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Heavy Caturday Reads

Posted: January 10, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , |5 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

By Lesley Ann Ivory

A couple of days ago, historian Garrett Graff posted a powerful essay on his Substack Doomsday Scenario: The physical weight of Trumpism.

One constant theme of conversations I’ve had over the last year has been the physical heaviness people feel in Trump’s America. I certainly felt it yesterday in the wake of that horrific murder — there’s nothing else to call it — of a mother by an out-of-control ICE officer in Minneapolis….

To me, there’s actually a simple explanation for that heaviness: It’s the weight of the shift from “zero to non-zero.” There are so many aspects of our daily life that we’d never had to weigh before; so many new possible horrors that we have to carry in our minds each day. We forget how much of the basic fabric of our country has been altered in the space of just a year, how many of our freedoms have been impinged, and how many things we took for granted that now we can’t.

Before last year, there was — effectively — a zero percent chance that as a US resident walking the streets, regardless of immigration status, you’d be swept up by masked secret police and deported to a foreign torture gulag.

Now that chance is at least non-zero.

Before last year, if you were a dedicated federal employee there was a zero percent chance your department, bureau, or agency would be closed over the course of the weekend, with decades of work by thousands of people, who had carefully stewarded taxpayer dollars to accomplish a mission authorized and supported by bipartisan congresses across decades tossed in the “woodchipper” before any had the chance to object, dooming millions of the world’s most vulnerable to die in the years to come to feed the ego of a single tech oligarch.

Now that chance is at least non-zero.

Before last year, if you were a daycare worker, there was — effectively — a zero percent chance that immigration agents (or right-wing influencers) would barge into the safe space you had worked so hard to create havoc and, in some cases, do physical violence.

Now that chance is at least non-zero.

Before last year, if you were an immigrant parent without a criminal record, there was — effectively — a zero percent chance that dropping off your child at school would lead to your detention and immediate removal from your country.

Now that chance is at least non-zero.

Before last year, if you were a graduate student, professor, or medical researcher working on a long-term federally-funded study, one that had gone through the interminable approval processes and started up to help lives and advance the frontiers of our collective knowledge, you didn’t have to worry your funding would disappear overnight — that you’d be out of a job, your months or years of research thrown into the trash, your own professional trajectory destroyed and the lives of your research subjects upended in a matter of hours or a few days. Similarly, if you were a university administrator, you didn’t have to wake up each morning wondering if the federal government has, without warning or process, canceled the visas of your students.

The list goes on. Graff provides an encyclopedic description of Trump’s cruel, evil actions over in the first year of his second term. I hope you’ll go read all of them. More examples:

Before last year, if you were an American, there was effectively a zero percent chance that you’d wake up to the news that historic parts of the White House itself were being destroyed without warning or consultation to feed the president’s ego.

Now that chance is much more than non-zero….

Before last year, if you criticized the president, there was a zero percent chance that the president would demand you be criminally prosecuted and proceed to fire anyone who refused until he found some flunky willing to indict you on kangaroo court charges.

Now that chance is at least non-zero….

If you were a federal judge, you knew that threats might come with the position, but there was a zero chance that the President of the United States would single you out for threats and encourage supporters to attack you for doing your job. Nor did you need to worry whether the US government officials appearing before you on behalf of the Justice Department would ignore your legally-binding court orders and lie to you in court.

Now, in both instances, that chance is at least non-zero.

And then there’s this week’s other big news: Before last year, if you were a NATO ally and partner of the United States, you never had to worry that one day the United States would begin, for seemingly no reason whatsoever, formulating military plans to seize your sovereign territory.

By Sandra biermann

Not all of these changes and shifts are equal in importance, surely. Some are abstract, others very much tangible. Some personal, some communal. Surely, also, some of these shifts began to unfold before Trump returned to power — although in many cases his rise accelerated or encouraged the shift — and unfortunately some communities and populations have long had reasons to fear government in various forms or question the “protection” of the police, but never have Americans collectively experienced anything like the accumulation of mental weight we have in this last year.

All that weight is piled upon all that we also accumulated in 2020, from Covid to George Floyd to January 6th — the last, also disastrous year of another Trump presidency — and all that other mental weight we’ve accumulated that comes from the rising fear and collective understanding that because of GOP policies, far-right culture and media, and a nation that has lost its collective mind, you cannot count on being safe in the places where we should feel safest — synagogues, churches, schools, universities, offices, and more — and that when you kiss your children and send them to school, you can’t guarantee that they will come home at the end of the day.

That heaviness you feel, that drag on your mental health, that drain on your emotional energy and lethargy in the face of world events, like yesterday, is real. We are all carrying a lot of new weight in the era of Trumpism.

It’s the weight of non-zero.

As it turns out, that simple switch from zero to non-zero — even if it any or all of the above is still infinitesimally unlikely, it is no longer effectively zero. And that tiniest bit of switch, that binary shift from 0 to greater than zero, turns out to be something that we can all feel in our daily lives.

Before last year, if you were a mom, with a glovebox full of stuffed animals, driving your SUV through a peaceful residential street, eager to see your six-year-old child at the end of the day — a wife with no criminal record who had committed no federal crimes, not being sought by any authorities anywhere — a poet who cared about your neighbors — there was, effectively, a zero percent chance you had to worry about being shot in the face by masked, ill-trained, aggressive federal officers who would then pull their guns on a doctor who tried to help you and let you die in the street.

Now that chance is at least non-zero.

I’ve quoted a lot of the piece, but the list is much longer that what I’ve shared here. When you read the list of outrages all at once, it makes sense that we feel so overwhelmed. I really wonder if my psyche can survive the next 3 years.

The News as usual is endless, but I’m going to focus on the ICE story today.

I’m sure everyone has seen the videos of the murder in Minneapolis, including the latest one that was recorded by the murderer himself, now identified as Jonathan Ross. I’ll just share this brief summary from Ellie Quinlan Houghtalinig at The New Republic: “F*cking B*tch”: What ICE Agents Did Right After Minnesota Shooting.

A newly released camera perspective of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis has shed additional light on the moments leading up to Renee Nicole Good’s death. [You can watch the video at the link.]

The previously unseen cellphone footage, obtained and published by Allen Analysis Newsroom, depicts a federal agent’s vantage point of the lethal encounter, and captures audio of at least one ICE agent calling Good a “fucking bitch” after they shot and killed her.

The exchange, as captured in the new video, begins with a 360 degree shot of Good’s red Honda Pilot, with the agent walking from the passenger side to the front to the rear of the SUV, presumably documenting the vehicle and its license plates. In doing so, the agent filming captures video of Good’s dog in the backseat, his large, black head hanging out of the open window.

As the agent passes in front of the driver’s side window, Good can be seen and heard telling him: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”

“I’m not mad at you,” she shouts again as he walks behind her car.

The agent’s masked reflection is caught in the glass of the backseat windows as he moves away.

Another woman—presumably Good’s wife, Rebecca Brown Good—is filming the agent while standing next to the rear of the SUV. Her voice can be heard over a long shot of the vehicle’s license plate.

“Show your face,” she said. “It’s OK, we don’t change our plates every morning, so it’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. U.S. citizen, former fucking veteran—disabled veteran. You want to come at us? I say you go and get yourself some lunch, big boy.”

Someone can then be heard telling Good to “get out of the fucking car,” when she reverses and then pushes the vehicle forward. As she does so, several shots can be heard. The image loses focus. When the camera stabilizes, Good’s car can be seen careening away.

“Fucking bitch,” an agent said.

Read discussion of the video at the TNR link.

Also from The New Republic: New Details Emerge on ICE Agent Who Shot a Woman in Minnesota, by Edith Olmstead.

Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good, reportedly had a history of escalating arrests with violent tactics.

Ross, a 10-year law enforcement veteran, was injured in June during the chaotic attempted arrest of Roberto Carlos Muñoz, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala with prior convictions for criminal sexual conduct, who drove off during a traffic stop in Bloomington, Minnesota.

by Laura Seeley

Ross and another agent pulled in front of Muñoz’s vehicle to force him to stop. The two officers exited their vehicle and aimed their firearms at Muñoz, demanding he provide documentation, which he did, according to the affidavit. When the officers demanded that Muñoz roll down his window, he refused. Ross pulled out his taser, which he aimed at Muñoz’s chest, and the officers warned Muñoz that they would break the window if he did not comply.

Ross used a spring-loaded window punch to break the rear driver’s side window, and reached in to try and unlock the driver’s side door. Muñoz put the car in drive and dragged Ross roughly 100 yards, while Ross fired his taser “at least twice,” according to the affidavit. The agent later testified that he fired his taser 10 times.

Eventually, Ross was shaken loose from the window, falling into the street. “The agent suffered serious lacerations on both arms, which required 33 stitches in total to close,” the affidavit said.

“I was fearing for my life. I knew I was gonna get drug,” Ross said, according to a transcript of his court testimony from December. “And the fact I couldn’t get my arm out, I didn’t know how long I would be drugged. So I was kind of running with the vehicle.”

The claim that an officer was “fearing for their life” is a common phrase used by officers to justify their use of deadly force—and has become a familiar refrain for ICE agents who claim protesters’ vehicles were “weaponized” against them.

Is it just me, or does it seem kind of stupid to put your arm into a car that is very likely to start moving? I have to say this guy does sound stupid: using “drug” and “drugged” instead of dragged. And why was a guy back on the street if, according to JD Vance probably had PTSD from the previous incident?

Complaining about a CNN headline that described the incident, Vance said: “What that headline leaves out is the fact that that very ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car six months ago, 34 stitches in his leg, so you think maybe he’s a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile?”

Setting aside the fact that it was Ross’s arm, not his leg, that was injured, Vance’s remarks also absurdly suggest that any officer hurt in the line of duty has a free pass to remain in the field and shoot dead civilians if they get scared. That’s exactly why desk duty exists, right?

A piece about Renee Good from Literary Hub by Jonny Diamond: Renee Nicole Good, murdered by ICE, was a prize-winning poet. Here’s that poem.

Renee Nicole Good, 37, mother to a six-year-old boy, was murdered earlier today by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, a few blocks from her home. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune:

[An ICE agent] shot and killed a woman in south Minneapolis during a morning confrontation between community members and federal officers […] Several residents of the area who witnessed the scene said agents were ordering the woman out of the vehicle. A video showed agents around the vehicle as the driver reversed and then pulled forward. One agent appeared to fire multiple rounds into the car.

By Vladimir Dunjic

The bio from a now-private Instagram account belonging to Good describes her as a “Poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado; experiencing Minneapolis, MN.” In 2020, when she went by Renée Nicole Macklin, she won the prestigious Academy of American Poets Prize for a poem called “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” [….]

This is murder in broad daylight by the Trump administration, obvious and brutal. And though each senseless act of violence committed by the state upon its citizens echoes the thousands that have gone before, we cannot become numb to the particular (and intensifying) depravities of this administration.

So if the violence of the deportations, and the crackdowns, and the cuts, and the raids, and the air strikes, haven’t been enough for you, let something so simple and evil as the daytime execution of a poet move you to action.

Here is the full poem from Poets.org:

On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs

by Renée Nicole Macklin

 

i want back my rocking chairs,

 

solipsist sunsets,

& coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches.

 

i’ve donated bibles to thrift stores

(mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp—

the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the meaty hands of zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind):

 

remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures; they burned the hairs inside my nostrils,

& salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms.

under clippings of the moon at two forty five AM I study&repeat

ribosome

endoplasmic—

lactic acid

stamen

 

at the IHOP on the corner of powers and stetson hills—

 

i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to anymore, maybe my gut—

maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.

 

it’s the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge that used to sit, a cloth against fevered forehead.

can i let them both be? this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom

 

 

now i can’t believe—

that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—

all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:

life is merely

to ovum and sperm

and where those two meet

and how often and how well

and what dies there.

You’ve Got a Friend, Paul Lovering

Minnesota Public Radio published a statement from Renee Good’s wife Becca Good: Renee Macklin Good’s wife says she nurtured kindness.

Here’s the full statement from Becca Good:

First, I want to extend my gratitude to all the people who have reached out from across the country and around the world to support our family.

This kindness of strangers is the most fitting tribute because if you ever encountered my wife, Renee Nicole Macklin Good, you know that above all else, she was kind. In fact, kindness radiated out of her.

Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.

Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow. Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.

Like people have done across place and time, we moved to make a better life for ourselves. We chose Minnesota to make our home. Our whole extended road trip here, we held hands in the car while our son drew all over the windows to pass the time and the miles.

What we found when we got here was a vibrant and welcoming community, we made friends and spread joy. And while any place we were together was home, there was a strong shared sense here in Minneapolis that we were looking out for each other. Here, I had finally found peace and safe harbor. That has been taken from me forever.

We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness. Renee lived this belief every day. She is pure love. She is pure joy. She is pure sunshine.

On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns.

Renee leaves behind three extraordinary children; the youngest is just six years old and already lost his father. I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.

We thank you for the privacy you are granting our family as we grieve. We thank you for ensuring that Renee’s legacy is one of kindness and love. We honor her memory by living her values: rejecting hate and choosing compassion, turning away from fear and pursuing peace, refusing division and knowing we must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love.

That’s all I have for you today. Please take care of yourselves.

 

 

5 Comments on “Heavy Caturday Reads”

  1. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    January 10, 2026 at 1:04 pm

    Mike Fox at MSNOW: Renee Good wasn’t the first person shot in her car by ICE. The justification followed a familiar script.

    Two thousand federal agents descended on Minneapolis on Jan. 6, 2026, an urban occupation framed as the “largest immigration operation ever.” By the next morning, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was dead, fatally shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross, MS NOW reported.

    In the shadows of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation blitz, a lethal pattern has emerged. Since July, immigration agents have shot at least six people behind the wheel of a vehicle (two of them fatal, including Wednesday’s shooting). In each instance, the playbook is the same: the agent claims self-defense, asserting they “feared for their life” as a vehicle was “weaponized” against them. 

    Yet the Department of Homeland Security’s use-of-force policy, which ICE is bound by, suggests agents are directed not to fire upon moving vehicles except in instances where deadly force is authorized. But the policy forbids the use of deadly force unless agents have a “reasonable belief” of an imminent threat of death or serious injury. Crucially, the policy cautions agents to avoid “unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.”

    Whether the use of lethal force in this case was lawful or unlawful should be decided by a jury in a civil damages case (and perhaps also a criminal prosecution of the agent who pulled the trigger, if warranted by the facts). But for the victims of constitutional violations by federal agents, the courthouse doors are effectively bolted shut.

    While the facts of Good’s death are still being determined, the DHS machinery is already in motion, churning out a narrative of “domestic terrorism” to sanitize the killing. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “Our officer followed his training, did exactly what he’s been taught to do in that situation,” while DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed Good “weaponized her vehicle” to run over officers.

    Reply
    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      January 10, 2026 at 2:49 pm

      There’s a huge list of them from all over. It’s a practice and a pattern.

      I’ve been making French onion soup today. Thinly slicing onions and then carmelizing them in melted butter is quite its own process. Part of a stinky and tear-inducing, the rest a lot of stirring. Then letting all the herbs and beef bone broth soak in. I’m in the process of smelling it now which is almost better than eating it!!!

      Hope everything is okay.

      Reply
  2. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    January 10, 2026 at 1:08 pm

    WMUR 9 ABC: ICE, immigration officials have shot at people at least 16 times in Trump second term.

    Renee Nicole Good, who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, was at least the 15th person fired upon by immigration officials in President Donald Trump’s second term.

    Now, a shooting in Portland, Oregon, by Customs and Border Patrol on Thursday marks the 16th shooting incident by federal immigration officials. Two were injured.

    Those 16 shooting incidents have resulted in four deaths — including Good — and at least seven injuries, according to a Get the Facts Data Team analysis of data collected by The Trace.

    In another 15 incidents, federal immigration agents held people at gunpoint but didn’t shoot. Fourteen times immigration agents have fired nonlethal weapons — including tasers, rubber bullets and pepper balls — at people.

    These numbers are likely an undercount, according to The Trace, as not all shootings are publicly reported.

    Three of the four deadly shootings by immigration officials have occurred in the past month. Immigration officials include agents from ICE, Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security.

    On New Year’s Eve, an off-duty ICE official shot and killed a man who witnesses say was firing a rifle into the air in celebration. The Department of Homeland Security has said the off-duty agent responded to an active shooter situation.

    On Dec. 11, a Border Patrol agent fatally shot a Mexican citizen who federal authorities say was fleeing capture. About a month earlier, an immigration agent shot and killed a 38-year-old from Mexico during a traffic stop after the man resisted arrest and dragged an officer with his car.

    Reply
  3. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    January 10, 2026 at 1:12 pm

    WBEZ Chicago: ICE shooting in Minneapolis echoes what feds did in Chicago.

    Wednesday’s shooting of an unarmed Minneapolis woman by an immigration enforcement agent resembles two recent Chicago-area incidents. And the U.S. Department of Homeland Security response for Minneapolis follows the agency’s playbook for Chicago. WBEZ reporter Chip Mitchell has reviewed hundreds of incidents that took place during the federal government’s deportation blitz in the Chicago area this past fall. He spoke with WBEZ host Melba Lara.

    Below is a transcript of Mitchell’s interview with Lara…

    Melba Lara: The woman who was fatally shot Wednesday, Renee Nicole Good, is not the first person killed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since Trump took office. An agent shot and killed a suburban Chicago man. Tell us about that case.

    Chip Mitchell: His name was Silverio Villegas González. He was 38 and originally from Mexico. He was a father and the caretaker of his two children. Like many people caught up in the deportation campaign, he had no serious criminal record, just traffic offenses. On September 12, he’d just dropped off one of the kids at school. ICE agents in Franklin Park, a suburb west of Chicago, tried to stop his car. They were on both sides of it. Villegas backed up, then started moving forward. Before he got too far, one of the agents shot him at close range. And that’s similar to what we saw Wednesday in Minneapolis.

    Lara: What did the Trump administration say about Villegas’s death?

    Mitchell: Right after the shooting, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported that Villegas had driven his car at agents, struck one of them and dragged him “a significant distance.” That statement said the agent was “seriously injured” and that an agent opened fire in fear for his life. But none of the available videos show Villegas driving at agents. Some footage first obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times shows the agent who killed Villegas telling local police he was “dragged a little bit” and it was “nothing major.”

    Lara: OK, that’s the fatal shooting by agents in the Chicago-area deportation blitz. There’s also a nonfatal shooting.

    Mitchell: Yes. The person hit was Marimar Martínez, 30, a U.S. citizen. On October 4, she was in her car on the Southwest Side, honking and yelling at U.S. Border Patrol agents in an SUV. At one point, the vehicles were side-by-side and collided. One agent, Charles Exum, got out and shot Martínez five times, leaving her with seven wounds. Soon thereafter, a Homeland Security spokesperson said agents had been “assaulted” and “rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.” The feds brought criminal charges against Martínez and a man involved in a collision more than an hour later. What happened next was really something: Exum, the agent who’d shot Martínez, sent some text messages to a group of friends. He was bragging about the shooting. Within a couple months, the U.S. attorney’s office here in Chicago dropped the charges against Martínez.

    Reply

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