
Anyone else is a bad commie, socialist (who does not deserve oil).
The thing is that the white race fascism thing, the Christian dominionism thing, is based on the same supremacy as that of the reich.
Well, that's all very stirring rhetoric, but across Europe and the US the voting public's had enough of politicians and liberal commentators pissing on their legs and telling them it's raining. Anyone who wants to see the right take over in Europe the way it has in the States should keep peddling this stuff, but otherwise it would be a good idea to stop pretending people who've had enough of mass immigration are racists, fascists or dupes of racists and fascists. They won’t vote for people telling them that.
You cannot even respond to the fact that Trump vetoed an immigration deal in the Senate.
Because it is evidence of intent.
Censoring observation of that truth, because the public might not like being informed they are being played, is not a sound strategy.
It is either fearful appeasement, or deliberate complicity.
Why?
what you are talking about is ethics/morals, what is right and wrong, what should happen.
What Milt is talking about is real politik, and that increasing numbers of the voting public don't actually care about the ethics you are naming. The reasons for that are complex, but the point Milt is making is sound.
Let me phrase it in my own words, rather than speaking for him. Anti-immigration sentiment has been cultivated and now used very effectively politically, because immigration settings have favoured neoliberal capitalism's need for cheap labour, over the wellbeing of citizens.
Now people are seriously fucked off and radicalising away from the people they see as inimical to their wellbeing. In the US they're voting for Trump, in the UK for Reform. And swing voters are being radicalised that way.
The left lecturing them about ethics isn't working. The centre left are largely not presenting anything that brings about good change that people want.
Yes blaming immigrants is wrong. And, the people scared about jobs and healthcare and housing aren't completely wrong about the problem (there is no doubt that in NZ, Key's immigration policy fueled the housing crisis here). Calling people racists and saying that immigration is always Good, is a massive fucking fail and the left appears unable to find its way out of that.
Taking affront at Milt's supposed lack of ethics is a symptom of the same dynamic.
just to head it off at the pass, people who interpret what I just said as being anti-immigrant, are part of the problem and really don't understand the argument (or do understand it and are ok with the left losing).
Immigration only ever seems to become a problem when the flow escalates. Obviously govts that engineer the escalation will become unpopular. The right only ever gets partisan traction from fear-mongering, but since migration flows have been excessive for years in many countries, no wonder so many folk lost faith in democracy.
I've been in favour of immigration through my adult life due to the biodiversity principle (cross-fertilising cultures is good) but I do get why conservatives are paranoid about it (culture-morphing imports novelty into the mix, which threatens continuity).
sure, there are a certain number of people who want society to stay the same, and those that are outright in favour of white culture staying dominant. But how did we get to the numbers of those people increasing? They weren’t always like this.
It’s possible for a place to change too fast, and that doesn’t even have to be around ethnicity. Any small town in NZ that’s had fast growth will have seen the local culture change by fast increases in New Zealanders from elsewhere coming in. But it’s not simply that, it’s the mix of housing crisis, unemployment, hospital waiting lists, cost of living crisis, pandemic… all those things make people insecure and have real life negative impacts, and along comes the right and blames immigration and people start shifting away from the centre. What the left doesn’t get is that just doing the opposite of that doesn’t work any more.
We can still have immigration (immigrants aren’t the problem, the neoliberal death cult that is using cheap labour is), and thus have the benefits of a multi cultural society. But a large part of the left can’t imagine that and addressing the neoliberal cheap labour issue and limiting numbers.
Not it is not.
It is a fools narrative. Because this is not even about immigration, it is about abuse of power.
And about someone deliberately exploiting the immigration issue with ulterior motives, to provide a cover for growing wealth inequality with mob patriotism/nationalism.
"Because the voting public" … yes it is their democracy to lose, but that they are losing it while this is going on, is not just a matter of ethics, but realpolitic too.
Stating that Trump is gaming immigration concerns is speaking truth to power.
you are still missing the point. Let me put it another way. How can the centre left in the US act to prevent ICE shooting citizens? Seriously, I'd like to know what the approach and strategy might be that doesn't include talking about immigration settings.
Immigrant removal rates per annum
POTUS 43, 275,000
POTUS 44 387,000 (peak 413,000 in 2013)
POTUS 45 300,000
POTUS 46 170,000
You can note that there was a higher rate in the Obama years than for the others.
Trump will probably be above 400.000 per annum in his second term.
There is no direct connection between removal of unauthorised migrants and ICE shootings.
Nor to numbers of Americans arrested and interned by ICE, this a new lawless practice by Homeland Security and reflects the culture – typified by the adverts for new ICE staff.
yes. But what’s your point? That all seems obvious.
The connection is that the administration wants to consolidate power and it is using anti-immigration actions and rhetoric as one way of achieving this.
I agree with much of what you and Weka say about the causes of the Trump regime's focus on immigration.
There's also the issue of illegal immigrants in a world where the US/capitalist led West has been exploiting poorer countries, destabilising them, and extracting their resources/wealth.
But for a large number of people, especially many struggling on low incomes in the US & other relatively well off countries, they are not likely to be focused on understanding the bigger picture – just trying to get by in the local context/community they are familiar with.
And the well-funded neoliberal right are very successful with their propaganda infiltrating media & social media, misdirecting and distracting large numbers of people from getting to understand the ultimate causes for their growing struggles & insecurities.
yes, and people mostly aren’t going to sit down and clinically analyse immigration/ICE data from various administrations, they’re going to react from their own personal situation and feelings.
It didn't seem necessary, since the response is effectively a statement of the obvious: politicians do things for political advantage, and for the last 10 years Trump's been a politician.
I agree with you in the sense that it sucks that successive liberal administrations in the USA and Europe have dedicated themselves to handing right-wing parties a tool to enable outright racist politicians to form governments, and yet here we are. It would help if they stopped the tool production.
This is standard political practice in the US (complaining about the lack of progress on an issue while blocking progress on that issue). One aspect of the Minnesota fraud scandal seems to be that Governor Waltz had requested certain investigations and powers to go forward already. These had been blocked by state republicans to some degree so they could save this up till it became useful to support their election ambitions.
The legal thing is that ICE have no law enforcement rights against US citizens.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/11/18/ice-and-cbp-officers-face-unprecedented-surge-vehicle-ramming-attacks
Home News Press Releases ICE and CBP Officers Face Unprecedented Surge in Vehicle Ramming Attacks
ICE and CBP Officers Face Unprecedented Surge in Vehicle Ramming Attacks
Release Date: November 18, 2025
Driven by far-left rhetoric against law enforcement vehicle ramming attacks against DHS law enforcement have more than doubled this year
WASHINGTON – The men and women of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been facing a surge in vehicle attacks, driven by hateful rhetoric from sanctuary politicians, leftist activists, and the mainstream media. There have been nearly 100 vehicular attacks this year, more than double the amount during the same time last year. These attacks not only pose a potentially fatal risk to officers but also endanger the public.
[overlong copy pasta deleted]
Earlier this year Ross smashed in the drivers side car door window and grabbed at the driver, who then drove off, so Ross was dragged along and injured.
They called that the use of a vehicle to attack him.
They are fraudulent statistics.
Er, it feels likely to me that if you did the same to a law enforcement official in this country it would count as an attack here, too. Justice systems in every country frown on you dragging their officials along the road with your car.
The fact is the statistics are a result of ICE tactics and it is a misreporting.
Driving off is standard action for self-protection against car-jacking.
And the ICE officers have no right to arrest a US citizen for protest action – their attempt to demand compliance by force (entry to vehicle) is unlawful and standing in front of a vehicle, ready to pull a gun if they try and drive off is a form of entrapment. The words spoken at the time of the killing indicate it was a hate crime killing (hate of those who protest ICE activity).
do you have video of what he said?
He's JD Vance? This is how Ross identity got leaked.
sorry, thought SPC was then referring to the killing last week where the officer allegedly called the woman he shot a bitch.
The second video here has it at the end, they bleeped the first of the two words.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpnwnqygro
This shows the fearful man executing the driver.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000010631041/minneapolis-ice-shooting-video.html
Unless Ross had probable cause for an arrest at the time (which seems highly unlikely) the vehicle dragging incident was effectively an attempted car-jacking as well. When exceeding their authority officials lose all associated legal protections for official use of force too.
He had lawful cause in the first case, the person was an illegal migrant who had committed a crime while in the USA.
If he had been trained to shoot the car tyres, or carry a tool for tyre slashing, his injuries would not have occurred.
DHS use of force says not to shoot at car tyres. See 12.1.1
Yet there is only a risk from this when the car is moving.
Instead they have officers dragged while forcing there way into stationary vehicles.
She deliberately chose to interfere in an ICE operation, whether you agree with ICE or not you cant just insert yourself into a situation like that
She and her wife chose to escalate the situation, if I'd ever antagonised lawenforcement like they both did I'd have been roughed up and likely thrown in the cells for the night
She chose to ignore ICEs orders to stop
She chose to drive into the ICE officer and as soon as that happened there was only one outcome.
This isn't victim blaming because she chose this, she didn't have to go there she chose to, she could have complied with instructions at any point but she chose not to.
I hope the wife is charged and thinks about her part in the actions, I hope the dog and kids are OK
I hope the officer gets all the support he needs
Not murder but a tragic outcome that didn't need to happen
One would have hoped that corrections officers were better informed about use of force than this. Jonathan Ross clearly walked in front of a her vehicle as it was likely to leave creating the whole situation, and causing him to drop his phone (which he was using as a camera). This appears to have been the actual reason for his decision to shoot her. Even in the US if a traffic officer stops someone, walks in front of a running car and has to evade as they suddenly speed off, shooting at the vehicle (let alone killing anybody) will be fully prosecuted as homicide. Added to that ICE have no authority to arrest US citizens, Jonathan Ross is basically a civilian in terms of how the law applies here. It's similar to if a corrections officer in some way attacked a protester outside their place of work.
Our pucky's always been a fan of extra judicial killings.
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G-P_E1kXAAAM0qQ?format=jpg&name=large
Stina56
@URAdumcunt
He's apparently been with DHS for a decade. This is current DHS deadly force policy. #JonathanRoss is a murderer.
https://x.com/URAdumcunt/status/2009730323064537550
That's simply untrue, and hopefully Americans know that obstructing armed federal agents entails risk – of being detained, at least.
"…will be fully prosecuted as homicide."
Well, investigated as homicide. And the fact that liberal social media users all over the world are convinced they've seen a murder is irrelevant to that investigation. Conservative social media users all over the world are convinced they've seen a federal agent forced to shoot someone trying to run him over, so the social media commentary effectively cancels itself out. The big question is whether it will be properly investigated, and given the nature of the current administration, my money's on "Nope."
There is zero evidence she was impeding anything (earlier footage shows her attempting to safely direct traffic around her vehicle). Her partner seems to have been observing (filming) something going on near by which is both lawful and protected activity, that is the closest any footage gets to impeding. In particular she wasn't impeding Jonathan Ross who was himself recording video at that time. When the officer stops following official procedure or goes beyond their authority to act officially (though it was other ICE officers initiating what looked like detention instructions against a US citizen), they lose all legal protection associated with their official duties.
What this has demonstrated is ICE should be converted to unarmed and chaperoned around by local law enforcement (who have been well versed in limits on ICE authority) at all times. That's basically how customs officers operate in NZ.
"There is zero evidence she was impeding anything…"
Well, that's easy enough to test. Stop your car perpendicular across the carriageway and sit there honking your horn, and when law enforcement officials arrive you can try them out on "There's zero evidence I'm impeding anything." I'm pretty confident the fact that other vehicles can find a way around you won't lead the officials to agree that you're not impeding anything.
Even conflating blocking traffic with impeding ICE operations, we are told the ICE vehicle was blocked in snow and unable to move. Perhaps they stopped to assist before finding out it was ICE and deciding to protest instead. We have yet to see how the confused situation on the street arose or what the ICE operation was actually doing there. If ICE was stuck in a snow drift, she's not impeding any ICE operations, as I already said.
The tow truck driver who towed an ICE vehicle away from an arrest just got acquitted on all charges BTW. That's how far off actual application of the law you are here (while trying to elevate an impediment to traffic to justify extrajudicial murder).
"Law enforcement", only authorised to apprehend "overstayers".
ICE were the ones impeding traffic, they arrived in force of numbers near a market used by migrants, but had problems with the road conditions.
This attracted a growing number of protestors.
In these situations ICE sometimes respond by having a go at protestors, (they have a problem with restraint because they operate like a paramilitary against those not US citizens) usually on specious grounds – so the people taken away then get released.
A car had gone around the stationary vehicle just before the incident.
Wanting to "apprehend the person", to assert dominance, rather than instruct them to drive away, says it all.
We're not sitting on a jury here, you don't need to persuade me to cast a vote any particular way. My point was that conservatives take a different view of these events from liberals. Responding to me with what amounts to "Well the conservatives are wrong" doesn't alter the fact that this is what conservatives see in the same videos that liberals have seen.
I bet none of the conservatives shows this video on X.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000010631041/minneapolis-ice-shooting-video.html
Like it or not, they've seen all the videos and formed a different opinion from you. For example, this one includes the same slo-mo sequence as the one you posted, with opposite conclusion drawn:
https://x.com/SeedOilDsrspctr/status/2010173308046807314
ok, but they're actually wrong. The wheels are clearly pointed to turn the car away. She was still wrong to drive into another human, probably panicked, but if people want to interpret that video as her intentionally driving into him, I can't see how the evidence supports that. That's not even getting to motivation.
I don't think this incident is clear-cut at all. The wheels are pointed right at the agent when the car starts moving forward and it's at that point he draws his gun. By the time he fires she's turning the wheels away from him but that's well inside his reaction time and even then she still clips him.
I don't see that that gets him off a manslaughter charge, but I can understand how conservatives watching it can convince themselves they're watching self-defence.
The two incontrovertible facts are
1.only one bullet was fired through the front window and two were fired through the open car door window when the car was moving away from him.
2.if the car had been driven at him, it could not then have moved up the road away from him.
The ICE tactic appears to be have one person in front of the vehicle (but able to step aside) while another one goes for the drivers car door.
If that involves the person in front claiming some deadly threat to shoot the driver, the tactic is a form of entrapment – creating a license to kill.
Like I said, we're not in a jury room here, you don't need to try and persuade me to find him guilty of murder. I'm just pointing out that different people reach different conclusions about this despite having the same data available.
not so much cancels each other out as throw petrol on two sides of the same wildfire.
It's still flaming away on X, my timeline's full of "If you watch these slowed-down seconds of this video, you can clearly see why my highly motivated reasoning is correct and the opposing tribe are retards."
lol. I shouldn't laugh, but everyone's gone madder.
The practice of ICE to stand in front of vehicles while others try and enter the vehicle is what would lead to so called evidence of people using their cars as weapons (standing that close to the car would mean limited impact, but if they used that as a right to shoot to kill – it is a form of entrapment)
That is, get away with killing protestors – when they had no right to apprehend protestors in the first place.
So the "she went out to a bar all dressed up and wearing lipstick" (and met someone with a date rape drug) rationalisation is still doing the rounds.
That, don't make yourself a target, because some people cannot control their use of/resort to violence.
You cannot even name any offence committed by the other women involved – so your wanting her prosecuted is based on the same attitudes as expressed by the killer after he had shot her dead.
She was told to get out of the stationary car.
No. An ICE person tried to open the drivers car door (window open)(so not smashed as they do sometimes) and drag her out.
This led to her driving off. She did not drive the car at the person, because the car was turning to drive up the road.
There was no impediment to any ICE action (as per unauthorised migrants work) by the killed person. It was merely protest action. ICE have no right to police protest by American citizens.
2nd and 3rd video here.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpnwnqygro
looking at those two videos, I'm now not sure he was actually hit by the car or if so, it wasn't very much. Has it been confirmed that he was hit by the car?
There may well have been a glancing blow, he did limp for a few steps on the way up to the crashed car. But on the way back, not at all.
This shows the glancing blow, side swiped as she drove past.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000010631041/minneapolis-ice-shooting-video.html
There are over 20,000 ICE employees in the US, so 'mistakes' will happen. Some citizens only learn they're wrong 'uns (domestic terrorists even) after they've been shot, if ever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Renee_Good
A couple of quotes from the movie 'Four Lions':
@ weka @ 9.1
Good point about ICE, their attitude and the limits of their powers.
I just cannot justify any emotional energy on this issue or just about any other coming out of the U.S.
Much rather focus on organizing here so we are far better equipped to deal with any repercussions that may emerge here.
Or, indeed the thin end of a similar wedge, with the lack of democratic law making going on here.
I hear ya. My time on TS should be going into that too.
@ weka above, yep.
Not just that though, it's the hours lost sharing in the injustice of it all that are fruitless.
We are trying to ban SM for youngsters. Maybe we look at rationing it out to adults as well. 😉
completely agree. Or present something more compelling. Getting lefties to focus on something productive, it's worse than herding cats.