How the Murder of Good Changes the Stakes for Good
ICE won’t melt, but traumatic events of this kind create their own force fields that bring change
No one can predict how the murder of Renee Good will change this country. But there’s an encouraging history of change the aftermath of certain violent and tragic events, and a poor track record for governments that shoot their own people in the streets. Even when this story is pushed out of the headlines by some new outrage, we may look back on it as the moment when Donald Trump lost his grip.
Of course, the ICE story will likely get worse before it gets better. With the help of bonuses of up to $50,000 for each new recruit, ICE has more than doubled in size to 22,000 officers and agents — a large, hastily-trained police force that will kill again. And that’s not even counting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents wandering far from the border. On Thursday, a CBP agent shot two suspects in Portland when, he says, they tried to run him down in their car.
So Jonathan Ross, the trigger-happy officer who shot Good three times in front of the whole world, has plenty of company out there. And plenty of backing from the top. “This is a guy who’s actually done a very, very important job for the United States of America,” J.D. Vance said on Friday, asking for prayers for Ross. “He’s been assaulted, he’s been attacked, he’s been injured because of it. He deserves a debt of gratitude.”
Gratitude? We should be grateful that instead of showing restraint or shooting out the tires, Ross shot Good in the face, orphaning her six-year-old son?
The White House’s Orwellian response marks a descent from Trump’s reaction to the 2020 killing of a man less than a mile from where Ross killed Good. “All Americans were rightly sickened and revolted by the brutal death of George Floyd,” Trump said then in a statement. “My administration is fully committed that, for George and his family, justice will be served.”
We have almost forgotten that in America — in any decent society — we’ve respected various customs, manners, and legal principles in these situations for hundreds of years. Presidents, governors, and other leaders invariably express sympathy for the dead and promise an independent investigation. That’s the difference between old-style authorities and today’s self-styled authoritarians.
So why am I hopeful that after tensions escalate for a time, we’ll get some accountability — if not for Good’s murder, then for Trump’s efforts to establish an American police state?
I’m hopeful because traumatic events of this magnitude — witnessed by all — create their own force fields, and thus their own social and political energy. Force fields, as we know from science fiction, are especially good in helping societies play defense.
Let’s look at three events with differing facts and context than the Good case but comparable possible consequences for the public debate:
The Kent State shootings
In 1970, after President Nixon invaded Cambodia, mass protests erupted across the country. At Kent State University, Ohio National Guardsmen, firing from 100 yards away, killed four students. John Filo (later my colleague at Newsweek) immortalized the moment with a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo.
Many conservative Ohioans interviewed that day said they wished more protesters had been killed, and Nixon went on to a landslide reelection. But the deaths of the students, commemorated in a powerful protest song by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, intensified the debate over Vietnam. Less than two months after Kent State, the Senate passed the Cooper-Church Amendment, which launched a slow but steady process of re-establishing congressional authority by cutting off funding for the war in Southeast Asia.
The Trayvon Martin Killing
In 2012, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black kid from Sanford, Florida, was walking to a convenience store to buy candy, clad in a hoodie. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator for a gated community, shot and killed him. After a storm of publicity, Zimmerman was acquitted on grounds of self-defense with the help of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.
The killing of Trayvon Martin led directly to the creation of Black Lives Matter, which now includes nearly 100 chapters across the country, and to new sensitivity to law enforcement’s treatment of young black men.
The Murder of George Floyd
In 2020, Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd after a store clerk reported that he had made a purchase using a counterfeit $20 bill. Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down in the street. He was later convicted of murder.
In the aftermath of Floyd’s death, huge peaceful demonstrations (amid COVID) led to new laws on police conduct in 30 states.
The Renee Good case will have its own dynamic. In the short term, the FBI is already pushing Minnesota investigators aside and there’s not much that local law enforcement can do about it. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey telling ICE to “stay the fuck out of my city” isn’t likely to bring results. But neither will Trump’s pathetic, January 6th-style efforts to whitewash the truth. Thanks to careful analysis of the videotapes by the New York Times and others, we know that Trump and his top officials were telling one lie after another about the incident. Tom (“Cava Bag”) Homan, White House Border Czar, has promised a real investigation, and he should be held to that. It’s a good bet that the videotape of Ross trying to explain to investigators why he fired three times will be leaked, and that will kick off a whole new round of stories about ICE abuses.
Melting ICE won’t be easy. There’s a noisy MAGA constituency for immigration control, and Democrats were burned in 2024 for moving too far left on the issue. Even if a new Democratic Congress slashes ICE funding, as it did in 2019 to spending on a border wall, Trump can re-purpose spending from other parts of the DHS budget. He has already moved funds from FEMA to ICE, and he can play those games again.
But the murder of Good has changed the stakes for good. The optics for ICE will only get worse when this kind of criminal behavior is inevitably replicated in future encounters with immigrants and U.S. citizens. It will then become part of a pattern— a compelling ongoing story about a war at home that includes Trumpian atrocities against ordinary people.
In the meantime, it’s nice to see Democrats stepping up. “She wasn’t a terrorist, she wasn’t a criminal, she was a mom,” Eric Swalwell said. “There’s no weapon in that glove compartment, no knife, no gun, no explosive. [Just] stuffed animals.” Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an inspiring freshman from Phoenix, excoriated the gaslighting of Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem: “This is what authoritarianism looks like. This is what happens when the leader of a nation turns a federal agency into his personal paramilitary force against the civilian population of the United States.”
And this is what democracy looks like, too. Anyone on the left or right who believes that fearful Americans will now put their cell phones away when ICE shows up in their neighborhood is in for a big surprise. Just watch as an aroused people prove that fearlessness in the face of power is the best way to save us, eventually, from the clutches of Donald Trump.
OK, here’s my short “Then and Now” convo with Princeton Professor Julian Zelizer, our latest weekly effort (every Friday at noon) to convey some of the historical context of the news.
Please explain how with every minute recorded by video of this murder, the Orange Regime can continue to have supporters believe a freaking word any of them say? The IRREFUTABLE TRUTH is seen by the entire world. Yet they say the most outrageous bald face lies. When will those damn complicit Republican congress people say 'ENOUGH"!! Maybe one of their family members has to be shot in the face?
After one year of Trump 2.0, the U.S.A. is now a fully developed dictator-supported police state, just as the Third Reich was in the 1930s and 40s.
But there is one difference that may save American democracy - the ubiquitous personal smartphone/camera. The reason is that the authoritarian goon squads rely on darkness, stealth, and false narrative. The personal phone/cam mitigates that structural advantage and places the common man-on-the-street in the happy position as the truthteller who will ultimately rise in legitimacy and power.