Letters from an American - January 10, 2026

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

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January 10, 26. Yesterday, in an apparent attempt to regain control of the national narrative surrounding the deadly shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Vice President J.D. Vance led the administration in pushing a video of the shooting captured by the shooter himself, Jonathan Ross, on his cell phone. The video shows Ross getting out of a vehicle and walking toward a red SUV where Goods sits in the driver's seat. Sirens blare as he walks toward her. She smiles at him and says, That's fine, dude. I'm not mad at you. As Ross walks alongside the car, she repeats, I'm not mad at you.

As he reaches the back of the vehicle, another person, presumably Good's wife, Becca, says, Show your face. As he begins to record the vehicle's license plate, the same person says, that's okay we don't change our plates every morning, referring to stories that agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, switch out plates to make their vehicles hard to track. Just so you know, it'll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. Ross's camera pans up to show the person recording him on her cell phone. She continues, that's fine, US citizen, former f***ing veteran.

As she walks to the passenger, side door, she looks at him and says, you want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead. Another officer approaches the driver's side of the vehicle and says to Renee Good, out of the car. Get out of the f*** car.

As the passenger calmly reaches for the passenger side door handle, the police officer on the driver's side again says, get out of the car. Other videos indicate that he had then put his hand into the car and was trying to open the door. Good quite clearly turns the wheel hard away from the police officers to head down the street as the passenger yells, drive, baby, drive, drive. Someone says, whoa, as the car moves down the street. Ross's camera shows his face and then sways. Remember, he has been filming all this on his phone. There are three shots and the houses on the side of the street swing back into view on Ross's camera, indicating he did not drop it. As the car rolls up the street, Ross says

just before there is the sound of a smash. What is truly astonishing is that the administration thought this video would exonerate Ross and support the administration's insistence that he was under attack from a domestic terrorist trying to ram him with her car. The video was leaked to a right-wing news site, and Vance reposted it with the caption, What the press has done in lying about this innocent law enforcement officer is disgusting. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. The Department of Homeland Security reposted Vance's post. A senior editor of Lawfare Media, Eric Columbus, commented,

Do Vance and DHS think we can't actually watch the video? Multiple social media users noted that Good's last words to Ross were, That's fine, I'm not mad at you. While his to her, after he shot her in the face, were, The release of this damning video as an attempted exoneration reminds me overwhelmingly of the release of the video of the murder of Blackjogger Ahmad Arbery in February. February 2021 in an attempt of one of the murderers to prove they had acted in self-defense.

In that case, the district attorney for that circuit told police that the video showed self-defense and declined to prosecute. When the story wouldn't go away, one of the murderers apparently thought that everyone else would agree that the video exonerated the killers. His lawyer gave the video to a local radio station. The station took the video down within two. hours, but the public outcry over the horrific video meant the killers were arrested two days later. A jury convicted them, and they are now in prison, two for life without possibility of parole, one for life with the possibility of parole after 30 years, when he will be about 82. In the case of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, the murderers and their protectors were clearly so isolated in their own racist bubble.

they could not see how regular Americans would react to the video of them hunting down and shooting a jogger. In the case of the murder of Renee Good, the shooter and his protectors are clearly so isolated in their own authoritarian bubble. They cannot see how regular Americans would react to the video of a woman smiling at a masked agent and saying, That's fine, dude, I'm not mad at you. Only to have him shoot her in the face. and then spit out after he killed her. The thread that runs through both is the assumption that an American exercising their constitutional rights must submit,

without question, to a white man holding a gun. This is the larger meaning of federal agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol in U.S. cities. while they are attacking primarily people of color, the message they carry is directed at all Americans. You must do what the Trump administration and its loyalists demand. Another recording from the past few days

shows a federal agent walking toward a woman recording him. She tells him, shame on you. He answers, Listen, have you all not learned from the past couple of days? Have you not learned? She responds, Learn what? What's our lesson here?

What do you want us to learn? He begins following federal agents, and he knocks the phone out of her hand. Hours after Good's death, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Knoem appeared in Manhattan behind a podium emblazoned with the words, One of ours, all of yours. After doubling down on their false narrative,

the administration pulled 200 Customs and Border Patrol agents from a crackdown in Louisiana to send them to Minnesota, where administration officials already had deployed 2,000 federal agents, more than three times the number of police officers in Minneapolis. There they are cracking down, apparently indiscriminately. Yesterday, Gabe Wisnant of Newsweek reported that ICE has

detained four members of the Oglala Lakota Nation, a federally recognized tribal nation of the indigenous peoples who were in North America long before European settlers arrived. In November, Asera Mehta of the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, noted at the time, the administration replaced almost half of ICE leaders across the country with border patrol officers. Border Patrol, a sub-agency of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is the agency responsible for acting on President Donald J. Trump's policy of taking children from their parents during his first term, and it remains at the center of complaints of cruelty, racism, and violation of civil rights. This is the agency led by Greg Bovino and the one behind the attack on a Chicago apartment building,

led by agents who repelled into the building from a Black Hawk helicopter. Although ICE currently employs more than 20,000 people, it is looking to hire over 10,000 more with the help of the money Republicans put in their one big, beautiful bill act of July. That law tripled ICE's budget for enforcement and deportation to about $30 billion. dollars. On December 31st, Drew Harwell and Joyce Soyan Lee of the Washington Post reported that ICE was investing $100 million on what it called a wartime recruitment strategy to hire thousands of new officers. It planned to target gun rights supporters and military enthusiasts, as well as those who listen to

right-wing radio shows, directing ads to people who have gone to ultimately. fighting championship, or UFC, fights, or shopped for guns and tactical gear. It planned to send ads to the phone web browsers and social media feeds of people near military bases, NASCAR races, gun and trade shows, or college campuses, apparently not considering them the hotbeds of left-wing indoctrination, right-wing politicians claim. This afternoon, Kyle Cheney, Ben Johansson, and Gregory Zvernovsky of Politico reported that the day after goods murder, Nome quietly restricted the ability of members of Congress to conduct oversight of ICE facilities. The policy came out in court today after ICE officers denied Democratic Minnesota representatives Elon Omar,

Angie Craig and Kelly Morrison, entry to a detention facility in Minneapolis. Last month, a federal judge rejected a similar policy. Trump and his allies have singled out Minnesota in large part because of its large Somali-American population, represented in Congress by Omar, a lawmaker Trump has repeatedly attacked from a population Trump has called garbage. As Chabeli Karanza explained in 19th news, shortly after Christmas, right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video that he claimed showed daycare centers run by Somali Americans were taking money from the government without providing services. The video has been widely debunked. In 2019, a state investigation found fraud taking place in the child care system and charged a number of people. for defrauding the state.

After that, the state tightened oversight, and state investigators have conducted unannounced visits to the daycares Shirley hit in his videos, where they found normal operations. Shirley claimed fraud when the centers would not let him in, but child care centers lock their doors and obscure the windows for the safety of the children and would not let a strange man inside the facility to videotape.

But Trump used the frenzy to justify cutting $10 billion in anti-poverty funding to five states led by Democrats, California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, only to have a federal judge block his order yesterday. Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rawlins, promptly announced she was withholding $129 billion in federal funding from Minnesota, alleging fraud. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison responded, I will not allow you to take from Minnesotans in need. I'll see you in court. When Caitlin Collins of CNN asked Trump yesterday if he thought the FBI should be sharing information about the shooting of Renee Good with state officials,

as is normally the case, Trump responded, well, normally I would, but they're crooked officials. I mean, Minneapolis and Minnesota. What a beautiful place, but it's being destroyed. It's got an incompetent governor fool. I mean, he's a stupid person and it looks like the number could be $19 billion stolen from a lot of people, but largely people from Somalia. They buy their vote. They vote in a group. They buy their vote. They sell more Mercedes-Benzes in that area than almost. Can you imagine? You come over with no money, and then shortly thereafter, you're driving a Mercedes-Benz.

The whole thing is ridiculous. They're very corrupt people. It's a very corrupt state. I feel that I won Minnesota. I think I won it all three times. Nobody's won it for, since Richard won it many, many years ago. I won it all three times, in my opinion, and it's a corrupt state, a corrupt voting state, and the Republicans ought to get smart and demand on voter ID. They ought to demand maybe same-day voting and all of the other things that you have to have to safe election. But I won Minnesota three times that I didn't get credit for. I did so well in that state every time. The people were, they were crying every time after. That's a crooked state.

California's a crooked state. Many crooked states. We have a very, very dishonest voting system. Trump lost Minnesota in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Protesters took to the streets today across the United States to lament the death of Renee Good and demand an end to ICE brutality. At strength in numbers, G. Eliot Morris reported that ICE's approval rating has plummeted in the past year, from plus 16 to negative 14. The day ICE Agent Ross shot Renee Good, 52% of Americans disapproved of ice, while just 39% approved.

In February, 19% of Americans held a strongly unfavorable opinion of ICE, while to this. Today, 40% do. There is, Morris notes, a growing and intense, angry opposition to ICE across America. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.