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For some of the people confused about why Minneapolis is such a big deal still, it's not a scissor event, it's a mask off moment and puzzling how some people aren't just reasonably disagreeing, but out of their fucking minds. I don't want to be accused of moving goalposts, so for the purposes of sane (hopefully) discussion, this thread is only intended to make the primary point that Trump, Noem, Vance, are portraying this with what can only be called outright propaganda, fabrications, alternate reality, whatever you want to call it, probably lies. I know that's a word that scares some people here, so I'm using it as a synonym for deceit in this post. Let me repeat that. I'm talking about the Trump administration's official response, and not just that it's inaccurate, but that people echoing it is callous and polarizing in the extreme (the second point). I do apologize by the way for yet another Minneapolis thread.
Sometimes someone else simply says it better. I'm vibing strongly with this video which feels worthy of appearing here. So here's (most of) his words (transcript and own parentheticals, no real edits):
(Showing a NYT overview video, voiceover, picking up around 2:30) The moment the agent fires, he is standing here to the left of the SUV and the wheels are pointing to the right, away from the agent. This appears to conflict with allegations that the SUV was ramming or about to ram the officer. President Trump and others said the federal agent was hit by the SUV, often pointing to another video filmed from a different angle. And it's true that at this moment in this grainy low-resolution footage, it does look like the agent is being struck by the SUV. But when we synchronize it with the first clip, we can see the agent is not being run over. In fact, his feet are positioned away from the SUV. The SUV crashes into a white car parked down the road. A bystander runs toward the collision. The federal agents on scene do not appear to rush to provide emergency medical care. Eventually, the agent who shot the motorist approaches the vehicle. Seconds later, he turns back around and tells his colleagues to call 911. (original video audio:) "Shame. You shot someone. You shot someone." Agents block several bystanders who attempt to provide medical care, including one who identifies himself as a physician. "I'll go check a pulse! -No! -I'm a physician. -I don't care." At the same time, several agents, including the agent who opened fire, get in their vehicles and drive off, apparently altering the active crime scene. (End clip) Okay, I think that video makes it so clear that what happened was not the normal course of business for what this officer should have been doing.
This is so obviously a murder. This is so obviously the person with the guns acting outside of the realm of what they are supposed to be doing. And it's very frustrating to me to see people deny like the basic reality I'm seeing with my eyes from multiple angles, from multiple sources. I don't know how to say it clear. So, I want to go through I and and when I say people, I'm really not just talking about random fucking people on Twitter or bots.
There was two things that happened after this action. First, Kristi Noem comes out and says this was an act. This, this right here again. Watch it again and listen with the sound. This woman, mother of three, kids stuffed animal in the car, just dropped her kid off at school, six-year-old, has stickers on the back of her car. This woman is committing an act of domestic terrorism, (shows video) first waving the car by with her hand, then saying, "I'm pulling out." Then screamed at by masked men with guns... Then clearly fleeing. The idea that she 'broke bad' and is attempting to run over and kill the officers is insane. She is clearly trying to flee. Then he kills her. There, there is no I can't imagine not seeing this different way. I think this is a fucking pure Rorschach test. I don't I don't understand people taking this a different way.
So she calls it domestic terrorism. Then Trump said she "violently, willfully, and viciously" ran over the ICE officer. There is no way you could watch that video and say that what she was doing was violently, willfully, and literally trying to kill this ICE officer. An insane thing to say. He even said, "It's hard to believe he [the ICE officer] is alive, but [he's] now recovering in the hospital." I want you to juxtapose that quote from Trump over the actual footage of this officer casually strolling away from the murder. (Shows clip) There, I, there is no way you cannot see this is a lie! There's no way. This is like, this is demonic.
So then this woman comes out and says, (direct quote) "Our officer followed his training and did exactly what he was taught to do." And I looked into this. There is absolutely no way that is true. ICE officers are trained to never approach a vehicle from the front, which this guy did (video shows documents at 6:52). Now, there's a lot of brand new rookie ICE officers who are getting thrown in with almost no training. But this guy, it turns out, was from since 2016, so he's a veteran. He would know never to approach a vehicle from the front, 90° angle. They're also instructed not to shoot at a moving vehicle. Firing at a vehicle will not make it stop moving in your direction. So even all things aside, it's not even smart. It doesn't stop it. Okay. The best thing to do is get out of the way. By the way, once she's shot and killed, the vehicle rolls to the right far away, proving again that it was not even moving in the officer's direction.
(I think this point has been lost in the noise, but it bears repeating: shooting at someone in a car does in now way guarantee that the car will stop, in fact the opposite is obviously true! We even see it here as the vehicle continues accelerating only to crash uncontrolled! So, the ICE officer is not in any way following his proper training here. That's simply a lie.)
Then she said, (direct quote) "You know, people need to stop using their vehicles as weapons. This domestic act of terrorism to use your vehicle to try to kill law enforcement officers is going to stop. And I'm asking the Department of Justice to prosecute it as domestic terrorism because it's clear that it's being coordinated. People are being trained and told how to use their vehicles to impede law." This is fucking insane. The idea that she was a domestic terrorist trained to use her vehicle and not a scared mother of three is fucking crazy, bro. This is her fucking glove box. (Video shows stuffed animals spilling out) It's fucking crazy.
So, you look at the shots. The first shot, you can look at his feet, dude. You can see him right here. He's able to get out of the way of this car, which is the number one priority. Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape if you think the subject is just escaping. You can't use deadly force. Running from the cops is not reason enough to use deadly force. You can only use it if no other reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle, which he already did. He can and did move out of the path of the vehicle. The first shot, he's already out of the way, but by the third shot, it is fucking crazy. That is a kill shot into a fuckin mother's car. The shots one and two could only be justified if no safe avenue of retreat existed. Shot three, the deadly force is only justified while the threat is ongoing. So even if you somehow thought shot one and two were fuckin there, shot three, he's out of immediate danger. There's no fucking way to justify it. There's just no way.
And this all this reporting I'm doing right here, not only the New York Times, this comes from the Washington Post. This is from a fucking magazine, or a paper that is owned by Jeff Bezos who has donated millions of dollars to Trump. What I'm saying is I don't it's not even about your fucking politics. Anyone with eyes can see that this guy crossed the line. This officer needs to face punishment. This guy, (shows a tweet) Marine Corps veteran, "If you are the guys with guns, you are responsible for the situation. Doubly so if you outnumber the person"; there has to be a higher standard for the people in masks with guns that have been trained than the mom in the car.
(Yet again a point deserving emphasis, especially here. If "both-sides-ism" is a sin, I'm probably among the worst offenders on this forum. Almost nothing in this conversation requires you to think Good was doing was right, or if she did it the right way, or was a nice person, or had accurate political views, you can think the protestors are scum of the earth, but that shouldn't have a serious bearing on the standards we have for federal officers with the power to kill at the drop of a hat. Good probably made mistakes. Ross definitely made mistakes. But Ross' mistakes are inherently more serious. We can have a conversation, a separate one, about what kinds of protest are good or bad or criminal or super-criminal and all that, but we're talking about life and death here. Frankly I don't think it matters very much at least with respect to what you think the officer, Ross, should be facing in terms of punishment.)
And I talk about this a lot. I try to get points across to people that have different values than me. Okay? I understand people are often talking past each other. Some people value certain things differently. Okay? But if you are somebody who feels like you have a fuckin 'don't tread on me' bumper sticker. I don't see how you've suddenly gone from this to supporting a mass militia of the government killing people. I don't get it. People like this. (Shows tweet). This guy's saying if I is doing a raid in my neighborhood, leaving the safe of my own home is -- she was a mile from home – "Even if I had to leave for work or something, I would drive in the opposite direction". The idea that, your argument is that people should feel like they have to cower in the safety of their homes if there's ever a federal agent in their neighborhood is fucking crazy.
I don't understand how this is an argument. This guy-- I'm trying to find sources that will get people to understand, even if you're not ideologically aligned with me. This guy right here, Greg Nunziata (shows a tweet). Greg Nunziata was the general counsel and domestic policy adviser to fuckin Marco Rubio. He is a he's a Senate Republican policy committee. He's executive director for the side. He is Republican as it gets. Bro, this guy is saying, "I've watched the videos" and "the reflexive defense of it is grotesque". I don't understand where people are getting looking at his footage and coming up with his entirely insane conclusions that this guy should just walk off scot-free, that he should shoot three rounds into a mom's car. It's crazy. The fucking Libertarian Party of Louisiana is saying that the police state, fucking 4chan is calling this shit out. I don't get it. Like where is, just who are the people defending this?
And then I got fuckin' the vice president of the country I live in going on fuckin' news and saying (direct video quote) "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's saying that this officer has absolute immunity. What the fuck are you talking about? The reason we have these rules is because they apply to the officers. When you have the monopoly on violence, which the state does, they are the ones that are allowed to have guns to physically arrest you and in some cases kill you. You have to have rules and accountability, or it is just it's a fuckin' thug owned by someone in power. It's there has to be rules and accountability. Of course, there does. And especially in the past like year and a half, ICE has gone from being already like I think a problematic organization, but the masking is new. So now we have a rise of masked officers, which by the way has led to a lot of fake ICE doing robberies.
The idea that there's just no accountability, you can't they can wear plain clothes or have a mask and they can kill people and then the vice president will say they have absolute immunity is not a reasonable path for for America. I don't care what politics are on. You have to agree that that is not that is not the right direction to go. And as I'm saying this, as I'm making these fuckin slides a few hours ago and feeling like shit during this time, two more people get shot in Portland. The FBI tweets this out and then deletes it (tweet saying CBP agents shot 2, "please follow this thread for updates"). How is this normal? It's like I don't know. I I I just find it so frustrating that people they can't even... Listen, even if we disagree on immigration, the idea that this there can't be any ICE officer who went too far. There's not one fuckin guy who didn't follow the training that this guy can't suffer some consequences for killing a woman. That's the bare minimum.
(Here I should pause and ask: are there prominent administration members who think that he should be punished, but just in some other way than criminal charges? I'm not aware of any, and that's crazy. I hope I'm wrong, but isn't that a fair characterization of their position, that zero consequences are appropriate? Take a step back and ask yourself if that seems appropriate. My answer is: hell no.)
Trump had a interview that came out today that kind of like pulls this back into perspective for me. They did a wide-ranging interview with the NYT today, three-hour long interview, and they asked him, "Are there any limits on your global powers?" He said, "Yeah, there's one thing, my own morality, my own mind." (direct quote) That is not the country of the United States. That is not what the Constitution says. That's not what anything says. There's no president for a president saying the only thing that I decide is my own morality in my own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me. This has to change.
So 2026 is an important year. And that's why I'm bringing this up. Trump has said if we don't win the midterms, referring to Republicans, he'll get impeached. That's what he said. Now I don't know whether impeachment will go anywhere, but it'll mean he has less power. He'll be a lame duck.
And he has floated this. He said it as a joke, but he often starts things as jokes. Canceling 2026 election (video direct quote) "We have to even run against these people. Now, I won't say cancel the election. They should cancel the election because the fake news will say he wants the elections canceled. 'He's a dictator.' They always call me a dictator." I just want to repeat that sentence. "...These people. Now, I won't say cancel the election. They should cancel the election because the fake news will say..." I won't say cancel the election because then the fake news will say he wants to cancel the election, he's a dictator. Why would that be fake? If you said it and then they reported on it, why would that be fake?!
...So I'm I'm just bringing this up. This is this is like the la this midterm I do feel at this direction is like one of the last peaceful ways to make change. I that's what I honestly feel. I know it sounds alarmist, but it's what I honestly feel. And so I, I'm encouraging that. And I also want to say I'm I'm a person listen if you disagree on disagree with me on fuckin tariffs or you disagree with me on there's a lot of things you can disagree with me on. And I am often willing to find common ground or intellectually listen to what you're saying and try to figure it out.
But this, this tweet from Paul Graham kind of stuck with me (shows tweet, which he paraphrases). This situation I feel like has been a a real Rorschach test of character. I can't imagine if you've watched the videos coming away with the idea that he should suffer no consequences, that what he did was okay. That that is how an officer of the law should behave. I don't understand. I don't understand that. I, I, that's not a bridge I can cross. And if you do think that way, I sincerely urge you to reconsider. It's not going to lead to a good direction in this country. That's all I got to say. That's, that's, that's all I got to say.
I think some of you here, effectively serving the role of ICE apologists, don't seem to get why this is a big deal for some of us. Hopefully this illustrates the why. You have the President saying, just outright saying, that he doesn't have any restrictions on his use of global power whatsoever. You have the Vice President saying that any federal cop who shoots someone is immune to consequences. You have both of them and Noem attempting to decieve people in broad daylight by accusing Good of domestic terrorism and intentionality, something that is plainly clear to almost literally everyone with eyes to be false. That has an impact! And I will echo those words. I'm a "the system works" kind of guy. This is not working. I've complained about dishonesty from official sources before - most recently this came up when talking about the BLS head being baselessly accused of fraud - but this is another level.
To use a conservative comparison, this is a major "fake news" mask-off moment for liberals and probably moderates too (like me). For whatever naive noises liberals often make about how virtuous and awesome the press is, most of us know that at the end of the day there's some spin expected and at the very least, some selection bias (a la "the media rarely lies" Scott post). It's yet another thing when the administration itself makes such a habit of lying and using deceit. That's what it is, folks. The administration thinks that the ICE agent deserves zero consequences and that just doesn't fit at all with the video we can plainly look at.
All this to say I am horrified at some of the upvote-downvote patterns in the threads this last week and I'm not lying, it hurt my faith in humanity a bit, and the Motte specifically. Are people really so wrapped up in the culture war that they have lost empathy for a dead mother has a child who's six years old and an orphan because she's on the 'other side'? That the officer did nothing wrong? Quibbling over "domestic terrorism" definitions as if that's in any way the way you'd describe it? She blocked half a road for likely five minutes in her local neighborhood because ICE was hanging out around schools to nab immigrant parents as their kids get out. She said stuff like "I'm not mad at you" and "I'm pulling out", and those are not the words attempting to murder a federal agent. For fuck's sake, someone (possibly Ross) called her a "fucking bitch" not two seconds after she was shot, which cuts the other way. Again: none of this requires you to think Good's wife, for example (!), or nearby protestors, or Good, are virtuous, only to think that the cop did at least something wrong. Something is wrong, and it's the attitude here.
I thought about calling a few people out but I'm not going to, but if this reads like an accusation, it basically is. Just needed to get that off my chest. Consider me officially flipped. Everything is no longer fine; the system is breaking; its replacement would only be worse; beware of helping it along.
The equal blame incident.
I'm libertarian. I'm pro immigration. I'm generally not a fan of the institution of policing and think it is run badly in many ways. I also think the average protestor belongs in a mental institution.
All of that to say I think this is generally a no one is at fault incident. Or at least one where everyone's culpability balances out in ways that they are all equally to blame.
Good went to a protest with the intent to use a deadly weapon (a car) to obstruct police officers in their duty. This is a risky thing to do. It endangers yourself and endangers others. Cars are not toys. They are about equal with guns in terms of killing people in the US each year Source. And the same holds true for police officers, where gun and car deaths in the line of duty are about equal Source.
I hate litigating specific incidents, because 99% of the time the main "this could have been prevented" turning points happen before the incident. I can think of at least two major ways Good could have prevented this (not going to the protest, or getting out of her vehicle to protest). I cannot think of any specific policy that police or ICE could have that would have prevented this. Officers are allowed to defend themselves from bodily harm or attacks on their person. Just like people in general are allowed to defend themselves from bodily harm or attacks on their person. The officer was not trying to create a situation, they were moving around the vehicle not trying to stay in front of it. If you are around police officers you should be aware that they have a heightened sense of "someone is going to attack me". Don't pretend like you are going to pull a gun on them, or pretend to charge them like you are going to beat them up. Don't nearly run into them with your vehicle. Unless you want to get shot. All of these things are also advice for how to treat a member of the public that might be carrying a firearm. People dying is a tragedy. But doing something dangerous towards someone carrying a gun and then getting shot is what I consider "accidental suicide". Its a tragedy if someone runs out into a street at a not-crosswalk and gets killed by a vehicle, no one is really at fault. Its an accidental suicide.
I've mostly been describing why Good is to blame. So why do I call it an equal blame incident? Well police and law enforcement still have some level of duty to exercise restraint in the use of deadly force. I do think the officer could have exercised that restraint here. I do not like that we have to treat police officers like wild animals or rabid dogs that might attack at the slightest provocation. Its not true for most officers, but its true for enough of them that I feel comfortable invoking the "accidental suicide".
To summarize, Good placed herself in a dangerous situation, and then did something that could be perceived as attacking an officer. The officer could have exercised restraint, but I would not expect that restraint of a private citizen.
Longevity and scissor statements
I have been surprised by the longevity of this incident in the news cycle. I mostly consider it a boring incident. As I said above I hate litigating specific incidents and asking could have been done in a split second of thinking for things to turn out differently. My rule of thumb is that something always went wrong long before someone had to make a split second life or death decision. In this case it doesn't seem like either side is strongly to blame. Good made more bad decisions leading up to the incident, but she died as a consequence which feels a little too heavy for her level of bad decision making. If the officer had died instead I'd say it was clearly Good's fault.
But I'm realizing now why I should not be as surprised by the longevity. You don't go to battle over a culture war incident if you feel like it is a losing ground. In an alternate world where Good had struck and killed a police officer with her vehicle I'd bet the story would be buried. Or at least no more talked about than the incident where 15 armed people tried to shoot and attack ICE agents (its still insane to me that this happened).
In all battles you only want to commit when you feel you can win. In the culture war winning means being morally right. Battles take two to tango though. So major controversies spring up when both sides feel like they are in the right. In this theoretical model the most battled over topics will always be scissor statements. The likelihood of "battles" is also helped along by however distorted the view of reality is by the partisans. If partisans had perfect perceptions of reality then only truly 50-50 incidents would spark up any controversy. But if they have something like a 5% bias for their side then incidents that are 45-55 would also spark up battles. The wider the gap in perception the more things become battles.
But I think reality can still partially penetrate partisan perceptions, so even when they have noticeable bias towards their own side they can notice a slightly losing argument. So they'll drop the topics where they feel that they are losing. Meaning that even if with partisan perceptions distorting reality a 50-50 incident is going to stick around much longer.
I think you're underestimating the impact of racism, sexism, tribalism, and profiling in the perception of this incident as compared to others.
Renee Good was a 37 year old white mother of three. I haven't looked into her background, but just judging from the car not being a complete heap I don't think she was impoverished, we can probably label her middle class. There's virtually no chance, with just that data, that she was out there engaged in a suicide terrorist mission. She might literally have to be the first middle aged white woman in all of American history to do something like that. I asked both ChatGPT and Grok, neither could bring me a single documented case of a white woman between the ages of 30-50 killing an on-duty police officer in the history of the United States. If we included "middle class," "mother of three," and "not visibly disordered" it would cut those odds even more. When I asked for 30-50 year old white female terrorists period (not just anti-cop), the closest I got was Shawna Forde who murdered two illegal immigrants as part of some cockamamie border militia thing, and maybe some left wing bank robbers from the 70s but those were getaway drivers. If anyone else can find me examples of 30-50 year old white women killing on-duty cops, let me know!
Liberals might decry racial profiling, but they believe in it, because it is obviously true. A male suspect is vastly more likely to be dangerous than a female, an old suspect less dangerous than a young one, a black suspect more dangerous than a white one. A middle aged white woman is just vastly unlikely to be a domestic terrorist engaged in an anti-cop suicide mission.
The white middle class might dislike what ICE is doing or we might not particularly care, but we pretty much assume that whatever happens it won't touch us. This is one of us getting shot. Not some immigrant getting sent to a foreign torture prison in Cuba or El Salvador, not some black kid in baggie pants getting killed, this is a middle aged woman who looks like my sister, my coworkers, my grad school classmates. I might roll my eyes when they lib out, that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with a world where they might get shot. A middle class liberal might decry his privilege, but he still believed in it, that as a middle class white person he was protected, that bad things wouldn't happen to him. This pierced that privilege. And that's hard to deal with.
The reason this is hanging around is because Renee Good doesn't fit the profile of the kind of person who gets killed by the cops. Turbolibs love to quote Wilholt's law: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." And they believed that, they believed they were in the group that the law protected but did not bind. Every accusation is an admission. White liberals believed that their privilege would protect them. It turns out it will not.
And that means you have to make a decision. Because when the gun turns against your tribe, the nature of war is that you don't get a choice of which tribe you are part of. If we decide that killing middle aged women for being turbolibs is ok, I can't decide that I'm not part of the tribe, my family and my friends decide that for me. I can only decide whether I'm ok with their deaths or not.
I find it so difficult to see this perspective. Literally all anyone has to do to achieve complete safety is not deliberately antagonise and obstruct members of the police force or equivalent as they go about their duty. You see a bunch of agents, you give them five minutes and you don't get in the way.
Do they really think that ICE are on some spree killing of middle-aged white women now?
The right to peacefully protest is a direct Constitutional right. A direct right. I think there's reasonable room to disagree about, and interesting discussion to be had, regarding the line between obstruction and protest. From that framing, obviously protesting/obstructing is risky, sure, but that's an official state-approved exercise of rights as much as free speech is or as much as the right to a jury trial. There's considerable meat to the argument that a right left unexercised is effectively a dead right.
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At the least, if you have a middle-aged white woman in your life that you care about, please talk to them, make sure they know real people in grass world love them, and research de-radicalization strategies.
If you know of some, unironically I would like them. I do have a brother that is thankfully living abroad right now, but who otherwise I'd be genuinely worried about them doing something very rash at an anti-Israel protest. He does know we love him at least.
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Thankfully the middle-aged white women in my life are much more liberal than me but still reasonably sensible. It's the middle-aged men who spam me with 'did you see what Trump did today' and 'this would never have happened before Brexit'. (I'm in the UK).
EDIT: I realised that you meant 'middle-aged' as in 37 and now I feel old. I was talking 50-60.
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I can't get on board with setting the scene as "intent to use a deadly weapon (a car)". I use a car all the time, without any intent to use it is as a deadly weapon or for it to have any function as such. Sure, it is probably reasonable that if I murder someone with a car, it can be classified as murder with a deadly weapon, just as a baseball bat also seems like a deadly weapon if I swing it at someone's head. But I can bring a car or a baseball bat to my kid's school, and I have a lot of doubt that Good brought her car to the scene in order to take advantage of the car's potential function as a deadly weapon (i.e., to harm or to threaten). Mostly, it seems like they wanted to use the car's large mass to impede the path of the ICE vehicle, and also that the car was their transportation.
Let's say someone hits somebody with a car at a school. Should the lede really be that "The driver brought a deadly weapon (their car) to an elementary school?"
Using a car as transportation is not something I'd say qualifies as intending to use a deadly weapon.
Using a car's physical mass, and the threat of that physical mass to intentionally obstruct others? That is definitely crossing into weaponization territory.
Also what happens when Good's obstruction is determined to be illegal? If she is on foot the authorities can use their bodies to arrest and restrain her. If she is in a vehicle they need her to cooperate and leave the vehicle. If she decides instead to flee in that vehicle she has now created a hazardous car chase scenario. Even if she had not nearly run someone over and no one had shot her, she still did the wrong thing by driving away.
I doubt she was thinking through any of these things, but thats exactly the problem she escalated the danger of the situation for others by adding her vehicle to it. The fact that she was ultimately the one to get killed feels a little harsh to me, but if anyone was going to die that day for what happened I'd have most preferred it to be Good.
What about just using a car's physical mass, and NOT the threat of it, to intentionally obstruct others? Moving your car back and forth to block someone else's car is just using the physical mass, not threatening.
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She was actually kind of using it as a weapon though -- more of a defensive weapon, but still.
If after you dropped your kids off at the school parking lot, you parked in front of the entrance and didn't let anyone but your friends through, I think it would be fair to say that you were using the car as something like a weapon? Certainly it's a tool of physical force.
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