President Donald Trump said Thursday morning that the government will no longer livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan. The firing squad killing, scheduled for December 3, will be the first such execution carried out by the military since 1945. “I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that the execution of Hasan, who opened fire on dozens of people at a military installation in 2009, would be publicly streamable. Since then, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has come out in support of the plan (“no one has to watch it” if they don’t want to, Mullin said). The execution livestream’s supporters also include weapons-tech titans such as Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, who wrote that to “revel in the death of those who truly deserve it…is normal, good, and aligned with our natural and national order.” Eight in ten Americans, according to a poll released by ABC News today, disagree. So do 72 retired US generals, who wrote a letter calling the idea of an execution livestream “barbaric.” Parenting experts have voiced fears that children might inadvertently witness a man’s death via YouTube autoplay or memes. Though Trump called off the Pentagon’s plan to broadcast the shooting, he was clear that Hasan “will die as scheduled” on December 3rd. The United States has executed 31 people in 2026 so far. It’s one of a few dozen nations that have the death penalty on the books—most of which do not actually carry out executions. According to Amnesty International, only 17 countries, including the US, executed anyone in 2025. “The execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose,” Trump wrote on Thursday. “They deserve to witness JUSTICE!”

This story was co-published with The 74, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on education in America. It was January 2022, and Rhian Allvin was in search of a space that could bring her vision to life.  The early childhood leader had just finished up her nearly decade-long tenure as CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a large, national, nonprofit that promotes high-quality early learning. She’d been steeped in early childhood policy, advocacy, and research for years. She was ready for something new, something hands-on. She wanted to start her own early care and education program.  That’s how she found herself, on that winter day, driving alongside a red-brick prison wall, past imposing watch towers, and onto the sprawling grounds that were once home to a notorious maximum-security prison at the Lorton Reformatory, a correctional complex in Lorton, Virginia.  > “Because the ceiling is so tall, and the kids are so small, we wanted to bring > the scale down.” A pair of the former penitentiary’s buildings was among the first Allvin toured in her pursuit of a property that would become her flagship location. The site intrigued her—how could it not? But she walked away, at least at first. “I said, ‘I’m already out over my skis. This isn’t a great idea,’’ Allvin recalled. “I must’ve looked at 40 or 50 other spaces in Virginia. They were all so vanilla. Office buildings. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I took friends to see it.” Allvin saw, in the former prison, a possibility for a second life, a rebirth. Eventually, she decided she would turn this historic site, awash in nearly a century of violence and trauma, “into a place of light and joy.” It took over a year to prepare the space, but Allvin opened the doors to Brynmor Early Education & Preschool in October 2023, with the capacity to serve up to 152 children. Today, the shuttered correctional facility is home to a thriving, high-quality early learning program.  Inside the 15-foot-tall walls, where blood was shed and brutality unfolded, babies now sleep soundly, practice newfound motor skills, learn to communicate with gestures and words, and explore the boundaries of their bodies.  Under a roof that has overseen riots, escapes, and assaults, toddlers now sit at tiny tables for mealtime, learn to wash their hands at little sinks, and attempt to regulate their big emotions under the tutelage of patient caregivers.   On the same grounds where prisoners were once on lockdown for 23 hours a day, children now move about the courtyard freely, riding bicycles and scooters around a racetrack, letting their imaginations guide them in a mud kitchen.  To get to this point, Allvin and many others had their work cut out for them. But the program is named Brynmor — Welsh for “great hill” — for a reason. Though Allvin saw a “steep hill to climb” in transforming this site and in creating a high-quality, profitable, early care and education business, she decided to take that first step anyway. Brynmor Early Education & Preschool now occupies a pair of red-brick buildings that once housed inmates in a maximum-security prison. By the time CEO Rhian Allvin saw them, they had been gutted for redevelopment.Maginniss + del Ninno Architects The Lorton Reformatory comprised eight prison facilities across three campuses in the relatively small Northern Virginia community, located about 20 miles outside of Washington, DC. The complex, which operated from 1910 to 2001 and was primarily used to incarcerate DC inmates, began as a progressive work camp and evolved to include distinct buildings for women, youth, and eventually a maximum-security penitentiary.  By the late 20th century, the Lorton Reformatory, like so many other maximum-security prisons in the United States, had become overcrowded. Violence became an everyday occurrence, according to former guards and inmates featured in Lorton: Prison of Terror, a documentary produced by former inmates and released in 2022. The facility was described as “unfit for humans” and “dusty, dirty, and dangerous.”  > “I had moments where I was like, ‘Was this really a good idea?’ There were > days where it felt like too much work.” After it closed, the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Over subsequent years, much of the old prison complex was gutted, redeveloped, and converted into art studios, gyms, and luxury apartments.  There have been several comparable efforts to repurpose closed prison facilities across the United States over the last couple of decades, said Nicole D. Porter, senior director of advocacy at The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that studies policies impacting the criminal justice system.  Each building has 50 tall, rectangular windows, allowing natural light to pour in. The windows created design challenges and opportunities for the architects.Maginniss + del Ninno Architects Though a common outcome is mixed-use developments, she has noticed a trend of these spaces being converted into education centers to serve youth—typically teenagers already involved in the criminal justice system or viewed as “at risk.”  But Porter believes Brynmor is unique; she’s not aware of any other former prison facility that hosts young children. And she pointed out the irony of a program serving early learners in a building that once housed incarcerated people, since early childhood investment has been associated with lower rates of crime in adulthood.  “The idea that a site that caused so much harm … is converted into a site of learning, of teaching young people in a healthy way and a holistic way, is very encouraging,” Porter said of Brynmor. “I would hope it serves as a point of inspiration in what could be possible at closed prisons going forward.” To take full advantage of the natural light coming in from 100 large windows, the architects made cutouts in interior classroom walls and added windows along the corridors.Judy Davis By the time Allvin was touring the maximum-security unit in 2022, only a small portion of the original prison cells were intact, preserved in a separate, undeveloped building on the grounds.  The two buildings she visited—9050 and 9060 Power House Road—had already been hollowed out. The two-story-high cell blocks had been removed. There was no HVAC or plumbing, just two vast rectangular buildings. “I got a cold, dark shell,” said Allvin, who signed a long-term lease for the buildings.  But the high ceilings and large, striking glass windows, which Allvin described as “cathedral-like,” drew her in. “The buildings were completely empty. We had a blank slate here,” said Theresa del Ninno, principal at Maginniss + del Ninno Architects, a small, women-owned architectural firm that has done a number of adaptive reuse projects for early childhood, including Brynmor. “You don’t really think, ‘This was a maximum-security prison.’” One might imagine a former prison as gray and drab, an eyesore. That is not the reality of the Lorton site.  “There was always talk about what’s going to happen with these beautiful, historic brick buildings,” said del Ninno. “For years we’ve seen them there, so it was exciting to get a chance to work in two of them.” The symmetrical Brynmor buildings, at about 6,700 square feet apiece, are connected by a brick colonnade portico, with ample green space in between. Inside each two-story building, the ceilings are nearly 20 feet tall. Great big windows—100 in all—allow natural light to pour in. These elements created design challenges and opportunities.  Natural light is an obvious advantage, the architects shared. “It’s so bright and light-filled and open,” del Ninno noted.  “I could picture a child care center being there,” said Kim Jesada, project architect, about her first impressions upon seeing the space.  But the same tall, rectangular windows that allow all that light in also created challenges. “We like to have windows down at a child’s eye level,” del Ninno explained. The bottom sills of these windows, however, sit nearly eight feet off the ground. The architects made cutouts in interior classroom walls and added internal windows along the corridors to allow light from outside to penetrate the innermost parts of each building. They also had to do something about those two-story ceilings, which are more than twice as high as a standard room.  “Because the ceiling is so tall, and the kids are so small, we wanted to bring the scale down,” del Ninno said.  They added acoustic baffles—sound-absorbing panels that hang from the ceiling—to create the feeling of a lower ceiling and smaller space without obstructing natural light. The buildings’ shape is “very unusual,” Allvin said. That, too, was a problem to solve.  “Because the buildings are so long,” Jesada said, “we didn’t want to have one single corridor running down that feels like one endless shaft.” Instead, the corridor charts a diagonal path through each building. That design choice resulted in what del Ninno called “non-rectilinear” classrooms—or what Allvin described as “funky-shaped.” > “I would hope it serves as a point of inspiration in what could be possible at > closed prisons going forward.” They landed on a design that had infant and toddler classrooms in one building and Pre-K in another. The buildings are connected by an open, covered walkway that overlooks a shared play area that’s almost as big as each of the buildings. It includes an outdoor storytime space, a concrete racetrack, an infant play area, and natural climbing structures with timber. The process of transforming the buildings into the welcoming, child-friendly haven they are today was long and arduous. “I had moments where I was like, ‘Was this really a good idea?’” Allvin recalled. “There were days when it felt like too much work.” It was an expensive undertaking, she said. “I was building a 14,000 square-foot child care center on a family child care home budget mentality.”  The two symmetrical Brynmor buildings, at about 6,700 square feet apiece, are connected by a brick colonnade portico, with ample green space in between.Maginniss + del Ninno Architects A portion of the former maximum-security prison unit at Lorton Reformatory remains intact, with cell blocks preserved.Maginniss + del Ninno Architects She paid for the multimillion-dollar project with a combination of “socially conscious” investors, a loan from a community development financial institution and private foundation support, she said. And fortunately, there was no shortage of help.  Allvin’s own children, now grown, assembled cribs. A network she built throughout her career, including leaders of other early care and education organizations such as ZERO TO THREE and Child Care Aware of America, pitched in too, putting together furniture. But it wasn’t just friends and family who stepped up. Members of the community were moved by the transformation and wanted to be a part of it.  Shortly before the center opened, Allvin realized she needed more hands on deck, so she hired a few workers through a local company to help. One of the workers shared with Allvin that he’d grown up in DC with a very clear idea about what Lorton Reformatory represented. “He said, ‘Anytime you need help, let me know. All I knew this place to be was where people came to die. Now it’s a place where babies are born, where light happens,’” Allvin recalled. “So many people have had that reaction.” Around two weeks before opening day, a local couple who had heard about the preschool showed up to see it for themselves, Allvin said. Both of them were former prison guards at Lorton. Allvin took them inside to see the progress, and standing in the infant classroom, the man commented that he wished society designed spaces as intentionally for incarcerated people as it does for kids, she recalled. The woman, Allvin said, returned every day for two weeks to help get the space ready to serve children and families. When the ribbon cutting ceremony came, Jesada, one of the architects, brought her young daughter with her. She got to see the space anew through her daughter’s eyes. The girl was not privy to the buildings’ history. Her face lit up as she walked in, Jesada remembered.  “The kids aren’t coming into this space thinking, ‘I’m going to preschool in what used to be a prison,’” Jesada said. “[My daughter] saw a warm and inviting space filled with light.” She added: “I think that with any project, seeing any of the users walk in and their reaction to the space, is what makes me want to keep designing. You see how people get to enjoy the space. Seeing this space filled with kids was my favorite part of it. They feel comfortable and safe learning.” > “He said, ‘Anytime you need help, let me know. All I knew this place to be was > where people came to die. Now it’s a place where babies are born, where light > happens.” Tiara Smith, an infant teacher at Brynmor who joined a few months after the center opened, didn’t realize the program was housed in a former prison until she started the job. After seeing the still-intact cells on campus, though, she said the significance of the turnaround is not lost on her.  We’re the change,” she said. “We’re making a difference to new lives—infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. We can give them that foundation to learn to love school, and love life, and enjoy life. We can be that partnership with families. It’s definitely a powerful thing.” Brynmor has been open for just over two years, and already it has demonstrated what so many in early care and education believe to be impossible.   From the start, Allvin was committed to serving children from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing from her experience as a national early childhood leader, Allvin has been able to build a thoughtful revenue and fee structure that makes that possible. About 60 percent of Brynmor families receive some form of financial assistance — either through government subsidies, child care scholarships with the support of a private foundation, or military subsidies. The rest pay the full price out of pocket.  The center recently earned National Association for the Education of Young Children accreditation—the gold standard for quality in the field, yet a designation that only a fraction of programs can claim. And it invests in its staff. In a field where the average wage is $13 per hour and nearly half of early childhood educators use at least one form of public assistance, Brynmor pays its teachers on par with public school employees, and provides them with health insurance, retirement matching, paid leave, and other benefits.  “That’s why we exist,” Allvin said. “That’s our North Star.” The model is working so well that Allvin is busy scaling the business. Brynmor now has two more locations, one in the heart of D.C. and another inside a 250-year-old Baptist church in Virginia. Next up, she said, is an effort to convert a former elementary school into an early learning program. In a field where scarcity is the default, each of these realities is rare. Together, they’re remarkable.  Yet it tracks with the narrative surrounding this project. Light chases out darkness. Hope overcomes despair.  And bit by bit, the promise and potential of our nation’s youngest children rewrites the story of a space that, for decades, represented pain and despair. Children play outside at Brynmor Early Education & Preschool in Lorton, Virginia. Rhian Allvin

A federal judge on Saturday ordered the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from an immigration detention facility outside San Antonio. Ramos, in the blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack, who became another symbol of the cruelty of ICE agents, was detained by federal agents earlier this month in a suburban Minneapolis neighborhood—an incident that has since drawn immense outrage. Judge Fred Biery of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas has ruled that the detention of Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, was unconstitutional. They are both asylum seekers.  In a scathing opinion, the judge wrote that the father and son “seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law,” adding that immigration agents were “traumatizing children.” The father and son’s case “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,” the judge noted. Biery wrote of the detainment: “Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency.” According to school officials in Minnesota, on January 20, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained the father as he and Liam were on their way home from school pickup. Agents then reportedly used the child as “bait” to knock on his front door to see if anyone else was home, Zena Stenvik, the superintendent for the Columbia Heights Public Schools district said. A photo of a federal agent holding onto the backpack of Liam went viral, sparking intense criticism. Writing in the Washington Post, Phillip Kennicott noted, “This is an image of universal moral urgency, akin to a small number of photographs that once upon a time had the power to change our behavior, away from cruelty or indifference and in the direction of basic decency.” Related THEY WANT TO TELL YOU A KID WITH A SPIDER-MAN BACKPACK IS EVIL The father and son were quickly sent to the Texas detention center, where Liam reportedly has been sick, according to his mother.  Judge Biery accused the federal government of “ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence” and “that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment.” At the end of the ruling, he includes that now indelible photo of Liam with two Bible verses. Matthew 19:14, which quotes Jesus: “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And John 11:35, “Jesus wept.”

Anyone with a child in the spitting distance age of a preschooler is likely to be familiar with Spidey and His Amazing Friends, the 2021 animated TV series that follows grade-school versions of Peter Parker, Miles Morales, and Gwen Stacy as they take on baddies across New York City. Their kiddo fans might even break out in song and try to talk to you about Patrick Stump. Such is the intense patronage that Spidey inspires among today’s youngest kids, and by extension, their parents, willingly or not. So when news emerged that ICE had detained Liam Ramos, a 5-year-old Minnesota boy, it was the photos that broke me. Here is a literal preschooler wearing a Spider-Man backpack, just like all of our kids, as the hand of a much larger masked ICE agent holds onto his backpack, as if he were a flight risk. An oversized blue hat with bunny ears partially covers his face as he stares ahead blankly. Liam and his father will eventually be sent to an immigration detention center just outside San Antonio, but not before, as school officials reported, federal officers attempted to turn the child into “bait” by persuading him to knock on his own front door to see if there were other family members they could apprehend inside. Speaking to federal agents in a closed-door meeting, JD Vance defended ICE’s actions. The flimsy politics of citizenship might seem like what distinguishes Liam’s story from the stories of our own offspring. But his innocence, like the innocence of all children, is unimpeachable. We know this child: his goodness, his go-to superheroes, his goofy hat. In Minneapolis, Liam is one of at least four children who have been detained in the last month. All of them attend the same school district, where half of the students are Latino. Similarly grotesque incidents involving kids are taking place across the country, including in Portland, Maine, where huge swaths of school populations are no longer attending out of fear of ICE. A recent analysis from the Marshall Project estimated that at least 3,800 kids, including 20 infants, have been detained since Donald Trump returned to office. > Something is deeply wrong if we, as a society, cannot agree that an > administration that snatches up children, uses them as bait to hunt down > others is not morally repulsive. But, as with so much that has unfolded over the past year, reports of these horrors barely seem to break into our collective consciousness. We read them with disgust and protest in some shape, while the infinite loop of our paralysis ticks on. But excruciating images like Liam’s demand more. To be clear, one does not need to see a Spider-Man backpack to evince the atrocities at play here. Nor do I need some kind of parenting parallel to understand that this child is like every child. But the power of these optics, their unique ability to clarify with a terrifying precision, that these kids could be any one of our own, should puncture some well-fortified defenses. Because something is deeply wrong if we, as a society, cannot agree that an administration that snatches up children, uses them as bait to hunt down others, is not morally repulsive. So what now? Democrats, occupied with writing angry letters and demanding that mean tweets be taken down, are proving to be feckless. But the people of Minneapolis are resisting in ways that we can all learn from: showing up in the thousands every day to say that enough is enough. Putting down our capitalistic instincts to stage large-scale economic blackouts. Tailing ICE and making it clear that their fascist levels of terror won’t go unwitnessed, with the hope that it may not continue to go unpunished. As for the rest of us who don’t live in Minneapolis, bearing witness to these images of Liam is the least we can do.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Shannon Bream that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not, nor are they planning to, investigate Jonathan Ross—the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in her car in Minneapolis earlier this month.  “We don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody or putting his life in danger,” Blanche, formerly Donald Trump’s personal attorney, said. The Trump administration began asserting immediately after the killing that Good was a “rioter” who committed an “act of domestic terrorism,” continuing a long pattern of responding to deadly tragedies by making baseless and false claims. “We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate and that is not the case here, it wasn’t the case when it happened, and it’s not the case today,” Blanche insisted. “If circumstances change, and there’s something that we do need to investigate around that shooting or any other shooting, we will,” he said, adding, “but we are not going to bow to pressure from the media, bow to pressure from politicians.”  > BREAM: Is the FBI investigating the ICE agent who shot Renee Good?BLANCHE: > What happened has been reviewed by millions of Americans bc it was recorded. > We investigate when it's appropriate. That is not the case here. We are not > going to bow to pressure. So no, we are not investigating. > > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-18T16:24:27.784Z Blanche used a remarkable rationale. He said that the FBI didn’t need to investigate, in part, because “what happened on that day has been reviewed by millions of Americans because it was recorded on phones when it happened.” Such footage appears in video investigations, including from the New York Times and Bellingcat, that undercut the administration’s message that Ross was acting in self-defense. The Times found that “the visual evidence shows no indication that the agent who fired the shots, Jonathan Ross, had been run over” and “also establishes how Mr. Ross put himself in a dangerous position near her vehicle in the first place.” As Mother Jones reported last week, many Americans do not buy the Trump party line about what eyewitness videos show.  While the Department of Justice and FBI decline to investigate Ross, they have reportedly been investigating Good’s wife, Becca Good, as well as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. And they also shut out state and local law enforcement: The day after Ross killed Good, Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension announced that the US attorney’s office was preventing it from participating in any investigation.  The Trump administration’s investigation into Good’s family—and lack thereof into the shooter—prompted the resignation of several federal prosecutors in Minnesota, with more poised to resign soon, according to reporting from my colleague Samantha Michaels. On Friday, the DOJ announced it is investigating Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, alleging that they are conspiring to impede federal immigration agents.  “This is an obvious attempt to intimidate me for standing up for Minneapolis, our local law enforcement, and our residents against the chaos and danger this Administration has brought to our streets,” Frey said in a statement to CBS News. “I will not be intimidated. My focus will remain where it’s always been: keeping our city safe.”  Days earlier, Blanche had accused the two men of “terrorism.” “Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement. It’s disgusting,” he wrote on X on Wednesday. “Walz and Frey – I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary. This is not a threat. It’s a promise.” On Friday, Walz responded to the DOJ probes into him and Frey: “Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic.” “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good,” Walz continued, “is the federal agent who shot her.”

If the ICE officer who shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week is not prosecuted criminally, or even if he is, can he also be sued? Legal experts have different takes. Last week I spoke with a police misconduct attorney in Minnesota who seemed hopeful about the odds that Good’s family might face in court. Others I spoke with were somewhat less optimistic. Winning lawsuits against cops who kill “is challenging by design,” as Michelle Lapointe, legal director of the American Immigration Council, an immigrant rights advocacy group, wrote on the group’s website. To flesh that out, I caught up with Lauren Bonds of the National Police Accountability Project, a national group that works with civil rights attorneys to file lawsuits over police misconduct. Our conversation below, edited for length and clarity, explores the legal hurdles to beating an ICE officer like Good’s killer, Jonathan Ross, in civil court. It’s notoriously tough to sue police, but it’s even harder when the officer is federal. What are the challenges? You’re absolutely right: All the problems you have with suing a regular law enforcement officer exist, and then you have additional barriers. There are two distinct pathways to sue a federal officer for misconduct or excessive force: One is a Bivens action—a court-created pathway that allows you to sue federal agents for constitutional violations. And then there’s the Federal Tort Claims Act, a statutory provision that allows for these lawsuits to move forward. The problem with Bivens is it’s been really, really narrowed in recent years by this particular Supreme Court. First there was Hernandez v. Mesa, a 2020 case where a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a child on the other side of the border in Mexico. And the court said it didn’t fit within the narrow confines of Bivens. And then there was a case in 2022, Egbert v. Boule, that foreclosed any new Bivens action: Basically the court said that this type of civil rights violation is something you can pursue under Bivens, but if it’s anything new, we’re not going that far. The Federal Torts Claims Act (FTCA) is where more people are going to get relief for violations by federal officers. It basically says that any tort that you would suffer under state law [such as false arrest, assault, or battery] you can sue the federal government for—with vast exceptions: There’s one that comes up a lot for law enforcement cases, the “discretionary function” exception, which says an officer can’t be sued for anything that he or she needs to use discretion for. Courts have done a good job of interpreting that to mean discretion in terms of policymaking decisions, but some courts get it wrong. So those are the two pathways—they’re both narrow, and they’re both complicated. There’s the issue of qualified immunity for police officers, or even sovereign immunity for the federal government, right? Sovereign immunity [a legal principle that says the federal government can’t be sued without its consent] wouldn’t come up in an FTCA case, because it’s a statute in which Congress waived sovereign immunity and agreed to be sued under certain circumstances. It does come up as a defense when [the government is] saying, Oh, this case falls within an exception, but they can’t assert it otherwise. If you were to file a constitutional claim under Bivens, they could invoke qualified immunity, another protection that law enforcement officers have; it asks whether there is case law in the circuit that would have put the officer on notice that their conduct was unconstitutional. [If not, the officer is essentially off the hook.] A lot of courts have taken that requirement to an extreme place, basically saying it’s got to be identical facts—like there are cases that have been thrown out on qualified immunity because a person was sitting with their hands up versus standing with their hands up. That level of granularity has been applied to defeat civil rights claims. And so it’s a difficult barrier to overcome. Given how hard it can be to sue, what about criminal charges? It’s definitely possible. There isn’t any immunity from criminal prosecution that federal officers are entitled to, none that I’m aware of anyway. I know this issue came up when some ICE raids were planned to take place in San Francisco back in early fall, with the DA of San Francisco asserting that she did have authority to pursue criminal action against ICE agents if they broke California laws. What about the Supremacy Clause? It protects federal officers from state prosecution if they were performing their federal duties, right? The Supremacy Clause protects federal officers when they’re engaged in legal activity, and so if their conduct is illegal, they wouldn’t be protected. So in Minneapolis, if the officer engaged in a Fourth Amendment violation, he’d be beyond the protection of the Supremacy Clause. This issue has come up with California, too. The Trump administration is suing California over new state legislation that would create a crime for wearing a mask and obscuring your identity if you’re a law enforcement officer. And it’s suing Illinois [for a state law that allows residents to sue ICE agents in certain circumstances]. Those lawsuits have asserted that the Supremacy Clause makes these [state] laws unconstitutional—that you can’t take any action against federal law enforcement officers under state law. Have you heard of cases in this past year of ICE officers being sued or prosecuted for misconduct? I haven’t seen any prosecutions yet. In terms of lawsuits, we’ve seen an increase in FTCA cases against DHS agents. Regarding the recent killing in Minneapolis, what do you see as the main path to accountability, and the main challenges? There’s going to be all the standard barriers that we talked about, including the Supremacy Clause defense, particularly because you have so many high-ranking federal officials, including the president and Secretary Noem, who are saying that this shooting was the right thing to do and was consistent with him carrying out his obligations. On the civil side, this could be a potentially difficult Bivens or FTCA case. I would note, since we’re on the heels of January 6: Ashli Babbitt, the woman who died during the Capital insurrection, filed a FTCA case, or her family did, and got a $5 million settlement from the government. It’s hard to factually distinguish these cases. The federal government has authority to settle a case like that, but since the Trump administration is taking a very opposing position against Good, the woman who died in Minneapolis, I would be surprised if they would be willing to put money on the table.

Minneapolis remains on edge after the ICE killing of Renée Good last Wednesday. As ICE and Border Patrol operations intensify—Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that “hundreds more” agents are being sent to the city—residents continue to spill into the streets, filming, heckling, and tracking federal vehicles, block by block. Following this drama closely is reporter Amanda Moore, who puts it simply: “Yeah, it’s chaos.” Over the weekend she captured confrontations she describes as “extremely violent,” including a St. Paul gas station scene where agents “busted out the window of a car.” (According the DHS, the man driving the car was a Honduran national with a final removal order.) Amanda says the mood is a mix of fear and fury, with residents watching arrests unfold up close and, at times, finding themselves surrounded by “masked men… banging on your windows carrying guns.” Her bottom line on the enforcement posture: “Everything is very aggressive.” Even the timing, she notes, might be a signal of escalation. Amanda says Sundays were normally a day off from the front lines—“you could do your laundry and watch TV.” With the ramp-up of federal agents, “I guess not anymore.” Check out her latest dispatch.

In the immediate aftermath of the ICE killing of Renée Good in Minneapolis last week, the Trump administration smeared her as a “domestic terrorist,” claiming that she had weaponized her vehicle. They labeled Good a “violent rioter” and insisted every new video angle proved their version of the truth: Good was a menace and the ICE agent a potential victim. That’s despite video evidence to the contrary, showing Good, by all appearances, trying to leave the scene of the altercation, while ICE agents acted aggressively. Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, spent Sunday doubling down, insisting that Good had supposedly been “breaking the law by impeding and obstructing a law enforcement operation.”  Last Thursday, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz invoked Orwell’s 1984 to describe this break between what millions of people saw, and what Trump and his allies insisted had taken place: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” he quoted. “It was their final, most essential command.” So, on Sunday, I joined the throng in Manhattan for one of many dozens of protests held around the country this past weekend. In the middle of Fifth Avenue, surrounded by raucous, defiant New Yorkers, I asked protesters the simple question: What did you see?  “I mean, it seems like the bottomless, self-radicalizing thing that the government is going through,” said Anne Perryman, 85, a former journalist. “Is there any point when they’re actually at the bottom, and they’re not going to get any worse? I don’t think so.” “I think there’s a small minority of Americans who are buying that,” said Kobe Amos, a 29-year-old lawyer, describing reactions to the government’s gaslighting. “It’s obviously enough to do a lot of damage. But if you look around, people are angry.” “I saw an agent that overreacted,” he added, “and did something that was what—I think it’s murder.” Protesters also described a growing resolve amid the anger sweeping the country. “This moment has been in the works for too long,” said Elizabeth Hamby, a 45-year-old public servant and mom. “But it is our time now to say this ends with us…Because we want to be a part of the work of turning this tide in a different direction.”

Kansas City police Officer Matt Masters first used a Taser in the early 2000s. He said it worked well for taking people down; it was safe and effective.  “At the end of the day, if you have to put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody, why risk that?” he said. “You can just shoot them with a Taser.” Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Masters believed in that until his son Bryce was pulled over by an officer and shocked for more than 20 seconds. The 17-year-old went into cardiac arrest, which doctors later attributed to the Taser. Masters’ training had led him to believe something like that could never happen.  This week on Reveal, we partner with Lava for Good’s podcast Absolute: Taser Incorporated and its host, Nick Berardini, to learn what the company that makes the Taser knew about the dangers of its weapon and didn’t say. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in August 2025.

“She behaved horribly.” That’s how President Donald Trump described Renee Good, the 37-year-old woman who was repeatedly shot and killed by an ICE officer on Wednesday, roughly one mile from where a police officer murdered George Floyd nearly six years ago. Speaking to the New York Times, the president then pushed the spurious narrative that Good had run over the officer, prompting him to shoot. “She didn’t try to run him over,” he said without evidence. “She ran him over.” The remarks are consistent with the administration’s impulse to defend, often with cruel vociferousness, the conduct of ICE officers as they detain, terrorize, sometimes with gunfire, and then brag about it. But its perpetuation by the president and his allies, now that a woman in Minneapolis is dead, is taking on new levels of impunity. “This vehicle was used to hit this officer,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters in New York on Thursday, where she had been addressing ICE operations in the city. “It was used as a weapon. The officer felt like his life was threatened.” As federal agents stood behind her, Noem appeared unmoved as reporters repeatedly referred to the multiple video angles that have essentially proven the outright falsehoods of the administration’s smear campaign. As for Good, who, by all accounts of those who knew her, was an exceedingly kind woman, Noem continued to charge her with “domestic terrorism,” just as Stephen Miller did on Wednesday when news of the shooting was only just unfolding. Together, the administration’s pervasive and reflexive disdain for facts—what can literally be seen without dispute—and the reflex to taint a woman now dead, crystallize a new level of ugliness for an administration that shamelessly admits: Violence is us. > Domestic terrorism. https://t.co/070fSKR8iX > > — Stephen Miller (@StephenM) January 7, 2026