Author: Ophelia Benson

Heather Cox Richardson tells us some things about the timing. She starts with the Epstein files, then

the Supreme Court on December 23, 2025, rejected the Trump administration’s argument that it had the power to deploy federalized National Guard troops in and around Chicago, a decision that seemed to limit Trump’s power to use military forces within the United States.

Oh so that’s why he stepped up the non-military bullying to such dramatic effect.

Yet another part of the backstory is that on New Year’s Eve, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a 255-page transcript of former special counsel Jack Smith’s December 17 closed-door testimony before the committee. In that testimony—under oath—Smith said that his office had “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”

With pressure building over the Epstein files and Jack Smith’s testimony, and with the Supreme Court having taken away Trump’s ability to use troops within the United States, the administration went on the offensive.

Trump wanted to do as much harm as he could before someone stopped him.

Then, on January 6, the fifth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters determined to keep Trump in office despite Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s majority of 7 million votes, Trump’s White House rewrote the history of January 6, 2021, claiming that the rioters were “peaceful patriotic protesters” and blaming the Democrats for the insurrection.

That same day, after the Supreme Court had cut off the administration’s ability to federalize National Guard soldiers and send them to Democratic-led cities, the administration surged 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis in the largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever launched.

The next morning, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, and the administration responded by calling Good a domestic terrorist.

Well, anything to make Trump feel happier, right? No price is too high? Price for other people, of course.

The Senate advanced a bill to stop the Trump administration from additional attacks on Venezuela without congressional approval. And, just two days after Trump had reversed the victims and offenders in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that Capitol Police officers had been among the offenders, the Senate unanimously agreed to hang a plaque honoring the police who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Congress passed a law in March 2022 mandating that the plaque be hung, but Republicans until now had prevented its installation.

Who will get custody of the red neckties?

Bash Free Speech

Trans activists have hacked into the website of the Free Speech Union (FSU) and published a list of its donors online.

A direct action group calling itself Bash Back said it had breached the FSU’s online security and was revealing the names of all those who had donated more than £50 over the past two years. Hours after the list of names appeared online, the FSU obtained an emergency injunction from the High Court, forcing the group to remove the donor details.

What was the point? Just random intimidation, I suppose, because what else could it be?

Bash Back, which describes itself as a direct action group “focused on total transgender liberation”, recently made headlines after allegedly attacking the constituency offices of Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary. Paint was sprayed across the building in Ilford, east London, and the words “child killer” were daubed on the windows.

Masked activists also disrupted a women’s rights conference in Brighton in the autumn, smashing windows and spraying paint on the building.

Calling it “direct action” is a tidy bit of self-flattery. It’s direct bullying is what it is.

At 4.30pm on Monday, Bash Back posted a link to a list of names of FSU’s financial supporters.

The FSU’s website was disabled for 72 hours after the attack, but the group later set up a temporary page allowing supporters to continue donating via a secure portal.

In the early hours of Wednesday, the FSU went to the High Court and was granted an emergency injunction. The order banned Bash Back from publishing the list of donor details, and warned any breach could lead to imprisonment for contempt of court.

It also named Autumn Redpath, a 22-year-old postgraduate student at Warwick University, as someone allegedly associated with the group.

Biter bit, eh wot? I don’t suppose Autumn wanted to be named as one of these criminal bullies.

Lord Young of Acton, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “Bash Back is a dangerous anti-democratic organisation that boasts about breaking the law and encourages its supporters to steal hammers to carry out ‘direct action’, including against Members of Parliament. The Health Secretary has already been targeted in a very unpleasant attack. Hacking and then publishing digital material is a serious criminal offence punishable by up to five years in jail.”

Lord Young said he was disappointed that none of the police forces contacted appeared to have yet taken any action against those responsible, adding: “The members of this group need to be prosecuted. Neither we nor our members will be cowed by these tactics.”

No action, eh? Jeez. When it’s a woman saying men are not women the action is taken before she has time to say anything else.

The coup continues.

Five years ago, President Donald Trump pressured Republican county election officials, state lawmakers and members of Congress to find him votes after he lost his reelection bid. Now, he’s seeking to change the rules before ballots are cast.

Trump, openly fearful that a Congress controlled by Democrats could investigate him, impeach him and stymie his agenda, is using every tool he can find to try to influence the 2026 midterm elections and, if his party loses, sow doubt in their validity. Many of these endeavors go far beyond typical political persuasion, challenging long-established democratic norms.

Of course they do. Everything he does goes far beyond typical anything.

They include unprecedented demands that Republican state lawmakers redraw congressional districts beforethe constitutionally required 10-year schedule, the prosecution of political opponents, a push to toughenvoter registration rules and attempts to end the use of voting machines and mail ballots.

The administration has gutted the role of the nation’s cybersecurity agency in protecting elections; stocked the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and FBI from top to bottomwith officials who have denied the legitimacyof the 2020 election; given a White House audience to people who, like the president, promote the lie that he won the 2020 election; sued over state and local election policies that Trump opposes; and called for a new census that excludes noncitizens. The wide-ranging efforts seek to expand on some of the strategies he and his advisers and allies used to try to reverse the 2020 results that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

We’re gonna need a bigger supply of suicide pills.

Trump cast this year’s elections in existential terms in a speech to House Republicans this month, telling them that Democrats would impeach him if they win a majority. He teased the notion of canceling the elections but said he wouldn’t because he’d be accused of being a dictator if he did.

Trump can’t cancel elections and he lacks the authority to carry out some of his most far-reaching plans because local and state officials oversee elections, rather than the federal government. Trump has already ignored those constraints and signaled he will continue to do so, which means courts will probably have to determine what rules are in place for the midterm elections.

But will he pay any attention to what courts determine?

Ofcom v Musk

Ofcom has launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over concerns its AI tool Grok is being used to create sexualised images.

In a statement, the UK watchdog said there had been “deeply concerning reports” of the chatbot being used to create and share undressed images of people, as well as “sexualised images of children”.

Note the careful avoidance of the word “women”. Note how unlikely it is that all this “undressing” is equally distributed between women and men. Note the BBC’s staunch determination to erase women even from stories that affect them far more than they affect men.

The BBC has seen several examples of digitally altered images on X, in which women were undressed and put in sexual positions without their consent. One woman said more than 100 sexualised images have been created of her.

Finally – but that’s the 6th paragraph. The word “women” should have appeared at the top.

An Ofcom spokesperson did not give an indication on how long the investigation would take but said it would be a “matter of the highest priority”.

“Platforms must protect people in the UK from content that’s illegal in the UK,” they said. “We won’t hesitate to investigate where we suspect companies are failing in their duties, especially where there’s a risk of harm to children.”

But not women. Never ever ever women.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room.

Today I wrote to Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, and Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Poilievre;

I’m writing you today to express my anger and dismay at your congratulating Donald Trump on his kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. In your misplaced and hasty enthusiasm at the misfortune of a bad guy you don’t like, you have forgotten or ignored Trump’s trampling of much more important principals, those of national sovereignty, and the standards and norms of international law. If you were reading the room, you would see that that is the case, and would not have pressed “enter” on this poorly thought-through message. But no. You have given him a pass on his violation of Venezuelan sovereignty because of your shared dislike of the people he conspired to abduct. You sign off your your post on X with “Down with socialism. Long live freedom.” This is a non sequitur. Donald Trump is not an agent of freedom. He is an agent of corruption, greed, and unbridled power. He is plunging the United States into tyranny and dictatorship. But, apparently, because he dislikes socialism, that’s okay. You have abandoned the very foundations of international law to become a cheerleader for a dangerously unhinged, aspiring dictator who believes in “Might makes right.” But don’t take my word for it, here is Trump advisor Stephen Miller:

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

And here’s Trump himself:

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”

Of course he’s looking to hurt people. He’s fine with killing people. He authorized and orchestrated the murder of scores of people in international waters, claiming they were “narcoterrorists” bent on attacking the United States (while piloting small powerboats that, from Venezuela, could never reach American waters.) We were supposed to take his word for it. Any proof or evidence of his claims was destroyed, and went to the bottom of the sea, along with those people who were killed without arrest, killed without trial. These acts, and Trump’s declaration of Venezuelan airspace as a “no fly zone” constituted acts of war. But Maduro was a bad guy, so you’re willing to brush that off, so long as Trump is supposedly fighting “socialism”.

Venezuela was apparently a test case. The day after his Venezuelan kidnapping outrage, Trump resumed his verbal campaign against Greenland. In Trump’s mind, because he wants it, he gets to have it. These are not the actions of a serious, responsible head of state. They are the musings of a mob boss armed with nuclear weapons. Is Greenland run by “narcoterrorists”? No. Is it a threat to the United States? No. Do the people of Greenland get a say in this? No. But because Trump claims he “needs it” for “national security”, he’s going to take it:

At a meeting with oil and gas executives at the White House earlier on Friday, Trump had said Greenland was crucial for US national security. “We’re not going to have Russia or China occupy Greenland. That’s what they’re going to do if we don’t. So we’re going to be doing something with Greenland, either the nice way or the more difficult way,” he told reporters

His words, not mine. This is not a joke. This is a threat. To an ally.

How do you respond to that Mr. Poilievre? You’ve already abandoned the high ground of international law. How do you dissuade or prevent Trump from invading Greenland, an act of war which will destroy NATO and embolden America’s enemies? If you give in to him on Venezuela, on what grounds do you refuse him Greenland? Because after Greenland comes Canada. Trump will see this big space on the map north of the lower 48 States, east of Alaska, and west of Greenland. For the sake of “national security”, and to complete his continental empire, Trump logic will demand that gets to “have” Canada too. Your craven, servile congratulatory message to Donald Trump doesn’t sound like something that’s written by man who wants to be the Prime Minister of Canada, but someone angling to become governor of the 51st State.

Trump says he doesn’t know what Norway has to do with the Nobel Peace Prize.

🚨OMG: Trump says he wants the Nobel Prize belonging to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado and expects her to give it to him when she comes to DC next week.

He can’t be insane enough to take out Maduro just because he wanted her award, can he? pic.twitter.com/6Z9Cpozmy5

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) January 9, 2026

Does he know what Sweden has to do with it?

Does he know what Nobel had to do with it?

Does he know anything?

Editing to add: Not to mention the complete absurdity of thinking that possession of the physical object=winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Of thinking it means anything.

So this is what technology is for.

Evie, a 22-year-old photographer from Lincolnshire, woke up on New Year’s Day, looked at her phone and was alarmed to see that fully clothed photographs of her had been digitally manipulated by Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, to show her in just a bikini.

The “put her in a bikini” trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026. Within days, hundreds of thousands of requests were being made to the Grok chatbot, asking it to strip the clothes from photographs of women. The fake, sexualised images were posted publicly on X, freely available for millions of people to inspect.

Relatively tame requests by X users to alter photographs to show women in bikinis, rapidly evolved during the first week of the year, hour by hour, into increasingly explicit demands for women to be dressed in transparent bikinis, then in bikinis made of dental floss, placed in sexualised positions, and made to bend over so their genitals were visible. By 8 January as many as 6,000 bikini demands were being made to the chatbot every hour, according to analysis conducted for the Guardian.

Because shaming women never goes out of style.

As people slowly started to understand the full potential of the tool, the increasingly degrading images of the early days were quickly superseded. Since the end of last week, users have asked for the bikinis to be decorated with swastikas – or asked for white, semen-like liquid to be added to the women’s bodies. Pictures of teenage girls and children were stripped down to revealing swimwear; some of this content could clearly be categorised as child sexual abuse material, but remained visible on the platform.

The requests became ever more extreme. Some users, mostly men, began to demand to see bruising on the bodies of the women, and for blood to be added to the images. Requests to show women tied up and gagged were instantly granted. By Thursday, the chatbot was being asked to add bullet holes to the face of Renee Nicole Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent in the US on Wednesday. Grok readily obliged, posting graphic, bloodied altered images of the victim on X within seconds.

Of course Grok did.

The LA Times way back in 2014:

Border Patrol agents have deliberately stepped in the path of cars apparently to justify shooting at the drivers and have fired in frustration at people throwing rocks from the Mexican side of the border, according to an independent review of 67 cases that resulted in 19 deaths.

Oh really. Stepped in front of cars have they. To justify shooting the drivers. How very interesting.

The report by law enforcement experts criticized the Border Patrol for “lack of diligence” in investigating U.S. agents who had fired their weapons. It also said it was unclear whether the agency “consistently and thoroughly reviews” use-of-deadly-force incidents.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which had commissioned the review, has tried to prevent the scathing 21-page report from coming to light.

House and Senate oversight committees requested copies last fall but received only a summary that omitted the most controversial findings — that some border agents stood in front of moving vehicles as a pretext to open fire and that agents could have moved away from rock throwers instead of shooting at them.

This was during Obama’s presidency, you’ll notice.

The Times obtained the full report and the agency’s internal response, which runs 23 pages. The response rejects the two major recommendations: barring border agents from shooting at vehicles unless its occupants are trying to kill them, and barring agents from shooting people who throw things that can’t cause serious physical injury.

The response, marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” states that a ban on shooting at rock throwers “could create a more dangerous environment” because many agents operate “in rural or desolate areas, often alone, where concealment, cover and egress is not an option.”

If drug smugglers knew border agents were not allowed to shoot at their vehicles, it argues, more drivers would try to run over agents.

Mexican authorities have complained for years that U.S. border agents who kill Mexicans are rarely disciplined and that the results of investigations are not made public for years. Critics warn that more deaths or abuses are inevitable unless stricter rules are imposed to limit use of lethal force.

I’m guessing those stricter rules have not so far been imposed.

“It is suspected that in many vehicle shooting cases, the subject driver was attempting to flee from the agents who intentionally put themselves into the exit path of the vehicle, thereby exposing themselves to additional risk and creating justification for the use of deadly force,” the report reads. In some cases, “passengers were struck by agents’ gunfire.”

“It should be recognized that a half-ounce (200-grain) bullet is unlikely to stop a 4,000-pound moving vehicle, and if the driver … is disabled by a bullet, the vehicle will become a totally unguided threat,” it says. “Obviously, shooting at a moving vehicle can pose a risk to bystanders including other agents.”

Yes, we just saw that. It’s just luck that there was no one between the SUV and the smaller white car that got smacked.

The authors recommended training agents “to get out of the way… as opposed to intentionally assuming a position in the path of such vehicles.”

They also recommended that the Border Patrol adopt police policies used in most U.S. jurisdictions, which bar officers from firing at a moving vehicle unless deadly force is being used “by means other than a moving vehicle.”

Border Patrol doesn’t seem to have adopted much of anything.

Al Jazeera on the “domestic terrorism” label:

Kristi Noem has described the actions of Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer on Wednesday, as “domestic terrorism”.

Noem said Good refused to obey orders to get out of her car, “weaponise[d] her vehicle” and “attempted to run” over an officer. Minnesota officials disputed Noem’s account, citing videos showing Good trying to drive away.

There were no “orders to get out of her car” – there was one guy who shouted at her to get out of her car but there was a whole lot of shouting going on, and it must have been very difficult to know which shouts were official and which were just dudes shouting in testosteroney rage.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a member of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said on Thursday on the CNN news channel that Noem’s statement is “an abuse of the term” “domestic terrorism”.

Just a tad.

Trump’s administration has turned to the phrase in recent months, including in an October immigration enforcement-related shooting. In September, the administration issued a memo calling on law enforcement to prioritise threats including “violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement”, saying “domestic terrorists” were using violence to advance “extreme views in favour of mass migration and open borders”. Experts said it violates free speech laws.

Also what about Trump’s endless violent threats?

Federal agencies have their own definitions of “domestic terrorism”.

According to a 2020 memo, the FBI, citing a specific section of the US Code, defines “domestic terrorism” as acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state criminal laws and appear intended to intimidate or coerce civilians; influence government policy by intimidation or coercion; or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.

Does not describe a couple of women talking to/taunting a man in police/military gear. Not even close.

After conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump issued a September 25 memo ordering the attorney general to expand “domestic terrorism” priorities to include “politically motivated terrorist acts such as organised doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder”.

Trump signed an executive order a few days before designating antifa, a broad, loosely affiliated coalition of left-wing activists, as a “domestic terrorist” organisation.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi told federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to compile a list of groups “engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism”.

Legal experts have raised alarms about the memo’s potential infringements on the First Amendment.

“Both the order and the memo are ungrounded in fact and law,” Faiza Patel, the director of liberty and national security at the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote. “Acting on them would violate free speech rights, potentially threatening any person or group holding any one of a broad array of disfavored views with investigation and prosecution.”

It’s almost as if Trump and his enablers are the ones terrorizing us.

Experts have also pointed to the memo’s focus on left-wing violence. It does not mention the politically motivated assassination of Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman, a member of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, months before.

“When a policy directive targets one ideological family and leaves others to the footnotes, it sheds any pretense of neutrality,” Thomas E Brzozowski, former Department of Justice counsel for domestic terrorism, wrote on December 12.

It’s another one of those pronoun things – no not that kind, the other kind, the one from Yes Minister. I’m an impassioned activist, she is a domestic terrorist.

Trump informs us that he doesn’t have to pay any attention to laws or treaties or precedent or anything else that might prevent him from doing whatever he wants all the time.

President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”

That’s not true, of course, but even if it were, it wouldn’t be a reason for throwing out laws or treaties.

Mr. Trump’s assessment of his own freedom to use any instrument of military, economic or political power to cement American supremacy was the most blunt acknowledgment yet of his worldview. At its core is the concept that national strength, rather than laws, treaties and conventions, should be the deciding factor as powers collide.

Also known as Might Makes Right. That is of course the negation of any form of moral constraint.

He made clear that he uses his reputation for unpredictability and a willingness to resort quickly to military action, often in service of coercing other nations. During his interview with The Times, he took a lengthy call from President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, who was clearly concerned after repeated threats that Mr. Trump was thinking of an attack on the country similar to the one on Venezuela.

How about Brazil next? Argentina? Chile? Peru?

The call between the two leaders, the contents of which were off the record, was an example of coercive diplomacy in action. And it came just hours after Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had extracted the United States from dozens of international organizations intended to foster multinational cooperation.

Because international war and international colonialism is so much better than international organizations fostering multinational cooperation.

Yet more news on Scotland’s war on women:

First Minister John Swinney has been asked for clarification amid reports his government is attempting to challenge the Supreme Court ruling on sex and gender. 

At First Minister’s Questions, SNP MSP Michelle Thomson asked about a report in The Times that in November the Scottish Government wrote to the Advocate General for Scotland, Baroness Smith of Cluny KC, who advises the UK Government. 

[For more see Unlawfully trample]

The government informed her that it would seek a legal ruling declaring that implementing the Supreme Court’s judgment would unlawfully infringe on the human rights of transgender criminals, if its other legal arguments against the Supreme Court‘s ruling fail.  

This is despite Scottish ministers consistently affirming in public that they accept the ruling.  

They are seeking a ruling that would demolish women’s rights, still, in the teeth of the existing ruling telling them to stop demolishing women’s rights.

This is despite Scottish ministers consistently affirming in public that they accept the ruling.  

They accept it, it’s just that they want to overturn it or, failing that, ignore it. Seems fair.

If Scotland’s highest civil court were to grant the declaration, it would state that to remove a biological male prisoner who identifies as female would be an unlawful breach of their human rights.  

While it would not be an unlawful breach of the human rights of female prisoners to force a man on them.

Why is that exactly? Why are the purported rights of one man who wants to intrude on and ogle and intimidate and assault women all-important while the rights of a whole lot of women? Why? Why is the male desire to intrude important while the female desire to be safe from intrusion is unimportant? How, exactly, do men like Swinney arrive at this conclusion? The insult and injustice seems so extremely blatant…

It’s a very rapey thing to say.

Greenlanders “don’t want to be Americans” and must decide the future of the Arctic island themselves, politicians in the self-governing Danish territory have said, after Donald Trump warned the US would “do something whether they like it or not”.

All it needs is replacing “they” with “the bitches”.

Trump of course actively loves doing things to people that they don’t “like”. It’s his happy place, his meaning of life, his Valhalla.

At a meeting with oil and gas executives at the White House earlier on Friday, Trump had said Greenland was crucial for US national security. “We’re not going to have Russia or China occupy Greenland. That’s what they’re going to do if we don’t. So we’re going to be doing something with Greenland, either the nice way or the more difficult way,” he told reporters.

That’s the slightly euphemized version of doing something whether they like it or not.

The US has operated a military base on the northwestern tip of Greenland since the second world war, where more than 100 military personnel are permanently stationed. Existing agreements with Denmark would allow Trump to bring as many troops as he wanted to the island.

But Trump told reporters on Friday that a lease agreement was not enough. “Countries have to have ownership and you defend ownership, you don’t defend leases,” he said. “And we’ll have to defend Greenland,.”

But the ownership that countries have to have is ownership of themselves, not of other countries. Trump is not the owner of Greenland, and the US is not the owner of Greenland either. Some Greenlanders murmur that Denmark is also not the owner of Greenland, but at this point Denmark is not the one throwing its flabby weight around.

The BBC reports:

A video filmed by the US immigration agent who fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday has emerged, showing the moments before gunfire rang out.

The gunfire didn’t “ring out”. Quite the contrary. There’s nothing bell-like about gunshots. End all stupid journalistic clichés.

The 47-second footage, obtained by Minnesota-based outlet Alpha News, shows Renee Nicole Good sitting behind the wheel of her car and speaking to the officer.

US Vice-President JD Vance shared the clip on social media, commenting that the agent had acted in self-defence. 

US VP lied, not for the first time.

The Trump administration says Good was blocking the road and impeding the work of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

That may be true. It is not a reason to shoot her in the head. Not even slightly.

Another agent approaches Good on the driver’s side and uses an expletive as he says: “Get out of the car.”

The agent filming the clip moves in front of Good’s car as she reverses.

In a chaotic couple of seconds, she turns the wheel to the right and pulls forwards.

The camera jerks up to the sky. “Woah, woah!” a voice says, as bangs are heard.

In the final part of the video the car is seen veering down the road. The ICE agent swears.

No the ICE agent doesn’t swear, the ICE agent calls the woman he’s just killed “fucking bitch”.

A different clip is being shared today.

Unearthed angle of ICE shooting reveals final exchange at the scene

Renee Nicole Good: “That’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you.”

ICE Officer: “Fuckin’ bitch” pic.twitter.com/m6p06MLGqH

— FactPost (@factpostnews) January 9, 2026

Guess who.

Did you guess?

Portland doesn’t want to be left out of the shooting civilians fun.

On Thursday, January 8, 2026, at 2:18 p.m., Portland Police Officers responded to the 10200 block of Southeast Main Street on a report of a shooting. Officers confirmed that federal agents had been involved in a shooting. Portland Police were not involved in the incident.

At 2:24 p.m., officers received information that a man who had been shot was calling and requesting help in the area of Northeast 146^th Avenue and East Burnside. Officers responded and found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds. Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel. The patients were transported to the hospital. Their conditions are unknown. Officers have determined the two people were injured in the shooting involving federal agents.

…

“We are still in the early stages of this incident,” said Chief Bob Day. “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”

A reminder to the community that PPB does not engage in immigration enforcement as outlined in PPB Directive 810.10, but is still responsible for maintaining public safety and enforcing state laws.

Unless Trump says step aside.

The Feds are barring the Minnesota investigators, because the Feds don’t trust the state people to do whatever Trump tells them to do. Now there’s a surprise.

Mutual distrust between federal and state authorities derailed plans for a joint FBI and state criminal investigation into Wednesday’s shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE officer, leading to the highly unusual move by the Justice Department to block state investigators from participating in the probe.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said Thursday that after an initial agreement for the FBI to work with the state agency, as well as prosecutors from the US Attorney’s office in Minneapolis and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, to investigate the shooting, federal authorities reversed course and the FBI blocked the BCA from participating in the investigation.

Behind the move to sever ties were concerns in the Trump administration that state officials couldn’t be trusted with information that emerges from the probe, and that ICE agents’ safety would be put at risk, including with potential doxxing of agents involved, two people familiar with the matter told CNN.

Blah blah blah. The Trump administration concerns are that the state is not in thrall to Trump.

The mistrust goes both ways, as state officials attacked the conduct of ICE agents and raised concerns that federal authorities can’t be trusted to fairly investigate given public statements from President Donald Trump and other administration officials accusing the woman killed of being a domestic terrorist.

Yes, because Trump is visibly, historically, documentedly, unmistakably not trustworthy. He lies every time he opens his foul mouth, he’s a sadist and a bully, he likes to see people he considers his enemies killed.

Minnesota officials have lambasted ICE as “reckless,” calling comments defending the officers who fired the shot as “bullshit,” and calling the deployment of ICE in Minnesota a threat to the “endurance of our republic.” Comments like these, the sources said, have fueled the distrust.

Nice little racket you’ve got there. Do bad things; get told you do bad things; refuse to work with people who tell you you do the bad things you do.

Minnesota Department of Public Safety commissioner Bob Jacobson said during a press conference Thursday that state investigators work with the FBI “all the time” as the bureau has “the evidence in the original investigative notes and reports.”

“We have none of that,” he said. “They have shared none of that with us.”

Jacobson added that bringing a case against the officer would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible, without cooperation from the federal government.”

So in other words the Ice agent will be protected and there will be no consequences for that murder.

On and on it goes, the obstinate refusal to obey the law because it’s only women who are harmed.

Bridget Phillipson is delaying the release of guidance which would bar transgender women from single-sex spaces by demanding the equalities regulator calculates how much it will cost businesses.

Is that a rule for all such guidance? No.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) submitted the guidance, which sets out how organisations should interpret a Supreme Court ruling from April on the definition of a woman, to Phillipson four months ago but she has yet to approve it.

The equalities minister has told the EHRC it must assess the financial impact of its guidance before it can be approved, despite the regulator arguing that such costs arise from the law itself rather than its interpretation of it.

That “must” is a fiction. She made it up.

Councils, NHS trusts and businesses are still allowing trans women, who are biologically male, to use single-sex spaces. They say that they are waiting for the new guidance before taking action, despite warnings they may be breaking the law after the Supreme Court ruling that sex is defined by biology in terms of the Equality Act.

Never mind that. When it comes to bulldozing women’s rights, it’s worth breaking the law.

More on the shooting:

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 is Jonathan Ross, the same officer who was dragged and injured by a fleeing driver in a separate incident last year, according to a person with knowledge of the case and verified by court documents.

…

“He acted according to his training,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told the Minnesota Star Tribune in an email, noting that this specific agent was selected for ICE’s Special Response Team, is an expert marksman and “has been serving his country his entire life.”

His training told him that trying to leave is the same thing as trying to run over an Ice agent?

We don’t know for sure what she was doing, but I think it’s fair to say that what she was doing could have been simply trying to leave, as opposed to trying to hit a agent with her car. I think it’s also fair to say that’s what it looked like.

She had positioned her car so that it blocked the street, so the ICE agent had good reason to see her as obstructing ICE’s work, but that’s not the same as good reason to think she would try to kill him with her car.

Five use-of-force experts interviewed by the Star Tribune questioned the agent’s decision to shoot at a moving vehicle, with some outright calling it a “bad shooting.” Others said the agent who fired may have legitimately feared for his life, but they noted that most police departments discourage shooting at a moving vehicle because deadly force is unlikely to stop the car and could jeopardize bystanders.

Maybe protesters need to draw up some rules themselves. I suggest a rule to park your vehicle (if any) at least a 15 minute walk away from the protest area. Do not, repeat DO NOT use it as an instrument of protest. A car is a deadly weapon.

The NY Times has an excellent analysis of who was where when the federal agent shot and killed the protester, complete with diagrams and slowed video.

The Washington Post headline:

ICE agent was not in the vehicle’s path when he fired at driver, video shows

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said the woman had committed an act of “domestic terrorism,” first disobeying officers’ commands and then weaponizing her SUV by attempting to “run a law enforcement officer over.” President Donald Trump said the woman “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer.”

A frame-by-frame analysis of video footage, however, raises questions about those accounts. The SUV did move toward the ICE agent as he stood in front of it. But the agent was able to move out of the way and fire at least two of three shots from the side of the vehicle as it veered past him, according to the analysis.

The agent was able to move out of the way, but he did have to be nippy about it. There is that tiny shred of truth in the torrent of lies. She did start to pull away while he was in front of her left bumper.

The agent who was first seen behind Good’s SUV reemerges in front of the vehicle, still appearing to hold up a phone. The SUV quickly pulls forward, and then veers to the right, in the correct direction of traffic on the one-way street.

As the vehicle moves forward, video shows, the agent moves out of the way and at nearly the same time fires his first shot. The footage shows that his other two shots were fired from the side of the vehicle.

Videos examined by The Post, including one shared on Truth Social by Trump, do not clearly show whether the agent is struck or how close the front of the vehicle comes to striking him. Referring to the officer, Trump wrote in his post that it was “hard to believe he is alive.” Video shows the agent walking around the scene for more than a minute after the shooting.

No, it isn’t a bit hard to believe he’s still alive.

Trump and his goons want us to think that she deliberately forced him to step out of her way. I doubt that. There were feds screaming at her to do incompatible things – back up, get out, stop, go – that kind of thing.

It’s Trump’s war on all of us that’s the problem.