Adam Serwer writes:

There’s a lot we don’t know about the shooting of Renee Nicole Good, who was killed yesterday by federal immigration agents deployed to Minnesota. But in the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, one thing became immediately clear: The Trump administration was lying about what happened.

Shortly after news began circulating about the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement on X that “rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and the White House adviser Stephen Miller also described the incident as “domestic terrorism,” while President Donald Trump posted on his social network that Good “ran over the ICE Officer.”

Videos of the incident, taken by bystanders, show almost every element of McLaughlin’s statement to be false. There were no riots at the scene, and no rioters. The vehicle appears to be driving away from the armed federal agents, not toward them, and no one was run over. And there is no evidence that terrorism of any kind was involved. After the shooting, federal agents then reportedly prevented a bystander who identified himself as a physician from tending to Good. “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told reporters. “Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly, that is bullshit.”

A perverse absurdity of American law and culture, however, is that agents of the state empowered to use lethal force are rarely held to high standards for doing so. Good’s reasons for being in the neighborhood are not publicly known yet. What the witness sees, though, is simple: A scared woman is shot dead by an armed agent of the state. The Trump administration’s position is also simple: She deserved it. “Do you think this officer was wrong in defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over?” Vice President J. D. Vance posted.

Administration officials’ indifference to facts, to due process, to the dignity of the deceased, and to basic human decency is remarkable. They could have pleaded for patience and said the incident would be investigated—the standard response in such circumstances. They could have even done so while defending the federal agents they have deployed to terrorize areas they perceive as Democratic Party enclaves. Instead, they proceeded to make ostentatiously dishonest statements that they knew would be contradicted by the video evidence available to anyone with eyes to see it. The federal government now speaks with the voice of the right-wing smear machine: partisan, dishonest, and devoted to vilifying Trump’s perceived enemies rather than informing the public. Good’s mother, partner, and children have to cope not only with their unfathomable loss, but with a campaign designed to justify her killing. [Continue reading…]