https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-13-2026
"Officials in the Trump administration insist its surges of federal agents into
Democratic-led cities are necessary to round up undocumented immigrants, but
the agents’ mission increasingly looks as if it is to frighten opponents of the
administration into submission. But instead of submission, they appear to be
sparking deeper and deeper opposition.
Since agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, protests
against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have broken out across the
nation. Federal agents in Minnesota have responded by increasing their violent
attacks, many of which have involved U.S. citizens and have been captured on
video: agents breaking into a home with weapons drawn, a teenager dragged away
from his job, agents guarding a restroom at Target, engaging in door-to-door
searches without warrants, using illegal chokeholds, dragging people out of
their cars.
Confronted with footage of officers using prohibited chokeholds, White House
spokesperson Abigail Jackson told
ProPublica reporters Nicole Foy and
McKenzie Funk: “Officers act heroically to enforce the law and protect American
communities.” On Air Force One Sunday evening, Trump cut to the heart of MAGA’s
attacks on those resisting ICE when, speaking about Renee Good, he told
reporters: “At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law
enforcement.”
Luke Broadwater and Katie Rogers of the
New York Times noted the response of
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) to Trump’s comment. Raskin recalled that the
insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, “violently
attacked police officers and called them everything from traitors to pigs to
racial epithets, and ruthlessly taunted them and maligned them for hours,” and
yet Trump pardoned them.
Raskin concluded that “Donald Trump’s very dubious characterization of Renee
Good as having been disrespectful is not only factually suspect, but it’s
legally irrelevant. The police do not have the right to shoot people in the
head because they consider them having acted in a disrespectful way. That legal
standard would have led to a slaughter on January 6.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
