The Shot That Shattered the Republic: ICE, State Violence, and America’s Breaking Point
Let us begin by refusing their language. This was not an “incident.” It was not an “altercation,” a “tragic encounter,” or an “officer-involved shooting.” These are the words of the bureaucratic state, designed to anesthetise moral outrage and transform a human tragedy into a line item on a report. On 7 January 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fired his weapon and ended the life of Renee Nicole MacklinGood, a 37-year-old mother of three. To use the sterile, bloodless language of the state is to become complicit in the laundering of its violence. We must call this what it is: a murder.
This killing is exposing. It is the moment the mask slips and the true face of the regime is revealed. It identifies ICE’s real function as a paramilitary apparatus of control and it reveals Donald Trump’s governing logic, which has moved beyond persuasion and consent into the realm of fear. It also shows a republic that is learning to govern its own citizens not through law, but through force. The question this killing forces upon America is not whether a line was crossed, but whether this is the moment when state violence stopped pretending to be exceptional and became nakedly political. Is this the moment the state learned it could commit murder, and be praised for it?
ICE Comes to Minneapolis: Occupation, Not Policing
The operation that led to Renee MacklinGood’s death was a coordinated federal occupation of a civilian city. In the days leading up to the shooting, thousands of ICE and other federal agents had been deployed to Minneapolis in what was described as one of the largest domestic immigration crackdowns to date (Luscombe, Leingang and Betts, 2026). Minneapolis did not invite this operation; it actively opposed it. The city’s leadership had made clear, repeatedly and unambiguously, that federal immigration enforcement was unwelcome in their jurisdiction. Yet the Trump administration proceeded anyway, treating the city’s democratic opposition as irrelevant.
The symbolic geography is impossible to ignore. This federal occupation took place in a city still scarred by the legacy of George Floyd’s murder, a city that has become a global symbol of the struggle against state violence and federal overreach. For the Trump administration, Minneapolis was not a city to be protected, but enemy territory to be subdued. ICE was not enforcing the law; it was functioning as a paramilitary force operating inside a civilian city without democratic consent, accountable not to the people of Minneapolis, but to the political agenda of the White House. The message was clear: your city does not belong to you. Your elected officials have no authority here. We are in control now.
The deployment of thousands of federal agents into a single city is not a proportionate response to any legitimate law enforcement need. It is a pure show of force and federal power and the logic of internal colonialism, in which the central power treats its own dissenting regions as hostile territory requiring military-style pacification. It is the logic of an empire turning its weapons inward, on its own people. Once deployed, it cannot be contained. Once the precedent is set — once the federal government demonstrates that it can occupy a city against the will of its elected officials and face no consequences — the precedent becomes available for use elsewhere. The next city will be easier. The one after that, easier still.
An Instrument of Coercion, Not Law
To understand how we arrived at this moment, we must strip ICE of its moral and legal camouflage. Created in the panicked aftermath of 9/11, the agency’s mission has steadily crept from targeting serious criminals to terrorising entire communities. The language of “enforcement” has always served to conceal a darker reality: the militarisation of domestic policy, the racialised targeting of vulnerable populations, and a deep, structural unaccountability. ICE is not bound by the norms of community policing or the constraints of local oversight. It operates as a national militia, taking its orders directly from the executive branch and implementing them with the tactics of a military force.
The agency operates under arrest quotas, meaning agents are incentivised to make arrests regardless of the severity of the alleged violation or the likelihood of successful prosecution. This transforms law enforcement from a response to crime into a production system, where the goal is not justice but numbers. Agents are rewarded for quantity, not quality. A mother without papers is as valuable as a trafficker. A teenager brought to the country as a child is as valuable as someone with a criminal record. The system does not distinguish; it only counts.
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ICE also operates with minimal transparency and accountability. Agents frequently conduct raids without warrants, relying on civil immigration authority rather than criminal warrants. They operate in unmarked vehicles and plain clothes, making them indistinguishable from kidnappers or criminals to the people they encounter. They are trained in military tactics but deployed in civilian spaces. They are armed with lethal force but deployed against populations that pose no threat to public safety. They operate under a logic that treats entire communities as suspect, entire neighbourhoods as hostile terrain.
As the sociologist Max Weber argued, the state is defined by its monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force (Weber, 1919). But legitimacy is not automatic; it must be earned and maintained through the consent of the governed. When the state’s use of force becomes so overwhelming and arbitrary that it is directed against its own civilians, it loses that legitimacy. The philosopher Hannah Arendt observed that violence appears where power is in jeopardy; it is the tool of a state that can no longer command obedience through authority alone (Arendt, 1970). When enforcement requires thousands of federal agents to occupy a city, when it leads to the murder of a mother in her car, it has ceased to be legitimate governance. It has become the infrastructure of fascism.
The Murder: Facts Without Deference
Renee Nicole MacklinGood, a 37-year-old US citizen and mother of three, was shot multiple times in the face by an ICE agent while she was in her car (Luscombe, Leingang and Betts, 2026). The federal government’s immediate claim was self-defence. Yet this narrative was instantly contradicted by eyewitness testimony and video evidence, which showed her vehicle backing away from agents as the shots were fired. ICE initiated the encounter. ICE chose to escalate. ICE brought lethal force into a civilian space during a domestic operation.
The sequence of events matters. Agents approached her vehicle. She did not approach them. She was in her own car, in her own neighbourhood. The agents were masked, unidentified federal personnel conducting an operation in a residential area. From her perspective, she was being approached by armed, masked individuals. Her instinct to back away was not an act of aggression; it was an act of self-preservation. Yet this act of self-preservation was met with lethal force. The state’s narrative that she “ran over” an agent is not supported by the evidence. The video shows her vehicle backing away. The agents were not in front of the vehicle; they were to the side. There was no collision. No threat. There was only a woman trying to escape, and a federal agent who chose to shoot her.
The physical evidence is undeniable. Photographs of the interior of her car show blood covering the seat, the headrest, the dashboard. The violence of multiple gunshots at close range in a confined space is written across every surface; the material reality of what happens when a a person fires his weapon into a car. This is what the state’s narrative tried to obscure, and crucially, what the video evidence and the photographs prove beyond any doubt: a woman was shot multiple times in the face inside her own vehicle by an agent of the federal government.
Renee’s mother described her as “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” a poet, a writer, a wife, and a mother. She was not a threat. She was not a “domestic terrorist.” She was not an enemy of the state. She was a citizen, and she was killed by her own government. The photographs of her car prove it. The blood on the interior proves it. The violence is no longer deniable or abstract, no longer something that can be laundered through narrative manipulation.
Before the investigation could begin, before the facts could harden, before accountability could take root, Donald Trump predictably took to Truth Social to impose his own narrative. He called the witness a “professional agitator,” described the victim as “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,” and claimed she had “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” This is deployment of narrative to pre-empt accountability, to signal impunity to the agents of state violence, and to license more of it. Trump did not wait for facts (he never does). He did not wait for investigation. He declared the killing justified before Renee’s body was even cold. This is the logic of authoritarian rule: the leader’s word is law, and the facts must conform to the leader’s declaration, not the other way around.
The “Radical Left” Mantra: When Citizens Become Enemies
How does a mother on the school run become a legitimate target for state violence? It happens through the deliberate and systematic weaponisation of language. For years, the architects of this regime, chief among them Stephen Miller, have been repeating a mantra: America faces “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism” that is “well organized and funded” and “shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general” (Miller, 2025b). The only solution, they claim, is to “use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.” This is a declaration of war against a category that the regime itself is defining.
In Minneapolis, we saw the practical application of this rhetoric. A woman in her car, a legal observer, a protester, are no longer citizens exercising their rights, but part of a vast, mythical “Radical Left” conspiracy. As we explored in our previous article on the Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt, the foundational move of all authoritarian politics is the division of the world into “friend” and “enemy” (L&A, 2025a). The enemy is not a fellow citizen with whom one disagrees, but an existential threat to be eliminated. By categorising all opposition, from city officials and state governors to ordinary citizens, as part of this “Radical Left,” the administration justifies treating them as enemies. It is the practical machinery of authoritarian control in motion, the intellectual framework that turns a police action into a military operation and a citizen into a target. And it is a framework that has already proven its lethality.
The expansion of the “Radical Left” category is deliberate and strategic. It begins with violent extremists, a category most people can agree is dangerous. But then it expands to include protesters. Then it includes legal observers who document police conduct. Then it includes city officials who oppose federal operations. Then it includes anyone who votes for the opposition party. Then it includes anyone who criticises the government. Then it includes anyone who simply exists in a space the government has designated as hostile.
By the time the category reaches its full expansion, it encompasses millions of ordinary Americans. A mother on the school run becomes part of the “Radical Left” if she lives in a city that opposes federal operations. A teacher becomes part of the “Radical Left” if she teaches history accurately. A nurse becomes part of the “Radical Left” if he treats undocumented patients. A priest becomes part of the “Radical Left” if he offers sanctuary to the persecuted. The category expands until it encompasses everyone the regime wishes to control.
Local Resistance and Federal Override
What makes the Minneapolis murder a moment of profound constitutional rupture is the direct clash between federal force and municipal democracy. The city’s elected officials rejected federal narrative with outrage and contempt. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, upon seeing the video evidence, issued a direct and unambiguous statement: “To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here… People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart… and now, somebody is dead. That’s on you” (Luscombe, Leingang and Betts, 2026). When the Department of Homeland Security claimed self-defence, Frey’s response was blunt: “That’s bullshit.”
Governor Tim Walz echoed the sentiment, warning the public: “Don’t believe this propaganda machine,” and activating the state’s National Guard not to assist ICE, but to prepare for a potential escalation. This is a stunning moment: a state governor activating the National Guard not to support federal operations, but to prepare for conflict with federal forces. This is the language of civil war; of a state government treating the federal government as a hostile force. This is the moment when the normal channels of democratic disagreement have broken down, and the only language left is the language of force. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, was equally direct: “You’re lying. There was no attempt to run the officer over and no ICE agents appear to be hurt. Get out of our city” (Luscombe, Leingang and Betts, 2026). And yet the federal government did not leave, apologise or even acknowledge the murder. It simply continued its operation, making clear that the opposition of elected officials was irrelevant.
The Machinery of Justification
This entire operation, from the deployment of agents to the narrative control that followed the killing, bears the fingerprints of one man in particular. As we documented in our previous article, Stephen Miller has moved beyond being a mere ideologue to become the chief bureaucratic architect of the authoritarian state (L&A, 2025b). His project is to build the durable systems of oppression that can outlast any single news cycle or presidential term. The machinery of justification we witnessed in Minneapolis is a key part of that project. It operates through a simple, brutal logic: redefine the victim, and you have justified the crime. Make the murder inevitable, and you have made it acceptable.
The process is chillingly efficient. First, the immediate narrative deployment: before any investigation, the state declares its actions were justified. Trump’s Truth Social posts were a pre-emptive strike against facts. Second, the application of the enemy framework: the victim is not a citizen, but a “domestic terrorist”; the witness is not an observer, but a “professional agitator.” Third, the rhetorical move that seals the logic: once the opposition is redefined as terrorism, state violence becomes legitimate self-defence.
This machinery has been tested and refined through years of practice. It was tested in the mass arrests of undocumented immigrants, where entire families were separated and detained without due process. It was tested in the deportations to CECOT, El Salvador’s torture prison, where people were sent without legal counsel or judicial review. It was also tested in the rhetoric about “Radical Left terrorism,” which gradually expanded the category of who could be targeted. It was again tested in the occupation of cities, the deployment of masked federal agents, the use of military tactics in civilian spaces. And now it has been tested in the murder of a U.S. citizen. The machinery has moved from theory to practice. If the machinery works — if the state can kill and be praised for it, if the narrative can be imposed before the facts can harden, if the opposition can be redefined as enemies — then the machinery is ready for wider application. And there is no reason to believe it will not be used again.
Media, Deference, and the Laundering of Power
This machinery cannot function without the complicity, witting or unwitting, of the media. Authoritarianism advances not only through force, but through epistemic asymmetry: the ability to control what is known and what counts as truth. In the initial hours after the killing, the familiar patterns of deference emerged. News alerts went out using the passive voice: “a woman was shot.” Reports relied on conditional phrasing, “allegedly,” “reportedly,” and privileged the statements of federal sources. ICE’s version of events travelled faster than the evidence. The federal claim of self-defence was laundered through mainstream outlets before the video emerged to contradict it. By the time the truth caught up, the initial, false narrative had already shaped public perception. This is a structural feature of how power operates through the media.
When the media defaults to the state’s framing, it ceases to be a watchdog and becomes an accomplice. The use of passive voice, “a woman was shot,” obscures agency. It makes it sound like something happened, rather than something someone did. It removes the shooter from the sentence. It removes responsibility. The use of conditional language, “allegedly,” “reportedly,” creates false equivalence between the federal narrative and eyewitness testimony. It suggests that both are equally uncertain, when in fact one is supported by video evidence and the other is contradicted by it. The privileging of federal sources treats the state as the default authority, the presumed truth-teller, while eyewitnesses and local officials are treated as partisan actors with axes to grind. This is a choice to side with power.
This epistemic asymmetry is structural. The media relies on access to federal sources. Federal officials can grant or deny access, can leak information or withhold it, can reward cooperative journalists and punish critical ones. Local officials have less power to reward or punish. Eyewitnesses have none. So, the incentive structure of journalism pushes toward deference to federal sources. Over time, this deference becomes habit and the default framing. By the time anyone notices, the narrative has already been set. The media becomes a tool of state power, not a check on it, and the public becomes trapped in a reality that the state has constructed.
The End of Consent
A democracy cannot survive when coercion replaces legitimacy. The murder in Minneapolis is a structural diagnosis of a democracy in cardiac arrest. Civil conflict does not always begin with armies on a battlefield. It begins when the state turns inward, treating sections of its own population as enemies to be managed with force. It begins when ICE raids become internalised border wars, when the “Radical Left” becomes the new enemy combatant, and when ordinary citizens become legitimate targets of state violence. The precedent being set is terrifying: if the state can murder a mother on her way home from dropping her son at school, and be praised for it by the President, what remains to constrain its power?
The answer is: nothing. Once the state learns that it can murder without consequences, that violence can be justified through narrative manipulation, that local opposition can be overridden through federal force, then there is nothing left to constrain it. The only thing that constrained state violence in the past was the threat of legal and electoral consequences. But if the state can control the narrative by redefining victims as enemies and opposition as terrorism, then those consequences disappear. The state becomes an unconstrained force of nature, answerable to no one, bound by no law. It will keep murdering and expanding the category of enemies until there is no one left to oppose it. This is the historical pattern. Minneapolis is the moment when the pattern accelerates.
Is This the Moment the Dam Broke?
Now is time to seriously address the question of civil war. The danger is not an imminent replay of 1861, with uniformed armies clashing over territory, but the normalisation of permanent, low-grade repression. The warning sign is not the mobilisation of armies, but when the killing of a citizen by her own government no longer shocks. It is when ordinary people are redefined as enemies. It is when federal forces occupy American cities against the will of their elected officials. By these measures, the dam has already broken. The question is not whether it will break. It has broken. The question is what flows through the breach.
So, what form might a second U.S. civil war take? Will it be open and declared, or will it be the slow strangulation of democracy by a state that has learned to kill with impunity? Will it be armies clashing, or will it be the gradual expansion of the “Radical Left” category until it encompasses everyone who opposes the regime? Will it be sudden and dramatic, or will it be the slow normalisation of state violence until Americans no longer remember what democracy felt like? Will it be a moment of rupture, or a series of small surrenders, each one seeming inevitable, until one day U.S. citizens will awaken and realise their republic is gone? The answer depends on what happens next, whether Minneapolis is treated as an aberration or as a precedent. It depends on whether the machinery of justification is dismantled or refined and whether people resist or capitulate.
If there are no consequences for killing a citizen, what will the state do next? Throughout history, authoritarian regimes have tested the boundaries of what they can do with impunity. They start with a killing that can be justified through narrative manipulation. They watch to see if there is resistance. If there is no meaningful resistance, if the killing is accepted or normalised, they proceed to the next step. They expand the category of who can be killed. They expand the circumstances under which killing is justified. Then they expand the machinery of violence until it encompasses everyone and everything they wish to control.
What happens the next time ICE conducts a raid, and someone is killed? Will there be an investigation and accountability? Or will the machinery of justification simply repeat itself? Will the victim be redefined as an enemy? Will the narrative be imposed before the facts can harden? Will the killing be defended by the President? And if it is, will anyone be shocked? Or will Americans have become so accustomed to state violence that they simply accept it as part of the normal functioning of government?
Moral Accounting: There Is No Neutral Ground
In this moment, there is no neutral ground. There is no ‘both sides.’ To call for ‘calm’ or ‘understanding’ is to side with power. To frame this as a complex issue with valid points on all sides is to erase the victim and legitimise the executioner. The choice is binary. Either you believe the state has the right to murder its citizens without accountability, or you don’t. Either you believe a mother in her car can be redefined as an enemy of the state, or you don’t. You cannot oppose authoritarianism while excusing its instruments. You cannot defend democracy while accepting the occupation of dissenting cities. You cannot claim to value life while remaining silent when the state takes it with impunity.
The demand for neutrality is itself a political act. It is a demand that you accept the status quo, that you treat the killing as a regrettable but inevitable part of governance, that you move on and stop asking questions. To refuse that demand, to insist on accountability, to demand that the state answer for what it has done, which is not extremism. This is rather the bare minimum of what democracy requires.
Conclusion: What Happens After the Shot
This murder is a threshold, and a test. The shot fired on that Minneapolis street was a question posed to the republic: what are you going to do about it?
What remains of democracy when enforcement becomes punishment? When federal forces occupy cities against local will, when ordinary citizens are redefined as enemies of the state, when the state kills and the President defends it, then the republic has already crossed the line it claims to defend. The question now is not whether this moment marks a breaking point, but whether anything remains to prevent what comes next.
The machinery of justification has been tested, and it works. The narrative can be imposed before the facts harden. The opposition can be redefined as enemies. State violence can be praised. Local resistance can be overridden. And the state has learned that it can do all of this without facing consequences. But here is what the machinery’s architects did not account for: the murder of Renee Nicole MacklinGood did not disappear into silence. The photographs of her car circulated. The video evidence spread. The words of Mayor Frey, “That’s bullshit,” echoed across the nation. Governor Walz activated the National Guard not to assist the occupation, but to prepare for conflict with it. Congresswoman Omar called out the lie directly. This is what resistance looks like in real time.
The machinery of justification is powerful, but it is not omnipotent. It depends on silence and complicity. It depends on people accepting the state’s narrative because no alternative is offered. But when the facts emerge, when the photographs prove the lie, when eyewitnesses speak, when elected officials refuse to defer, the machinery begins to jam. Their narrative fractures: the spell begins to break. People begin to see what was always true, that the state is not infallible, its declarations are not law, that its violence can be named and resisted.
The republic’s fate depends on what Americans do now. Fate is not written in stone. The machinery can be stopped. The occupation can be ended. The murder can be answered with accountability. This requires resistance — sustained, organised, uncompromising resistance. It requires elected officials who refuse to defer to federal power, and citizens who refuse to accept the normalisation of state violence. It requires people who are willing to say: this far, and no further.
The shot fired in Minneapolis was a test. But the answer that came back from the city, the state, and ordinary Americans who saw the photographs and refused to look away, is a resounding no. This is the awakening. And it is the beginning of resistance.
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References
Arendt, H. (1970) On Violence. Harvest Books.
L&A (2025a) ‘Part 11 - Carl Schmitt: How a Nazi Theorist Became the Prophet of Modern Authoritarianism’, Notes From Plague Island, 17 October. Available at: https://www.plagueisland.com/p/part-11-carl-schmitt-how-a-nazi-theorist[Accessed: 8 January 2026].
L&A (2025b) ‘Part 10: The Architect of American Fascism: How Stephen Miller Is Building the Authoritarian State’, Notes From Plague Island, 8 October. Available at: https://www.plagueisland.com/p/part-10-the-architect-of-american[Accessed: 8 January 2026].
Luscombe, R., Leingang, R. and Betts, A. (2026) ‘Woman in Minnesota fatally shot by ICE agent during raid, video shows’, The Guardian, 7 January. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/07/minneapolis-shooting-immigration-crackdown [Accessed: 8 January 2026].
Miller, S. (2025b) ‘America faces a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism’, X (formerly Twitter), 2 October. Available at: https://x.com/StephenMillerUS [Accessed: 6 January 2026].
Weber, M. (1919) Politics as a Vocation. Martino Fine Books.