As U.S. press sleeps, UK Daily Mail reports on federal agents' peculiar raid at the home of ICE shooter Jonathan Ross, who fatally wounded Renee Good

Agent carries a computer tower.

A team of armed federal agents entered the home of Jonathan Ross, the ICE shooter in last week's killing of Renee Nicole Good, and removed several belongings, according to a report at UK Daily Mail. The British daily newspaper, which features a U.S. edition, appears to be the first and only major news outlet to shine light on the raid, if you want to call it that.

That's odd, considering the article involves a story of international scope and raises a number of obvious questions -- such as what were federal agents doing at Ross's home, who ordered them to be there, and what items were they taking? Adding to the intrigue, the Daily Mail (DM) notes claims that Ross has gone into hiding. If so, why -- and where?

In addition to the Daily Mail report, the Good killing received significant attention in other United Kingdom outlets (BBC, The Times of London, The Telegraph), plus newspapers in Canada, Singapore, and Italy. That federal agents saw fit to invade Ross' home and take out numerous items -- amid reports that Ross himself has gone into hiding -- presents a significant new angle to the story. But we have been unable to find any coverage in the mainstream U.S. press -- at least of the print variety.

The Daily Mail is not noted for its reliability, but we think the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old unarmed mother of three by an immigration officer, under circumstances of confusion and disputed evidence, is so significant that it merits attention -- even if the Daily Mail, so far, seems to be our only source of printed information in the U.S. Below is a look at the DM's report, written by U.S. Senior Reporter Ben Ashford. Let's start with the headline: "

Gun-toting feds in ski masks swarm the ICE agent shooter's home to retrieve belongings as the house sits empty amid claims he has gone into hiding

Gun-toting Feds swarmed the home of the ICE agent who fatally shot protester Renee Good last Wednesday (1/7/26), the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal.

A Special Response Team arrived at the suburban Minneapolis home, where Jon Ross, 43, lives with his wife and children, early this morning.

Daily Mail images captured half a dozen Federal officers wearing masks and balaclavas, one carrying pepper spray and another wielding an assault rifle.

They entered the smart five-bedroom home before carrying out five large plastic crates, a computer tower, and a stack of picture frames.

The agents climbed back into their unmarked trucks afterwards to form a defensive formation around a personal vehicle that drove out of the garage.

The driver of the black Jeep SUV wore a full-face mask, making it impossible to identify him.

'How much money are you making' growled one agent as he approached the Daily Mail reporting staff.

Another climbed out and took a close-up cell phone video of our photojournalist before the convoy drove away.

A neighbor told the Daily Mail she spotted Ross's wife Patrixia pacing around the couple's driveway on Wednesday afternoon, hours after her husband opened fire on Good. 

Since then, the house has been empty amid suggestions that the couple and their children have gone into hiding.

The fresh activity comes after the Daily Mail revealed that Ross is an Enforcement and Removal Operations agent and Iraq veteran, married to a Filipina immigrant.

He has become the focus of rage over ICE actions around the country after he shot and killed Good on Wednesday afternoon while she was driving her SUV down a street where agents were on duty.

The Daily Mail might not be exalted in the journalism world, but its reporters dug up details about Ross and his family that currently are hard to find in the mainstream U.S. press. Ashford writes:

Ross's shaken father defended his son's decision to shoot Good dead in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail.

'She hit him,' said Ed Ross, 80. 'He also had an officer whose arm was in the car. He will not be charged with anything.

'You would never find a nicer, kinder person,' the father added of his son. 'He's a committed, conservative Christian, a tremendous father, a tremendous husband. I couldn't be more proud of him.'

The elderly father from North Pekin, Illinois, said Patrixia is a US citizen but declined to say how long she had been in America. 'I do not want to go any further than that,' he added.

Ross has lived on the outskirts of Minneapolis since 2015 and served as an immigration officer since at least 2013.

Neighbors told the Daily Mail that Ross was a hardcore MAGA supporter.

Social media posts revealed he has foreign-born in-laws.

Ross married Patrixia, whose doctor parents come from the Philippines, in August 2012, according to posts on her Instagram page.

She posted her first picture with Ross on her social-media account two months earlier.

In July 2013, when the couple lived around El Paso, Texas, Patrixia posted a picture posing next to a US Border Patrol helicopter.

She also posted pictures of baking recipes from a Spanish-language cookbook.

Another neighbor told the Daily Mail that until recently Ross had been flying pro-Trump flags and a 'Don't Tread On Me' Gadsden Flag that is an emblem of the Make America Great Again movement.

There's now no sign of Ross, his wife, or the flags.

Agent with an assault rifle

 

A Minneapolis-based Homeland Security agent, who reports to Trump cabinet secretary Kristi Noem, pleads guilty to charges of transporting child pornography

(donaldwatkins.com)

A Minnesota-based federal agent has pleaded guilty to charges of transporting child pornography, according to a post from online investigative journalist and longtime criminal defense and civil rights attorney Donald Watkins. The news, coming days after the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, might cause a reasonable person to ask, "How many morally challenged slime balls are employed by ICE and related agencies?" Watkins says he plans to conduct research on that question, and depending on what he unearths, the ramifications could be staggering for the Donald Trump administration. Before we consider how big this story might become, let's look at yesterday's post from Watkins' Facebook page under the headline "Minnesota-Based Federal Agent Pleads Guilty to Transporting Child Pornography":

Child sexual predators are everywhere. They even have infiltrated the ranks of federal and state law-enforcement agencies.

On October 30, 2025, Timothy Ryan Gregg, 51, a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent and FBI Task Force Officer, pleaded guilty in the District of Minnesota to knowingly transporting visual depictions of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Gregg worked for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

In late May 2025, the father of a 17-year-old girl called police after finding photos and videos on his daughter’s phone of the teen engaging in sexual activity with a much older man -- later identified as Timothy Ryan Gregg.

The connections here to recent events are bound to raise eyebrows. Both Gregg and ICE shooter Jonathan Ross engaged in unlawful activities in Minneapolis (assuming Ross' actions ever are investigated and prosecuted; at the moment, the Trump DOJ apparently is more interested in a cover up than dispensing Justice -- and Trump's FBI is doing its best to hamstring Minnesota prosecutors, who seem eager to pursue the case.) Here is more from Watkins:

The victim told officers that she connected with Gregg on the dating app Tinder and met with him at hotels at least nine times throughout the spring.

The teen told investigators that she believed the sex was consensual. While Minnesota’s age of consent is 16, the videos that Gregg made of the victim are illegal child sex abuse material because she was a minor.

Gregg faces a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence. But his plea agreement with federal prosecutors calls for up to 17-and-a-half years.

Minnesota, it seems, is turning into a case study of the human sewage that can invade law-enforcement agencies -- and that is a subject we have covered on multiple occasions. (See here, here, here, here, and here.) What is going on with cops and their ilk in the Land of Lakes? It's grim, and Watkins provides these details:

Gregg is the third Minnesota law enforcement agent to plead guilty to crimes involving child sex abuse materials in 2025. On October 8, 2025, former state trooper Jeremy Plonski admitted to sexually assaulting a baby while in uniform and making videos of the abuse.

In September 2025, Anthony John Crowley of Minnetonka — a former border patrol agent — admitted using a messaging app to upload child sex abuse images.

All three men are being held in the Sherburne County, Minnesota Jail as they await sentencing.

Last week, Minneapolis-based ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, an unarmed mother of three children. Ross called Good a “fucking bitch” moments after killing her in cold blood.

Our news team has an ongoing investigation to determine whether Jonathan Ross is a child sexual predator, as well. 

That last paragraph is a stunner -- and, in my view, such an investigation has the potential to change the course of modern American history. How so? We will examine that question and more in a post later this week. 

Trump eyes Greenland as a means of breaking China's hold on the supply of rare-earth minerals -- but a new report suggests Trump is dealing in fantasy, not reality

Greenland's foreboding environment (Policy Options)

Donald Trump 's recent actions in Venezuela indicate his plans to "run" the country are driven by a desire to generate wealth and power for himself and his financial backers in the U.S. oil industry (as former Trump ally Lev Parnas recently outlined in his Substack newsletter). A similar situation appears to be unfolding in Greenland.

Other U.S. Presidents have looked longingly toward Greenland, but Trump's lust seems particularly intense and perhaps misguided, especially in light of his bullying tactics in Venezuela, which raise  questions about his true motivations toward Greenland. Trump says his interest in taking over the territory is driven by national-security concerns, but the icy island -- the world's largest island and part of the Kingdom of Denmark -- is known to have vast natural resources, including oil, gas, and rare-earth minerals, the kind considered vital for defense and green technology. The global rare-earth elements market is growing in tandem with the green energy boom and is expected to be worth more than €6.5 billion this year. That news, despite his lack of interest in green energy, is likely to make Trump see dollar signs.

A new report from Associated Press (AP), however, suggests Greenland's rare-earth minerals might not be worth the trouble and expense of extracting them, much less the costs of taking over the territory. In other words, Trump's designs on Greenland might be driven by his well-established predilection for cluelessness. Josh Funk and Suman Naishadham report for AP under the headline "Greenland's harsh environment and lack of infrastructure have prevented rare earth mining":

Greenland’s harsh environment, lack of key infrastructure and difficult geology have so far prevented anyone from building a mine to extract the sought-after rare earth elements that many high-tech products require. Even if President Donald Trump prevails in his effort to take control of the Arctic island, those challenges won’t go away.

Trump has prioritized breaking China’s stranglehold on the global supply of rare earths ever since the world’s number two economy sharply restricted who could buy them after the United States imposed widespread tariffs last spring. The Trump administration has invested hundreds of millions of dollars and even taken stakes in several companies. Now the president is again pitching the idea that wresting control of Greenland away from Denmark could solve the problem.

The AP report strongly suggests Trump's interest in Greenland has little, if anything, to do with national security. Funk and Naishadham write:

Trump eyes Greenland's critical materials

Critical raw materials are metals and minerals important for high-tech products and the green economy. Greenland has significant deposits but most of the territory is encased in ice and unexplored.

But Greenland might not be able to produce rare earths for years — if ever. Some companies are trying anyway, but their efforts to unearth some of the 1.5 million tons of rare earths encased in rock in Greenland generally haven’t advanced beyond the exploratory stage. Trump’s fascination with the island nation may be more about countering Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic than securing any of the hard-to-pronounce elements like neodymium and terbium that are used to produce the high-powered magnets needed in electric vehicles, wind turbines, robots and fighter jets among other products. 

We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” Trump said Friday. 

That is the kind of brain-dead malarkey that should make Americans cringe. It suggests Trump has not even begun to think through a complex issue -- and that is much the same potentially disastrous approach he has taken to Venezuela. "We are going to 'do something' on Greenland"? Like what? Trump gives the impression he has no idea. From the AP report:

“The fixation on Greenland has always been more about geopolitical posturing — a military-strategic interest and stock-promotion narrative — than a realistic supply solution for the tech sector,” said Tracy Hughes, founder and executive director of the Critical Minerals Institute. “The hype far outstrips the hard science and economics behind these critical minerals.”

Trump confirmed those geopolitical concerns at the White House Friday.

“We don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland, which if we don’t take Greenland, you can have Russia or China as your next door neighbor. That’s not going to happen,” Trump said.

No matter what Trump wants, the challenges of mining in Greenland are daunting, and the expense is substantial. On top of that, Greenland, Denmark and Europe have made it clear they oppose Trump's designs on the territory, which includes threats to take it by force. From AP:

A difficult place to build a mine

The main challenge to mine in Greenland is, “of course, the remoteness. Even in the south where it’s populated, there are few roads and no railways, so any mining venture would have to create these accessibilities,” says Diogo Rosa, an economic geology researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Power would also have to be generated locally, and expert manpower would have to be brought in.

Another concern is the prospect of mining rare earths in the fragile Arctic environment just as Greenland tries to build a thriving tourism industry, said Patrick Schröder, a senior fellow in the Environment and Society program at the Chatham House think-tank in London.

“Toxic chemicals are needed to separate the minerals out from the rock, so that can be highly polluting and further downstream as well, the processing,” Shröder said. Plus, rare earths are often found alongside radioactive uranium.

Is U.S. intervention likely to release radioactivity into Greenland's environment? Are we going to turn the island into an oversized Chernobyl? How many Trumpian screw-ups are the U.S. and the world going to tolerate before someone finally forces him out of office? 

Trump has proven that he does not possess the patience or the intellectual curiosity to confront challenging issues. Consider his response to the coronavirus. When an unknown virus appeared in China, U.S. intelligence issued warnings in more than a dozen classified briefings. But Trump ignored the warnings, lied to the public about the threat, allowing the COVID pandemic to take hold.

Seeking rare-earth minerals poses a laundry list of details that Trump has proven he is not equipped to handle. From AP:

Besides the unforgiving climate that encases much of Greenland under layers of ice and freezes the northern fjords for much of the year, the rare earths found there tend to be encased in a complex type of rock called eudialyte, and no one has ever developed a profitable process to extract rare earths from that type of rock. Elsewhere, these elements are normally found in different rock formations called carbonatites, and there are proven methods to work with that.

“If we’re in a race for resources — for critical minerals — then we should be focusing on the resources that are most easily able to get to market,” said David Abraham, a rare earths expert who has followed the industry for decades and wrote the book The Elements of Power.

This week, Critical Metals’ stock price more than doubled after it said it plans to build a pilot plant in Greenland this year. But that company and more than a dozen others exploring deposits on the island remain far away from actually building a mine and would still need to raise at least hundreds of millions of dollars.

Turning a profit in rare-earth minerals is difficult, according to AP, and it seems likely Trump has given that little or not consideration: 

Producing rare earths is a tough business

Even the most promising projects can struggle to turn a profit, particularly when China resorts to dumping extra materials onto the market to depress prices and drive competitors out of business as it has done many times in the past. And currently most critical minerals have to be processed in China.

The U.S. is scrambling to expand the supply of rare earths outside of China during the one-year reprieve from even tougher restrictions that Trump said Xi Jinping agreed to in October. A number of companies around the world are already producing rare earths or magnets and can deliver more quickly than anything in Greenland, which Trump has threatened to seize with military power if Denmark doesn’t agree to sell it.

“Everybody’s just been running to get to this endpoint. And if you go to Greenland, it’s like you’re going back to the beginning,” said Ian Lange, an economics professor who focuses on rare earths at the Colorado School of Mines.

A number of more promising mining paths exists outside Greenland, but those options might not satisfy Trump's thirst for bullying:

Focusing on more promising projects elsewhere

Many in the industry, too, say America should focus on helping proven companies instead of trying to build new rare earth mines in Greenland, Ukraine, Africa or elsewhere. A number of other mining projects in the U.S. and friendly nations like Australia are farther along and in much more accessible locations.

The U.S. government has invested directly in the company that runs the only rare earths mine in the U.S., MP Materials, and a lithium miner and a company that recycles batteries and other products with rare earths.

Scott Dunn, CEO of Noveon Magnetics, said those investments should do more to reduce China’s leverage, but it’s hard to change the math quickly when more than 90% of the world’s rare earths come from China.

“There are very few folks that can rely on a track record for delivering anything in each of these instances, and that obviously should be where we start, and especially in my view if you’re the U.S. government,” said Dunn, whose company is already producing more than 2,000 metric tons of magnets each year at a plant in Texas from elements it gets outside of China.

J.D. Vance says ICE shooter Jonathan Ross has "absolute immunity"; a prominent expert, in so many words, says Vance is full of feces. Guess who's right?

Video scene, a split second after deadly shot (YouTube)

After the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Vice President J.D. Vance said ICE agent Jonathan Ross enjoyed "absolute immunity" from prosecution for the incident. Vance earned his law degree at Yale University, but that does not mean he knows the relevant law in the Ross matter -- and it certainly doesn't mean Vance, an ardent defender of Donald Trump (perhaps the most prodigious liar in modern American history) is honest. So it should be no surprise to most non-MAGA Americans that the VP is operating on shaky legal ground here.

Evidence of that comes via an article at Mother Jones under the headline "Misconduct Expert says State Has the right to Charge ICE Officer Who Killed Renee Good." Senior Reporter Samantha Michaels writes:

After an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis this week, firing his weapon as she attempted to drive away, protesters have amassed around the country, many wondering: Can that officer be taken to court?

The Trump administration, predictably, says the agent, Jonathan Ross, is immune from prosecution. “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Thursday. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.”

But what do independent attorneys say? After the shooting, I reached out to Robert Bennett, a veteran lawyer in Minneapolis who has worked on hundreds of federal court police misconduct cases during his 50-year career. “I’ve deposed thousands of police officers,” he says. “ICE agents do not have absolute immunity.”

Bennett says the state of Minnesota has the right to prosecute an ICE agent who commits misconduct. But, he adds, that might be difficult now that the FBI has essentially booted the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension off the case—blocking access, the BCA wrote, to “case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.”

In short, Americans should not rely on J.D. Vance for legal advice. Michaels provides details to suggest Vance might struggle to make a living if he's ever forced off the government teat and must engage in private practice. In fact, one might reasonably wonder how this guy ever passed a bar exam. From the Mother Jones piece:

In the conversation below, edited for length and clarity, Bennett discusses how the shooting in Minneapolis unfolded and the legal paths forward.

When you watched the videos of this shooting, what did you see?

You saw what could be easily identified as four ICE officers. And they’re all experiencing, to a greater or lesser extent, the same set of operative facts, the same factual stimuli. But only one officer, seeing the set of circumstances, picked up his weapon. None of the other officers did. That’s a bad fact [for Ross].

Also, the officer walked in front of the car, which counts against him in the reasonableness analysis. If you look at the recent Supreme Court case of Barnes v. Felix, that’s problematic for the ICE agent.

At this point, many readers likely will begin to understand that Bennett knows what he's talking about, while Vance does not. Michaels writes:

What happened in Barnes v. Felix?

It’s a shooting case where the officer walked around the car, [lunged
and jumped onto the door sill], and put himself in harm’s way. You can’t bootstrap your own bad situation [to] allow a use of force.

What did the court find?

They sent it back to the trial court to consider it. But there’s good language in there.

We noted above that Vance suggested Ross was in the clear because he was "doing his job." Now we learn that isn't the standard at all:

You said it’s bad news for the ICE agent, Ross, that his colleagues didn’t pull their weapons. Can you talk more about that?

Sure, we’ve had several other cases. There was a tactical semicircle, a bunch of officers aiming their guns at a couple fighting over a knife; one officer out of the eight or nine fired his weapon, none of the others perceived the need to.

And that’s important because it suggests the officer who fired wasn’t reasonable, right? Under federal law, an officer can only use deadly force if he had a reasonable fear that he could otherwise be killed or harmed.

It’s an objective reasonableness standard. So it’s not whether you were personally scared out of your wits and fired your gun. It’s: Would an objectively reasonable officer at the scene have fired his weapon, believing he was in danger of death or immediate bodily harm?

In Ross’ case, there was a previous incident—Ross had shot [with a Taser] through a window before at somebody in the car, and the guy hit the gas, and Ross had stuck his arm through the broken window, and he got cut [and dragged about 100 yards]. And so he was supposedly reacting to that. He’s not an objective officer at that point.

Bennett makes a powerful point, one that never occurred to me. Vance, despite his snazzy law degree, apparently did not know it -- and wanted to ensure the public never understood it. 

Michaels' next question drills down to the crux of the matter -- and Bennett nails the answer by citing to ACTUAL LAW. Imagine that. When have Trump or any of his underlings ever cited actual law to support their dubious actions. I cannot think of a single instance -- and that indicates they don't know the law, don't care about the law, and want to make sure the public (especially MAGA mouth breathers) never understand the law:

The Trump administration has suggested that Ross is immune from prosecution as a federal officer. Why do you say he’s not?

There’s plenty of case law that allows for the prosecution of federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE. And it’s clear under the law that a federal officer who shoots somebody in Minnesota and kills them is subject to a Minnesota investigation and Minnesota law.

Now, the feds just took that away this morning, and they’ve already decided who’s at fault. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was going to do an investigation to find out. 

But I can tell you, the federal code provides that when there is a state criminal prosecution of a federal officer in Minnesota or any other state, the officer has the right to remove the case to federal court. So if Ross was charged in Hennepin County, he could remove the case to the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, have a federal judge deal with his case. The code is explicitly predicting such a prosecution could take place. If there was immunity of an absolute nature, you wouldn’t need that section, right?

The administration seems to argue that Ross is protected under the Supremacy Clause, which essentially says that states can’t charge a federal officer if the officer was acting within the scope of his duties.

Do you think killing people is acting within the scope of their duties? What if they decided to kill the 435,000 people in the city of Minneapolis while they were here, would the Supremacy Clause give them a free pass? I don’t think so.

Also, if there was an actual independent investigation, and you apply the actual federal case law to this, and you concluded that Ross violated her rights by using excessive deadly force, he could be indicted federally. Now, nobody believes that would ever happen now: For a guy who talked a lot about rigged things, this [investigation] is rigged. Kash Patel took over the autopsy, so who knows, maybe they’ll say she died of a heart attack when she was backing up.

If the officer isn’t charged criminally, the other route is a lawsuit. What are the challenges there?

My team and I think there are ways to do it. I hope that her mother, or her next of kin, calls us and we’ll figure out a Bivens action or a Federal Tort Claims Act case, or something else. If you look at this case carefully, it has all the hallmarks of cases we’ve either won or settled for amounts of money no reasonable person would pay us if we weren’t going to win. It is essentially a garden variety unjustified use of deadly force case. And that’s based on the facts we know now; I bet the case is going to get better.

Heather Cox Richardson: As outrage boils over ICE's fatal shooting of Minnesota woman, jumbled stories and brazen deceit suggest Trump admin is feeling heat

(AP)

After watching the Trump administration get away with a veritable crime wave in the first year of Dear Leader's second term, you might expect members of the president's team to be unworried about ever being held accountable for their wrongdoing. But a new report from historian Heather Cox Richardson suggests Trumpers are unsettled after an ICE agent on Wednesday (1/7/26) fatally shot a Minneapolis woman during a White House-ordered immigration-enforcement operation in Minnesota.

With all of the untruths that spew forth from Trump and his allies, you might think they would be good at lying by now. But the killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who never has been charged with anything by law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket, seems to have the White House shaken -- to the point that key officials are struggling to keep their stories straight. The staff, however does seem united in trying to whitewash the whole event as quickly as possible. Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Trump himself all have issued statements essentially blaming Good for getting in the way of a bullet fired by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. Trump even suggested "the Radical Left," whatever that is, was responsible for the shooting, despite the support of many liberals for gun control. Perhaps dementia really has turned the president's brain to mush.

Cox Richardson, likely the most prominent and respected voice in today's social-media world, says the muddled response of the White House indicates finding the truth behind the Minneapolis shooting hardly will be a top priority of officialdom. At this point, a concerted cover up effort seems more likely.

Writing at her "Letters From An American" Substack page, Richardson sets the scene for what led to the shooting of Renee Good -- and provides insights on what might happen next. Early indications are that the Trumpian response hardly will be a shining example of government transparency. Richardson makes it clear that Good, on the way to drop off her 6-year-old son at school, encountered a frenetic scene that likely set her nerves on edge:

[Wednesday] morning (1/8/26), a federal agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good as she was driving away from ICE agents on a residential street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to Minneapolis leaders, Good was a legal observer: a volunteer trained to observe police conduct in case of future legal action.

Three videos taken at the scene show a maroon SUV perpendicular on a snowy street. A silver SUV driving up the street stops. Two officers wearing badges that say “police” and body armor get out of the vehicle and walk toward the maroon car.

One of them says, “Get out of the f*cking car,” and the other reaches through the open driver’s-side window while trying to open the door. The driver backs up the vehicle, and straightens the wheel as if making a three-point turn. Then she starts slowly to accelerate along the street.

Gov. Tim Walz recently accused the Trump administration of "waging a war" on Minnesota and vowed to fight the White House until the end of his term. Anyone wishing to assign blame for Renee Good's death likely would be wise to focus on Trump's determination to unleash chaos in a Blue state that he lost in 2024 to Kamala Harris -- 50.92 percent to 46.68. For good measure, Trump lost Minnesota to Joe Biden in 2020 by a margin of 7.12 percent. Before that, Trump lost the 2016 race to Hillary Clinton by 1.52 percent. Democrats now have 12 consecutive presidential wins in the "Land of Lakes." Is it any wonder that Trump, given his documented thirst for retribution, appears to be exacting revenge on Minnesota? Cox Richardson reports:

Yesterday the Trump administration deployed federal agents and officers to Minneapolis for what they called the largest federal immigration operation ever carried out, eventually planning to deploy 2,000 agents. The administration has been attacking Minnesota’s Somali community, and Homeland Security Kristi Noem was present at an ICE arrest yesterday, telling a man in handcuffs, who Homeland Security later said was from Ecuador, “You will be held accountable for your crimes.”

Rebecca Santana and Michael Balsamo of the Associated Press reported that Minnesota governor Tim Walz called the deployment “a war that’s being waged against Minnesota.” “You’re seeing that we have a ridiculous surge of apparently 2,000 people not coordinating with us, that are for a show of cameras,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) insists that its actions are protecting American citizens from “the worst of the worst” criminal immigrants, so the shooting of a young white woman, the mother of a young child, and how that would look, made it appear eager to smear Good.

It immediately put out a statement that looked much like what it said after officers shot 30-year-old Chicago teaching assistant Marimar Martinez in October when it claimed she had “ambushed” agents, ramming their vehicle before an agent shot her five times. Footage showed that, in fact, the agents had rammed her car, and after the shooting one had sent a text message bragging: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” The Department of Justice dropped the charges it had filed against her, asking a judge to “dismiss the indictment and exonerate” Martinez and her passenger.

All of that raises this question: Does the administration's version of events square with evidence now on hand, in an environment where many Americans have viewed videos of the incident that have been widely viewed online? Richardson says the answer is no:

Today, DHS posted on social media that “ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism. An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers. The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries. This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement who are facing 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.” (Whoever wrote this post must have gone to the same school where Donald Trump "learned" math.)

Trump jumped in with his own fact-free post lying that the shooter had been run over: “I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot at her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe that he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”

The administration appears to be trying to sow confusion on purpose. But Americans might be wising up because the effort seems to be flailing, Richardson writes:

That both DHS and Trump posted false accounts of the shooting even as there are four videos circulating that reveal those accounts to be lies shows they no longer are making any attempt to justify their actions. Instead, they are demanding Americans abandon reality in favor of whatever the administration says. If this works, it would be a demonstration of totalitarian power, the ability to control how people think. Accepting that lie is a loyalty test.

But it is not working.

First of all, Sarah Jeong of The Verge noted that the reason there are so many videos is because “people cared enough to show up where ICE was and record them. It wasn’t just one or two legal observers, and when Good was shot, they didn’t abandon her.”

Second, elected Democrats are pushing back. “I’ve seen the video,” Governor Walz wrote. “Don’t believe this propaganda machine. The state will ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice.” To reporters, he said: “We’ve been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday I said exactly that. What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines, and conflict. It’s governing by reality TV and today that recklessness cost someone their life. I’ve reached out to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and I’m waiting to hear back.”

He told Minnesotans that, like them, he was angry, but “they want a show. We can’t give it to them. We cannot. If you protest and express your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully as you always do. We can’t give them what they want…. To Americans, I ask you this. Please stand with Minneapolis.”

Walz prepared to call out the Minnesota National Guard if necessary, demonstrating that there would be no need for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in troops. He reminded Minnesotans that the Minnesota National Guard does not wear masks and that it is theirs, not Trump’s.

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey told reporters that the DHS statement was “bullsh*t. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.” “To the family, I’m so deeply sorry,” Frey said. “There’s nothing that I can say right now that’s going to make you or your relatives, friends of the victim feel any better.” To ICE and other federal agents deployed in Minnesota, he added: “Get the f*ck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart…and now somebody is dead.”

As drama unfolds in Minnesota, Cox Richardson notes that the political world has not come to a stop. In fact, Trump apparently sees it as an opportunity to once again try to use his office for financial gain:

Something else was going on today. At the same time the administration was pouring gasoline on the domestic fire ICE had sparked and the international fire it had set with attacks on Venezuela and threats against Greenland, it was quietly making a number of major financial moves.

The smallest of those moves came as Trump asked Fulton County, Georgia, for a $6.2-million payout in attorneys’ fees and costs after the criminal charges against him in Georgia were dismissed. Trump had been indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by pressuring Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensberger to “find” 11,780 votes to give him a victory in the state of Georgia. In November 2025 a new special prosecutor dropped the charges, citing the difficulty of prosecuting a case against a sitting president. Trump boasted on social media of his victory over an “illegal, unconstitutional, and un-American hoax,” and continued to push the lie that Democrats stole the election.

Meanwhile, Trump and his sons once again are angling to enrich themselves:

Vicky Ge Huang of the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial today applied for a national banking license from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, part of the Treasury Department. A banking license would integrate the Trump family’s cryptocurrency more fully into mainstream finance.

If the Treasury Department issues the license—a potential outcome that critics say reveals a major conflict of interest for the president—the president and chair of the new company would be Zach Witkoff, whose father is the son of Trump’s envoy to Russia Steve Witkoff, who the Wall Street Journal recently reported had been handpicked for his role by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The younger Witkoff started World Liberty Financial in 2024 with Trump’s sons Don Jr., Eric, and Barron. 

That takes us back to the busy intersection  of Venezuela, oil, and Trump. The latest news regarding Caracas makes the Trumpian plans smell even more like a grift than they already did. Cox Richardson writes:

Today, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told an audience at a Goldman Sachs energy industry event in Miami, Florida, that the United States will take control of all oil from Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Lisa Desjardins and Nick Schifrin of PBS NewsHour reported this afternoon that Trump administration officials have told lawmakers that they plan to put the money raised from their seizure of Venezuelan oil into bank accounts outside the U.S. Treasury. Desjardins clarified that “[s]ources said they understood these as similar [to] or decidedly ‘off-shore’ accounts.”

Yesterday, Trump announced that, as president of the United States, he would control the money from the sale of Venezuelan oil.

Could a chunk of that money wind up in the president's own pocket? Nah, the Donald would never think of that. Finally, Cox Richardson reports on the latest in Trump's never-ending threats:

The same account posted: “After long and difficult negotiations with Senators, Congressmen, Secretaries, and other Political Representatives, I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars. This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe. If it weren’t for the tremendous numbers being produced by Tariffs from other Countries, many of which, in the past, have ‘ripped off’ the United States at levels never seen before, I would stay at the $1 Trillion Dollar number but, because of Tariffs, and the tremendous income they bring, amounts being generated, that would have been unthinkable in the past (especially just one year ago during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, the Worst President in the History of our Country!), we are able to easily hit the $1.5 Trillion Dollar number while, at the same time, producing an unparalleled Military Force, and having the ability to, at the same time, pay down Debt, and likewise, pay a substantial Dividend to moderate income Patriots within our Country!”

Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles wrote: “Trump has gone completely mad.”

Hartmann: Trump White House resorts to revisionist history and the oft-used fascist playbook in an effort to normalize violence as a means of clinging to power

Mayhem on Jan. 6 (AP)

The White House's fact-free response to the Jan. 6 anniversary is a sign U.S. democracy might already be on life support. That's the conclusion of Thom Hartmann, author, businessman, radio personality, and a leading progressive voice in America.

What drove Hartmann to reach such a grim conclusion? He read a narrative on the White House website that apparently is Donald Trump's version of what happened on Jan. 6, 2001 when his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. Millions of Americans watched as events unfolded that day in D.C., and they heard Trump urge his followers to "fight like hell." But you would never know that from the White House narrative, which lives on a website supported by taxpayer dollars. Writes Hartmann:

The Trump regime has rolled out a new, lie-filled website purporting to tell the history of the January 6 insurrection attempt. It opens with bullshit like this (which, interestingly, appears to be 100% AI-generated):

“The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government.

“In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters, all while Pelosi’s own security lapses invited the chaos they later exploited to seize and consolidate power. This gaslighting narrative allowed them to persecute innocent Americans, silence opposition, and distract from their own role in undermining democracy.”

The most dangerous lies a government can tell aren’t about how tax cuts will create prosperity or that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, although those were bad. When a malicious, corrupt government wants to truly break down trust in a society to more easily seize and manipulate it politically and loot it economically, it inevitably tells lies about the past.

Because once a government convinces its people that what they saw with their own eyes never really happened, what’s left of democracy in that republic is already on life support.

Trump long has been known as a prodigious liar, so it should not be a surprise that he has surrounded himself with others who have a tortured relationship with the truth. But this goes beyond standard-issue political deceit, Hartmann says. It is an extraordinary effort to rewrite the history of an event that huge numbers of American saw with their own eyes. That Trumpers apparently think regular folks are such saps that they will buy an an epic attempt at revisionism suggests the administration has little or no respect for the public, even MAGA supporters. From Hartmann:

That’s what makes the Trump administration’s new official White House website about January 6 so chilling. This isn’t spin or selective memory: it’s an industrial-scale, government-run attempt to erase the memory of a violent insurrection and replace it with a fantasy narrative where Trump and the attackers were the heroes, the police and Mike Pence were the villains, and Joe Biden simply winning the election was the real crime.

The site claims that January 6 was marked by “minimal violence”; that the rioters who smashed doors and windows, smeared feces on the walls, urinated on carpets and papers on Democratic members’ desks, killed Officer Brian Sicknick and four others were “peaceful”; and that the police officers trying to prevent the mob from greater violence weren’t brutally assaulted but instead “allowed” the “protesters” into the Capitol.

The White House claims the police “aggressively” fired “tear gas, flash bangs, and rubber munitions into crowds of peaceful protesters, injuring many and deliberately escalating tensions. Video evidence shows officers inexplicably removing barricades, opening Capitol doors, and even waving attendees inside the building—actions that facilitated entry—while simultaneously deploying violent force against others. These inconsistent and provocative tactics turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos.”

Whoever wrote the official White House version of Jan. 6 has adopted one of Trump's most disturbing personality traits. It's hard to remember when the president has ever accepted responsibility for anything. He almost always plays a game of deflect/deny/finger point. It's as if the writer produced a narrative he or she knew would curry favor with the boss. Hartmann has no trouble finding examples:

One section argues that the real injustice wasn’t the beating of officers with flagpoles, fire extinguishers, and fists, but that Trump’s violent supporters were later prosecuted at all.

Another section claims that the January 6 defendants were victims of “political persecution,” while the police officers who defended the Capitol were the aggressors.

You can almost hear Hartmann catching his breath as he reads the garbage. But he is not falling for any of it:

These are simple, blatant lies, something we’ve grown to expect from Trump and his people but are shocking, nonetheless.

More than 140 police officers were injured so severely that day that they were hospitalized. We watched officers crushed in doors, dragged down stairs, tased into heart attacks, beaten, eyes gouged out, and left bleeding on the ground. We heard their screams live on television.

Multiple courts reviewed thousands of hours of video and multiple juries sent hundreds of Trump’s thugs to prison. Multiple judges — many appointed by Republicans — called January 6 an “attempted coup” and an attack on America’s constitutional order. 

And now our government itself — today in the hands of a billionaire wannabe dictator and his lickspittles because five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court let billionaires buy an election — is trying to tell Americans none of it was real.

Hartmann suggests Americans would be wise to learn about the history of fascist movements -- starting with the man who embodies evil, Adolph Hitler:

History would like to have a word with us about this despicable attempt at revisionist propaganda.

In Nazi Germany, the regime’s most important lies weren’t about economics or foreign policy; they were about violence. Nazi street thugs were recast as patriots while the victims of their violence, including socialists, gays, immigrants, and Jews, were reframed as the provocateurs.

When the Nazi state lied about who committed violence and why, it taught its citizens that paramilitary force is legitimate when used by the “right” people.

Evil, of course did not begin and end with Nazi Germany. Hartmann finds it in other directions:

In the Soviet Union, people didn’t necessarily believe the government’s lies, but that didn’t prevent the USSR’s dictatorship from holding power. Instead, it produced something worse: mass cynicism.

A common joke in Russia about the two major newspapers — Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestia (“News”) — was “In Pravda there is no news, and in Izvestia there is no truth.” (В ‘Правде’ нет известий, а в ‘Известиях’ нет правды.) When citizens assume the government is lying all the time, truth stops mattering, participation becomes mere theater or social climbing, and power becomes untouchable and, thus, increasingly brutal.

Has America reached a point where mass cynicism could set in, where citizens might reasonably believe the Trump government is lying all the time? I fear the answer is yes. Hartmann suggests Trumpers are not being clever or creating anything new; they simply are pulling a page from the well-established authoritarian playbook. It's a sort of political plagiarism, which seems appropriate for an administration that makes regular use of thievery:

This is an old tactic that dictators have used since the days of Ancient Rome. Putin today has motorcycle gangs called the Night Wolves, for example, who terrorize “liberals” and gays in Russia with impunity. It’s not hard to imagine the militia members in America who’re now being recruited by ICE being turned loose on the rest of us in a similar way once the “immigration emergency” is “resolved.”

The police who defend democracy, these White House lies tell would-be vigilantes, will be abandoned by the very government that employs them, while the courts that are the historic arbiters of the law will be smeared and ignored. Elections that should reflect the will of the people will instead be treated as optional suggestions rather than binding decisions.

We’ve seen this movie before in America, too. After the Civil War, the “Lost Cause” mythology rewrote an armed rebellion to preserve slavery into a noble struggle for “heritage.” That lie didn’t heal the country, but instead justified the rise of the Klan and a century of racial terror, voter suppression, and political violence that endures to this day.

The evil that is brewing in America goes beyond Trump. It also includes his Republican enablers -- officials such as Mike Johnson, J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and (until recently) Marjorie Taylor Greene. Perhaps most importantly, it includes Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court, who has spent years seeking to enhance power in a "unitary executive." Hartmann writes:

These official lies about January 6 are laying the groundwork for the same kind of future for those of us who may oppose the Trump regime and its successors.

This isn’t just about salving Donald Trump’s fragile, 10-year-old ego. It’s also a setup to condition the public to accept the next time Republicans lose an election and respond with violent attacks.

The message isn’t subtle: if January 6 was “peaceful,” then January 6 is within the new norm and can — or even should — happen again. If police were the villains, then police can be ignored next time. If courts are corrupt, then their verdicts don’t count when they’re inconvenient to these new American fascists.

A democratic republic can survive policy mistakes and bad presidents; G-d knows we’ve had our share of both. What it can’t survive, though, is a government that looks straight into the camera and tells its people that violence didn’t happen when everyone watched it live.

In other words, this depraved new website isn’t just a lie: it’s an invitation.