01/09/26

Good morning! It’s Friday, January 9th.

National Law Enforcement Day

That is… quite the timing.

And now, the news.

Salt Lake City Shooting

-via NY Times

We start how we start here in America – with two dead and six others injured after a suspect, who is still at large, opened fire outside of a Mormon church on Wednesday.

Dozens were inside attending a funeral service at the time of the shooting.

The shooting is not believed to have been an attack against the religion.

Instead it was one of 56 reported shootings that happened in America on Wednesday, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Authorities are on the hunt for a suspect, as well as a motive.

Minnesota

-via AP News, Washington Post, NBC News, and NPR

And we continue on with yet another very American story.

A very American episode, all around, actually.

Minnesota. First, I want to clarify a few things now that there has been more, well, clarity from when I first reported on the death of 37-year-old Renee Good.

First, this started because she was trying to be a legal observer for her neighbors, who are immigrants. That’s what she was doing when she was murdered. She was standing up for her neighbors.

Kristi Noem says she blocked federal officers with her SUV.

I want you to hear me clearly. If you haven’t seen the video, listen to what I am telling you – she put her hand out of the window and waved to let another car go ahead of her. She was allowing them to pass before they got out of their car to stop her.

Do not let them try and tell you that you cannot believe your own eyes.

She told them they could pass. Instead, an ICE officer got out of the car and lunged toward her jar, trying to open the door. Wouldn’t you also try to leave? Knowing this ICE agent had no right to detain you (or, frankly, even if he did), if a stranger lunged at your car and tried to pull the door open… would you allow it to happen?

It’s a miracle she didn’t slam on the gas.

She didn’t.

She started to back up so that she can responsibly turn her wheel and get away.

That’s when the ICE officer stepped in front of her car.

The ICE agent stepped in front of her. She was trying to leave. He had plenty of time to move away from the slow-moving car. And I’ll tell you something incredible. He did.

He fired once through the windshield as he was moving to the side.

A second later and fired two more shots – he was on the side of the vehicle at that time.

At that moment, the car continues to accelerate.

She has been shot three times. At least once in the face. It’s likely, at that point, she was already brain-dead. It’s almost impossible to believe, even if she were still alive, that anything was other than a lifeless foot hitting the gas.

Not everyone needs to watch this video.

Every single person who believes that this was anything other than a police officer killing, in cold blood, a woman who posed no threat whatsoever, must.

The agent who shot her, by the way, was involved in a prior incident in June when he tried to get a man to roll down his window. When he didn’t, the agent pulled his Taser, shattered, the rear driver’s side window, and reached in to unlock the door.

When that happened, the driver drove away, and the agent was dragged about 100 yards.

I’m sure that was a genuinely scary incident. He said himself, in the court documents, that he feared for his life.

But just seven months later, he took actions to step in front of a car and then shot and killed the driver. You can’t see him in the video at first. Which means he was far enough away, had to walk far enough into frame, that if it was self-defense, as he claims, he had plenty of time to stop.

I just can’t stress that point enough… he wasn’t in frame when the video started.

He made an effort to get to that car. He was in no danger.

He chose to be where he was and he chose to do what he did.

Kristi Noem, who deserves no respect whatsoever. Who has no training for her position. Who stole 10% of donations from the nonprofit American Resolve Policy Fund and put it into her personal LLC in 2023, pressured officials into giving her daughter a real estate appraiser license (because it was originally denied) when she was governor, and without any evidence whatsoever, accused tribal leaders in South Dakota of profiting from drug cartels, called what happened on Wednesday morning an act of domestic terrorism.

And to be clear, she’s saying that Renee Good was, in this case, the terrorist.

The one that the ICE agent killed. Murdered.

On Wednesday, the Minneapolis Police Chief said the FBI and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension would work together to investigate what happened.

By Wednesday night the US Attorney’s Office had reversed that decision, blocking the state from investigating the murder done on their streets, to their citizen.

Because, not that it matters, but she was, in fact, a citizen.

And maybe it will make a difference, make people understand that this can happen to anyone, that she was a white woman.

She was also a wife and a mother of three.

Yesterday when reports said it happened in front of a family member? It was her wife… she was murdered in front of her wife.

We know this because one of the videos, taken after the shooting, shows her sitting on the curb crying and saying: “That’s my wife, I don’t know what to do!”

As protests continue, in an unconnected incident that still has more questions than answers as of this recording… two people were shot and wounded in Portland Oregon by Border Patrol agents.

Their conditions are unknown.

A spokesperson for Homeland Security, however, says the driver "weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents."

Where have we heard that before?

He also said they were affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He offered zero evidence.

Where have we seen that before?

So which is it? Did you want to murder them for being here illegally and committing a crime no more severe than a parking ticket? Or did you want to send them to a torture prison in El Salvador for the non-crime of being Venezuelan?

For what it’s worth, the Border Patrol is in Portland because Trump is planning to place ICE with BPD in some places. Why? He prefers that BPD is more aggressive.

Though it sounds like ICE is plenty aggressive.

Governor Walz has authorized the National Guard to get staged and ready to support state and law enforcement, though he stated that protests have stayed peaceful.

And please god let that stay the case. Because not unlike when the National Guard came here to Los Angeles… we are a tinder box about to explode. Now more so than even then. And it’s Minnesota, which Trump has been targeting for a while now.

He wants something to go wrong.

He wants to invoke the Insurrection Act.  He always has.

He wants to overtake other countries – why on earth would anyone be naive enough to think he wouldn’t want to overtake this one?

And that’s it. That’s the news.

Look. It’s not. Not by a long shot.

The Senate advanced a war powers resolution that will block the president from using armed forces against, or within, Venezuela without Congress. Four republicans crossed the aisle and voted with Democrats to make it happen.

Across the Capitol, in the House, 17 House Republicans voted with the Dems to extend the Affordable Care Act tax subsidies for three years. It now heads to the Senate, where its possibility of passing is more questionable.

And it’s Friday, and sometimes when we have weeks like this one, I really hate to leave you feeling like… well, I guess I don’t know how you feel, but I know how I feel, and it’s not great.

But I’m sorry, I’m just not going to do that this time.

If you look like me, (if you’re watching this podcast with your ears not your eyes I am… so so white) you have an obligation to stay angry. If you’re not angry, and instead you’re sad. I do get that. Feel whatever you need to feel.

As long as angry is in there too.

The president is on a white nationalist mission. America first. And for a while, it was only if the America looked like… well looked like Stephen Miller which is terrifying because he’s afraid of garlic and the sun, and can’t see himself in a mirror. But in general – white people. That’s what he wants, he wants more white people.

He has said literally exactly that.

But now that’s not even good enough. Now you have to be the right kind of white person. She was following all of the rules. A good little white woman… and that still wasn’t enough in Trump’s America. Not quite.

I’m not trying to make you scared. You need to be mad.

I’m not telling you that you need to watch a million videos about this or keep the news on 24/7. I would suggest the opposite, in fact.

But I’m saying: stay loud. Stay in it.

Do not let this administration lie about what happened. They will, but that means we cannot stop telling the truth. Believe your own eyes.

And I don’t have a clever way to say it, I just want to get to the absolute and indisputable truth of… I’m proud of you.