An endless cycle of violence

Another violent death in Minneapolis lays bare the nation’s fractured politics

Analysis by Stephen Collinson

It took just a few seconds and a violent, unnecessary death to drag a snowy residential street in Minneapolis into America’s new age of political brutality.

Soon, all of America was sharing the horror, as bystander video of an ICE agent’s point-blank shooting of 37-year-old American Renee Nicole Good flashed onto millions of mobile device screens.

The grainy scene — with its older homes, ice underfoot and green-clad government agents closing on a civilian car — seemed a little unreal. It evoked old news footage from a repressive Soviet state more than the land of the free.

But the killing quickly became the latest explosive incident in the second term of Donald Trump that is dragging politics to a bitter breaking point.

Minneapolis’ Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey, plainly outraged by a killing just a day into a federal crackdown sending 2,000 federal agents to his city, told ICE to “get the fuck out.”

But Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem mobilized to define their own misleading narrative. “It was an act of domestic terrorism,” Noem said. A more conventional public servant might have promised inquiries, offered solace and called for calm.

Trump was more inflammatory. He posted on social media that a woman seen screaming in a video was a “professional agitator” and that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.” None of the available video is so unequivocal.

It was left to Good’s mother to try to reclaim her humanity. Donna Ganger told the Minneapolis Star Tribune her daughter was “not part of anything like that at all” and was compassionate, forgiving and affectionate.

An endless cycle of violence

This was the latest sickening example of violence arising from politics that is draining America’s morale and marks a savage chapter in modern history. It follows two assassination attempts against Trump in 2024; the killings of a beloved Minnesota Democratic lawmaker, Melissa Hortman, and her husband last year; the alleged murder of a health insurance executive on a New York street in 2024; and the abhorrent gunning-down of MAGA hero Charlie Kirk in September.

The lesson of past horrors is that politics may thwart national closure.

Normally, an investigation would be expected to probe the mindset and decisions of the officer who killed Good. It might examine whether the force used was excessive or whether current rules of engagement with suspects encourages escalation. But Trump and Noem may have already prejudged any federal inquiries.

At a later news conference in Minneapolis, Noem didn’t leaven her initial assessment. But she said: “Any loss of life is a tragedy, and I think all of us can agree that in this situation, it was preventable.”

Vice President JD Vance posted on X that “you can accept that this woman’s death is a tragedy while acknowledging it’s a tragedy of her own making.” Vance also said that he, Trump and the entire administration were behind ICE agents.

This was only the latest encounter between citizens and the ICE agents who’ve fanned into major cities. Often wearing masks, the agents sometimes dragnet American citizens as well as undocumented migrants. Social media videos show car rammings by federal agents or pro-immigration activists. ICE officials told CNN in October that attacks against agents rose 1,000% last year. Noem said one officer involved on Wednesday was dragged by the car of an “anti-ICE rioter” in June.

This all poses a searching question: Is an immigration crackdown that Trump insists will make American safer in fact making it far more dangerous?

Putting the particulars of Wednesday’s incident aside, it’s possible that any American, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, is in peril. A a few wrong choices by either party in the heat of the moment could spell disaster.

Is that level of danger and risk really tolerable in a democratic society? And is America beginning to resemble some authoritarian states where lives of individuals are a trifle compared to the political ambitions of strongmen? Trump has, after all, declared that America is under “invasion” by foreign migrants and has authorized warlike tactics in response.

It’s too early to assess lasting political impact, if any, from Wednesday’s shooting.

But the killing took place only a mile from the street corner where another bystander’s video was filmed before going viral and creating a mass movement: that of George Floyd, who died with a police officer’s knee on his neck in 2020.

One reason Trump was elected in 2024 was that millions of Americans believed that former President Joe Biden lost control of the southern border. Trump has honored a pledge to stem undocumented migration. And a country that fails in enforcement won’t make its people feel safe.

But horrible scenes like the one in Minnesota on Wednesday seem far removed from Trump’s campaign pledge to first go after criminals, rapists, drug traffickers and the worst of the worst. Looking back in months to come, the Minnesota shooting could appear as a turning point when more voters in a midterm election year rejected his excesses.

Political consequences may, however, be in the eye of the beholder. Administration critics will see state-authorized violence, repression and due process being crushed. Supporters may find enough in the videos to argue that the officer concerned opened fire because he felt his life was at risk. And advocates of Trump’s policy will highlight murders committed by illegal migrants.

But Trump’s critics say the risks of misunderstandings, violent encounters and innocents being harmed mean his ordering of thousands of armed agents onto the streets is reckless.

“When do things stop being about politics and start being about actual human decency?” Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith said to reporters. “We can all hypothesize on what all of their political reasons are. But meanwhile, a woman died being shot in her car, and everything that they’re doing is making it worse and not better.”

If the crackdown’s intent is at least partly performative, public safety risks become even more questionable.

“I have been worried – not that federal law enforcement activity was happening, but how that enforcement was taking place in the city,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “And I have specifically said I’ve been worried we would have a tragedy in our community.”

But former Vice President Mike Pence told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that “today should be a cautionary tale that people ought not to, as reports in this case suggest … be harassing ICE officers.”

‘We can’t give them what they want’

Good’s death came against a backdrop of Trump’s dystopian attempts to portray Democratic-run cities as hellholes where migrant gangs run riot and regular Americans fear for their lives. He’s used such depictions to justify draconian tactics like the dispatch of the National Guard into some cities last year.

The federal government is also currently locked in a clash with Minnesota over claims in conservative media that Somali-run child care centers have fraudulently taken funding earmarked for low-income families. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, just announced he was dropping his reelection bid over the controversy.

Minnesota Democratic leaders fear any unrest in protest at Wednesday’s events could result in a more intense crackdown.

Frey dismissed administration depictions of the shooting as “garbage” but asked Minnesotans not to give Trump a pretext for an even greater show of force.

Walz had a similar message. “They want a show. We can’t give it to them. We cannot,” he said. “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.”

By nightfall on Portland Avenue, where Minnesota skyscrapers loom in the distance, residents held a vigil for yet another American victim drawn to their death by political forces that, once unleashed, cannot be tamed.