The US has purloined over $300 million of oil in a month while enforcing a blockade, which UN experts say has "seriously undermined the human rights of the Venezuelan people."
By Stephen Prager
As President Donald Trump geared up for a meeting with fossil fuel executives about plans for them to tap into the “tremendous wealth” of Venezuela’s vast oil supply, the US militaryseized another oil tanker in the Caribbean off the coast of Trinidad on Friday morning.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted unclassified footage from US Southern Command of explosives being deployed and soldiers boarding the vessel Olina on social media.
“As another ‘ghost fleet’ tanker ship suspected of carrying embargoed oil, this vessel had departed Venezuela attempting to evade US forces,” she said. “This is owning the sea.”
Olina, which was reportedly carrying around 700,000 barrels of crude, is at least the fifth tanker seized by the military in recent weeks and the third in the last three days after the Trump administration imposed a blockade on sanctioned oil tankers leaving Venezuela in December, a move that has been credited with hastening the country’s economic collapse.
Earlier this week, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the US plans to manage Venezuela’s oil sales and revenues indefinitely following its illegal operation last weekend to topple and abduct President Nicolás Maduro.
According to the ship-tracking database TankerTrackers.com, the US has “seized five tankers and 6.15 million barrels in the span of a month, with the oil valued at over $300 million.”
The US has described Olinaand other ships it has seized as part of a “shadow fleet” that uses deceptive tactics—including flying false flags—to secretively transport oil for sanctioned countries, including Venezuela, Russia, and Iran.
The US has justified its blockade of Venezuela’s oil, as well as the overthrow of Maduro generally, based on the claim that its government is part of an alleged foreign terrorist organization known as the “Cartel de los Soles.”
In late December, a group of United Nations experts condemned the blockade and denounced this justification, stating that the alleged cartel does not exist. The US Department of Justice later acknowledged that the cartel was not an actual organization in its indictment of Maduro this week. Maduro has pleaded not guilty to US narco-terrorism charges.
The group of international experts, which included Ben Saul, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, and Gina Romero, the special rapporteur on freedom of association and assembly, described the blockade as “violating fundamental rules of international law.”
“There is no right to enforce unilateral sanctions through an armed blockade,” the experts said, citing the United Nations Charter, which describes blockades without UN Security Council approval as illegal acts of aggression.
They added that “there are serious concerns that the sanctions are unlawful, disproportionate, and punitive under international law, and that they have seriously undermined the human rights of the Venezuelan people.”
The Trump administration has been ratcheting up threats against Europe in the wake of its invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.
By Brad Reed
President Donald Trump finished up a busy week by once again leveling threats against longtime allies over their refusal to hand Greenland over to US control.
While taking questions from reporters at the White House on Friday, Trump was asked about a reported plan to win over Greenlanders on joining the US by giving them annual $10,000 payments.
“I’m not talking about money for Greenland yet,” the president replied. “I might talk about that, but right now we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.”
Trump then explained his purported rationale for making Greenland a US territory.
“If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland,” he said. “And we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.”
Neither Russia nor China have shown any indication that they want to take over Greenland, which is currently a self-governed Danish territory. Because Denmark is a founding member of NATO, an attack on its territory from Russia or China would trigger a counterattack by all other NATO members, theoretically including the US.
Trump then informed the press that he would “like to make a deal the easy way” to acquire Greenland, before adding that “if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”
The president then claimed that he was a “fan of Denmark,” even though seconds ago he hinted at using military force to seize their territory.
“The fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn’t mean that they own the land,” Trump said. “I’m sure we had lots of boats go there also.”
The Trump administration has been ratcheting up threats against Europe in the wake of its invasion of Venezuela and the US abduction of President Nicolás Maduro last week.
Top Trump aide Stephen Miller on Monday refused to rule out using the military to take Greenland, telling CNN host Jake Tapper that “we live in a world... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
"We just saw them murder an American citizen in cold blood, in the street," said US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "This is an agency that must be reined in."
By Jake Johnson
Federal immigration enforcement agents, unleashed and emboldened by President Donald Trump, have been rampaging through the streets of cities across the United States for months, racking up an appalling record of abuses and alleged crimes, including kidnapping, beatings, and murder.
Such abuses have targeted, but haven’t been limited to, undocumented immigrants. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent’s killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen and mother of three, earlier this week called greater attention to the agency’s lawless behavior, enabled by an administration whose number-two official—Vice President JD Vance—falsely insists that federal immigration officers have “absolute immunity” from prosecution.
“Out of control” were the words lawmakers, advocacy groups, experts, and community members used to describe ICE’s conduct in the wake of Good’s killing.
Just 24 hours later, Border Patrol agents shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon, heightening nationwide outrage over the Trump administration’s onslaught against undocumented immigrants, US citizens, and those protesting the presence of ICE agents, who are often masked and dressed in military fatigues.
Seemingly, nowhere is safe; ICE has raided houses of worship, schools, hotels, restaurants, farms, and retail stores.
“Communities across the state have been terrorized by masked, armed agents who are indiscriminately and aggressively harassing and kidnapping individuals at school, at work, on the streets, and in their homes,” the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota said Thursday.
US Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) wrote on social media following the shootings in Portland on Thursday that “ICE has done nothing to keep our communities safer.”
“ICE agents are terrorizing folks in Oregon and across the country,” he added. “I’m demanding full accountability—an investigation that involves Oregon officials—and ICE to immediately end these dangerous operations in Oregon.”
Others have echoed Merkley’s demand that ICE immediately exit cities across the US amid mounting abuses, documented by local and national media outlets, watchdog organizations, and eyewitnesses in the months since Trump launched his mass deportation push.
“Get the fuck out,” was Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s message to ICE following the killing of Good on Wednesday.
The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization, stressed that Good’s killing at the hands of Jonathan Ross—a federal agent with more than a decade of experience at ICE—was not the first time that federal officers have killed civilians since the Trump administration launched its aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.
The organization went on to observe that “federal officers have fired on at least nine people while they were in their vehicles” and repeatedly threatened others with deadly force.
“A pregnant Illinois woman told Newsweek she thought her life was about to end when a federal agent pointed his gun through her car window, after she honked her horn to alert people ICE was nearby,” The Marshall Project reported. “In another incident in Chicago, a combat veteran alleged in a court filing that a federal officer said ‘bang, bang’ and ‘you’re dead, liberal’ while pointing a handgun at him.”
The list of abuses, both alleged and captured in real time, is seemingly endless. As the investigative outlet ProPublica reported late last year:
Immigrants detained by ICE have accused agents of horrific abuse, including sexual assault. One teenager held at Fort Bliss, the largest immigration detention center in the US, alleged that an officer broke his tooth and “crushed” his testicles while another “forced his fingers deep into my ears,” causing lasting damage.
Those who have turned out in the streets to protest ICE’s activities in their neighborhoods—and those who have tried to stop agent abuses—have also been subject to attacks, including tear gas to the face.
On the same day as Good’s killing, ICE conducted a raid at a nearby Minneapolis high school. One local resident who witnessed the raid said she saw “one teacher get tackled” as educators and other school employees tried to keep the agents away from students.
The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers accused federal agents of using tear gas—which ICE has deployed frequently in recent months.
The Washington Postreported in November that federal immigration officers “have thrown chemical agents out of vehicles on city streets, creating a hazard for motorists.”
“They have thrown tear-gas canisters near stores and schools, exposing children, pregnant women, and older people to the noxious gas,” the newspaper added. “And on numerous occasions federal officers have fired pepper balls directly at protesters—in one case, striking a pastor in the head.”
In response to ICE’s horrific behavior, lawmakers at the federal level have taken steps aimed at constraining an agency whose budget is now larger than that of a dozen nations’ militaries.
US Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) is introducing articles of impeachment against Noem, accusing her of setting loose ICE’s “reign of terror.”
Axiosreported Thursday that US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) “will propose sweeping reforms” to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “including requiring a warrant for arrests, banning masks during enforcement operations, and requiring Border Patrol to remain at the border.”
Murphy is “also trying to build a coalition of Democrats to insist on some restraints on DHS’ authority as a condition of their support for a spending bill for the department—with funding set to lapse January 30,” the outlet reported.
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has previously called for the abolition of ICE, warned that the agency is currently “accountable to no one.”
“It’s a nightmare,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters on the steps of the US Capitol on Wednesday. “They are operating with impunity. We just saw them murder an American citizen in cold blood, in the street.”
“This is an agency that must be reined in,” she added.
"They have literally started killing us—enough is enough," said one campaigner.
By Brett Wilkins
Progressive advocacy groups are set to lead nationwide rallies this weekend to protest Wednesday’s killing of Renee Good by an immigration officer in Minneapolis and the Trump administration’s wider deadly mass deportation campaign.
Groups including 50501 Movement, Indivisible, the Disappeared in America campaign, MoveOn, the ACLU, Voto Latino, and United We Dream are planning demonstrations across the country to protest the killing of Good and what Indivisible called the “broader pattern of unchecked violence and abuse carried out by federal immigration enforcement agencies against members of our communities.”
Good, a US citizen, was shot multiple times by veteran Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation officer Jonathan Ross on Wednesday while driving in south Minneapolis. Bystander video shows Good slowly maneuvering a Honda Pilot SUV in an apparent effort to drive away from officers when Ross draws his pistol and fires at her head.
President Donald Trump and senior members of his administration quickly spread lies about Good, with the president saying she “ran over” Ross and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others accusing the 37-year-old mother of three—one of whose children is now orphaned—of “domestic terrorism.”
“After ICE executed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis and federal agents shot two more people in Portland, the 50501 Movement is demanding the immediate abolition of ICE,” 50501 said in a statement Friday. “Renee Nicole Good and the Portland victims are just the most recent victims of ICE’s reign of terror. ICE has brutalized communities for decades, but its violence under the Trump regime has accelerated.”
“Marginalized communities have taken the brunt of their force; in 2025, at least 32 people died in ICE custody,” 50501 added. “This past September, ICE shot and killed Silverio Villegas González, a father and cook from Mexico who was living in Chicago. In that same city, a Border Patrol agent celebrated after repeatedly shooting and injuring Marimar Martinez. The American people have had enough.”
The ACLU said in a statement that “an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother, shooting her three times in the head through her car window. This is a reckless, horrific shooting that should have never happened.”
“Renee’s killing came just one day after the Trump administration stormed Minnesota communities with an unprecedented 2,000 federal agents. Children are afraid to go to school and Minnesota families are reeling from fear and a sense of chaos,” the group continued. “For months, the Trump administration has been deploying heavily armed federal agents into our communities. They are smashing car windows, dragging people from their cars, zip-tying children, and physically harming our neighbors—citizens and noncitizens alike.”
“We can’t wait around while ICE harms more people,” the ACLU added. “Congress MUST demand an end to these reckless immigration raids, and oppose any bill that would add to ICE’s already massive budget.”
United We Dream said that Good’s “brutal killing is a horrifying reminder of the threat armed forces pose to our collective safety, especially at a time when local, state, and federal officials have consistently called on the federal government to invest in the resources working families truly need—healthcare, housing, access to food—instead of indiscriminate terror in our communities.”
“In 2025 alone, 32 people died in immigration detention,” the group added. “Billions poured into immigration raids for the sake of ripping apart communities in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis does nothing but lead to irreparable damage, violence, and death. We demand an immediate end to this cruelty and for elected leaders at every level to speak out in defense of immigrant communities and our shared safety.”
MoveOn argued that “the Trump administration is not making anybody safe—they are creating chaos and destroying lives.”
“You don’t raid peaceful cities, schools, libraries, and churches unless your goal is to terrorize communities and silence dissent,” the group added. “MoveOn is outraged and devastated that the unnecessary, reckless, and escalatory deployment of ICE is causing even more senseless killings. Trump’s ICE agents need to follow the advice of local officials and leave Minnesota immediately.”
Represent Maine, an “ICE out for Good” national coalition partner, said in a promotion for a Saturday noon rally in Augusta that “ICE’s campaign of terror is out of control and leading to the murder of our people.”
“Entire communities are being traumatized,” the group continued. “Immigrants, refugees, and American citizens are being targeted. This is not normal border enforcement: This is state violence.”
“We will gather to remember those who have been killed, kidnapped, and disappeared by ICE, and the families and communities devastated in their wake,” Represent Maine added. “We demand ICE out of Maine NOW!”
Dan Harmon of 50501 Minnesota said Friday, “They have literally started killing us—enough is enough.”
“We are a peaceful and community-oriented state that will not allow the violent ICE secret police to continue kidnapping our neighbors and killing our friends,” he said. “Immediately after the shooting, hundreds of Minnesotans gathered to respond on site, just as we did in 2020 after officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.”
“ICE must be removed from Minnesota and permanently abolished,” Harmon added.
There has been "almost no hiring since April," observed one economist.
By Brad Reed
The US labor market appears to be running on fumes under President Donald Trump, as the latest jobs report revealed that the American economy added just 50,000 jobs in December, below economists’ consensus estimate of 55,000 jobs.
The report, released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), also found that the US economy as a whole created just 584,000 jobs in 2025, which is less than a third of the 2 million jobs created in 2024 during the last year of former President Joe Biden’s term.
The 2025 figure also marked the lowest number of annual jobs created since 2020, when the economy was shut down due to the Covid-19pandemic.
Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone couldn’t put a happy spin on the jobs report after its release, as she noted that the gains of just 37,000 private-sector jobs on the month were “much weaker than expected.”
Digging further into the report, Bloomberg economic analyst Joe Weisenthal observed on X that manufacturing employment has been hit particularly hard in recent months, despite Trump’s vow that his tariffs would lead to a manufacturing revival in the US.
“It’s not just that total manufacturing employment is shrinking,” he explained. “The number of manufacturing sub-sectors that are adding jobs is rapidly shrinking. Of the 72 different types of manufacturing tracked by the BLS, just 38.2% are still adding jobs. A year ago it was 47.2%.”
Heather Cox Richardson, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that the weakness in the labor market extends beyond the manufacturing sector, as there has been “almost no hiring outside of healthcare and hospitality” since the start of Trump’s second term.
Richardson also observed that “there was almost no hiring since April” of last year, when Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs that sent shockwaves through the global economy.
Economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, zeroed in on downward revisions in prior jobs reports, reinforcing that the current labor market is anemic.
“With the revisions, the average for the last three months was a fall of 22,000 [jobs],” Baker explained. “The healthcare and social assistance sector added an average of 49,000 jobs over this period, which means that outside of healthcare the economy lost an average of 71,000 jobs in the last three months.”
Alex Jacquez, chief economist at Groundwork Collaborative, said the jobs report reflected a “lifeless economy,” and he pinned the blame on Trump and his trade policies as a top reason.
“Working families face sluggish wage growth, fewer job opportunities, and never-ending price hikes on groceries, household essentials, and utilities,” said Jacquez. “Despite the president’s endless attempts to deflect and distract from the bleak economic reality, workers and job seekers know their budgets feel tighter than ever thanks to Trump’s disastrous economic mismanagement.”
Economist Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute took a look at the jobs numbers and concluded the US labor market now is far weaker than the one Biden left Trump nearly one year ago.
“The slowdown in job growth this year is stark compared to 2024,” Gould wrote on Bluesky. “The average monthly gain was only 49,000 in 2025 compared to 168,000 in 2024. Over the last three months, average job growth was actually negative, meaning there are fewer jobs now than in September.”
“This is the mind of a fascist,” said a former official of the first Trump administration.
By Stephen Prager
As he uses the military to extort Venezuela and threatens to wage war against half a dozen other nations, President Donald Trump stated plainly this week that there are no restraints on his power to use force to dominate and subjugate any country on the planet besides his own will.
Asked by theNew York Timeswhether there were any limits on his ability to use military force in his ambitions toward “American supremacy,” and a return to 19th-century imperial conquest, he told the paper, which published excerpts from the interview Thursday: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Trump’s attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro last weekend, his floating of military force to annex Greenland this week, and his repeated threats to bomb Iran in recent days have all been described as blatant affronts to international law and what remains of the “rules-based” global order.
The president told the Times, “I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.” He seemed to backpedal momentarily when pressed about whether his administration needed to follow international law, saying, “I do.” But the Times reports that the president “made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.”
“It depends what your definition of international law is,” Trump said.
If statements by other top officials are any guide, the administration’s “definition” of international law is more akin to the law of the jungle than anything to do with treaties or UN Security Council resolutions.
In an interview earlier this week, senior adviser Stephen Miller, reportedly one of the architects of Trump’s campaign of extrajudicial boat bombings in the Caribbean, laid out a view of the president’s power that amounts to little more than “might makes right.”
Speaking of Trump’s supposed unquestioned right to use military force against Greenland and Venezuela, Miller told CNN anchor Jake Tapper: “The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to us.”
Miller added that “the future of the free world depends on America to be able to assert ourselves and our interests without an apology.”
The United Nations Charter expressly forbids “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
Yet in recent days, Trump has also threatened to carry out strikes against Colombia and Mexico, while his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, suggested a similar operation to the one that deposed Maduro could soon be carried out against Cuba’s socialist government, which US presidents have sought to topple for nearly seven decades.
In a Fox News interview on Thursday, Trump stated that the US would “start now hitting land” in Mexico as part of operations against drug cartels. The nation’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum—who has overseen a dramatic fall in cartel violence since she took office in 2024—has said that such strikes would violate Mexico’s status as an “independent and sovereign country.”
To Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Trump’s assertion of limitless authority sounded like “the dangerous words of a would-be dictator.”
“Trump says he is constrained not by the law but only by his ‘own morality,’” Roth said. “Since he values self-aggrandizement above all else, he is describing an unbridled presidency guided only by his ego and whims.”
In recent days, the White House has sought to punish those who suggest that members of the US military should not follow illegal orders given by the president.
Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that he would seek to strip retirement pay from Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), a retired Navy captain who last year spoke in a video reminding active duty soldiers that their foremost duty is to the law rather than the president. Trump has referred to these comments as “seditious behavior” and called for Kelly and other members of Congress who took part in the video to be executed.
The White House has repeatedly asserted that because Trump is the commander-in-chief of the military, any orders he gives are legal by definition.
For Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term, the president’s latest claim to hold unquestioned authority called to mind a warning from Gen. John Kelly, who also served in the first Trump White House as its chief of staff.
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Kelly told The Atlantic that Trump fits the definition of “a fascist” and that the president would frequently complain that his generals were not more like “German generals,” who he said were “totally loyal” to Hitler.
“John Kelly was right,” Turner said on Thursday. “This is the mind of a fascist.”
While Trump’s comments left her worried about a return to an “age of imperialism,” Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, said that the president’s sense of impunity is unsurprising given the recent toothlessness of international law in dealing with the actions of rogue states, specifically Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“International law cannot stop states from doing terrible things if they’re committed to doing them,” Satterthwaite told Al Jazeera. “And I think that the world is aware of all of the atrocities that have happened in Gaza recently, and despite efforts by many states and certainly by the UN to stop those atrocities, they continued. But I think we’re worse off if we don’t insist on the international law that does exist. We’ll simply be going down a much worse kind of slippery slope.”
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The House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena journalist Seth Harp—seen here in a 2024 social media profile photo—on January 9, 2026 after he published the identity of a US special forces commander involved in the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.
(Photo by Seth Harp/X)
Free press defenders voiced alarm and outrage following Wednesday’s vote by a congressional committee to subpoena a journalist wrongly accused of “leaking classified intel” and “doxing” a US special forces commander involved in President Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and abduction of the South American nation’s president and his wife.
Seth Harp is an investigative journalist,New York Times bestselling author, and Iraq war veteran whose work focuses on links between the US military and organized crime. On January 4—the day after the US bombed and invaded Venezuela and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—Harp posted on X the name and photo of a commander in Delta Force, which played a key role in the attack.
Experts noted that Harp did not break any laws, with Freedom of the Press Foundation chief of advocacy Seth Stern pointing out that “reporters have a constitutional right to publish even classified leaks as long as they don’t commit crimes to obtain them.”
“Harp merely published information that was publicly available about someone at the center of the world’s biggest news story,” he added.
However, the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday approved in a voice vote a motion introduced the previous day by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to subpoena Harper. Democrats on the committee backed the measure after Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) added an amendment to also subpoena co-executors of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, according to the Washington Post.
Responding to the committee vote, Harp told the Post:
The idea of a reporter “leaking classified intel” is a contradiction in terms. The First Amendment and ironclad Supreme Court precedent permit journalists to publish classified documents. We don’t work for the government and it’s our job to expose secrets, not protect them for the convenience of high-ranking officials. It’s not “doxing” to point out which high-ranking military officials are involved in breaking news events. That’s information that the public has a right to know.
Harp also took to social media to underscore that he’s not the only journalist being targeted with dubious “doxing” claims.
The House lawmakers’ vote drew widespread condemnation from press freedom advocates.
“Luna’s subpoena of investigative reporter Seth Harp is clearly designed to chill and intimidate a journalist doing some of the most significant investigative reporting on US special forces,” Defending Rights & Dissent policy director Chip Gibbons said in a statement.
“Harp did not share classified information about the US regime change operation in Venezuela. And even if he had, his actions would firmly be protected by the First Amendment,” Gibbons added. “This is a dangerous assault on the press freedom, as well as the US people’s right to know. It is shameful it passed the committee.”
PEN America Journalism and Disinformation program director Tim Richardson said Thursday that “any attempt to haul an investigative reporter before Congress for doing their job reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of a free press.”
“Seth Harp is an independent journalist, not a government official, and therefore cannot be accused of ‘leaking’ classified information in the way those entrusted with such material can,” Richardson added. “The information at issue was publicly available, not secret or unlawfully obtained.”
In a bid to protect reporters and their sources, House lawmakers in 2024 unanimously passed the PRESS Act, legislation prohibiting the federal government from compelling journalists and telecommunications companies to disclose certain information, with exceptions for imminent violence or terrorism. However, under pressure from Trump, the Senate declined to vote on the proposal.
“The bill died after Trump ordered the Senate to kill it on Truth Social,” said Stern. “Apparently, so did the principles of Reps. Luna, Garcia, and their colleagues.”
Renee Nicole Good speaks with ICE officer Jonathan Ross shortly before he fatally shot her on January 7, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(Photo: Screengrab/Alpha News)
WARNING: The following article includes graphic footage of the shooting that some people may find disturbing...
New footage taken from the phone of the federal immigration agent who killed Renee Good was released on Friday, and it offers the closest view so far of the deadly shooting that took place on Wednesday in Minneapolis.
As Ross circles the car while filming it with his phone, Good can be seen smiling at him and gently taunting him.
“It’s fine, dude,” she says as Ross passes by her on the driver’s side window. “I’m not mad at you.”
As Ross continues circling the car and captures its license plate, Good’s wife, Becca Good, approaches him and tells him that “we don’t change our license plates every morning, just so you know.”
Becca Good also asks Ross if he was “going to come at us,” and then recommends that he “go get yourself some lunch, big boy.”
Shortly after this, other immigration officers begin moving aggressively toward Good’s car, instructing her to exit the vehicle.
After this, Good can be seen turning her steering wheel completely to the right, which was away from the location where Ross was standing, and trying to drive away.
As the car drives past Ross, it is unclear if it makes any contact with him, although he remains on his feet the entire time and is able to take out his weapon and fire multiple shots at the vehicle.
A man can be heard calling Good a “fucking bitch” as her car crashes into a phone pole.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, argued on Bluesky that the video is “about as close as you can get to conclusively disproving the Trump [administration’s] claims that she deliberately attempted to run down the officer.”
Reichlin-Melnick cautioned, however, that this does not mean that prosecutors will be able to prove that Ross was guilty of murder when he opened fire on Good.
“The threshold for when police officers are allowed to use force is very low, so I’m not going to offer a definitive opinion,” he explained. “And yes; what the law permits and what is justified are two different things entirely.”
Appearing on MS Now, former FBI agent Michael Feinberg said that Ross’ decision to film Good’s vehicle with his phone while approaching her car was “the height of unprofessionalism.”
“Why on Earth is a law enforcement officer filming an interaction with a civilian on his cellphone?” he asked. “They’re not influencers, they’re not social media posters. If you’re there to do a job as an agent of the federal government, do the job. You don’t need to be making content in the midst of it.”
Independent journalist Radley Balko noted that Alpha News, which first obtained the video, “is a far-right site run by the wife of the former head of the Minneapolis police union.”
“Whoever leaked this to them thinks it makes Ross look good,” Balko wrote. “Which is just astonishing.”
Vice President JD Vance nonetheless declared in a post on X that the video showed “the reality is that his life was endangered and he fired in self-defense,” even though the video makes it clear that Good was turning the car away from where Ross was standing.
Vance has also falsely claimed that ICE agents have “absolute immunity,” which has been rebuked by legal experts including Reichlin-Melnick.
The question is not whether a particular president’s motives are sincere, nor whether a foreign government is flawed. The question is whether the United States will remain governed by law―or by precedent accumulated through silence.
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