The intersection of Foothill Boulevard and Indian Hill today between the hours of 12:30pm and 2:00pm
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Juan Matute
CCRC
Sunday, January 11, 2026
Something to Know - 11 January
Seriously horrible events in the past few days have transcended tales of corruption and high level grifts by the Trump administration, and are exposing the raw fabric of an authoritarian regime, full Monty. We are now seeing our federal officials all lined up and lying through their collective teeth trying to convince us that what we have seen happen in Minneapolis is in fact contrary to what our senses may have seen. An American citizen observing an ICE raid was murdered by a gang of thugs. The entire Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the executive branch is defending the murder of an innocent civilian by smear tactics and coverup. We now realize, or should, that we are to the point that we have no trust in the officers that we have elected to serve us, and that we are losing our rights and standing to legally combat the fascists. Our Constitution means nothing to them, and we are lost in despair. While we are wallowing, the fascist regime is deinstalling what we have left, and installing what we have only known by reading historical records of previous authoritarian regimes. I know it sounds dark and bleak, but as has been said before, we probably need to experience the worst to wake up and fight back. Set your alarm clocks.
| Sat, Jan 10, 9:32 PM (12 hours ago) | |||
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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 Good 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 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (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. U.S. citizen. Former f*cking veteran." As she walks to the passenger-side door, she looks at him and says: "You wanna come at us? You wanna 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*cking 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, "F*cking bitch!" 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. As 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 "F*cking b*tch!" The release of this damning video as an attempted exoneration reminds me overwhelmingly of the release of the video of the murder of Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in 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 "F*cking bitch" 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: "Learned 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 Kristi Noem 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 Whisnant 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, as Sarah Mehta of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) noted at the time, the administration replaced almost half of ICE leaders across the country with Border Patrol officers. Border Patrol, a subagency 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 rappelled 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. On December 31, Drew Harwell and Joyce Sohyun 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 radi0 shows, directing ads to people who have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship (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 Johansen, and Gregory Svirnovskiy of Politico reported that the day after Good's murder, Noem 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 Ilhan 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 Carrazana explained in 19th News, shortly after Christmas, right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video that he claimed showed day care 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 day cares 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 antipoverty 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 Rollins 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 Kaitlan 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, uh, 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 Nixon 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. Elliott Morris reported that ICE's approval rating has plummeted in the past year, from +16 to -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 today 40% do. There is, Morris notes, "a growing and intense, angry opposition to [ICE] across America." — |
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Juan Matute
CCRC
Saturday, January 10, 2026
Something to Know - 10 January
Christopher Armitage lays out his newsletter with strident conviction that we need to exercise extreme resistance if we are to overcome the Fascist state that Trump is crafting. Trump was supposedly elected on his promises to cut inflation, lower costs, and improve our lives. He is doing none of that. The sick man is consumed with power and not being accountable for anything. We have to resist in the most extreme ways and push back and take back both houses of congress to start with. His goal is to install a Fascist state, abolish all elections, and amass more power to invade and rule as he wants. So, let's quit trying to figure out how this happened, and concentrate on getting rid of him and all the elements who got him to where he is today. Armitage writes below that "this may be something that pearl clutchers may want to sit out". Armitage points out that our federal government has been bullied into acquiescence by the executive branch. So, it is up to the state and local governments to exercise constant resistance in this process. The citizens need to make a forceful vocal and visual display of of resistance all the way to the midterms and beyond
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How Extrajudicial Killings Became LegalAnd how we can change that without waiting for a single election.
Bottom Line Up Front for Hardcore Activists Here are three clear demands: One: Agents identify or face arrest. Badge number, name, agency. Refusal means you have no authority. Prosecute accordingly. Two: States prosecute federal agents who commit crimes. When the feds intervene, keep prosecuting. Stopping is acquiescence. Continuing is justice. Three: Prosecute Jonathan Ross for the murder of Renee Nicole Good. In February 2013, the Police Executive Research Forum completed an internal review that Customs and Border Protection had commissioned. The nonprofit organization, which develops best practices for law enforcement agencies, examined use-of-force incidents along the border.¹ Among its findings: Border Patrol agents had deliberately stepped in front of moving vehicles to manufacture justification for shooting the drivers. Agents had fired across the border at rock throwers when simply moving away would have resolved the situation. The agency demonstrated what the review called a "lack of diligence" in investigating incidents where agents discharged their weapons.¹ The report recommended that Border Patrol bar agents from shooting at vehicles unless lives were threatened and prohibit firing at rock throwers entirely. Customs and Border Protection rejected both recommendations. Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher told the Associated Press that implementing such restrictions would be "very problematic" and "potentially put Border Patrol agents in danger."² The agency then attempted to suppress the scathing twenty-one page report from public view.³ That sequence of events captures something essential about how the United States arrived at a system where federal agents can kill without meaningful legal consequence. The mechanisms that permit this did not emerge from legislation or executive policy. They emerged from decades of judicial decisions that gradually erected an architecture of impunity so thorough that it has become the norm rather than the exception. The doctrine of qualified immunity provides the first layer of protection. In 1967, the Supreme Court decided Pierson v. Ray and held that police officers could claim immunity from civil suits if they acted in "good faith" and with "probable cause."⁴ The Court reasoned that officers should not face financial ruin for doing their jobs. This seemed reasonable enough at the time. But in 1982, the Court transformed the doctrine in Harlow v. Fitzgerald.⁵ It eliminated the good faith requirement entirely. Government officials would now receive immunity unless their conduct violated "clearly established law," which courts have interpreted to mean a prior decision involving nearly identical facts. The perverse result is that constitutional violations can go unremedied indefinitely. A victim must point to a previous case where another official engaged in essentially the same conduct and was held accountable. If no such case exists, the official receives immunity regardless of how egregious the behavior. Courts sometimes acknowledge that an official violated the Constitution and then grant immunity anyway because no sufficiently similar case preceded it. As Judge Carlton Reeves wrote in a 2024 opinion denying qualified immunity, the doctrine means government agents "can get away with violating your rights as long as they do so in a novel way."⁶ Justice Sonia Sotomayor has repeatedly criticized this framework. In her dissent in Kisela v. Hughes, she described a "disturbing trend" of courts siding with officers who use excessive force, noting that qualified immunity has become "an absolute shield" that "tells officers that they can shoot first and think later."⁷ The case involved an Arizona officer who shot a mentally impaired woman four times as she stood stationary in her driveway holding a kitchen knife at her side. The Court granted immunity because no prior decision had established that this precise conduct was unconstitutional.⁷ Federal agents enjoy additional protections beyond qualified immunity. Civil suits against federal officers arise under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, a 1971 decision that created a damages remedy for constitutional violations by federal officials.⁸ But the Supreme Court has spent the past two decades severely restricting when Bivens claims can proceed. In Ziglar v. Abbasi, decided in 2017, the Court held that extending Bivens to any "new context" requires courts to exercise extreme caution.⁹ What counts as a new context has proven remarkably broad. The case of Hernandez v. Mesa demonstrates how these doctrines combine to produce complete immunity for federal agents who kill.¹⁰ In June 2010, Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. shot and killed Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca, a fifteen-year-old Mexican boy. Mesa stood on American soil in El Paso. Hernández stood on Mexican soil in Ciudad Juarez. Video footage contradicted Mesa's claim that Hernández had thrown rocks at him. The Department of Justice investigated and concluded that Mesa had not violated agency policy, declining to bring charges.¹⁰ When Hernández's parents sued Mesa under Bivens, the Supreme Court held in 2020 that they could not proceed because a cross-border shooting constituted a "new context" with "foreign relations and national security implications." Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion acknowledged that extending Bivens might provide justice to the family but concluded that doing so would interfere with the executive branch's authority over border security and foreign policy.¹⁰ The Court suggested that if such families deserved a remedy, Congress should create one.¹⁰ This is the system we inherited. And now we are watching it metastasize. Since January 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have conducted raids across the country while masked, in plainclothes, and without visible identification. Human Rights Watch documented agents concealing agency insignias and using unmarked vehicles to detain people at courthouses, schools, workplaces, homes, and on public transport.¹¹ ICE justifies the practice as necessary "to prevent doxing." One federal district court judge dismissed that rationale as "disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable," writing that "ICE goes masked for a single reason: to terrorize Americans into quiescence. We have never tolerated an armed masked secret police."¹¹ Except we have been tolerating it for the past year. Are we going to tolerate it for another year? And if the next election does not go our way, or gets stolen, then what? We wait another two years after that? The Center for American Progress reported agents swinging batons, smashing car windows, using explosives to blow doors off homes with children inside, emerging from unmarked vehicles with weapons drawn, and grabbing people off the street.¹² Criminals have exploited this chaos. A South Carolina man was charged with kidnapping after posing as an agent and confronting a Latino driver. A Florida woman kidnapped her ex-boyfriend's wife while wearing an "ICE" shirt and a mask. In Philadelphia, a man posing as an agent robbed an automobile shop. In Minnesota, a man allegedly disguised as law enforcement murdered a state legislator and her husband.¹³ On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a thirty-seven-year-old woman whose car had briefly blocked traffic during an enforcement operation.¹⁴ Video shows Ross drawing his weapon and firing three shots as she drove away. The car crashed into a light pole about one hundred feet down the road. ICE is not law enforcement. It is an immigration enforcement agency with jurisdiction limited to immigration matters. A woman blocking traffic is not an immigration matter. These agents operate as though they possess general police powers. They do not. President Trump immediately claimed on social media that Ross acted in "self defense." There will be no federal prosecution. Everyone knows that, even the GOP. The legal architecture works precisely as intended. Qualified immunity blocks civil suits unless a victim can point to a prior case with nearly identical facts. Bivens restrictions prevent extending damages remedies to any new context, which proves remarkably easy to manufacture. Local prosecutors face pressure not to pursue charges, or to overcharge to sabotage potential convictions. Federal investigators with integrity have been fired or resigned. The Heritage Foundation Supreme Court wants this. We cannot wait until the next election to address the "secret police abducting and murdering people without anyone stopping them" problem. We do not get to operate in this environment for years and remain a democracy. Masked, unidentified agents snatching people off streets in unmarked vehicles is not compatible with constitutional governance. The FBI will not hold these agents accountable. The Department of Justice will not prosecute them. These organizations are not going to hold themselves accountable. Part of why we have lost so much ground is the mismatch between how our side operates and how theirs does. The attorney mindset says: we will pass legislation creating a ten thousand dollar fine for agents who refuse to identify themselves. We will establish a hotline for reporting misconduct. We will form a commission to study the problem. In the months it takes institutionalists to draft legislation, hold hearings, negotiate amendments, and celebrate incremental progress, fascists enact massive structural changes that render those incremental gains meaningless. An effective response means stepping up with the same urgency. An executive order at the state level: if you claim authority to detain people or use force in this state and refuse to identify yourself when asked, we treat you as a criminal acting with malintent. If you are a local or state law enforcement officer who refuses to enforce state law against federal agents committing crimes, you lose your job. If you obstruct state prosecutions, you face charges yourself. Police departments that refuse to cooperate get their leadership replaced. Everyone who breaks the law faces prosecution to the fullest extent. Local and state law enforcement should respond to reports of armed, masked individuals grabbing people off the street as what they appear to be: kidnappings and assaults in progress. If someone claiming to be law enforcement refuses to identify themselves, they have not established that they are law enforcement. Dispatch should treat these calls as high priority. Officers should respond as they would to any violent crime. If local police departments refuse to respond, governors should engage the National Guard. The safety of residents cannot depend on taking the word of someone masked, armed, wearing gear you can buy off eBay, and screaming "get the fuck out of the car bitch." Nobody gets to be above the law. Yes, this is disruptive. It is disruptive because it reinstitutes rule of law when the more powerful actor in the situation has abandoned it. This is what wins. We are using these tactics to enforce accountability and protect constitutional rights, not to destroy them. We are not seizing power to abuse it. We are wielding power to prevent abuse. That distinction matters. But the tactical reality remains: incremental measures designed to avoid conflict do not work against adversaries who embrace conflict. We either match their willingness to act decisively or we lose. If the pearl clutchers need to sit this one out, please do so. States can prosecute federal agents who commit criminal acts. The Supremacy Clause provides some protection for federal officials, but only when they are reasonably acting within the bounds of lawful federal duties.¹⁵ Shooting into a vehicle at a driver who poses no threat to anyone is not a lawful federal duty. Smashing windows, beating civilians, and conducting home invasions without identification are not lawful federal duties. Minnesota has successfully prosecuted police officers for murder before. States can prosecute ICE agents too.¹⁶ The process will be contested. Federal law allows defendants to remove state criminal prosecutions to federal court. The Trump administration will fight every prosecution with every tool available. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has already claimed that prosecuting federal agents constitutes conspiracy to interfere with immigration enforcement. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told ICE officers that "anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony."¹⁵ He is lying. Multiple states have indicted, charged, and arrested federal officers for conduct that exceeded their official duties. Virginia charged a federal tax collector posse with shooting horses and cattle during an 1898 shootout. The history of state prosecution of federal officials stretches back to the War of 1812.¹⁶ States possess this authority. The federal government will try to remove cases to federal court and sabotage them through sympathetic judges. So let them. Run the prosecutions anyway. Build the record. Make the arguments. Create the precedent. Even if individual prosecutions fail in hostile federal courts, the documentation establishes facts that may support future prosecution when the political environment changes. The conflict has to happen. There is no path through this that avoids it. They are the ones writing rules that place themselves above the law. If the federal government will not provide accountability, and if federal courts have constructed an architecture specifically designed to prevent accountability, then states must provide it instead. That is what federalism means. That is what it has always meant. State attorneys general should establish portals for civilians to report encounters with unidentified federal agents and should investigate every report. Prosecutors should bring charges where evidence supports them. We are not asking permission. The administration has made clear that it considers itself above accountability. It has constructed an enforcement apparatus designed to terrorize communities while remaining invisible to legal consequence. The response cannot be to wait politely for the next election while masked agents assault, kidnap, and murder innocent people. The response must be to use every tool available to impose the consequences that the federal government refuses to impose. Some of this will fail. Federal courts will block some prosecutions. The administration will retaliate against states that resist. There will be chaos and conflict and uncertainty. But the alternative is acquiescence to a system where government agents can kill without identification, without accountability, and without consequence. That is not a system compatible with constitutional democracy. We either resist it or we accept it. There is no third option. Three demands. There is no legal rule that says anyone is above the law. Not the Supremacy Clause. Not qualified immunity. One: Identify or be arrested. Badge number, name, agency. Refusal means you have no authority. Prosecute accordingly. Two: States prosecute federal agents who commit crimes. When the feds intervene, keep prosecuting. Stopping is acquiescence. Continuing is justice. Three: Prosecute Jonathan Ross for the murder of Renee Nicole Good. |
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Juan Matute
CCRC
Friday, January 9, 2026
Andy Borowitz
| 4:13 AM (6 hours ago) | |||
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LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—In a move that was widely hailed across the free world, on Friday King Charles III of the United Kingdom reasserted British rule over the colonies formerly known as the United States of America. "In recent days, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller have been advocating a muscular return to colonialism," the monarch said. "I couldn't agree more with those chaps." "We lost the colonies because our King went insane," Charles added. "But now the shoe's on the other bloody foot, isn't it?" As for what this change in status would mean for Trump, the King said, "Perhaps he could room with his old chum, my idiot brother."
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Juan Matute
CCRC
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