In Washington, D.C. Wednesday, Jan. 7, a reporter asked Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) why she thinks the Trump administration is so fixated on Minnesota right now.
“I wish I knew. I wish they would just leave us the fuck alone. Seriously. What is the… When do things stop being about politics and start being about actual human decency?”
1,100 miles away, the community of Minneapolis was already organizing a vigil for Renee Nicole Good, 37, who was shot and killed by an ICE officer earlier in the day. It took place mere blocks from where George Floyd was murdered in 2020.
The eyewitness videos show one thing; The Trump administration says another, which we posted on Substack Wednesday.
“I think the first time as a human being, when you watch this video and you just, I mean, I remember literally gasping when I saw what had happened.” Smith said. “You don’t know what happened before, you don’t never have the full picture. And then as more and more information came out, it became more and more horrifying.”
One of the clips of the aftermath shows a man identifying himself as a physician asking if he can check Good’s pulse. “We have medics on scene. We have our own medics,” an ICE agent responded. That’s when onlookers screamed, “WHERE ARE THEY?!”
President Trump painted a different picture of the shooting on Truth Social, in which he said it seems the ICE agent shot Good in self defense and added that “it’s hard to believe he is alive.”
“You’ve got [DHS Sec.] Kristi Noem, who basically is saying that this officer fired in self-defense and that he had to go to the hospital. But you can see in the video after he fired, he wasn’t even knocked down. And he walks to the car, he gets close to the car, and then he walks back again. No hurry. I mean, anybody who is a trained law enforcement professional is trained to give immediate aid to somebody who has been injured, even in that kind of a situation,” Smith said, adding that she knows about law enforcement training from her time as chief of staff for the Minneapolis mayor.
DHS policy clearly states law enforcement officers are “prohibited from discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle” unless the “use of deadly force against the operator is justified.”
By Thursday morning, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) released news that the FBI informed the BCA the investigation would be “led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.”
“As a result, the BCA has reluctantly withdrawn from the investigation,” the release says. “The BCA Force Investigations Unit was designed to ensure consistency, accountability and public confidence, none of which can be achieved without full cooperation and jurisdictional clarity.”
On top of the George Floyd murder, Minneapolis has been the focal point of other tragedies in last year—including the horrific assassination of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and the deadly mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church where kids were gathered for mass.
“Minnesota just feels like it’s ground zero of this— first a racial reckoning. Now this political angst that’s just gripping the nation and tearing it apart,” said longtime Minnesota political journalist Mary Lahammer. “And ever since Governor Walz joined Kamala Harris’s ticket, I don’t know that we hear much about Harris, but we hear about Walz every day, day in and day out.”
This all comes the same week the nation marked 5 years since the January 6 Capitol riots. The White House published revisionist history in a new section of its website, calling J6 defendants “mere trespassers or peaceful protesters” and falsely claiming no law enforcement officers lost their lives. The same administration is calling Renee Good a domestic terrorist.
"[Our] Republican colleagues, colleagues that you and I have had long relationships with, that we have respect for, have been completely unwilling or unable to challenge this administration,” Smith said. “What is it going to take? Are they going to finally stand up when the president says he’s going to invade Greenland? What’s it going to take for them to stand up for their constituents and for their constitutional responsibilities?”
After Wednesday’s shooting, a CSPAN camera on the House floor caught what appeared to be a heated exchange between Minnesota Reps. Angie Craig and Tom Emmer.
While there’s division over the ICE shooting at the federal level, Lahammer says she’s hearing different sentiment at the state level.
“The state legislative Republican leaders have not been repeating the same rhetoric as the federal officials,” Lahammer said. “They have said that their hearts go out to those grieving and they have said we need investigation and information.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has said the National Guard is on standby if needed and warned protesters to stay peaceful.
“I hope that this horrible event can be the catalyst for people coming together and saying, ‘Enough.’” Smith said. “I know that not only in Minneapolis, but around the country, there were people coming together and state capitals and neighborhoods and sort of coming together in solidarity.”
Thank you Pamela, Sandra Tuttle, Clayton Sandell, Tamie Swain, Bluesin’ Bob, and many others for tuning into our live video with Mary Lahammer!
