Our Mendacious Government

How can Democracy work when they lie so easily?

Watching the video of a Federal officer shoot and kill Renee Nicole Good at point blank range was horrendous. As experts have noted, there is no need to respond aggressively to someone in a car, even if they are disrupting your enforcement plans. It was as senseless as it was needless.

Even more infuriating — it’s amazing that it is even possible to write that — was the response from government representatives. The goals for them was to adopt an FAFO stance, demonizing Good (before we even knew her name) and justifying the actions taken by ICE agents. As we learned from the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, they can not find it in themselves to simply say, “what a tragedy” and promise to look into the circumstances.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem addressed the media shortly after the news broke while in Texas (wearing a too-big cowboy hat). She said that it was a sad but necessary shooting as the officer was acting in self-defense against a domestic terrorist who was trying to run him over. She also said that the ICE agents were only there to push their car out of the snow.

President Trump wrote on Truth Social that Good was “very disorderly, obstructive and resisting who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense”. He claimed that the officer had been taken to the hospital and was progressing nicely. He said that the “screaming woman” filming the events in Minneapolis was “obviously a professional agitator”.

Andrew Egger of The Bulwark noted the comments made by DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin before the video was released.

The victim, McLaughlin said, had “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.” It had been, she said, “an act of domestic terrorism.” The officer who, “fearing for his life,” fired the shots, she said, “saved his own life and that of his fellow officers.”

Then the video came out. Here’s Egger again.

Shortly after came the videos showing what actually took place. Good had been blocking traffic with her vehicle when ICE officers approached, demanding alternately that she stop blocking the street and that she get out of her car. One pulled her door handle, at which point she attempted to drive away. In doing so, she turned past another agent standing near the front of her vehicle, possibly clipping him—the angle of the various videos makes it difficult to tell—with the corner of her front bumper. Immediately afterward, as she drove past him, that officer fired into the vehicle multiple times—once through the side of her windshield, then multiple times through her open passenger window.

Some of McLaughlin’s claims were only arguably lies. It is unsettling to have a vehicle accelerate past you; it is possible that the officer who fired the shots had indeed feared for his life.

The rest of McLaughlin’s statement was pure invention. McLaughlin accused Good of deliberately attempting to run down ICE agents, a statement completely at odds with the clear video evidence. (One video shows Good waving at ICE vehicles to drive around her prior to the incident taking place.) Her accusation that Good was guilty of “domestic terrorism” was an unbelievable, outrageous smear—a baldfaced lie about an American citizen killed by her own government, before her body was even cold on the ground.

The video makes several things clear. While Good’s car was perpendicular to the street, you can see cars driving around it. So the claim that she was interfering with ICE law enforcement efforts is hard to take. And there were no cars stuck in the snow; the roadway looked clear.

The officer that shot Good walks around the front of her car when she is starting to drive off, apparently still engaged with the officers by her car door. Given the turn she was making, she was nowhere near ramming speed. And the officer (tentatively identified as Jonathan Ross) shows no signs of injury, much less being hospitalized.

The woman who recorded the video, Emily Heller, appeared on MSNOW and CNN to tell her story. She said she was in her house when she heard neighbors blowing ICE whistles and went outside to see what was happening, which is when she saw the interaction with Good’s car. She was not a “professional agitator”, although she was screaming WTF as Good was shot.

Given all of that, this would be the time for the administration to show some compassion, perhaps even contrition. They would announce an investigation and reiterate guidelines for ICE agents limiting civilian engagement in the course of their duties.

Of course that’s not what they did. Both Noem and JD Vance told gathered reporters today that the officer was being rammed with the car. Vance claimed that the officer had experience being dragged by a car. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that yesterday’s events were “a result of a larger, sinister left-wing movement taht has spread across our country where our brave men and women of federal law enforcement are under organized attack.”

Anyone who saw any video clips knows that these are falsifications designed to prevent accountability.

The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote this on BlueSky this afternoon:

It’s time to state clearly that if MAGA and Republicans can’t condemn any part of this shooting, continue to blame the victim for it, and even hint that it’s a just outcome that others “deserve,” that’s a crossing of the line that the rest of us won’t ever be able to forget.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch echoed Sargent’s sentiment.

But there was something even more critical on this frigid prairie morning: brave everyday citizens willing to put their lives on the lines for neighbors they don’t even know, and to risk everything in pursuit of the truth. America knows what really happened to Good because courageous people ran toward the scene with their phones aloft to bear witness, not knowing if ICE would kill again.

It’s the revolutionary spirit we’ve been seeing all across America for months — regular folks from the community blowing whistles, filming ICE raids, and telling the world that our citizens will defend their communities even when all the big institutions and their overpaid leaders will not. Authoritarian governments only thrive in their own manufactured reality, gaslighting the masses that their hard-working brown-skinned neighbor is a rapist, or that an uninjured federal agent is instead in the ER.

Mark down Jan. 7, 2026 as the day America started turning off the gas, and the masks came off. No wonder it came out Thursday morning that the FBI is not cooperating with Minnesota state authorities on the investigation, in a pathetic too-late effort at covering this mess up.

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This is but the latest and most egregious example of the administration pushing a narrative designed to serve their prior preferences. Whether it’s the abduction of Maduro or claims about tariffs or new oil revenues or Epstein or windmills or crime in cities or the 2020 election, that have a story that works for them. Because they hold to it and have a conservative media infrastructure that won’t challenge the narrative, they seem sealed off from the actual democratic process of discussion, negotiation, and finding common ground.

The failure of Republican leadership to show any kind of independence blocks the legislative function from operating. I recently saw comments from Democratic lawmaker saying that they didn’t know why they went to congressional briefings because administration officials will lie to them.

The only correctives for this fantasy spinning rests with the American people. Just like happened yesterday, when thousands of people shared the story of Renee Good across social media and with friends, family, and coworkers. The mendacious government depends upon others not challenging their stories. So we have to do even more and do it more often. Even if you aren’t in the streets, you can be sharing what is really going on.

I saw a very astute observation in the last few days. Someone (I didn’t track the source) noted that conservatives were scared of the postmodern movement at the turn of the 20th century because it might mean that we couldn’t come to a verifiable truth.

A quarter century later, the Trump Administration is the embodiment of that fear. The main response we have is to tell a Better Story.