Most of these comments are arguing the Renee Good incident as if this were a courtroom brief. That’s a category mistake.
Noah's point isn’t “this shooting was unjustified beyond doubt.” It’s that even ambiguous encounters are now being interpreted, defended, and operationalized in ways that break with American legal and cultural norms.
Fixating on frame-by-frame video analysis is a comfortable dodge. The essay is about why federal law enforcement has adopted an invasion mindset, why constitutional restraint is being treated as optional, and why “comply or die” rhetoric is now openly defended by national leaders.
If your takeaway is “she should’ve complied,” you’ve missed the argument entirely — and quietly accepted a definition of authority that would have horrified earlier generations of Americans. Engage with the larger questions of "Why are federal agents gunning down Americans in the streets?" and "Americans have to insist that the Trump administration stop these abuses, and they have to vote against any politician who embraces the ideology that led to them."
Exactly. An America where everyone has to bow and scrape and instantly do whatever any federal agent tells them to do, on pain of instant death? That's a dystopia. No one will stand for that sort of country.
A substantial proportion of Americans absolutely will stand for it. At the very least, they’ll do what they’ve been doing with the rest of Trump’s atrocities, which is to deny them or creatively rationalise them.
Think of all the ‘No one will stand for…’ statements that reasonable people have made over the last 10 years that have proven to be depressingly wrong.
Your comment grossly overstates the situation. Ms Good was already committing a crime by positioning her vehicle to impede ICE. Far from being punished for failing to bow and scrape, she drove to that place for the purpose of interfering with federal LEOs. She was instructed to get out of the car. She refused and attempted, in the most charitable light, to escape apprehension, a 2d crime, and in so doing, recklessly at least, if not deliberately, sideswiped a LEO, vehicular assault being a 3d crime. That is a far far far cry from “instant death” for failing to “bow and scrape.” She could have stayed away and let LEO do their job. She could have parked on the side of the street and video’d. She could have turned off her car and exited the vehicle. No one asked her to “bow and scrape.” Your thinking here is inflamed and inflammatory.
Remarkable to see how many people who subscribe to Noah Smith have a fascist attitude. Not even I would have predicted that, and my misanthropy has few bounds. The fact that such an obvious and much-needed commentary on this killing and all the other criminal abuses and the criminal administration's lies about it could be controversial among people who read this blog on a regular basis, is crazy.
I'm surprised too. I figured he'd get the usual hate from the usual lefties who don't want to acknowledge that there's a serious strain of anti-White ideology on their side that's unAmerican and insanely counterproductive.
What I didn't expect was people actually defending the Good shooting. There's so many reasons to oppose it, but one prominent one I didn't see Noah mention -- they had no right to do anything to Good. She was a citizen who wasn't obstructing them (proof: some of them drove around her seconds before). If she was violating traffic laws, or, I dunno, "disturbing the peace", MPD could address that. ICE isn't an all-purpose police force and anyone who's even a little fond of the rule of law has to see this is all insanely chaotic and out of bounds.
Or they really don't want to believe it's gone this far. They're just in denial, and this is some kind of pivot point they can't accept without their denial collapsing.
Canada and the rest of nato are way past that. We are f*cking freaking out. Taking over Greenland may as well be shooting Archduke Ferdinand. The whole world will fall to conflict from that point. Even the republicans in the senate seem to get it, but most americans just think it's a minor territory issue.
Not surprising for a leftist to be bemused by people subscribing to someone they disagree with
Sad you can’t censor us like you and your lefty fascist friends did and condoned in 2020 and before until Musk bought Twitter and y’all took your toys and left to go circle jerk in your ideological bubble?
Please just end your gift subscription early. We get terrorized enough in the streets by federal agents demanding to see our papers - no need to troll us in the comments section.
". . . y’all took your toys and left to go circle jerk in your ideological bubble."
You're certainly trying to make sure people don't, CC. I hope you wouldn't blame anyone because you succeeded.
There are ways to dissent with a majority on a comment string and maintain lines of communication rather than confrontation. It can allow for persuasion or at least some recognition of common interest in replacing demonization with dialogue. When you arrive post only to bait those you disagree with (trolling) you're not really part of the conversation, you're just trying to disrupt it with anger. Of course, you're free to attempt to be a social arsonist if that's you're aspiration.
Sometimes intentional antagonism is effective, sometimes dialogue is.
I’m happy to engage in dialogue - I’ll talk about anything you want right now.
But when someone comments “why are people I disagree with here”, the proper strategic response is to slam their hypocrisy back in their stupid face in the hope that perhaps a shock to the system can break them or others out of their stupor. The left is q single handedly responsible for the breakdown in dialogue in this country, and they still have not reckoned with that or apologized for it.
"The left is single handedly responsible for the breakdown in dialogue in this country, and they still have not reckoned with that or apologized for it."
I appreciate the sentiment that you are open to dialogue, CC. I don't disagree with you that challenging a point of view or what seems to be closed-mindedness can be effective, but in my experience sarcasm and snark never is. It invariably closes dialogue and reflection. So if "shocking" people into reflection is your goal I think you'll find that civility and well targeted argument are the tools you want. Personal dismissiveness always generates its equivalent.
Moreover, as the phrase I've quoted above indicates, you have chosen an absolute position as a tactic and that is equally unlikely to have a positive effect. I think most people on this thread can understand what you're looking at when you blame "the left" (as if people on the Left were all alike), but looking at the long perspective it is clearly untrue. Having watched the social force of public rhetoric since the 1950s I believe that an objective review would find substantially equivalent responsibility for this breakdown located at both ends of the political spectrum, and by "ends" I mean the relative extremes, which always capture far more attention than the far more populated moderate regions. And regularly in private and periodically in public you will find individuals who migrate away from the extreme make statements of regret for past extremism throughout the past 75 years. But to expect "The Left" or "The Right" to apologize is to personify as an individual large numbers of people who do not share a single voice, though it may appear that they do if you look only at the fraction who speak publicly or take participation in some political event on a single issue as monolithic agreement on a broader stance. The way "reckonings" and "apologies" are expressed by a political bloc on the extreme is in a waning of numbers and a shift towards more moderate approaches. (I found the individual recent public apology by Marjorie Taylor Greene astonishing and welcome, but it is, obviously, something very rare.)
Noah Smith's blog and its rising influence is a clear reflection of the growing strength of moderate approaches on the Left, both in its analytic substance and in its reasoned tone. I suppose that's why your friend recommended it. It's not common to find adversarial snark here, although comments do frequently challenge Mr. Smith's points. Having looked over some of your Substack comments I think it's pretty certain that you'll find very few here whose ideological perspective aligns with yours, but there's actually plenty of room for you to make germane criticisms and have your points received, even if the result is only to ensure that others remain aware that there are civil people who see things differently and who need to be heard.
Thanks to Mr. Musk, American Christendom is associated with weird online creeps. Not exactly helpful when the faith continues to lose believers with each passing generation. Are you sure he’s not a lefty fascist pulling a Straussian move?
His personal beliefs don’t matter. Musk (partly) enabled the mainstreaming of the creeps and their hijacking of the right’s energy and trajectory. American conservatives have gone from the dignity of John McCain to drowning in raw sewage.
I agree. I'm just puzzled by all these people on the right who support Christendom without knowing the first thing about Christianity, or claim they want to defend European Civilization but think that Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are just Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Well I think all too often Partisans never think "wait these practices are two-edged swords"
While personally far from being a Lefty and generally quite unsympathetic to the proggy protest movement people - excusing a shooting of a pudgy-faced goofy soccer mom - over a situation that at most maybe shoot out her tires and frankly just take down her plates and description and at most arrest later - is utterly blind to precedent setting that one does not want to have Federal agents to have at all. As one day it will be Not Your Side with such powers.
It's wonderful you're being forcefully exposed to opinions you consciously seek to avoid at all costs. That's what's good about Noah's readership - we're all over the board.
Thank you for writing this Noah. I am sickened and disturbed by the reactions of our fellow Americans to these videos. The ICE agent was in no danger. If Renee hit him at all she couldn't have been going more than 10 mph. As the video showed, he was easily able to avoid any injury from the car, and it's clear that would be true even if he hadn't pulled the trigger. Shooting Renee did not stop the car. I do not accept domestic law enforcement agencies that run around in masks shooting people on flimsy justifications. I especially do not accept it when the similarly compromised FBI insists on excluding all other parties from the investigation. There will be no real investigation under the FBI. It is clearly a cover up. I am truly shocked that so many American citizens support this. How could someone support this? I don't understand it. I went out and protested today and that helped, but this week has made me lose some of my faith in the American people.
In 2013, CBP reviewed their Use of Force practices and recommended the following with regard to shooting at vehicles:
"CBP should make policy changes that restrict agents from shooting at vehicles. Likewise, agents should be trained to get out of the way of oncoming vehicles as opposed to intentionally assuming a position in the path of such vehicles. The policy should mirror the clear and unambiguous policies that have been in place and which have proven effective in a number of large U.S. jurisdictions for over 40 years. The CBP policy should state “Agents shall not discharge their firearms at or from a moving vehicle unless deadly physical force is being used against the police officer or another person present, by means other than a moving vehicle.”
“An unarmed woman who just made cheerful remarks to you”
Alternate reality. She and her partner were jeering the officer, and then her partner yelled at her to drive, and she drove into him with her car. Which is a weapon
Since when does jeering at a police officer mean summary execution?
And "she drove into him with her car" - her wheels were turned away from him, the car was at a standstill, not approaching him with any speed, and he capably stepped aside and was on his feet the entire time.
If one is in the mode of making distorted excuses for utterly stupid and bungling Banana Republic Third World style policing, then yes that would be your alternative reality
It has no credibility outside the blind partisans that are unable to recognise these swords as precedents cut both ways.
Establishing Federal Goons to play bungling incompetent shooter cowboys like they're in Venezuela isn't something that any smart person celebrates -
Banana Republicism isn't a good thing, whether Venezuela, Columbia or Mexico, are ICE twits aping LatAm third world incompetence.
Shooting a pudgey Soccer Mom with twattish politics over something that the video very clearly makes evident was not "car charging" but "person trying to drive away" is not a precedent one wants - as one day you will have a Lefty administration and precedents stand.
Why are you analyzing this like it didn't happen in under 1 second?
The sort of frame-by-frame analysis you are doing reveals more about you than what happened. In this case it reveals that you have never been in a situation where you needed to rely on instinct. Or you have but have chosen to forget.
The event is over before you are aware of the choice, and the science bears this out.
By all means, discuss why this situation arose, but the idea that he considered each shot after the first? Do you really believe that?
Whether you "consider" it or not, firing a gun into the side of a car is not self defense. Even killing someone on a spur of the moment instinct is not legal.
Actually it is legal if he can show he justifiably feared for his life.
You are right that firing a gun into the side of a car is not a good look in isolation. But my point is those subsequent shots were an inevitable consequence of his original decision to open fire on a vehicle that was not actually intending to run him down (as we can see from the wheel direction, something the officer could not see). He didn't decide to fire 2 or 3 or 4 times, he decided to use lethal force once.
The question is: when he decided to open fire, can he show he was justified in perceiving a mortal threat?
This wasn't 8 minutes, it was 800 milliseconds.
However, I find the higher order conversation far more significant: why did this situation exist *at all*? And that is where I believe your analytical skills would be more valuable, and impactful.
"I find the higher order conversation far more significant: why did this situation exist *at all*? And that is where I believe your analytical skills would be more valuable, and impactful." <-- Well, sir, you're in luck. I wrote a whole post about that. Scroll up and check it out!
I know, I pay for your words, and you'll notice I provide a narrow critique because I believe you compromised the rest of your analysis by starting with a presumption I believe to be flawed, as I explained.
A sort of inverse Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.
What if the woman had been trying to run him down? Would that change how you feel about ICEs current application? I'd suspect not. It's not important to the analysis, it weakened it and compromises your future writing on this subject.
If the woman had been trying to run him down, that still doesn't justify shooting into the side of the car to make sure she's dead. The problem with these questions is that asking "What if this were clearly self-defense?" requires hypothesizing a change in the facts.
But you're also missing the broader, overarching point: in a healthy democracy that didn't recruit white supremacists to terrorize part of the population, the situation would probably never have arisen.
It absolutely totally does, even in MN post Floyd. MN Stat 609.066. Risk of great bodily harm to the LEO or anyone is complete justification for deadly force.
The question remains: Even putting aside the fact that the vehicle was already turning away (which the ICE agent couldn't see) -- how was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?
If you think that is physically possible, I suggest you do some reading.
You can criticize how he was holding his weapon or how he positioned his body, and of course his decision to use lethal force, but once the decision has been made to use lethal force, you can not consider each shot.
That's the point of my argument, by taking this angle you reveal yourself to know absolutely nothing about this type of situation.
If your argument hinges on the 2nd or 3rd shot in few hundred milliseconds, you're on some pretty thin ice.
Yet as I understand it, this exact scenario has a lot of case law behind it and it goes counter to your claim. There's isn't a "it all happened so fast I couldn't think it through" defense. The case law is that each shot has to be justifiable on its own, based on the totality of circumstances in that exact moment in time, for that shot to be self-defense.
Science will eventually give us all the precise details of each shot, but if the forensics report determines some shots were fired at her from the side or behind, even if only milliseconds after the threat ended, a self defense claim for those specific shots will likely be difficult to prevail on if it ever goes to a jury.
I look to science, not the law. If you read all I have written here you will find I am not defending what he did on a legal basis, or even a scientific one. I am arguing that debating his intent on a shot by shot basis is malarkey.
That said I would challenge you to find me a case where 3 shots were fired *in under 1 second*, and the jury was ok with the first shot and not the 2nd or 3rd. "It all happened so fast" is not a defense I would ever buy, especially from an officer. That is not my stance, I am narrowly focused on the fallacy of analyzing each shot individually, and have been rather consistent.
Looks like someone else already responded to you, but I'm just going to go ahead and agree with him. You might want to look up whether there is a defense of "it happened too fast and I didn't know what to do". Pretty sure that's not going to fly when the state has given someone rights carry a deadly weapon as part of their job.
This is why cops who actually know what they're doing only pull out their weapon as their last resort. Because they know that once they do that, everything changes.
Another challenge this officer will face is that he had the presence of mind to move his phone from one hand to the other, yet kept holding it up and trying to aim it after unholstering his weapon. (LEOs distracting themselves trying to manually record with personal phones is a whole other topic - I'm guessing the reason is the same reason Hillary had personal email servers).
The officer needlessly allowed himself to be distracted by having to clumsily aim the phone with one hand and his weapon in the other. To the extent the officer felt threatened, it was likely because he was off balance from this reckless and needless balancing act.
At a minimum, it's gross incompetence and reckless behavior, but realistically, to the extent he thought his life was in danger, it was largely because he was distracted and off balance from doing this. You can't intentionally do something that puts you in danger and then claim self defense.
There is no progressive prerogative to interfere with law enforcement and sure as hell none to disobey or assault them, just as there was no right wing prerogative to interfere with Congress on January 6. Good is no different than Ashli Babbitt - both crossed the line. No American gets to hit a law enforcement officer with a vehicle after being told to get out of their car.
You’re coming from the same ignorant armchair quarterback as others. I’m going to assume you know what an adrenaline rush does to someone, specifically tunnel vision. Give law enforcement some grace that (1) he was well aware she was there specifically to interfere and harass and potentially assault ICE. (2) once he got hit by her vehicle, after she was ordered to get out of her SUV, he was unable to see where her wheels were turned. He was protecting himself from assault by 2 ton vehicle. All the Bellingcat geniuses likely haven’t been in a firefight, or even a normal physical fight. I have, so I’m willing to remember how hard it is to be fully rational in those few seconds. You had hours to analyze videos and assume the time scale is the same for that ICE agent. That’s simply not true.
This might be the most ignorant American-branded thing I’ve ever read.
You’re happy to ignore the fact that ICE is engaged in dangerous and unnecessary activity in American cities, egged on by idiot leaders playing out their violent fantasies, even though plenty have warned about exactly this sort of thing happening. You implicitly think it was reasonable for the killer to have his gun out and pointing it at the victim, even though there was nothing useful he could do with that gun. And you’re happy to excuse an obvious murder because the killer incorrectly thought (for a split second) that he might get a bump from the car, got an adrenaline rush, and therefore could not control himself enough to NOT SHOOT THE DRIVER IN THE FACE??
If you look around, you’ll see that no sane country in the world has anything like ICE agents running around on their streets. No sane country tolerates law enforcement officers pointing guns at citizens unless there is no other choice.
Like I said, stop being a weird loser obsessed with the US. It’s the most pathetic thing about Europe, Australia, New Zealand and others. Your inferiority complex is showing. Worry about your own country and fuck off.
Your invitation is politely refused. You know, we can talk about whatever we like. Of course this looks more and more unfamiliar to many of you Americans, but this is exactly the problem. Oh, from a citizen of a country who just kidnapped the head of state of another country and babble day and night about acquiring a large chunk of another, this is pretty rich.
Not so. The ICE video shows him being grazed by the car.
However, the question remains: Even putting aside the fact that the vehicle was already turning away (which the ICE agent didn't realize) -- how was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?
The word "any" is doing a lot of work in your reply. He actually created further threats by shooting the driver of a moving vehicle. Luckily for him, the Pilot crashed against a empty parked car. That was also an "ostensible threat".
You have no idea what you’re talking about. This is a well-trained officer and military veteran. You just think AWFLs get to break the law, endanger law enforcement with a 2 ton vehicle (she bragged about that just before) and get away with it. There is no such progressive prerogative.
Obviously not trained well enough to learn "don't walk in front of the 2-ton vehicle while in confrontation with its driver".
As for military training and experience, it is actually bad for law enforcement jobs: it is focused on killing the enemy on sight, preferably before they see you. Not exactly what the police are expected to do.
Armed officials should be trained exactly for these situations. They are holding a weapon. They have the responsibility of using it wisely. Anything like this happens in a normal country, you get ministers resigning and endless investigations. Don’t fool yourself: you are justifying a political backed militia.
It wasn’t instant death. That’s pretty clear from the video and I think you are letting your (likely correct) concerns about ICE color this specific situation.
She and her wife had clearly been disobeying the ICE agents for a while before any of the videos we’ve seen started—that’s why the car is crosswise in the street and her wife is outside the car.
She only got shot after accelerating toward the agent from feet away. I don’t think she was actually planning to run him over (and I think the way the wheels went is proof) but it was also completely reasonable for the officer to think she was. Unfortunately she was dead before he could reconsider his first instinct that she was threatening him with deadly force but that doesn’t make it an unreasonable assumption.
I think you are doing something you usually criticize: applying systematic concerns to specific cases that don’t fit them and twisting the facts that don’t match.
I am with you if you want to talk about ICE doing risky operations with ill-trained and probably unsuitable agents and I am very concerned about the conservative rhetoric around this shooting but “accelerating toward someone standing feet in front of you” and “disobeying a federal agent” are not the same thing. She’d been doing the latter with no physical harm for a while.
The question remains: Even putting aside the fact that the vehicle was already turning away (which the ICE agent didn't realize) -- how was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?
I think people mistakenly focus on just the frontal impact of the vehicle and don’t think about the fact that you can also get caught under the car, get a limb knocked into a wheel well and dragged along, and so on. If you’re caught in that way and the driver keeps going, the initial impact might not kill you, but being dragged by the car very well could, and at that point you’re not going to be able to do anything else about it even if you’re holding a gun. What the agent did is commonly referred to as a “scoot and shoot”: he drew his weapon, jumped out of the way and sprayed a set of loosely-aimed shots at the driver as he did so. This is a trained maneuver, and the purpose is twofold: first, it might save you if you don’t manage to get fully out of the way, get trapped by the car, and the driver would have kept driving and killed you. But second, and more importantly, if the driver is actually intending to run you over, firing shots at them gives them something to worry about other than trying to turn the car to hit you, or throwing it into reverse to try to run you over if you leap out of the way and land on the ground (as you are likely to do).
This is a desperation maneuver and the speed with which he executed it (if you closely watch the clip, from the time her car starts moving towards him until the time the third shot is fired is less than 1.5 seconds) indicates that he’s acting on trained reflex. He very likely wasn’t making any conscious decisions after the one to draw his pistol; everything else would be running on autopilot. After he takes the third shot, you can see in the video that he’s got time to reassess, realizes the car has gone past, and holsters his weapon rather than continuing to fire. He would probably not have known at that point whether his shots had struck or killed the driver, and the fact that he stops shooting as soon as he realizes the car isn’t a threat is probably the strongest indication that this was a tragedy of misunderstood intentions and not a deliberate murder.
The really frustrating thing to me about all of this is that the focus should not, I think, be on Ross, the agent who fired the fatal shots. If you watch the whole set of videos from numerous angles that have come out and kind of tie the whole story together (everything from about 5 minutes before the shooting until about 30 seconds after), it becomes kind of apparent that he was acting fairly quietly and professionally the whole time. He got out of his vehicle, took his camera and walked around the car videoing it while being taunted the whole time and not responding, and then had the misfortune to be in front of the car when it took off.
His partner, however, is a completely different story, and if anyone deserves the lion’s share of blame in this encounter, I think it’s him. You can, I think, construct a “what if” scenario where each individual in this story made different choices:
* Say Ross jumped out of the way but didn’t shoot. Outcome: Good survives, but probably gets prosecuted for criminal vehicle operation since she nearly ran someone over due to negligence, and possibly also gets prosecuted on charges for attempting to flee a lawful detention (but that’s far more dubious since it’s debatable whether the ICE agents had any authority to detain her). Better than dying, but still a pretty bad outcome.
* Say Good chose not to try to flee and instead let herself be dragged out of the car by an angry ICE agent behaving like a thug. Outcome: she probably gets roughed up and illegally arrested by a guy who’s just angry that she was talking back to him, but that arrest would be very unlikely to hold water and she’d be free shortly. Better outcome than either death or prosecution.
* But now we come to the third character here: say that Ross’s partner, instead of jumping out of his vehicle and acting like a psychopath, had walked up calmly and had a conversation like an actual human being. Likely outcome: almost certain the misunderstanding is cleared up in under a minute and everyone walks away and no one would ever hear about it because there would have been no incident at all.
I’m not on board with Noah’s conclusion about the shooting being unjustifiable because the second and third shots were fired from the side; I think that comes from inexperience with combat and failure to understand that in a high-pressure adrenaline-pumped situation like this, you aren’t making conscious decisions between every individual action. Fortunately, courts do realize this and tend to analyze situations of this kind by looking for evidence that a person had time to reassess their situation and consciously decide to take a new action. I don’t think we’ll see this case go to trial because of Trump’s wildly inappropriate interference, but if it did, I think Ross likely has a pretty good case for acting in reasonable self-defense.
That said, I absolutely endorse the broader point of Noah’s article: this whole situation happened because of the thuggish, unprofessional nature of the encounter from the very beginning, caused by an agent who dialed the tension level of the encounter to 11 from the moment he jumped out of his car and was itching to punish people who were defying his (presumed) authority. The number of disputed police shootings every year is very low (most are very clear-cut cases where someone shot at the police first). But the number of encounters where a cop leads with an aggressive, hostile, imperious attitude expecting subservience is absolutely astronomical, and probably one of the largest contributors to the number that end in violence. And not just because of the way it escalates any individual encounter, but because of the way distrust and suspicion of law enforcement prime other people to respond to them before they even open their mouths.
ICE are the poster children for this sort of unprofessionalism and thuggery right now, but they’re far from the only offenders: this is an endemic rot in our entire way of policing and it needs more focus and accountability than it gets. People love to talk about the big, flashy, headline-grabbing incidents, but it’s the slow corrosion of relations between police and the communities they serve that’s doing the most damage, I think.
One thing that indicts both the officer and ICE in general is the rampant use of personal phones as cameras while conducting policing work.
To me, this calls into question the competence of both ICE overall and of this specific officer. The distraction/coordination challenges of holding a phone and a weapon at the same time likely contributed to the officer feeling unable to flee and thus to Good's death.
I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful (albeit lengthy) response -- and I agree with much of what you wrote. Nonetheless, your point about “scoot and shoot” as a "trained maneuver" remains questionable.
My initial question was, "How was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?"
By "exacerbate" I was considering that evidently, the driver already had her foot on the accelerator, and that (after being shot [or even shot AT]) she would undoubtedly lose control of the vehicle -- thus making this (notwithstanding your caveats and explanations) a rather dubious mode of "self-defense." Under the circumstances, we're all very lucky that no bystanders (or anyone else) got hit. And that's not even considering the fate of the driver!
This was already an "adrenaline-pumped situation" when the agent took his first shot -- not merely the subsequent shots. In that sense, a process was set in motion that was reckless from the get-go -- and that would seem (in a very real sense) to validate Noah's harsh view of the agent's overall behavior.
Yeah, I think that’s a perfectly reasonable concern. Scoot-and-shoot is, like I said, a desperation move. I think it’s entirely fair to argue that it wasn’t necessary here because we know from the video footage that Ross himself took of the encounter that Good wasn’t trying to run him over: when she throws her car into gear and accelerates, she’s not looking at him at all, she’s looking to the side at his partner who’s trying to yank her door open. When she does look in front of her and sees she’s about to hit someone, she jerks the wheel to the side — which, in a stupendous show of cosmic irony, may in fact be what saved the life of the man who killed her, because he barely got out of the way of the car even with her last-second correction.
That said, I think there are two important factors to consider. The first is the speed of conscious thought: adult human reflexes take about 200-250ms to react to simple visual stimulus when they’re primed and expecting it (push a button when you see a light flash). That increases to about 300-350ms if you have to make a simple binary choice (push the left or right button depending on whether the light is green or red). The second thing to know is that Ross had a previous encounter with a suspect where his arm got trapped in a car window as the suspect attempted to flee and he was dragged by the vehicle and badly injured (this was dug up and confirmed by a number of media sources even before his name was released).
As I mentioned, from the time that Good throws her car out of reverse and into gear (we can tell by her brake lights going off) until the time the burst of shots finishes is about 1.5 seconds. During that time, Ross had to evaluate whether she was coming at him, make a complex decision about whether he could get out of the way in time and whether he might still be in danger from the car even if he did, and then act on it. If you look at the videos we have frame by frame, he doesn’t go for his weapon when she reverses to try to hold her at gunpoint and stop her from fleeing, he goes for it when she guns the engine while pointed straight at him. I think it’s entirely plausible that his combat training combined with his fear of having been previously caught and nearly killed by a fleeing car were a lot of what was driving his reaction here. He just didn’t have the time to make a conscious, careful evaluation of all the consequences of trying to just evade rather than combine evasion with lethal force. Perhaps if he had, he would have made a very different choice.
Ultimately I just think this whole situation is a real tragedy that should have been avoided by never escalating it to the point where Good was terrified enough to try to flee in the first place. It was utterly unnecessary and unreasonable and it put two people in positions where they were reacting in panic and made bad decisions with horrible, permanent consequences.
Certainly not as a general rule, but it really depends on the order. If it's "Drop the gun!" then probably. At least assuming that a gun is actually being brandished.
To say that what Renee Good did is no different from what Ashli Babbitt is an incredibly ill-informed (or stupidly trollish) statement! Ashli Babbitt was part of a mob of angry, weapons-bearing Trump supporters who assaulted Capitol police officers on Jan. 6, 2021 in order to interfere with the official counting of the electoral votes by Congress. In the course of that assault over 100 police officers were injured, with multiple cracked ribs, spinal injuries, loss of an eye and loss of part of a finger, among other injuries. Police showed incredible restraint in not firing a single shot until Ashli and her confederates broke thru the door to the House chamber. The police officer behind the door warned her to stop but she continued to try to go thru the door, at which point he fired a single shot just inside her shoulder, after which she died. Renee Good had just dropped her son at grade school, and while driving in her neighborhood, stopped for a few minutes as ICE agents were raiding her neighborhood. She was told by one ICE agent to leave and then another ICE agent screamed at her to "get out of her fucking car". She backed up slowly, then turned a hard right to avoid 2 ICE agents near her car. She told one "I'm not mad at you" then tried to drive away as 1 agent (Jonathan Ross) was videotaping her with his left hand while he pulled out his gun with his right, and fired 3 shots at her head, the last 2 thru her side window, killing her as she attempted to drive away. Afterward, he said "fucking bitch" and walked without any sign of injury to his car and drove away. Ashli Babbitt was treated with more consideration than almost any rioter anywhere in the world would have been. Renee Good did nothing to deserve being murdered by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a Trump cult member, a Trump toady paid to repeat Trump's lies, or a blind misogynist.
She wasn’t randomly shot on the street, she was looking to interfere with a law enforcement operation. I didn’t vote for Trump, definitely don’t get paid on Substack - both are simple to confirm. I have zero interest in the notion that progressives or far-right nuts get to interfere and assault law enforcement. Not voting for any “Abolish ICE” or “Defund the Police” representative. Until this post Noah Smith used to point out the importance of law enforcement, and yet he falls into the same progressive trap.
Frankly - as Not a Lefty by far- this is incredibly stupid.
Good (who I haven't any particularly wide sympathy for) was in no way in a situation analagous to Babbitt who was in a situaiton of a breaking and entering into a Federal building against clear law and well-posted warning.
Good was on a public street that under any normal circumstances was at best reading at most a disburbing the peace situation if not merely a warning.
Excusing the ICE (who I am not in any "abolish" framing) for what is clealry (as one can see in the WSJ article) reckless usage of deadly force in a broad set off circumstances are absultely abnormal is a category error.
Having myself worked and lived in authoritarian countries - the real deal, not cosplay - frankly the ICE patterns are not good (including the masked snatch&grab), they are real violations of basic American law enforcement in a developed democracy.
And frankly they fall into the Napoleonic aphorism, "worse than a crime, a blunder" as if one supports the overall idea of action, they are grossly crude and clearly intimidation aimed - that is fundamentally un American and will as many other of Trump's unnecessary - really unnecessary - crudeness in execution of what might otherwise be broadly supported action, will further ultimately undercut.
In short - the entire approach is one that is wrong-headed if one is not in crude Milleresque authoritarian cosplay idiocy mindset.
and wrong relative centuries of American liberties tradition.
Had Good been arrested, I'd possibly shrug - likely. Shooting on the street in the wider pattern WSJ has profiled - Wall Street Journal, not the Guardian - is a clear sign of gross approach that not only is legally wrong, again to use the Napoleonic aphorims 'worse than a crime, a blunder."
This is the consistent thread through all this. ICE officers clumsily aiming their phones at people while thuggishly using intimidation to escalate encounters is anger-inducing and disheartening, as is watching them routinely unable to handle basic textbook policing situations competently.
My conclusion from all this is that ICE as it's currently constituted is unfit and unable to competently and professionally execute its mission in compliance with our constitution. The ramifications of this are unclear to me, but that seems to be where we are.
Quite: Thuggish escalation is the pattern that the WSJ highlights.
This is generally incompetence, as competent not-Cosplaying /LARPing regimes generally try to avoid generating potentially sympathetic-to-oppo incidents, and a whitebread pudgy soccer-mom-of-three is not the mediatised target you want by a long country mile.
Further it does not help normalise your otherwise extremely abnormal approach by generating thuggish and generally cowboy-3rd-rate-TV-Action-Drama poor scripting incidents for no particularly real reason.
It's rather clearly bungling "show off and bluster" incompetence in leadership from top down - generating avoidable errors, generating avoidable negative media.
To repeat the Napoleonic aphorism (which if the Trumpian supporters had some modicum of proper Machievelian instinct would take heed of): "Worse than a Crime, a Blunder."
Dan Drezner was and remains quite right (from an ex-Bush admin perch as he has) that it is Trump II is characterised by bungling incompetence in its authoritiarian play, or as I have been putting it, they are LARPing and Cosplaying in incompetent bungling manners, aping TV presentation rather than cold calculation (that is in a sense good althoug pathetic incompetence).
Wrong. She was committing a federal crime by blocking the street to impede ICE. Similarity there. She was given an opportunity, unlike Babbitt, to de-escalate by exiting the vehicle. Instead, she escalated and in so doing, recklessly at least, hit a LEO, which is another felony. Which is even worse than Babbitt who did not assault an LEO.
As the lady was in public street - not under any particular specific Federal rule - and it is at best amibiguous as to actions. Escalating it masive bootstrapping of her what rather looks as much like driving away (somewhat foolishly but in no way similar to assaulting a Federal building).
It is not an "opportunity" to "deescalate" to be ordered from a vehicle under quite unclear authority - if local police authority made request it is another matter, but ICE is not a general policy authority.
There is no operatoinal similarity being
A. Breaking into unambiguous Federal territory - Federal buidling (i.e. Congress)
B. as part of a mob that had and was using violence in no ambiguity at all
C. had clearly ability to retreat from unambiguous Federal building / territory rather than push violent assualt on Federal law enforcement agents in clear defensive posture.
D. Engaging in a direct and sustained assault on the doors holding back the mob from entering deeper into the building in clear violent trespasing and in contravention of hours of unambiguous warnings.
There is literally nothing similar here. The fact you make such bankcrupt argument is actually fairly idiotic and without any rationality (other than rather sad attempts to make false equivalences)
Sad, pathetic and disgusting how partisans manage to excuse perceived Own Tribe error but such is humanity in th end.
People who show up to interfere with law enforcement should be aware they’ll be arrested, and there is no legal right to drive away from that. People who assault law enforcement with a vehicle should expect to be physically hurt. There is no right to assault law enforcement.
It's funny how the same people who constantly go on about how they need automatic rifles to defend themselves from the gub'mint are all of a sudden loudly demanding people do whatever they're told even if it's an unconstitutional order from an unqualified slob who just came out of his parents' basement to go beat up some brown people.
The real question is why are all these liberals interfering with law enforcement executing duly passed laws, and why are so many on the left vilifying law enforcement?
Filming law enforcement is legal, and even fleeing from an arrest is not grounds to kill someone. We do not live in a society where law enforcement is allowed to shoot people for running away. That's not the law. If you think that law is pathetic, that's your problem.
The biggest criticism I have of your writing, Noah, and why I have canceled my subscription despite some great posts, is how casually you treat the truth. In this case, you imply that she was being arrested for filming law enforcement and that she was shot as retaliation for running away. Neither is true.
She was not being arrested for filiming law enforcement. There were reports from the beginning of this that she was part of an at least semi-organized harassment group. The video I linked (that post was deleted from Twitter, but you find it yourself, e.g., https://x.com/usanewshq/status/2010065477322846365) shows she was blocking the streeet, honking, blowing whistles, etc., for the purpose of obstructing law enforcement. That is probably a crime, and at the very least is justification for being detained.
And, more importantly, she was not shot for running away. No, there is no clear video of the agent being hit by the car directly. But there is clear video of her looking directly at the ICE agent directly in front of her car about half a second before she accelerated so fast her wheels spun. (If the road hadn't been icy, the agent would have been hit a lot harder.) There is also clear video of both feet of the agent sliding away from the car that could only reasonably happen if her car hit him.
I think the agent made some bad decisions in the lead-up to the shooting, and he probably could have been a bit more restrained, even after she hit him with her car. But to describe it as "ICE tried to arrest someone for filing them, and then shot her for trying to flee" is so disingenuous or completley out of touch with reality.
You miss the point and you’re factually wrong. She wasn’t filming. Her wife was. She was blocking the road with intent to impede ICE. That’s a felony. Then she attempts to flee, a 2d crime, and she commits vehicular assault, a 3d crime. She wasn’t being arrested for filming and she wasn’t shot for filming.
ICE is violating people's rights all over the place; they have ceded any and all right to authority; they're clearly a bunch of undisciplined morons who hate brown people.
Those liberals are standing up for something they believe in, just like those liberals in Iran - getting in the way of Iranian law enforcement - who are currently being lauded by our president.
Noah’s use of "Ohio" isn’t decorative. It frames the entire essay.
There are still living generations who were raised on the idea that the federal government acted badly — even illegally — in the 1960s and early 1970s when confronting anti-war and civil-rights protest. Peaceful resistance to federal overreach wasn’t just tolerated; it was morally lauded.
Ohio captured the moment when people realized the state had crossed a line and then lied about it — and when “just comply” suddenly sounded obscene.
The uncomfortable question Noah is raising is whether we are back at a similar inflection point now — and whether we recognize it, or are sleepwalking past it because the uniforms and targets have changed.
Spooky time to be alive and to be a believer in liberal democracy. Such a stupid shame, because it really, really doesn't have to be like this. The bloodlust and need for theater that Vance and Trump have must be sated, apparently. What pathetic losers they have in their ardent supporters, plenty of which have shown up here.
I suspect that the venn diagram of people who want to serve in ICE right now and people whose social milieu reviles ICE is pretty close to two separate circles.
A better question could be - why are these white women putting themselves in danger like this? ICE are federal law enforcement officers. They don't fuck around. Is the goal of preventing an illegal immigrant who's been served with a final order of deportation from being deported really worth one's life? Part of me thinks the people doing this have had almost zero interaction with any form of law enforcement in their lives, especially federal, because if they had they'd not be putting themselves between officers who, like it or not, are ENFORCING a LEGAL court order and an illegal immigrant who shouldn't be here in the first place. Standing up for what one believes in can be admirable - but these people are acting the fool and its costing them their lives.
So is your argument that all immigration enforcement should stop because someone was unjustly detained? What is your desired cure for these injustices?
Did you read my comment? I said "citizen". What ICE did is a violation of the 4th and 6th amendments . Previous administrations have been doing deportations without much trouble. The arbitrary detentions are a new practice.
I did read your comment and I know you're referring to the few instances US citizens have been unjustly detained. I was asking what you think the remedy should be.
You're absolutely incapable of arguing in good faith, and you're certainly not doing it here, but yes, Democracy is worth dying over. Doesn't mean Good should be dead today.
Put that way, yes, we should all be willing to put our lives on the line to protect our freedoms, and your comments are making me feel guilty that I haven't been out there on the streets filming and protesting ICE agents. It is morally incumbent on all of us to do so.
Disagreeing with federal policy and/or its enforcement does not justify or excuse intentionally impeding it. That is a crime. Your retort is, to be polite, overbroad. Leaking military plans because one disagrees with them? Blowing up military recruitment offices? Destroying evidence because one believes the law being enforced is unjust? Policy disagreement is not a defense to a crime.
There’s a sleight of hand in this framing that’s worth calling out.
It’s obviously true that putting yourself physically near armed federal officers can be dangerous, and people should think seriously about personal risk. Prudence matters.
This argument quietly moves from prudence to legitimacy — from “this is risky” to “this therefore shouldn’t be done, and responsibility for the outcome lies with the civilian.” That’s a much stronger claim, and a far more troubling one.
Historically, governments don’t need to ban protest to suppress it. They just need to make the cost unpredictable and then moralize the consequences: you should have known better.
Once we accept that logic, the only “acceptable” protest is symbolic, distant, and easily ignored. Anything that meaningfully interferes with state action becomes, by definition, foolish or illegitimate.
That’s exactly how chilling works — not through censorship, but through fear and blame-shifting. And that should worry anyone who still believes free expression includes the right to contest authority before history renders its verdict.
Well - in developed Democracies - rather than 2nd rate personal rule authoritarian Banana republics - citizens do not need to fear that Central Gov agents are going to use deadly force in trivial circumstances.
While I have little sympathy directly for the protestors, I also have lived in authoritarian banana republics and ICE and Trump Cosplaying "Banana republic intimidation" is not something that is desirable, needed or positive for the United States. There's a reason Banana Republics are messes with low legal actionability - and that's rooted in precisely cowboy action - right or left it doesn't matter, both are long-term toxic.
There is not 'Legal' court order giving US federal immigration agents carte blance on public roads. That's not in US law
Playing Cowboys as they are is at once uttelry unneeded and second, undercutting an actual support - the fact Trump is underwater on approval on Immigration is without doubt (given one can align the declines with these flagrant incidents) due to the unnecessary Banana Republic antics. Repeat - unnecessary - Bush and Obama managed both to suppress illegal immigr and take action on illegal immig using normal means and ex-Proggy Lefty w/o broad public backlash
Certainly myself as a definately Not Lefty this stuff I see the clear bad precedent and all swords / preceent cut both ways.
To repeat again, the Napoleonic aphorism: "It is worse than a Crime, it is a Blunder."
They are standing up in the same way many right wing people do so it’s hypocritical to deny them the right to stand up for abuse just because they are left leaning 😎
That's right. This wasn't her fight. Antifa and other Leftist groups spread agitprop to rile up ordinary people into LARPing as "civil rights crusaders" and when some of them get shot, these groups trumpet them as martyrs to gain more support.
I know it's a worn out analogy, but I hope those who are commenting here to the effect that disobeying a LEO officer's orders justifies summary loss of life if the officer feels threatened would agree that LEO on the capital on January 6 five years ago would have been perfectly justified in shooting to kill those in the large and militant crowd who disobeyed orders and assaulted them violently and repeatedly with their fists and various objects and sprays while urging others to do the same.
The restraint of the police on that day, at great personal cost, seems to me a remarkable rebuke to all who make blanket condemnations of LEOs. The one case of an officer discharging a weapon in response to the imminent threat of an angry crowd flooding an area in pursuit of legislators has, on the other hand, been treated as the murder of a martyr. It was indeed a horrible tragedy, but I don't think we're going to see these same people saying that Ms. Babbitt brought it on herself in the manner they claim Ms. Good did after she smiled and said, "That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you," before trying to drive away.
I will stand up and say that I think this shooting and the shooting on January 6 were both justified yet regrettable uses of government force.
But I disagree with the idea that disobeying an officer justified lethal force. While she was in her car and not moving, or if she had gotten out with her wife and jeered them with her, it would not have been a justified shooting. But when she appeared to be driving at the officer she crossed a line.
The question remains: Even putting aside the fact that the vehicle was already turning away (which the ICE agent didn't realize) -- how was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?
AmonPark, I appreciate your attempt to be evenhanded, but the main contrast I was drawing was not between Ms. Babbitt and Ms. Good, but between the police who were physically attacked individually by groups of rioters and Officer Ross. Hundreds of January 6 rioters were *not* killed by police because of ordinary LEO restraint on lethal force.
The exercise of sanctioned lethal violence by LEOs ordinarily carries with it the proviso that it must be exercised with exceptional restraint, which we saw in DC and not in Minneapolis. The DC exception was the first person to breach the inner safety area protecting legislators after due warning with a mob behind her.
So I would counter and say that if we look for justification we find entirely different grounds. In the case of Ms. Babbitt, the justification was not "disobeying an order" (all the rioters had by that time done so), it was doing so and presenting a credible threat of violence towards many targeted individuals. In the case of Ms. Good, it was, most charitably, presenting a perceived (though misperceived) threat to Officer Ross's personal safety. That most charitable interpretation means Ross went into panic mode in the line of duty and cost someone her life, in which case we might expect a response of regret and a spontaneous effort to save her life, rather than a cursed expletive aimed at the victim and refusal of immediate medical aid.
I see you are already getting hell in the comments, Noah. I'm writing to say I'm glad you wrote this.
Thanks!!
Most of these comments are arguing the Renee Good incident as if this were a courtroom brief. That’s a category mistake.
Noah's point isn’t “this shooting was unjustified beyond doubt.” It’s that even ambiguous encounters are now being interpreted, defended, and operationalized in ways that break with American legal and cultural norms.
Fixating on frame-by-frame video analysis is a comfortable dodge. The essay is about why federal law enforcement has adopted an invasion mindset, why constitutional restraint is being treated as optional, and why “comply or die” rhetoric is now openly defended by national leaders.
If your takeaway is “she should’ve complied,” you’ve missed the argument entirely — and quietly accepted a definition of authority that would have horrified earlier generations of Americans. Engage with the larger questions of "Why are federal agents gunning down Americans in the streets?" and "Americans have to insist that the Trump administration stop these abuses, and they have to vote against any politician who embraces the ideology that led to them."
Exactly. An America where everyone has to bow and scrape and instantly do whatever any federal agent tells them to do, on pain of instant death? That's a dystopia. No one will stand for that sort of country.
A substantial proportion of Americans absolutely will stand for it. At the very least, they’ll do what they’ve been doing with the rest of Trump’s atrocities, which is to deny them or creatively rationalise them.
Think of all the ‘No one will stand for…’ statements that reasonable people have made over the last 10 years that have proven to be depressingly wrong.
At least 35% of Americans won’t just stand for it, they’ll bend over for it.
As long as they think they are the boot, they are happy to apply it to everyone else’s necks.
With some kind of leather involved I hope 😂
From your mouth (or keyboard), Noah, to God's ear!
Are you forgetting McCarthyism or the Palmer Red Raids? There's plenty of precedent.
Your comment grossly overstates the situation. Ms Good was already committing a crime by positioning her vehicle to impede ICE. Far from being punished for failing to bow and scrape, she drove to that place for the purpose of interfering with federal LEOs. She was instructed to get out of the car. She refused and attempted, in the most charitable light, to escape apprehension, a 2d crime, and in so doing, recklessly at least, if not deliberately, sideswiped a LEO, vehicular assault being a 3d crime. That is a far far far cry from “instant death” for failing to “bow and scrape.” She could have stayed away and let LEO do their job. She could have parked on the side of the street and video’d. She could have turned off her car and exited the vehicle. No one asked her to “bow and scrape.” Your thinking here is inflamed and inflammatory.
Remarkable to see how many people who subscribe to Noah Smith have a fascist attitude. Not even I would have predicted that, and my misanthropy has few bounds. The fact that such an obvious and much-needed commentary on this killing and all the other criminal abuses and the criminal administration's lies about it could be controversial among people who read this blog on a regular basis, is crazy.
I'm a bit surprised as well, but isn't it ultimately a good thing? That means they're reading his arguments. Perhaps some will come to agree with him.
A good point. I was angry about this all day and had started writing myself but Noah is better at it and faster, like he's supposed to be...
Awww thank you
I'm surprised too. I figured he'd get the usual hate from the usual lefties who don't want to acknowledge that there's a serious strain of anti-White ideology on their side that's unAmerican and insanely counterproductive.
What I didn't expect was people actually defending the Good shooting. There's so many reasons to oppose it, but one prominent one I didn't see Noah mention -- they had no right to do anything to Good. She was a citizen who wasn't obstructing them (proof: some of them drove around her seconds before). If she was violating traffic laws, or, I dunno, "disturbing the peace", MPD could address that. ICE isn't an all-purpose police force and anyone who's even a little fond of the rule of law has to see this is all insanely chaotic and out of bounds.
Or they really don't want to believe it's gone this far. They're just in denial, and this is some kind of pivot point they can't accept without their denial collapsing.
Canada and the rest of nato are way past that. We are f*cking freaking out. Taking over Greenland may as well be shooting Archduke Ferdinand. The whole world will fall to conflict from that point. Even the republicans in the senate seem to get it, but most americans just think it's a minor territory issue.
Not surprising for a leftist to be bemused by people subscribing to someone they disagree with
Sad you can’t censor us like you and your lefty fascist friends did and condoned in 2020 and before until Musk bought Twitter and y’all took your toys and left to go circle jerk in your ideological bubble?
Please just end your gift subscription early. We get terrorized enough in the streets by federal agents demanding to see our papers - no need to troll us in the comments section.
Are you saying you don’t like me? 🥺😢😭
". . . y’all took your toys and left to go circle jerk in your ideological bubble."
You're certainly trying to make sure people don't, CC. I hope you wouldn't blame anyone because you succeeded.
There are ways to dissent with a majority on a comment string and maintain lines of communication rather than confrontation. It can allow for persuasion or at least some recognition of common interest in replacing demonization with dialogue. When you arrive post only to bait those you disagree with (trolling) you're not really part of the conversation, you're just trying to disrupt it with anger. Of course, you're free to attempt to be a social arsonist if that's you're aspiration.
Sometimes intentional antagonism is effective, sometimes dialogue is.
I’m happy to engage in dialogue - I’ll talk about anything you want right now.
But when someone comments “why are people I disagree with here”, the proper strategic response is to slam their hypocrisy back in their stupid face in the hope that perhaps a shock to the system can break them or others out of their stupor. The left is q single handedly responsible for the breakdown in dialogue in this country, and they still have not reckoned with that or apologized for it.
No justice no peace, as they say
I hope you find peace - some advice https://www.wikihow.com/Leave-a-Cult
"The left is single handedly responsible for the breakdown in dialogue in this country, and they still have not reckoned with that or apologized for it."
I appreciate the sentiment that you are open to dialogue, CC. I don't disagree with you that challenging a point of view or what seems to be closed-mindedness can be effective, but in my experience sarcasm and snark never is. It invariably closes dialogue and reflection. So if "shocking" people into reflection is your goal I think you'll find that civility and well targeted argument are the tools you want. Personal dismissiveness always generates its equivalent.
Moreover, as the phrase I've quoted above indicates, you have chosen an absolute position as a tactic and that is equally unlikely to have a positive effect. I think most people on this thread can understand what you're looking at when you blame "the left" (as if people on the Left were all alike), but looking at the long perspective it is clearly untrue. Having watched the social force of public rhetoric since the 1950s I believe that an objective review would find substantially equivalent responsibility for this breakdown located at both ends of the political spectrum, and by "ends" I mean the relative extremes, which always capture far more attention than the far more populated moderate regions. And regularly in private and periodically in public you will find individuals who migrate away from the extreme make statements of regret for past extremism throughout the past 75 years. But to expect "The Left" or "The Right" to apologize is to personify as an individual large numbers of people who do not share a single voice, though it may appear that they do if you look only at the fraction who speak publicly or take participation in some political event on a single issue as monolithic agreement on a broader stance. The way "reckonings" and "apologies" are expressed by a political bloc on the extreme is in a waning of numbers and a shift towards more moderate approaches. (I found the individual recent public apology by Marjorie Taylor Greene astonishing and welcome, but it is, obviously, something very rare.)
Noah Smith's blog and its rising influence is a clear reflection of the growing strength of moderate approaches on the Left, both in its analytic substance and in its reasoned tone. I suppose that's why your friend recommended it. It's not common to find adversarial snark here, although comments do frequently challenge Mr. Smith's points. Having looked over some of your Substack comments I think it's pretty certain that you'll find very few here whose ideological perspective aligns with yours, but there's actually plenty of room for you to make germane criticisms and have your points received, even if the result is only to ensure that others remain aware that there are civil people who see things differently and who need to be heard.
Thanks to Mr. Musk, American Christendom is associated with weird online creeps. Not exactly helpful when the faith continues to lose believers with each passing generation. Are you sure he’s not a lefty fascist pulling a Straussian move?
Musk's a Christian? Does the American church now endorse serial polygamy? Talk about keeping up with the times.
His personal beliefs don’t matter. Musk (partly) enabled the mainstreaming of the creeps and their hijacking of the right’s energy and trajectory. American conservatives have gone from the dignity of John McCain to drowning in raw sewage.
I agree. I'm just puzzled by all these people on the right who support Christendom without knowing the first thing about Christianity, or claim they want to defend European Civilization but think that Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are just Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
McCain was a good guy. Dignified.
I hope you're a bot. I don't want to believe an intelligent human would write this.
Bluesky 😂
Well I think all too often Partisans never think "wait these practices are two-edged swords"
While personally far from being a Lefty and generally quite unsympathetic to the proggy protest movement people - excusing a shooting of a pudgy-faced goofy soccer mom - over a situation that at most maybe shoot out her tires and frankly just take down her plates and description and at most arrest later - is utterly blind to precedent setting that one does not want to have Federal agents to have at all. As one day it will be Not Your Side with such powers.
It's wonderful you're being forcefully exposed to opinions you consciously seek to avoid at all costs. That's what's good about Noah's readership - we're all over the board.
Thank you for writing this Noah. I am sickened and disturbed by the reactions of our fellow Americans to these videos. The ICE agent was in no danger. If Renee hit him at all she couldn't have been going more than 10 mph. As the video showed, he was easily able to avoid any injury from the car, and it's clear that would be true even if he hadn't pulled the trigger. Shooting Renee did not stop the car. I do not accept domestic law enforcement agencies that run around in masks shooting people on flimsy justifications. I especially do not accept it when the similarly compromised FBI insists on excluding all other parties from the investigation. There will be no real investigation under the FBI. It is clearly a cover up. I am truly shocked that so many American citizens support this. How could someone support this? I don't understand it. I went out and protested today and that helped, but this week has made me lose some of my faith in the American people.
The local authorities are already going to conduct an investigation and the visibility of this case will make impossible to just ignore.
In 2013, CBP reviewed their Use of Force practices and recommended the following with regard to shooting at vehicles:
"CBP should make policy changes that restrict agents from shooting at vehicles. Likewise, agents should be trained to get out of the way of oncoming vehicles as opposed to intentionally assuming a position in the path of such vehicles. The policy should mirror the clear and unambiguous policies that have been in place and which have proven effective in a number of large U.S. jurisdictions for over 40 years. The CBP policy should state “Agents shall not discharge their firearms at or from a moving vehicle unless deadly physical force is being used against the police officer or another person present, by means other than a moving vehicle.”
source: U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION
USE OF FORCE REVIEW: CASES AND POLICIES
February 2013
Conducted by The Police Executive Research Forum
Taking one step back vs firing three rounds into an unarmed woman who just made cheerful remarks to you.
Should not be a hard decision.
“An unarmed woman who just made cheerful remarks to you”
Alternate reality. She and her partner were jeering the officer, and then her partner yelled at her to drive, and she drove into him with her car. Which is a weapon
It is an alternate reality to the one that happened and was recorded, yes.
In other words, she was killed for taunting an officer (and then attempting to flee)?
Sieg Heil!
Since when does jeering at a police officer mean summary execution?
And "she drove into him with her car" - her wheels were turned away from him, the car was at a standstill, not approaching him with any speed, and he capably stepped aside and was on his feet the entire time.
Did a US citizen, mother of 3 now orphaned children, deserve summary execution, even if what you describe actually happened, which it didn’t?
One day, they’ll come for you, and you’ll have let it get to that point.
If one is in the mode of making distorted excuses for utterly stupid and bungling Banana Republic Third World style policing, then yes that would be your alternative reality
It has no credibility outside the blind partisans that are unable to recognise these swords as precedents cut both ways.
Establishing Federal Goons to play bungling incompetent shooter cowboys like they're in Venezuela isn't something that any smart person celebrates -
Banana Republicism isn't a good thing, whether Venezuela, Columbia or Mexico, are ICE twits aping LatAm third world incompetence.
Shooting a pudgey Soccer Mom with twattish politics over something that the video very clearly makes evident was not "car charging" but "person trying to drive away" is not a precedent one wants - as one day you will have a Lefty administration and precedents stand.
It is worse than a Crime, it is a Blunder.
Trump now (ever-more-obviously) aspires to be caudillo of the entire Western Hemisphere. Sadly, his vision of making America "great" has come to that.
Why are you analyzing this like it didn't happen in under 1 second?
The sort of frame-by-frame analysis you are doing reveals more about you than what happened. In this case it reveals that you have never been in a situation where you needed to rely on instinct. Or you have but have chosen to forget.
The event is over before you are aware of the choice, and the science bears this out.
By all means, discuss why this situation arose, but the idea that he considered each shot after the first? Do you really believe that?
Whether you "consider" it or not, firing a gun into the side of a car is not self defense. Even killing someone on a spur of the moment instinct is not legal.
Actually it is legal if he can show he justifiably feared for his life.
You are right that firing a gun into the side of a car is not a good look in isolation. But my point is those subsequent shots were an inevitable consequence of his original decision to open fire on a vehicle that was not actually intending to run him down (as we can see from the wheel direction, something the officer could not see). He didn't decide to fire 2 or 3 or 4 times, he decided to use lethal force once.
The question is: when he decided to open fire, can he show he was justified in perceiving a mortal threat?
This wasn't 8 minutes, it was 800 milliseconds.
However, I find the higher order conversation far more significant: why did this situation exist *at all*? And that is where I believe your analytical skills would be more valuable, and impactful.
"I find the higher order conversation far more significant: why did this situation exist *at all*? And that is where I believe your analytical skills would be more valuable, and impactful." <-- Well, sir, you're in luck. I wrote a whole post about that. Scroll up and check it out!
I know, I pay for your words, and you'll notice I provide a narrow critique because I believe you compromised the rest of your analysis by starting with a presumption I believe to be flawed, as I explained.
A sort of inverse Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.
What if the woman had been trying to run him down? Would that change how you feel about ICEs current application? I'd suspect not. It's not important to the analysis, it weakened it and compromises your future writing on this subject.
If the woman had been trying to run him down, that still doesn't justify shooting into the side of the car to make sure she's dead. The problem with these questions is that asking "What if this were clearly self-defense?" requires hypothesizing a change in the facts.
But you're also missing the broader, overarching point: in a healthy democracy that didn't recruit white supremacists to terrorize part of the population, the situation would probably never have arisen.
It absolutely totally does, even in MN post Floyd. MN Stat 609.066. Risk of great bodily harm to the LEO or anyone is complete justification for deadly force.
The question remains: Even putting aside the fact that the vehicle was already turning away (which the ICE agent couldn't see) -- how was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?
It is literally his responsibility to consider each shot. That is part of the requirements of the job.
If you think that is physically possible, I suggest you do some reading.
You can criticize how he was holding his weapon or how he positioned his body, and of course his decision to use lethal force, but once the decision has been made to use lethal force, you can not consider each shot.
That's the point of my argument, by taking this angle you reveal yourself to know absolutely nothing about this type of situation.
If your argument hinges on the 2nd or 3rd shot in few hundred milliseconds, you're on some pretty thin ice.
Yet as I understand it, this exact scenario has a lot of case law behind it and it goes counter to your claim. There's isn't a "it all happened so fast I couldn't think it through" defense. The case law is that each shot has to be justifiable on its own, based on the totality of circumstances in that exact moment in time, for that shot to be self-defense.
Science will eventually give us all the precise details of each shot, but if the forensics report determines some shots were fired at her from the side or behind, even if only milliseconds after the threat ended, a self defense claim for those specific shots will likely be difficult to prevail on if it ever goes to a jury.
I look to science, not the law. If you read all I have written here you will find I am not defending what he did on a legal basis, or even a scientific one. I am arguing that debating his intent on a shot by shot basis is malarkey.
That said I would challenge you to find me a case where 3 shots were fired *in under 1 second*, and the jury was ok with the first shot and not the 2nd or 3rd. "It all happened so fast" is not a defense I would ever buy, especially from an officer. That is not my stance, I am narrowly focused on the fallacy of analyzing each shot individually, and have been rather consistent.
Looks like someone else already responded to you, but I'm just going to go ahead and agree with him. You might want to look up whether there is a defense of "it happened too fast and I didn't know what to do". Pretty sure that's not going to fly when the state has given someone rights carry a deadly weapon as part of their job.
This is why cops who actually know what they're doing only pull out their weapon as their last resort. Because they know that once they do that, everything changes.
Another challenge this officer will face is that he had the presence of mind to move his phone from one hand to the other, yet kept holding it up and trying to aim it after unholstering his weapon. (LEOs distracting themselves trying to manually record with personal phones is a whole other topic - I'm guessing the reason is the same reason Hillary had personal email servers).
The officer needlessly allowed himself to be distracted by having to clumsily aim the phone with one hand and his weapon in the other. To the extent the officer felt threatened, it was likely because he was off balance from this reckless and needless balancing act.
At a minimum, it's gross incompetence and reckless behavior, but realistically, to the extent he thought his life was in danger, it was largely because he was distracted and off balance from doing this. You can't intentionally do something that puts you in danger and then claim self defense.
Unfortunately, I’d say it’s because they can and the Feds have recruited a bunch of people that wannabe warriors.
It’s doubled in the last year so yeah a lot of very unqualified white DEI hires here 😜
There is no progressive prerogative to interfere with law enforcement and sure as hell none to disobey or assault them, just as there was no right wing prerogative to interfere with Congress on January 6. Good is no different than Ashli Babbitt - both crossed the line. No American gets to hit a law enforcement officer with a vehicle after being told to get out of their car.
Should it be a sentence of instant death to disobey an order by a federal agent? No law in America says that it should be.
You think she was shot for disobeying an order? Being quite intellectually lazy today, I see.
Intellectually lazy? Did you actual read my post, or just this comment??
She was shot because the ICE agent didn't feel sufficiently manly for a second there; had to kill someone to make himself feel better.
What a ridiculous analysis from someone who clearly projecting his worry about not being manly enough.
Hahaha. That's where you went? Personal attacks immediately? So you're just completely out of coherent arguments, then?
That was the conclusion you had about the shooting. How is it different? Your argument was dumb, is that better?
You’re coming from the same ignorant armchair quarterback as others. I’m going to assume you know what an adrenaline rush does to someone, specifically tunnel vision. Give law enforcement some grace that (1) he was well aware she was there specifically to interfere and harass and potentially assault ICE. (2) once he got hit by her vehicle, after she was ordered to get out of her SUV, he was unable to see where her wheels were turned. He was protecting himself from assault by 2 ton vehicle. All the Bellingcat geniuses likely haven’t been in a firefight, or even a normal physical fight. I have, so I’m willing to remember how hard it is to be fully rational in those few seconds. You had hours to analyze videos and assume the time scale is the same for that ICE agent. That’s simply not true.
This might be the most ignorant American-branded thing I’ve ever read.
You’re happy to ignore the fact that ICE is engaged in dangerous and unnecessary activity in American cities, egged on by idiot leaders playing out their violent fantasies, even though plenty have warned about exactly this sort of thing happening. You implicitly think it was reasonable for the killer to have his gun out and pointing it at the victim, even though there was nothing useful he could do with that gun. And you’re happy to excuse an obvious murder because the killer incorrectly thought (for a split second) that he might get a bump from the car, got an adrenaline rush, and therefore could not control himself enough to NOT SHOOT THE DRIVER IN THE FACE??
If you look around, you’ll see that no sane country in the world has anything like ICE agents running around on their streets. No sane country tolerates law enforcement officers pointing guns at citizens unless there is no other choice.
If you excuse this, you’ll excuse anything.
Hey, if you’re not American yourself you’re invited to kindly STFU. Nobody cares about some random non-citizen opining about another country.
I thought you Americans were all about free speech?
You could learn a lot from other countries. Try looking around. You’ll be amazed at how bad America is at healthcare, for starters.
Like I said, stop being a weird loser obsessed with the US. It’s the most pathetic thing about Europe, Australia, New Zealand and others. Your inferiority complex is showing. Worry about your own country and fuck off.
Your invitation is politely refused. You know, we can talk about whatever we like. Of course this looks more and more unfamiliar to many of you Americans, but this is exactly the problem. Oh, from a citizen of a country who just kidnapped the head of state of another country and babble day and night about acquiring a large chunk of another, this is pretty rich.
Kidnapped a citizen. That is a hilarious framing.
Please take your complaints to "the administration" (Noah Smith). He allowed all of his subscribers to comment here.
There's no evidence from any of the videos that Ross was hit by the car.
Not so. The ICE video shows him being grazed by the car.
However, the question remains: Even putting aside the fact that the vehicle was already turning away (which the ICE agent didn't realize) -- how was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?
The word "any" is doing a lot of work in your reply. He actually created further threats by shooting the driver of a moving vehicle. Luckily for him, the Pilot crashed against a empty parked car. That was also an "ostensible threat".
That's precisely what I meant by "exacerbate."
Then they should not be in law enforcement, or have not had enough training
You have no idea what you’re talking about. This is a well-trained officer and military veteran. You just think AWFLs get to break the law, endanger law enforcement with a 2 ton vehicle (she bragged about that just before) and get away with it. There is no such progressive prerogative.
You say he’s very well trained but he sure doesn’t look it.
What part of being well trained is shooting so many times and saying “fcking bitch” after?
You may have missed what a sweetheart she was before.
Obviously not trained well enough to learn "don't walk in front of the 2-ton vehicle while in confrontation with its driver".
As for military training and experience, it is actually bad for law enforcement jobs: it is focused on killing the enemy on sight, preferably before they see you. Not exactly what the police are expected to do.
I’m sure you’re an expert in law enforcement.
Where did she brag about endangering law enforcement?
Four hours later and still waiting on evidence that she bragged about endangering law enforcement.
Armed officials should be trained exactly for these situations. They are holding a weapon. They have the responsibility of using it wisely. Anything like this happens in a normal country, you get ministers resigning and endless investigations. Don’t fool yourself: you are justifying a political backed militia.
It wasn’t instant death. That’s pretty clear from the video and I think you are letting your (likely correct) concerns about ICE color this specific situation.
She and her wife had clearly been disobeying the ICE agents for a while before any of the videos we’ve seen started—that’s why the car is crosswise in the street and her wife is outside the car.
She only got shot after accelerating toward the agent from feet away. I don’t think she was actually planning to run him over (and I think the way the wheels went is proof) but it was also completely reasonable for the officer to think she was. Unfortunately she was dead before he could reconsider his first instinct that she was threatening him with deadly force but that doesn’t make it an unreasonable assumption.
I think you are doing something you usually criticize: applying systematic concerns to specific cases that don’t fit them and twisting the facts that don’t match.
I am with you if you want to talk about ICE doing risky operations with ill-trained and probably unsuitable agents and I am very concerned about the conservative rhetoric around this shooting but “accelerating toward someone standing feet in front of you” and “disobeying a federal agent” are not the same thing. She’d been doing the latter with no physical harm for a while.
The question remains: Even putting aside the fact that the vehicle was already turning away (which the ICE agent didn't realize) -- how was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?
I think people mistakenly focus on just the frontal impact of the vehicle and don’t think about the fact that you can also get caught under the car, get a limb knocked into a wheel well and dragged along, and so on. If you’re caught in that way and the driver keeps going, the initial impact might not kill you, but being dragged by the car very well could, and at that point you’re not going to be able to do anything else about it even if you’re holding a gun. What the agent did is commonly referred to as a “scoot and shoot”: he drew his weapon, jumped out of the way and sprayed a set of loosely-aimed shots at the driver as he did so. This is a trained maneuver, and the purpose is twofold: first, it might save you if you don’t manage to get fully out of the way, get trapped by the car, and the driver would have kept driving and killed you. But second, and more importantly, if the driver is actually intending to run you over, firing shots at them gives them something to worry about other than trying to turn the car to hit you, or throwing it into reverse to try to run you over if you leap out of the way and land on the ground (as you are likely to do).
This is a desperation maneuver and the speed with which he executed it (if you closely watch the clip, from the time her car starts moving towards him until the time the third shot is fired is less than 1.5 seconds) indicates that he’s acting on trained reflex. He very likely wasn’t making any conscious decisions after the one to draw his pistol; everything else would be running on autopilot. After he takes the third shot, you can see in the video that he’s got time to reassess, realizes the car has gone past, and holsters his weapon rather than continuing to fire. He would probably not have known at that point whether his shots had struck or killed the driver, and the fact that he stops shooting as soon as he realizes the car isn’t a threat is probably the strongest indication that this was a tragedy of misunderstood intentions and not a deliberate murder.
The really frustrating thing to me about all of this is that the focus should not, I think, be on Ross, the agent who fired the fatal shots. If you watch the whole set of videos from numerous angles that have come out and kind of tie the whole story together (everything from about 5 minutes before the shooting until about 30 seconds after), it becomes kind of apparent that he was acting fairly quietly and professionally the whole time. He got out of his vehicle, took his camera and walked around the car videoing it while being taunted the whole time and not responding, and then had the misfortune to be in front of the car when it took off.
His partner, however, is a completely different story, and if anyone deserves the lion’s share of blame in this encounter, I think it’s him. You can, I think, construct a “what if” scenario where each individual in this story made different choices:
* Say Ross jumped out of the way but didn’t shoot. Outcome: Good survives, but probably gets prosecuted for criminal vehicle operation since she nearly ran someone over due to negligence, and possibly also gets prosecuted on charges for attempting to flee a lawful detention (but that’s far more dubious since it’s debatable whether the ICE agents had any authority to detain her). Better than dying, but still a pretty bad outcome.
* Say Good chose not to try to flee and instead let herself be dragged out of the car by an angry ICE agent behaving like a thug. Outcome: she probably gets roughed up and illegally arrested by a guy who’s just angry that she was talking back to him, but that arrest would be very unlikely to hold water and she’d be free shortly. Better outcome than either death or prosecution.
* But now we come to the third character here: say that Ross’s partner, instead of jumping out of his vehicle and acting like a psychopath, had walked up calmly and had a conversation like an actual human being. Likely outcome: almost certain the misunderstanding is cleared up in under a minute and everyone walks away and no one would ever hear about it because there would have been no incident at all.
I’m not on board with Noah’s conclusion about the shooting being unjustifiable because the second and third shots were fired from the side; I think that comes from inexperience with combat and failure to understand that in a high-pressure adrenaline-pumped situation like this, you aren’t making conscious decisions between every individual action. Fortunately, courts do realize this and tend to analyze situations of this kind by looking for evidence that a person had time to reassess their situation and consciously decide to take a new action. I don’t think we’ll see this case go to trial because of Trump’s wildly inappropriate interference, but if it did, I think Ross likely has a pretty good case for acting in reasonable self-defense.
That said, I absolutely endorse the broader point of Noah’s article: this whole situation happened because of the thuggish, unprofessional nature of the encounter from the very beginning, caused by an agent who dialed the tension level of the encounter to 11 from the moment he jumped out of his car and was itching to punish people who were defying his (presumed) authority. The number of disputed police shootings every year is very low (most are very clear-cut cases where someone shot at the police first). But the number of encounters where a cop leads with an aggressive, hostile, imperious attitude expecting subservience is absolutely astronomical, and probably one of the largest contributors to the number that end in violence. And not just because of the way it escalates any individual encounter, but because of the way distrust and suspicion of law enforcement prime other people to respond to them before they even open their mouths.
ICE are the poster children for this sort of unprofessionalism and thuggery right now, but they’re far from the only offenders: this is an endemic rot in our entire way of policing and it needs more focus and accountability than it gets. People love to talk about the big, flashy, headline-grabbing incidents, but it’s the slow corrosion of relations between police and the communities they serve that’s doing the most damage, I think.
Very thoughtful reply. Thx.
One thing that indicts both the officer and ICE in general is the rampant use of personal phones as cameras while conducting policing work.
To me, this calls into question the competence of both ICE overall and of this specific officer. The distraction/coordination challenges of holding a phone and a weapon at the same time likely contributed to the officer feeling unable to flee and thus to Good's death.
I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful (albeit lengthy) response -- and I agree with much of what you wrote. Nonetheless, your point about “scoot and shoot” as a "trained maneuver" remains questionable.
My initial question was, "How was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?"
By "exacerbate" I was considering that evidently, the driver already had her foot on the accelerator, and that (after being shot [or even shot AT]) she would undoubtedly lose control of the vehicle -- thus making this (notwithstanding your caveats and explanations) a rather dubious mode of "self-defense." Under the circumstances, we're all very lucky that no bystanders (or anyone else) got hit. And that's not even considering the fate of the driver!
This was already an "adrenaline-pumped situation" when the agent took his first shot -- not merely the subsequent shots. In that sense, a process was set in motion that was reckless from the get-go -- and that would seem (in a very real sense) to validate Noah's harsh view of the agent's overall behavior.
Yeah, I think that’s a perfectly reasonable concern. Scoot-and-shoot is, like I said, a desperation move. I think it’s entirely fair to argue that it wasn’t necessary here because we know from the video footage that Ross himself took of the encounter that Good wasn’t trying to run him over: when she throws her car into gear and accelerates, she’s not looking at him at all, she’s looking to the side at his partner who’s trying to yank her door open. When she does look in front of her and sees she’s about to hit someone, she jerks the wheel to the side — which, in a stupendous show of cosmic irony, may in fact be what saved the life of the man who killed her, because he barely got out of the way of the car even with her last-second correction.
That said, I think there are two important factors to consider. The first is the speed of conscious thought: adult human reflexes take about 200-250ms to react to simple visual stimulus when they’re primed and expecting it (push a button when you see a light flash). That increases to about 300-350ms if you have to make a simple binary choice (push the left or right button depending on whether the light is green or red). The second thing to know is that Ross had a previous encounter with a suspect where his arm got trapped in a car window as the suspect attempted to flee and he was dragged by the vehicle and badly injured (this was dug up and confirmed by a number of media sources even before his name was released).
As I mentioned, from the time that Good throws her car out of reverse and into gear (we can tell by her brake lights going off) until the time the burst of shots finishes is about 1.5 seconds. During that time, Ross had to evaluate whether she was coming at him, make a complex decision about whether he could get out of the way in time and whether he might still be in danger from the car even if he did, and then act on it. If you look at the videos we have frame by frame, he doesn’t go for his weapon when she reverses to try to hold her at gunpoint and stop her from fleeing, he goes for it when she guns the engine while pointed straight at him. I think it’s entirely plausible that his combat training combined with his fear of having been previously caught and nearly killed by a fleeing car were a lot of what was driving his reaction here. He just didn’t have the time to make a conscious, careful evaluation of all the consequences of trying to just evade rather than combine evasion with lethal force. Perhaps if he had, he would have made a very different choice.
Ultimately I just think this whole situation is a real tragedy that should have been avoided by never escalating it to the point where Good was terrified enough to try to flee in the first place. It was utterly unnecessary and unreasonable and it put two people in positions where they were reacting in panic and made bad decisions with horrible, permanent consequences.
This is very thoughtful. Thank you.
Certainly not as a general rule, but it really depends on the order. If it's "Drop the gun!" then probably. At least assuming that a gun is actually being brandished.
To say that what Renee Good did is no different from what Ashli Babbitt is an incredibly ill-informed (or stupidly trollish) statement! Ashli Babbitt was part of a mob of angry, weapons-bearing Trump supporters who assaulted Capitol police officers on Jan. 6, 2021 in order to interfere with the official counting of the electoral votes by Congress. In the course of that assault over 100 police officers were injured, with multiple cracked ribs, spinal injuries, loss of an eye and loss of part of a finger, among other injuries. Police showed incredible restraint in not firing a single shot until Ashli and her confederates broke thru the door to the House chamber. The police officer behind the door warned her to stop but she continued to try to go thru the door, at which point he fired a single shot just inside her shoulder, after which she died. Renee Good had just dropped her son at grade school, and while driving in her neighborhood, stopped for a few minutes as ICE agents were raiding her neighborhood. She was told by one ICE agent to leave and then another ICE agent screamed at her to "get out of her fucking car". She backed up slowly, then turned a hard right to avoid 2 ICE agents near her car. She told one "I'm not mad at you" then tried to drive away as 1 agent (Jonathan Ross) was videotaping her with his left hand while he pulled out his gun with his right, and fired 3 shots at her head, the last 2 thru her side window, killing her as she attempted to drive away. Afterward, he said "fucking bitch" and walked without any sign of injury to his car and drove away. Ashli Babbitt was treated with more consideration than almost any rioter anywhere in the world would have been. Renee Good did nothing to deserve being murdered by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a Trump cult member, a Trump toady paid to repeat Trump's lies, or a blind misogynist.
She wasn’t randomly shot on the street, she was looking to interfere with a law enforcement operation. I didn’t vote for Trump, definitely don’t get paid on Substack - both are simple to confirm. I have zero interest in the notion that progressives or far-right nuts get to interfere and assault law enforcement. Not voting for any “Abolish ICE” or “Defund the Police” representative. Until this post Noah Smith used to point out the importance of law enforcement, and yet he falls into the same progressive trap.
"hit a law enforcement officer with a vehicle" LOL
LOL.
Frankly - as Not a Lefty by far- this is incredibly stupid.
Good (who I haven't any particularly wide sympathy for) was in no way in a situation analagous to Babbitt who was in a situaiton of a breaking and entering into a Federal building against clear law and well-posted warning.
Good was on a public street that under any normal circumstances was at best reading at most a disburbing the peace situation if not merely a warning.
Excusing the ICE (who I am not in any "abolish" framing) for what is clealry (as one can see in the WSJ article) reckless usage of deadly force in a broad set off circumstances are absultely abnormal is a category error.
Having myself worked and lived in authoritarian countries - the real deal, not cosplay - frankly the ICE patterns are not good (including the masked snatch&grab), they are real violations of basic American law enforcement in a developed democracy.
And frankly they fall into the Napoleonic aphorism, "worse than a crime, a blunder" as if one supports the overall idea of action, they are grossly crude and clearly intimidation aimed - that is fundamentally un American and will as many other of Trump's unnecessary - really unnecessary - crudeness in execution of what might otherwise be broadly supported action, will further ultimately undercut.
In short - the entire approach is one that is wrong-headed if one is not in crude Milleresque authoritarian cosplay idiocy mindset.
and wrong relative centuries of American liberties tradition.
Had Good been arrested, I'd possibly shrug - likely. Shooting on the street in the wider pattern WSJ has profiled - Wall Street Journal, not the Guardian - is a clear sign of gross approach that not only is legally wrong, again to use the Napoleonic aphorims 'worse than a crime, a blunder."
This is the consistent thread through all this. ICE officers clumsily aiming their phones at people while thuggishly using intimidation to escalate encounters is anger-inducing and disheartening, as is watching them routinely unable to handle basic textbook policing situations competently.
My conclusion from all this is that ICE as it's currently constituted is unfit and unable to competently and professionally execute its mission in compliance with our constitution. The ramifications of this are unclear to me, but that seems to be where we are.
Quite: Thuggish escalation is the pattern that the WSJ highlights.
This is generally incompetence, as competent not-Cosplaying /LARPing regimes generally try to avoid generating potentially sympathetic-to-oppo incidents, and a whitebread pudgy soccer-mom-of-three is not the mediatised target you want by a long country mile.
Further it does not help normalise your otherwise extremely abnormal approach by generating thuggish and generally cowboy-3rd-rate-TV-Action-Drama poor scripting incidents for no particularly real reason.
It's rather clearly bungling "show off and bluster" incompetence in leadership from top down - generating avoidable errors, generating avoidable negative media.
To repeat the Napoleonic aphorism (which if the Trumpian supporters had some modicum of proper Machievelian instinct would take heed of): "Worse than a Crime, a Blunder."
Dan Drezner was and remains quite right (from an ex-Bush admin perch as he has) that it is Trump II is characterised by bungling incompetence in its authoritiarian play, or as I have been putting it, they are LARPing and Cosplaying in incompetent bungling manners, aping TV presentation rather than cold calculation (that is in a sense good althoug pathetic incompetence).
Wrong. She was committing a federal crime by blocking the street to impede ICE. Similarity there. She was given an opportunity, unlike Babbitt, to de-escalate by exiting the vehicle. Instead, she escalated and in so doing, recklessly at least, hit a LEO, which is another felony. Which is even worse than Babbitt who did not assault an LEO.
Well...
As the lady was in public street - not under any particular specific Federal rule - and it is at best amibiguous as to actions. Escalating it masive bootstrapping of her what rather looks as much like driving away (somewhat foolishly but in no way similar to assaulting a Federal building).
It is not an "opportunity" to "deescalate" to be ordered from a vehicle under quite unclear authority - if local police authority made request it is another matter, but ICE is not a general policy authority.
There is no operatoinal similarity being
A. Breaking into unambiguous Federal territory - Federal buidling (i.e. Congress)
B. as part of a mob that had and was using violence in no ambiguity at all
C. had clearly ability to retreat from unambiguous Federal building / territory rather than push violent assualt on Federal law enforcement agents in clear defensive posture.
D. Engaging in a direct and sustained assault on the doors holding back the mob from entering deeper into the building in clear violent trespasing and in contravention of hours of unambiguous warnings.
There is literally nothing similar here. The fact you make such bankcrupt argument is actually fairly idiotic and without any rationality (other than rather sad attempts to make false equivalences)
Sad, pathetic and disgusting how partisans manage to excuse perceived Own Tribe error but such is humanity in th end.
They do get to live, though.
People who show up to interfere with law enforcement should be aware they’ll be arrested, and there is no legal right to drive away from that. People who assault law enforcement with a vehicle should expect to be physically hurt. There is no right to assault law enforcement.
They shouldn't be killed.
Zero evidence she interfered with anything, she wasn't blocking them, and they had no had no legal basis to arrest her or order her to do anything.
That’s a crock of shit, and I say that politely.
404 assault not found
Wow, you’re so clever.
Clever enough to outdo you, low a bar though that may be 🤗
Nah, you’re a lot less clever than you think you are.
That’s the both sides fallacy in action, to equate the two actions 😎
It's funny how the same people who constantly go on about how they need automatic rifles to defend themselves from the gub'mint are all of a sudden loudly demanding people do whatever they're told even if it's an unconstitutional order from an unqualified slob who just came out of his parents' basement to go beat up some brown people.
"Nor is it clear why Good was interacting with the agents in the first place."
Yes, it is. She was there to obstruct a federal agent (https://x.com/GrageDustin/status/2010037103665787019/mediaViewer?currentTweet=2010037103665787019¤tTweetUser=GrageDustin) and then flee from an arrest, during which she looked a federal agent in the eyes right in front of her car before slamming on the accelerator.
This post is pathetic.
The real question is why are all these liberals interfering with law enforcement executing duly passed laws, and why are so many on the left vilifying law enforcement?
Filming law enforcement is legal, and even fleeing from an arrest is not grounds to kill someone. We do not live in a society where law enforcement is allowed to shoot people for running away. That's not the law. If you think that law is pathetic, that's your problem.
The biggest criticism I have of your writing, Noah, and why I have canceled my subscription despite some great posts, is how casually you treat the truth. In this case, you imply that she was being arrested for filming law enforcement and that she was shot as retaliation for running away. Neither is true.
She was not being arrested for filiming law enforcement. There were reports from the beginning of this that she was part of an at least semi-organized harassment group. The video I linked (that post was deleted from Twitter, but you find it yourself, e.g., https://x.com/usanewshq/status/2010065477322846365) shows she was blocking the streeet, honking, blowing whistles, etc., for the purpose of obstructing law enforcement. That is probably a crime, and at the very least is justification for being detained.
And, more importantly, she was not shot for running away. No, there is no clear video of the agent being hit by the car directly. But there is clear video of her looking directly at the ICE agent directly in front of her car about half a second before she accelerated so fast her wheels spun. (If the road hadn't been icy, the agent would have been hit a lot harder.) There is also clear video of both feet of the agent sliding away from the car that could only reasonably happen if her car hit him.
I think the agent made some bad decisions in the lead-up to the shooting, and he probably could have been a bit more restrained, even after she hit him with her car. But to describe it as "ICE tried to arrest someone for filing them, and then shot her for trying to flee" is so disingenuous or completley out of touch with reality.
You miss the point and you’re factually wrong. She wasn’t filming. Her wife was. She was blocking the road with intent to impede ICE. That’s a felony. Then she attempts to flee, a 2d crime, and she commits vehicular assault, a 3d crime. She wasn’t being arrested for filming and she wasn’t shot for filming.
ICE is violating people's rights all over the place; they have ceded any and all right to authority; they're clearly a bunch of undisciplined morons who hate brown people.
Remember a core tenant of the left these days is pretending they don’t understand things
Tenet.
Kind of undermines your smugness about ‘understanding things’ if you don’t understand things.
I concede the typo. A regrettable blunder I must admit
More regrettable is your original comment. If you have something useful to say, then say it.
It’s not fair that the left has to pretend not to understand things when not understanding things comes so naturally to the MAGA right.
❤️
Cardinal Newman?
Those liberals are standing up for something they believe in, just like those liberals in Iran - getting in the way of Iranian law enforcement - who are currently being lauded by our president.
Noah’s use of "Ohio" isn’t decorative. It frames the entire essay.
There are still living generations who were raised on the idea that the federal government acted badly — even illegally — in the 1960s and early 1970s when confronting anti-war and civil-rights protest. Peaceful resistance to federal overreach wasn’t just tolerated; it was morally lauded.
Ohio captured the moment when people realized the state had crossed a line and then lied about it — and when “just comply” suddenly sounded obscene.
The uncomfortable question Noah is raising is whether we are back at a similar inflection point now — and whether we recognize it, or are sleepwalking past it because the uniforms and targets have changed.
Spooky time to be alive and to be a believer in liberal democracy. Such a stupid shame, because it really, really doesn't have to be like this. The bloodlust and need for theater that Vance and Trump have must be sated, apparently. What pathetic losers they have in their ardent supporters, plenty of which have shown up here.
The social and economic cost of being an ICE agent has risen a great deal. "Would you date an ICE agent?" would be an interesting poll to take.
If you value your career, get out of ICE. It will haunt you forever.
I suspect that the venn diagram of people who want to serve in ICE right now and people whose social milieu reviles ICE is pretty close to two separate circles.
You assume that anyone wants to date an AWFL or better yet a lazy, barely employed neo-Communist.
You think these people have careers ?
Thanks, Noah. Spot on.
A better question could be - why are these white women putting themselves in danger like this? ICE are federal law enforcement officers. They don't fuck around. Is the goal of preventing an illegal immigrant who's been served with a final order of deportation from being deported really worth one's life? Part of me thinks the people doing this have had almost zero interaction with any form of law enforcement in their lives, especially federal, because if they had they'd not be putting themselves between officers who, like it or not, are ENFORCING a LEGAL court order and an illegal immigrant who shouldn't be here in the first place. Standing up for what one believes in can be admirable - but these people are acting the fool and its costing them their lives.
Maybe they object to ICE's tendency to arrest U.S. citizens?
That's valid, but is it worth dying over? Are the courts not acting expeditiously to free anyone unjustly detained?
Why should you have to die? Shouldn't Americans be able to protest without dying??
Yeah asshole, it is worth dying over. How do you think this country came to be? Bootlicker
Good didn't have in her mind to be killed on that day.
I've heard testimony today of a citizen that was detained for 3 days without food and released without an explanation nor apology.
So is your argument that all immigration enforcement should stop because someone was unjustly detained? What is your desired cure for these injustices?
Did you read my comment? I said "citizen". What ICE did is a violation of the 4th and 6th amendments . Previous administrations have been doing deportations without much trouble. The arbitrary detentions are a new practice.
I did read your comment and I know you're referring to the few instances US citizens have been unjustly detained. I was asking what you think the remedy should be.
You're absolutely incapable of arguing in good faith, and you're certainly not doing it here, but yes, Democracy is worth dying over. Doesn't mean Good should be dead today.
Do tell, big talker, what is undemocratic about deporting someone with a final order of removal issued by a federal court?
Oh, I can promise you i'm a small talker!
I don't believe anyone in this conversation has suggested that it is, and I find it hard to believe that you think anyone has.
Put that way, yes, we should all be willing to put our lives on the line to protect our freedoms, and your comments are making me feel guilty that I haven't been out there on the streets filming and protesting ICE agents. It is morally incumbent on all of us to do so.
So, lick all the boots? That’s America?
Disagreeing with federal policy and/or its enforcement does not justify or excuse intentionally impeding it. That is a crime. Your retort is, to be polite, overbroad. Leaking military plans because one disagrees with them? Blowing up military recruitment offices? Destroying evidence because one believes the law being enforced is unjust? Policy disagreement is not a defense to a crime.
There’s a sleight of hand in this framing that’s worth calling out.
It’s obviously true that putting yourself physically near armed federal officers can be dangerous, and people should think seriously about personal risk. Prudence matters.
This argument quietly moves from prudence to legitimacy — from “this is risky” to “this therefore shouldn’t be done, and responsibility for the outcome lies with the civilian.” That’s a much stronger claim, and a far more troubling one.
Historically, governments don’t need to ban protest to suppress it. They just need to make the cost unpredictable and then moralize the consequences: you should have known better.
Once we accept that logic, the only “acceptable” protest is symbolic, distant, and easily ignored. Anything that meaningfully interferes with state action becomes, by definition, foolish or illegitimate.
That’s exactly how chilling works — not through censorship, but through fear and blame-shifting. And that should worry anyone who still believes free expression includes the right to contest authority before history renders its verdict.
They are defending their neighbors from unconstitutional actions by ICE. They're showing more bravery than any coward who hides behind a mask.
Ice has a quite narrow area of legal operation and they are hardly holding themselves to deporting immigrants with a final order of deportation.
Well - in developed Democracies - rather than 2nd rate personal rule authoritarian Banana republics - citizens do not need to fear that Central Gov agents are going to use deadly force in trivial circumstances.
While I have little sympathy directly for the protestors, I also have lived in authoritarian banana republics and ICE and Trump Cosplaying "Banana republic intimidation" is not something that is desirable, needed or positive for the United States. There's a reason Banana Republics are messes with low legal actionability - and that's rooted in precisely cowboy action - right or left it doesn't matter, both are long-term toxic.
There is not 'Legal' court order giving US federal immigration agents carte blance on public roads. That's not in US law
Playing Cowboys as they are is at once uttelry unneeded and second, undercutting an actual support - the fact Trump is underwater on approval on Immigration is without doubt (given one can align the declines with these flagrant incidents) due to the unnecessary Banana Republic antics. Repeat - unnecessary - Bush and Obama managed both to suppress illegal immigr and take action on illegal immig using normal means and ex-Proggy Lefty w/o broad public backlash
Certainly myself as a definately Not Lefty this stuff I see the clear bad precedent and all swords / preceent cut both ways.
To repeat again, the Napoleonic aphorism: "It is worse than a Crime, it is a Blunder."
They are standing up in the same way many right wing people do so it’s hypocritical to deny them the right to stand up for abuse just because they are left leaning 😎
That's right. This wasn't her fight. Antifa and other Leftist groups spread agitprop to rile up ordinary people into LARPing as "civil rights crusaders" and when some of them get shot, these groups trumpet them as martyrs to gain more support.
I know it's a worn out analogy, but I hope those who are commenting here to the effect that disobeying a LEO officer's orders justifies summary loss of life if the officer feels threatened would agree that LEO on the capital on January 6 five years ago would have been perfectly justified in shooting to kill those in the large and militant crowd who disobeyed orders and assaulted them violently and repeatedly with their fists and various objects and sprays while urging others to do the same.
The restraint of the police on that day, at great personal cost, seems to me a remarkable rebuke to all who make blanket condemnations of LEOs. The one case of an officer discharging a weapon in response to the imminent threat of an angry crowd flooding an area in pursuit of legislators has, on the other hand, been treated as the murder of a martyr. It was indeed a horrible tragedy, but I don't think we're going to see these same people saying that Ms. Babbitt brought it on herself in the manner they claim Ms. Good did after she smiled and said, "That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you," before trying to drive away.
I will stand up and say that I think this shooting and the shooting on January 6 were both justified yet regrettable uses of government force.
But I disagree with the idea that disobeying an officer justified lethal force. While she was in her car and not moving, or if she had gotten out with her wife and jeered them with her, it would not have been a justified shooting. But when she appeared to be driving at the officer she crossed a line.
The question remains: Even putting aside the fact that the vehicle was already turning away (which the ICE agent didn't realize) -- how was shooting the driver supposed to neutralize (rather than exacerbate) any ostensible threat?
AmonPark, I appreciate your attempt to be evenhanded, but the main contrast I was drawing was not between Ms. Babbitt and Ms. Good, but between the police who were physically attacked individually by groups of rioters and Officer Ross. Hundreds of January 6 rioters were *not* killed by police because of ordinary LEO restraint on lethal force.
The exercise of sanctioned lethal violence by LEOs ordinarily carries with it the proviso that it must be exercised with exceptional restraint, which we saw in DC and not in Minneapolis. The DC exception was the first person to breach the inner safety area protecting legislators after due warning with a mob behind her.
So I would counter and say that if we look for justification we find entirely different grounds. In the case of Ms. Babbitt, the justification was not "disobeying an order" (all the rioters had by that time done so), it was doing so and presenting a credible threat of violence towards many targeted individuals. In the case of Ms. Good, it was, most charitably, presenting a perceived (though misperceived) threat to Officer Ross's personal safety. That most charitable interpretation means Ross went into panic mode in the line of duty and cost someone her life, in which case we might expect a response of regret and a spontaneous effort to save her life, rather than a cursed expletive aimed at the victim and refusal of immediate medical aid.