What Minnesota Tells Us About America’s Future

On Jan. 7, Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed inside her vehicle by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis. Between Good and the officer who killed her were not only bullets, but two incompatible visions of the United States: one that sees protest as a democratic duty, and another that treats dissent as a threat to be neutralized. Good took her last breath less than a mile from where George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, uttered his last words—“I can’t breathe”—as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck in 2020. For a brief moment in the protests that followed, the country appeared to stand at the edge of a reckoning that promised accountability, restraint in policing, and a more inclusive understanding of who democracy is meant to protect.  That vision provoked a fierce backlash. It is that backlash—hardened, organized, and now fully empowered—that I believe defines President Donald Trump’s second term, advancing not through persuasion, but through force against anything deemed oppositional. Good was a white 37-year-old mother of three, described by her loved ones as “one of the kindest people,” “compassionate,” and a “devoted Christian.” She was one of countless Americans moved to protest the detention of their neighbors and the  deployment of ICE agents to their communities—ordinary citizens waking up to the subtle authoritarian encroachment that surrounds us, unknowingly putting a target on our backs every time we leave the front door.  We don’t know whether Good locked eyes with Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot her from close range. But if they did meet each other’s gaze, they would have been staring into the reflection of two very different Americas. Trump has repeatedly referred to immigrants as “criminals,” migrants as “garbage,” Democrats as “un-American,” and protesters as “Antifa.” At the same time, he has painted dissenters as “the radical left,” claiming it is “threatening, assaulting, and targeting” his officers—leaving no room for debate and quashing what remains of the country’s democratic pulse. It is no surprise then that, in Good, ICE appears to have seen a “domestic terrorist,” just as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin saw Floyd as a threat. The only difference between then and now isn’t just the impunity that has found a shield behind ICE’s black masks, but the ruthlessness behind the violence. In the aftermath of Good’s death, Vice President J.D. Vance publicly defended the ICE agent’s actions as self-defense. Good, who appears never to have been charged with anything more serious than a traffic violation, also seems to have left her home that afternoon with the intention of defending America as a legal observer, not an adversary. In many ways, what happened in Minneapolis fits squarely into Trump’s playbook. From Los Angeles to Chicago to Portland, recent confrontations have escalated into unrest, violence, and death. According to The New York Times, Good’s killing marks the ninth shooting by an ICE officer since September. It’s also the continuation of a long history of Americans dying at the hands of law enforcement. After Floyd’s murder in 2020, an estimated 15 to 26 million people took to the streets during Trump’s first term in what may have been the largest protest movement in U.S. history. This time, a more emboldened administration appears to be betting that both fear and a show of force will be enough to quell a movement that has become fragmented and disillusioned through the years. Last summer, in reference to protests against ICE in Los Angeles, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared, “We are not going to let a repeat of 2020 happen.” The protesters who flooded the streets of Minneapolis, Louisville, Memphis, Los Angeles, and other cities in 2020 demanding social justice are now confronting a modern, militarized police state that I believe is moving towards its imperialist roots and away from its democratic endeavor. In this nation, as this week’s events tragically demonstrated, everyone—not just Black and Brown people or other marginalized communities—can be victims. This week it was Renee Nicole Good. Tomorrow, the chilling message seems to be: it could be you.  And even with this understanding, just hours after witnessing the apparent ease in which an ICE agent can pull a trigger, thousands of protestors still descended into public spaces across the country, refusing to disappear quietly. My fear is about what happens next. If the chokehold is strong enough, a nation experiences a loss of consciousness, followed by permanent damage and, eventually, the death of the country as we know it.  But if Minneapolis has shown us anything, it is this: Some Americans will continue to fight for one another until their very last breath.