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Renee Nicole Good tells ICE thug "I'm not mad at you" seconds before he shoots her.,
Further

ICE: "Fucking Bitch"

It was shocking how quickly the psychopaths in power launched their vicious lies about Renée Good—"violent rioter," "domestic terrorist," "self-defense"—shot in the face for trying to drive away from ICE. It's all bullshit, proven by stunning new video from the killer's own phone. Bafflingly, JD Vance posted it, thinking it proved his smears. How sick is he? Good was "pure sunshine ...kindness radiated out of her," says her wife. "We stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns."

Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and widow of a veteran, was dropping off her youngest child, 6, at a Minneapolis school when she encountered an ICE raid at 34th Street and Portland Avenue; it was the second day of a 30-day "surge" of siccing America's Gestapo on the state's Somali-American population. On Instagram, Good described herself as "a poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado"; she and her wife Becca had recently moved there, finding what Becca called "a vibrant and welcoming community" with a strong sense of people "looking out for each other."

Horrific, widely viewed footage shows what happened next: The sirens and unmarked cars, masked thugs getting out, Good's car straddling the road, protesters shouting and then, suddenly, screaming as one goon approaches her window, yells "Get out of the fucking car," and fires off three shots through the windshield as Good's car careens wildly off and crashes. Multiple cellphone videos and eyewitness accounts concur: Good was trying to turn around, let one ICE car pass ahead, backed up slightly to turn to the right, pulled forward and around the agent - a few feet away - as he shot her three times in the face.

The horror kept coming. Witnesses said Good slumped in her car onto a blood-soaked air bag for up to 15 minutes with no medical attention as protesters yelled and wept. One man asked agents if he could check her pulse. They said no. "I'm a physician," he pleaded. "I don't care," said the thug, claiming "we have our own medics." "Where the fuck are they?" shrieked a distraught woman. Emergency responders finally arrived without a stretcher; they carried Good away, said one woman, "like a sack of potatoes." Mayor Jacob Frey was livid: "To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here."

Despite the clear, stark evidence, the fascist propaganda machine shot into high gear. In Texas, ICE Barbie, cosplaying in a ludicrous cowboy hat, proclaimed "an act of domestic terrorism...a woman attacked (ICE) and attempted to run them over." Dead-eyed DHS spokesbot Tricia McLaughlin raved about "a violent rioter” who "weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over law enforcement officers." Vance called Good "a deranged leftist." In an incendiary post, Trump ripped a "disorderly" woman "obstructing and resisting" who "then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer...It is hard to believe he is alive."

More to the point, it is hard to believe how brazenly, brutishly, remorselessly these motherfuckers can spew their fucking lies in the face of demonstrable, overwhelming reality, demanding we not see what we see or hear what we hear. Eventually, even Trump had to back down, slightly, after both the Washington Post and New York Times committed a rare act of journalism - the Times, to his face - and declared the video entirely contradicted his vile fantasy. Then, on Friday, the right-wing, Minnesota-based Alpha News released 47-second footage of the scene from the phone of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, Renée Good's murderer.

An Iraq War veteran, Ross has worked for ICE since 2015 and is also a firearms instructor and SWAT team member; he was injured last summer when he was dragged by the vehicle of a fleeing suspect. The footage shows Ross arriving and walking around Renée Good's red Honda recording with his phone; he circles back to her window as another agent curses and tries to open her door. Sitting behind the wheel, her dog in the back, Good smilingly tells the agent, "It's fine, dude, I'm not mad at you." Seconds later, shots ring out. Ross stands safely away as her car veers off. Audio catches a man muttering, "Fucking bitch."

Inexplicably, both Fox News and J.D. Vance posted the footage. "Watch this, as hard as it is," Vance wrote. "Many of you have been told (Ross) wasn’t hit by a car, wasn’t being harassed, and murdered an innocent woman." The footage, he said, proves Ross "fired in self-defense” when his "life was endangered” by Good. What the ever-loving fuck. Ross, he adds, "deserves a debt (sic) of gratitude. This is a guy who’s actually done a very important job for the United States of America." AOC speaks for us all: "I understand that Vance believes shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not... I do not believe the American people should be assassinated in the street."

Good was ICE's ninth victim. Her murder - a white woman, not brown guy, it must be noted - has prompted nationwide outrage, and a GoFundMe that aimed to raise $50K is now at over a million. “This is an execution plain and simple,” said journalist Krystal Ball. "If your Trump love or immigrant hatred has you justifying murder, please seek help.” "We're a Third World country now," said Jesse Ventura, citing the history of 1930s Germany. "That's what happens in a dictatorship - in comes the military." And on the "giddy sadism" we see daily, "All of us, citizens and immigrants alike, are being ruled by people who think life is a privilege bestowed by authority, and death is a fair penalty for disobedience."

Still, it goes on. They are still assaulting people, usually brown, sometimes citizens. In a clumsy, nasty encounter in North Carolina, they attacked two U.S. citizens in their car and only gave up when both guys kept filming the abuses. The lesson: "Film them. Always." In Minneapolis, they blithely moved on from murdering Renee Good to terrorize workers at a nearby childcare center and students at a high school, tackling people, handcuffing two staff members and firing teargas at bystanders until the schools were forced to shut down. "They're just animals," said one school official. "I've never seen people behave like this."

Meanwhile, Renée Nicole Good is being mourned, in the words of her mother, as "an amazing human being" and "one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.." On Friday, Renée's wife Becca Good released a moving statement thanking all the people who have reached out to support their family: "This kindness of strangers is the most fitting tribute because if you ever encountered my wife, Renée Nicole Macklin Good, you know that above all else, she was kind. In fact, kindness radiated out of her...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."

She described moving to Minnesota, "like people have done across place and time...to make a better life for ourselves. 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. Renée lived this belief every day... 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."

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A woman fans herself by a sign reading 37 degrees Celsius, or 99 degrees Fahrenheit
News

'A Wake-Up Call': Scientists Find 2025 Among Hottest Years on Record

Climate change driven by human burning of fossil fuels helped make 2025 one of the hottest years ever recorded, a scientific report published Monday affirmed, prompting renewed calls for urgent action to combat the worsening planetary emergency.

Researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that "although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record," with only two other recent years recording a higher average worldwide temperature.

For the first time, the three-year running average will end the year above the 1.5°C warming goal, relative to preindustrial levels, established a decade ago under the landmark Paris climate agreement.

"Global temperatures remained very high and significant harm from human-induced climate change is very real," the report continues. "It is not a future threat, but a present-day reality."

"Across the 22 extreme events we analyzed in depth, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts, and wildfires claimed lives, destroyed communities, and wiped out crops," the researchers wrote. "Together, these events paint a stark picture of the escalating risks we face in a warming world."

The WWA researchers' findings tracked with the findings of United Nations experts and others that 2025 would be the third-hottest year on record.

According to the WWA study:

This year highlighted again, in stark terms, how unfairly the consequences of human-induced climate change are distributed, consistently hitting those who are already marginalized within their societies the hardest. But the inequity goes deeper: The scientific evidence base itself is uneven. Many of our studies in 2025 focused on heavy rainfall events in the Global South, and time and again we found that gaps in observational data and the reliance on climate models developed primarily for the Global North prevented us from drawing confident conclusions. This unequal foundation in climate science mirrors the broader injustices of the climate crisis.

The events of 2025 make it clear that while we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels, we also must invest in adaptation measures. Many deaths and other impacts could be prevented with timely action. But events like Hurricane Melissa highlight the limits of preparedness and adaptation: When an intense storm strikes small islands such as Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, even relatively high levels of preparedness cannot prevent extreme losses and damage. This underscores that adaptation alone is not enough; rapid emission reductions remain essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

“If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal” of 1.5°C, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto—who is also an Imperial College London climate scientist—told the Associated Press. “The science is increasingly clear.”

The WWA study's publication comes a month after this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference—or COP30—ended in Brazil with little meaningful progress toward a transition from fossil fuels.

Responding to the new study, Climate Action Campaign director Margie Alt said in a statement that "2025 was full of stark reminders of the urgent need to cut climate pollution, invest in clean energy, and tackle the climate crisis now."

"Today’s report is a wake-up call," Alt continued. "Unfortunately, [US President Donald] Trump and Republicans controlling Congress spent the past year making climate denial official US policy and undermining progress to stave off the worst of the climate crisis. Their reckless polluters-first agenda rolled back critical climate protections and attacked and undermined the very agencies responsible for helping Americans prepare for and recover from increasingly dangerous disasters."

"Across the country, people are standing up and demanding their leaders do better to protect our families from climate change and extreme weather," Alt added. "It's time those in power started listening.”

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Elon Musk
News

US Billionaire Wealth Surges to $8.1 Trillion as Affordability Crisis Hammers Working Class

The collective wealth of US billionaires surged to $8.1 trillion in 2025 as working-class Americans faced a cost-of-living crisis made worse by President Donald Trump's tariff regime and unprecedented assault on the social safety net.

An analysis released Friday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found that the top 15 US billionaires saw the largest wealth gains last year, with their collective fortune growing from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. That 33% gain was more than double the S&P 500's 16% increase in 2025.

What IPS describes as the "elite group" of US billionaires includes Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the richest man in the world; Google co-founder Larry Page; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; and Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison.

IPS emphasized that "these staggering combined billionaire wealth totals come as the Trump-GOP budget bill passed in 2025 defunded health insurance, food stamps, and other vital anti-poverty safety net programs, in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and budget increases for militarism and mass deportations."

"The affordability crisis is hitting ordinary Americans particularly hard as we head into the new year, but not everyone is feeling the pain: Billionaires are raking in staggering profits off the backs of ordinary workers,” Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS, said in a statement.

“These extreme concentrations of wealth and power," Collins added, "undermine our daily lives and further rig our economy in favor of the ultra-rich and corporations, while ordinary Americans get a raw deal once again.”

IPS released its analysis days after Bloomberg reported, based on its Billionaires Index, that the world's 500 richest people gained a record $2.2 trillion in wealth last year.

Omar Ocampo, an IPS researcher, said that in the US, billionaires are "paying far less in taxes compared to the huge amount of wealth they amass," allowing them to continue accumulating vast fortunes, supercharging inequality, and using their wealth and influence to subvert reform efforts.

“Not only are a small number of Americans holding more wealth than the rest of America, but they’re also not paying their fair share in taxes," said Ocampo.

The new report comes as families across the US struggle to make ends meet amid high and still-rising prices for groceries, housing, and other necessities. A Century Foundation survey released last month found that "roughly three in 10 voters delayed or skipped medical care in the past year due to cost, while nearly two-thirds switched to cheaper groceries or bought less food altogether."

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Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries
News

Schumer, Jeffries Refuse to Join Democrats' Growing Calls to Slash ICE Spending

The killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis this week came as Republicans in Congress were planning to bring a homeland security spending bill to the House floor, deciding on whether the agency that's surged thousands of armed agents into communities across the country should have increased funding—and progressive lawmakers are demanding that the Democrats use the upcoming government funding deadline to hopefully reduce the department's ability to wreak further havoc.

"I just don’t understand how we provide votes for a bill that funds the extent of the depravity," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNN Thursday. "I know we can’t fix everything in the appropriations bill but we should be looking at ways we can put some commonsense limitations on their ability to bring violence to our cities."

But the top Democratic leaders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) both appeared to have little interest in discussing how their party can use the appropriations process as leverage to rein in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies that have taken part in President Donald Trump's mass deportation operation.

Both Schumer and Jeffries sharply criticized Wednesday's shooting and the Trump administration's insistence that, contrary to mounting video evidence, the ICE agent who shot Good was acting in self-defense.

But Jeffries said Thursday that he was focused on passing other appropriations bills that were ultimately approved by the House.

“We’ll figure out the accountability mechanisms at the appropriate time," Jeffries told reporters.

With Congress facing a January 30 deadline for approving government spending packages—and with public disapproval of ICE at an all-time high—several lawmakers have said this week that right now is the "appropriate time" to rein in the agency in any way the Democrats can.

"Statements and letters are not enough, and the appropriations process and the [continuing resolution] expiring January 31 is our opportunity," Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) told Axios.

Schumer also refused to say whether the Democrats would use the appropriations process as leverage to cut funding to ICE, whose budget is set to balloon to $170 billion following the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. Republicans will need Democratic support to pass a spending bill in the Senate, where 60 votes are required.

The Senate leader said only that he has "lots of problems with ICE" when asked whether he would support abolishing the agency—a proposal whose support has gone by 20 percentage points among voters in just one year, according to a recent survey. Both leaders also would not commit to slashing the homeland security budget should the Democrats win back majorities in Congress this year.

"It’s hard to be an opposition party when you refuse to oppose the blatantly illegal and immoral things being done by the opposition," said Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health.

Sharing a clip of Jeffries' remarks to reporters about the agency's funding, historian Moshik Temkin said that "people need to understand that at its core ICE is a bipartisan project, increasingly funded and normalized over multiple Democratic administrations and congressional majorities, and a few of them (not this guy) are starting to realize how foolish, weak, and misguided they were."

Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are among the progressive lawmakers calling on the Democrats to demand reduced funding for ICE—even if it means another government shutdown months after the longest one in US history late last year, which began when the Democrats refused to join the GOP in passing a spending bill that would have allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire. Ultimately, some Senate Democrats caved, and the subsidies lapsed.

"We can't just keep authorizing money for these illegal killers," Jayapal told Axios. "That's what they are, this rogue force."

Ocasio-Cortez told the Independent that Democrats should "absolutely" push to cut funding.

“This Congress, this Republican Congress, while they cut a trillion dollars to Americans’ healthcare, and they exploded the ICE budget to $170 billion making it one of the largest paramilitary forces in the United States with zero accountability as they shoot US citizens in the head—absolutely,” she said.

On the podcast The Majority Report, Emma Vigeland and Sam Seder called on progressive Democrats to demand Schumer's ouster in light of his refusal to take action to rein in ICE as its violence in American communities escalates.

"Change the news cycle and show that you'll be an opposition party," said Vigeland. "Call for his ouster."

Seder added that Schumer "has the ability to wage a fight to prevent the funding of DHS. He has the ability to do that and he doesn't want it. He's running away from any leverage he has, deliberately."

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Federal agent in Minneapolis
News

'You Are Murderers!' 'Get the F*ck Out!': Fury at ICE Agents Boils in Minneapolis

Amidst peaceful demonstrations and shows of empathy and solidarity in Minneapolis and other US cities following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal agent last week, videos appearing online over the weekend also show increasing levels of outrage directed at immigration officers who community members say they no longer want to see terrorizing their streets.

While Trump has reportedly ordered more officers to Minneapolis in the wake of Good's killing—even as local and state officials have called for the end of operations in order to tamp down tensions in the city—the clips circulating online reveal mounting frustration by neighbors no longer willing to tolerate the situation.

On Sunday, journalist and documentarian Ford Fischer posted video from Minneapolis he described as ICE agents being "followed by dozens of activists on foot and in vehicles" in the city.

While agents are seen holding bear spray and warning people to stay back, the procession of civilians following them heckled the officers and made it clear they are not wanted in the city.

"You are murderers!" yells one man at the officers. Several others can be heard screaming, "Go home!" and "Fuck you!"

In another video, posted by FreedomNews.TV, federal agents are seen pulling two people from a vehicle on a residential street and placing them under arrest before being confronted by neighbors and onlookers telling them to "Get out of our fucking state!"; "Get the fuck out!"; and "Get a real job!"

"Protesters in the area are furious, and tensions are exploding," said independent journalist Brian Allen in response to the video. "This is escalation, not policing."

The latest scenes appear to indicate growing anger by the public towards President Donald Trump's authoritarian deployment of federal agents to cities nationwide over the last year. With Good's killing, the growing tensions are palpable.

While many state and local lawmakers and other officials calling for calm and peaceful protest in response, many—including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) also believe that Trump and members of his administration are intentionally trying to provoke the civilian population in order to justify an ever harsher repressive response.

In comments on Saturday, as Common Dreams reported, Omar warned that the ultimate goal is "to agitate people enough where they are able to invoke the Insurrection Act to declare martial law."

While the individual episodes documented above reveal the very real anger that many are feeling as masked federal agents target people in their communities, the overall protests against the policies that led to Good's killing—which took place in hundreds of cities over the weekend—have been resoundingly peaceful.

"A peaceful night in Minneapolis," the city posted to its social media accounts following Saturday night's demonstrations. "As more demonstrations are planned today, we appreciate and thank the community for using its collective voice in harmony and love."


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Head of Amnesty International Agrees Trump-Led US Is ‘Destroying World Order’
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Head of Amnesty International Agrees Trump-Led US Is ‘Destroying World Order’

Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard expressed agreement Thursday that the US under President Donald Trump is tearing down world order, while also pointing the finger at other major Western powers for being part of the problem.

In a post on X, Callamard reacted to a warning delivered by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier that the Trump administration was undermining systems developed decades ago with the help of the US to ensure greater international stability.

Callamard agreed with Steinmeier's basic argument, but added that Germany has not been an innocent bystander.

"The US is destroying world order," wrote the Amnesty International chief. "And so did Israel for the last two years. With Germany support."

She then accused Germany and other US allies of ignoring past US violations of international law and only getting upset now that it's come back to bite them.

"German and other European leaders cannot suddenly discover that the rule-based order is on its knee when they have governed over its demise for the last two years," she wrote. "Complicity, tacit agreement, appeasement, silence: these have a cost. A high cost. And you/we will all end up paying for it."

Steinmeier's remarks came in response to increased US aggression against both Latin America, where Trump ordered the invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, and Europe, where Trump has once again stated his desire to seize Greenland from Denmark.

"Then there is the breakdown of values by our most important partner, the USA, which helped build this world order," the German president said. "It is about preventing the world from turning into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers."

Top Trump aide Stephen Miller earlier in the week explicitly advocated returning to an era in which great military powers are free to take whatever they want from weaker powers.

"The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere,” Miller said during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. “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.”

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