Funded by Our Own Tax Dollars, American Fascism Is Here

One of the hardest tasks we face collectively is identifying the moment when we have passed a point of no return. It isn't a question of simply identifying the crises. These are clear and plenty. The question is: when have we shifted into a form no longer recognizable to ourselves?

In the span of one week, we have watched more of the unthinkable unfold, earthshattering moments piling up. It is only a week into a new year, yet we are already exhausted by 2026. The US government abducted the president and first lady of Venezuela in violation of every norm established through the UN to hold our fragile world together. Trump has reached beyond the bounds of international law with such brazen contempt that even the pretense of world order has shattered.

And in that same week, on a snowy Minnesota morning, an ICE agent, later identified as Jonathan E. Ross, emboldened by this brutal administration shot Renee Nicole Good through her car window. He shot her through the front windshield. As she slumped forward, he shot her again and again through the side window. He murdered her. And then his fellow ICE officers stood by as she died. They prevented a physician who rushed to help from providing emergency care, when the physician asked if he could check for a pulse, ICE agents refused and said “I don’t care" as Renee bled out.

This Is Who We Are Now

Renee had dropped her children off at school that morning. She drove with her partner and their dog to be a legal observer, to ensure there would be witnesses to the illegal acts happening around our country. She drove toward the vulnerable, members of her community who were being targeted by masked thugs, to make sure they were not alone. And she was murdered for it.

We will organize. We will refuse. We will not fund our own terror.

The ICE officers near her did nothing to try to revive her. Nothing to keep her alive. They barred those around her from helping. The shooter simply walked away, gazed at his phone flippantly, got in a car, and drove off.

So who are we? Are we Renee Good, whose children's toys were squeezed into every crevice of her car, who understood that when neighbors are under attack, showing up to bear witness is not optional, rather, it is our obligation? Or are we the masked agent who carelessly takes a gun and shoots an unarmed witness in the head?

The Architecture of Exclusion

What we are witnessing is what social psychologist Morton Deutsch called moral exclusion—the process by which we come to see more and more people as undeserving of rights, as outside the sphere of justice. When people are morally excluded, their mistreatment becomes justifiable. Their discrimination becomes policy. Their exploitation becomes economic strategy. Their murder becomes enforcement.

The ICE agents who killed Renee and prevented anyone from saving her life had excluded her from their moral community. She was not a mother to three children. Not a neighbor. Not a beloved partner and precious daughter to her mom and dad. Not a person worthy of life-saving intervention. She was disposable.

This is not new in America. We have always had these ebbs and flows, moments when fascistic violence surges and moments when it recedes just enough for us to pretend it's over. For the majority of this country's history, Black and brown people were morally excluded by white people. And white people learned to accept this. We became numb to it. Look at who fills our prisons: the majority are Black and brown people. We have been complicit in building and funding a system that treats Black and brown lives as disposable. We pay our taxes knowing where they go. We see the incarceration rates and do nothing.

The moral universe in the eyes of the state has always been small. What is happening now is that it is shrinking further, faster. The violence we accepted against Black and brown communities is expanding. Fascism is here.

Funded By Our Money

It is critical for us to understand that we are the ones funding this. Soon we'll be filing our taxes. Many of us, including those who are undocumented and continue to work and pay taxes, are funding the very system that is murdering our neighbors.

When we seek funding for education, for healthcare, for research, we are really asking for our own money back. Instead, anything that benefits us is being diminished and defunded by the Trump administration. Anything that supports our quality of life, our thriving, our children is being stripped away. And our taxpayer money is being used to fund thugs who are murdering Renee, who are abducting our neighbors, who are terrorizing our communities.

The same money that could be ensuring every child has what they need to learn is instead arming untrained ICE agents who shoot mothers in front of witnesses. The same money that could be providing healthcare is instead funding mass deportation operations. The same money that could be supporting research and innovation is used to blow up boats in the Mediterranean.

The Point of No Return

This is a watershed moment. This is the point of no return.

Until now, we at least had a story. Even if for Black and brown Americans, for poor Americans, equal rights were always an empty promise, we had a story of America that mattered to the world.

I know because it mattered to me. As a little Hungarian girl under Ceaușescu in Romania, I believed in a place where you could be an ethnic minority without persecution, speak your language without criminalization, name histories without being targeted. It is all so complex, and really both things were simultaneously true. The dream was real even when the reality fell devastatingly short. That dream saved lives. Saved my life. It animated people risking everything, crossing deserts, floating across seas, to reach what America promised to be.

Now that story is gone. The norms are being exploded and we are being exploded along with it.

When the institutions fail, when the story shatters, ordinary people must become what we thought the country would be. Renee Good understood this. She showed up to protect the persecuted because no one else would.

In the face of fascistic terror, there are always people who crumble and people who refuse. Renee refused. She refused to look away. She refused to let the vulnerable face terror alone. And for that refusal, she was murdered.

Refusing to Fund Our Own Terror

We cannot afford to crumble. We must refuse. We must show up more, not less.

This means becoming sanctuary. Houses of worship, community centers, neighborhoods. When ICE comes, we document, witness, disrupt. We block deportation buses. We make this machinery of exclusion slower, harder, more costly to operate. Civil disobedience is a moral requirement now. We do more after Renee's murder, not less.

And, crucially, here is the power we must claim: We are funding this.

This means we have power. Take it back. Build mutual aid networks. Fund bail funds, legal defense, sanctuary. Take care of each other when the government we fund refuses to.

Demand it back. Call every elected official. Tell them: not one more dollar for ICE. Not one more dollar for detention centers, where 32 people died in 2025 while in ICE custody. Not one more dollar to militarize our communities. Every dollar used to fund this violence is stolen from us. We will organize. We will refuse. We will not fund our own terror.

We will not buckle before the masked cowards who murder our neighbors. Like Renee, we show up. We build sanctuary. We make our communities ungovernable to fascism.

This is the point of no return. We are the ones who refuse.