Rising This Week: Minnesota, unbowed
A federal judge forbids ICE agents from retaliating against protesters, as new details emerge about Renee Good's death.
The full force of the U.S. federal government has failed to stop state and other investigations into Minnesota mother-of-three Renee Good’s death or quell the outrage of protesters seeking to hold federal agents accountable on the streets of the Twin Cities.
A Fire Department report released on Friday revealed that Good had four bullet wounds in her chest, arm and head and paramedics found her with an “inconsistent” and “irregular” pulse, raising questions of criminal liability under the state’s Good Samaritan law, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
With a state investigation ongoing, Good’s family hired Romanucci & Blandin, the same law firm that represented George Floyd’s family.
As protests show no signs of ebbing, the state of Minnesota and city of Minneapolis filed a federal lawsuit declaring: “Operation Metro Surge is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities.”
The American Civil Liberties Union scored a legal victory in a separate lawsuit, resulting in a federal judge blocking law enforcement from retaliating against the protesters. The ruling estimated that Operation Metro Surge brought 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota, mostly in the Twin Cities.
“There is no sign that this operation is winding down — indeed, it appears to still be ramping up,” U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez wrote.
The same judge set out a briefing schedule in the lawsuit brought by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, which seeks a ruling that the federal surge in the Twin Cities to be “unconstitutional and unlawful.”
Protests, legal battles and civic engagement have been a potent force for accountability, even as the federal government seems to be taking every step to corrupt the investigation into Good’s death and the agent who shot her: Jonathan Ross. Several federal prosecutors resigned after Main Justice reportedly ordered them to investigate Good’s widow instead of Ross, but state and private investigations continue. Local records and journalistic investigations continue to undermine Donald Trump and Kristi Noem’s narratives.
Underwater in the polls and rebuked by the courts, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he believes could end-run the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibition of using the military for civilian law enforcement. On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon ordered 1,500 active-duty soldiers to prepare for possible deployment to Minnesota.
The gambit should be understood as an act of desperation following a string of legal defeats. Trump previously tried to justify the deployment of troops in U.S. cities through a different legal justification, Title 10, only to be defeated all the way up to the Supreme Court.
The Insurrection Act is the last mechanism that Trump can try to use after those defeats, but invoking the law carries a political price.
“There is a huge cost: You look illegitimate, and it's a use of force that the Founders of the country never wanted,” University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor Jamie Rowen noted in an interview.
Whether Trump knows it or not, he can’t afford it. Polls show majorities of people understood Good’s shooting to be unjustified and believed Immigration and Customs Enforcement had made their communities less safe. Two mainstream pollsters — The Economist and YouGov — found more people wanted to abolish ICE than keep it.
But Trump, as usual, won’t back down: His former criminal defense attorney turned Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche continued his practice of treating the Justice Department as his former client’s personal law firm. Blanche suggested that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey may have broken the law by encouraging people to record federal agents. Waltz immediately identified the threat as a “dangerous, authoritarian tactic,” and Frey recognized it as an attempt at “intimidation.”
Legal experts, including First Amendment groups, agree.
Trump’s response to the pushback against ICE’s actions in Minnesota defaulted to his usual playbook of bullying and intimidation, but Minnesota remains unbowed. The federal government, like their agents perpetually slipping on the icy streets, keeps finding itself flat-footed.
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The Supreme Court considers the independence of the Federal Reserve, and Minneapolis gears up for Martin Luther King Day, as federal agents violate protesters’ civil rights.
