Murder in Minneapolis

An innocent woman has been murdered in Minneapolis.

In December, the 23-year-old conservative video influencer Nick Shirley went around trying to get into various daycare centers in Minneapolis. He claimed that he was investigating fraud, but there is no evidence of fraud at any of the centers he visited. 

Nevertheless, the videos took on a life of their own. Soon after, Donald Trump went on what is among the most racist rants he had ever given against the Somali immigrant population in Minneapolis. The usual toadies echoed his talking points on social media and in cable news segments, and the ICE machine began to gear up in response to its leader’s whims. 

This morning, DHS posted “GOOD MORNING MINNEAPOLIS!” on X, relishing their own power to bring fear down on an American city. 

Mere hours later, a masked agent of the state murdered a US citizen while she was attempting to drive away. 

DHS quickly spun the killing as self defense, but a plethora of videos and even more witnesses made that lie obvious immediately. Here is one video, for those with the stomach to check for themselves. She was turning her car to leave and the agent, in no danger at all, shoots straight into her open window.

This tragedy, this crime, is only to be expected from an administration that has always believed itself entitled to not just govern, but to rule over a free people. An administration that rejects professionalism and has sought to scale up what was already the least professionalized federal agency to act as a personal enforcer for the President. An administration that treats minorities, women, and liberals and city-dwellers as beneath contempt, as subhuman. 

Killing ordinary American citizens is not popular. This is not going to help Republicans hold Congress in November, nor will continuing to do this kind of thing help put a Republican in the White House in 2029, never mind enabling a mythical Trump third term.

But an unpopular, desperate, and yes, weak president still has extraordinary ability to spread suffering and death. In 2025 that was largely confined to immigrants, and that was bad enough. But these things never stay confined for long. The long tradition of American abolitionism often rested its argument on the fact that you cannot guarantee that institutions of brutality will never be turned against free men. Similarly, one cannot intensify the attack on non-citizens and expect citizens to come out unscathed. 

A woman is dead today, in Minneapolis. Her murder was an avoidable tragedy, had voters not chosen mass deportation in 2024, had Stephen Miller not instructed ICE to abandon the last vestiges of its professionalism, had the clicktatorship not run itself on the basis of whatever the viral right-wing video of the moment is. 

But voters did make that choice, and this is the administration we have, for now. We must do what we can to impede its ability to act, to mitigate the inevitable harms. We must vote them out of Congress in November, and we must demand Democrats use every tool at their disposal the following January.

Three years is a long time to resist and to endure with all our might. But it is not long enough for them to triumph, not the way they’re going. We’ve got this. It’s going to be hard, there will be more losses, but we will beat them in the end.

Featured image is Sad Foreboding of What is to Come, by Francisco Goya