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Today, the family of Renee Good, the Minneapolis mother of three shot dead by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross in January, is suing Ross and other senior Trump officials over her death. A Trump-appointed federal judge just threw out a lawsuit from two January 6 police officers who wanted their names included on the plaque honoring them for defending the Capitol from Trump supporters. Vice President JD Vance got heckled twice at a Florida rally and responded by promising to “kick out” Democrats. And Trump’s Justice Department is now entertaining the idea that disgraced former President Richard Nixon was a victim of “lawfare” over the Watergate investigation.
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The family of Minneapolis mother and U.S. citizen Renee Good filed two federal lawsuits Thursday. ICE agent Jonathan Ross and several senior Trump administration officials were named as defendants. Good was just 37 years old when she was shot dead on January 7 as the Minneapolis community protested Trump’s ICE crackdown.
Ross claimed self-defense, and the Department of Homeland Security maintained he shot and killed Good because she was trying to run him over with her car, calling her actions “an act of domestic terrorism.” However, multiple videos of the encounter, show Good turning her steering wheel all the way away from Ross before attempting to drive off.
Good’s death, along with the fatal shooting of VA nurse Alex Pretti, kicked off nationwide outrage against the Trump administration. Then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in the aftermath that he saw no grounds for a civil rights investigation into the shootings. In the following days, the Justice Department opened an investigation into Good’s partner, Becca, and her ties to various protest groups. At least 10 federal prosecutors resigned over the move.
Both Becca Good and Renee’s brother, Brent Ganger, are alleging wrongful death and other federal violations in the lawsuit. Becca stated in the complaint that she was standing just feet away from Ross, who watched her partner die after Ross fired three rounds into Good’s vehicle at point-blank range.
The lawsuit also argues that the government treated Constitutionally protected peaceful assembly and dissent as “violence against our republic and acted with extreme and unconstitutional force.” The second lawsuit alleges a conspiracy to interfere with civil rights, with Ross, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and former Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino named as defendants along with several others.
These are among the first major civil lawsuits filed against the Trump administration over its mass deportation campaign in the Gopher State. That backlash prompted Trump to withdraw federal agents from the state. But a Guardian investigation finds ICE continues to arrest record-breaking numbers of people, using quieter tactics the administration describes as a shift from a “siege” to “soft feet.”
This week, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit filed by two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from a throng of Trump supporters who tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and DC Metropolitan Police officer Daniel Hodges sued the Architect of the Capitol over a plaque honoring police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, 2021, because the plaque only lists the agencies involved. Visitors can only see officers’ names by scanning a QR code. Congress passed a law in 2022 requiring the plaque be installed within a year. However, the plaque didn’t go up until March of this year, and it’s been placed in a part of the Capitol the public isn’t even allowed to access, rather than the Capitol’s more public western front.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, who was appointed to the court by Donald Trump during his first term, granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss. She acknowledged that while those officers are among the very people Congress meant to honor with the plaque and have a personal stake in the matter, they lacked the standing to file suit. She wrote in her ruling that the officers had no legal injury at the time they filed their suit.
Friedrich also rejected their argument that the missing recognition worsened the officers’ psychological injuries and emboldened people to harass them. This means that the police officers who were attached trying to hold back a violent mob only get a plaque the public can’t see, the people who attacked them walked free thanks to the stroke of Trump’s pardon pen.
Vice President JD Vance was interrupted twice during a campaign speech Thursday while stumping for Republicans in surprisingly tight statewide races.
The first outburst came while he was praising Republican Senator Ashley Moody — who is running against Democratic state representative Angie Nixon— when a man began shouting from the audience. Vance called him a “clown” and claimed without evidence that he was a “Democrat plant.” He then told the crowd that security kicked the man out “just like we’re going to kick out the rest of the Democrats,” prompting cheers from the MAGA crowd.
The second instance came as Vance promoted Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, who is running against Democrat David Jolly. After a woman was heard shouting, Vance asked what she was saying, before decided for himself that she was calling for “left-wing bureaucrats” to run Florida schools. After the woman was carried out of the venue, he used the moment to talk about parental control and law enforcement.
A sitting vice president promising to throw an entire political party out is the kind of talk usually heard from authoritarian leaders in foreign countries. Hearing a crowd applaud it ought to worry anyone who values a functioning democracy.
Trump’s Justice Department apparently isn’t content with spending almost the last two years investigating the people who investigated the president. According to the Wall Street Journal, the DOJ is now reaching back half a century to investigate whether Richard Nixon was the victim of political persecution over the Watergate scandal.
Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide-turned-Watergate revisionist, delivered gave a two-hour presentation at DOJ headquarters. The presentation included a 78-page PowerPoint titled “Watergate As Lawfare,” after a senior official invited him to make his case to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
The irony is hard to miss. That office was itself created after Watergate, as part of the reforms meant to keep the White House away from criminal investigations. Biden’s Justice Department turned Shepard down in 2022. A department spokeswoman now says his presentation “does not constitute an investigation.”
Shepard claims prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski met secretly with judges and suppressed evidence. Mainstream historians concluded long ago that Nixon was the lawbreaker, running a campaign of political sabotage, wiretapping and illegal contributions, followed by a coverup that forced his resignation in August 1974.
Vance said at the Nixon Library this summer that the “deep state” took Nixon down and that there’s “a parallel” with Trump. Trump has asked former Nixon aides why Nixon resigned instead of fighting, and he’s been chipping away at post-Watergate limits on presidential power. When an administration starts rehabilitating the last president who abused his office this badly, it’s fair to ask what it’s laying the groundwork to excuse.
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