I’m encouraging you to support any news organization that’s dedicated to original reporting. If that’s your local newspaper, terrific — local newspapers in particular need your support. If that’s another national newspaper, that’s great too. And if it’s the New York Times, we’ll use that money to send reporters out to find the facts and context that you’ll never get from AI. That’s it, not asking you to click on any link, just subscribe to a real news organization with real journalists doing firsthand, fact-based reporting. And if you already do, thank you.
Fact-based reporting is crucial for a democratic society. It’s in all of our interests to support it.
Hours after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Good inside her S.U.V. on a Minneapolis street last month, a senior federal prosecutor in Minnesota sought a warrant to search the vehicle for evidence in what he expected would be a standard civil rights investigation into the agent’s use of force.
The prosecutor, Joseph H. Thompson, wrote in an email to colleagues that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that specializes in investigating police shootings, would team up with the F.B.I. to determine whether the shooting had been justified and lawful or had violated Ms. Good’s civil rights.
But later that week, as F.B.I. agents equipped with a signed warrant prepared to document blood spatter and bullet holes in Ms. Good’s S.U.V., they received orders to stop, according to several people with knowledge of the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation — by using a warrant obtained on that basis — would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.
Over the next few days, top Department of Justice officials presented alternative approaches. First, they suggested prosecutors ask a judge to sign a new search warrant for the vehicle, predicated on a criminal investigation into whether the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Ms. Good, Jonathan Ross, had been assaulted by her. Later, they urged the prosecutors to instead investigate Ms. Good’s partner, who had been with Ms. Good on the morning of the shooting, confronting immigration agents in their Minneapolis neighborhood.
Several of the career federal prosecutors in Minnesota, including Mr. Thompson, balked at the new approach, which they viewed as legally dubious and incendiary in a state where anger over a federal immigration crackdown was already boiling over. Mr. Thompson and five others left the office in protest, setting off a broader wave of resignations that has left Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office severely understaffed and in crisis. Officials have not said whether they ultimately obtained a new warrant to search the vehicle.
It’s easy to become desensitized when every week Trump does something far worse than anything Nixon got forced out of office for, but ending a murder investigation because it would embarrass the president is an unspeakable abuse of power.
Yesterday, in response to the despicable killing of Renee Good by a masked ICE agent, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey used an even more justified profanity. His statement is angry, it is powerful, and it is worth watching.1 I’ll quote part of it here:
They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly, that is bullshit. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.
…
I do have a message for our community, for our city, and I have a message for ICE. To ICE: Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.
We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized, and now, somebody is dead. That’s on you.
Let’s go one further. ICE should get the fuck out of existence.
Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that two laws barring the procedure, including the country’s first explicit ban on abortion pills, violate the state constitution.
The justices sided with the state’s only abortion clinic and others who had sued over the abortion bans passed since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Wyoming is one of the most conservative states, but the 4-1 ruling from justices all appointed by Republican governors was unsurprising in that it upheld every previous lower court ruling that the abortion bans violated the state constitution.
Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund and four women, including two obstetricians, argued that the laws violated a state constitutional amendment ensuring competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions.
Voters approved the constitutional amendment in 2012 in response to the federal Affordable Care Act. The justices recognized that the amendment wasn’t written to apply to abortion but said it’s not their job to “add words” to the state constitution.
Never let it be said that Sarah Palin didn’t accomplish something useful once!
Trump has responded to the murder of a civilian by an ICE agent in Minneapolis by defending an entirely fictious scenario with no resemblance to the facts that are easily observable on video:
This is the ICE agent President Trump says was "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over … hard to believe he is alive."
Mayor Frey, to his credit, preemptively pushed back forcibly at the inevitable claims from the government that a woman was shot from the side of her car out of “self-defense”:
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey forcefully pushed back against any suggestion that the fatal shooting involving a federal immigration agent was an act of self-defense.
“This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed,” Frey said.
Frey said claims that the shooting was justified are false and misleading.
“What I can tell you is the narrative that this was just done in self-defense is a garbage narrative that is not true,” he said. “It has no truth, and it needs to be stated very clearly.”
The administration’s lies about what happened beed to be countered as forcefully as possible as often as possible.
And no matter how bad you think the facts are, they’re worse:
"A doctor at the scene attempted to help the woman who was shot, but was kept away by federal agents. When an ambulance finally arrived, it was blocked from reaching her by law-enforcement vehicles, and paramedics had to reach her on foot. The woman has died." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0…
In anticipation of the Purple Line’s scheduled opening in 2027, Montgomery County officials are looking at places to build sidewalks near the light rail line. But plans to build sidewalks near the future Takoma-Langley station, on University Boulevard in Takoma Park, have been shelved in part because neighbors say they’re afraid of “stranger danger.”
Staff at the Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) identified eight residential streets within a half-mile of the station that were missing sidewalks, then sent information about the proposal to over 150 nearby households. Fewer than half replied, but those who did were mostly against it. According to the letter from Robert Gonzales, Sidewalk Section Chief, of the 73 residents who responded, just 12 supported the sidewalks.
“In the remaining 61 comments, residents heavily opposed the installations,” Gonzales wrote, “expressing concerns about loss of available parking, lack of need, financial loss due to tree and landscaping removals, loss of environmental beauty and the ‘natural feel’ of the community, stranger danger, increased crime, littering, and, most of all, the worsening of stormwater flooding and erosion.”
Gonzales added that the county’s budget doesn’t have enough money to install the sidewalks anyway. “Our decision is clear,” he concluded. “None of the proposed sidewalks will be installed.”
“Stranger danger” is a concept dating to the 1960s, when high-profile cases of children being abducted or murdered began appearing in the news. If you grew up in the 1990s like me, you probably remember pictures of missing kids on milk cartons or round-the-clock news coverage about child kidnappings.
In a now-deleted Bluesky post, an agency staffer said they asked residents in Bethesda’s Kenwood neighborhood, where thousands of people go to see cherry blossoms each spring, about building sidewalks. MCDOT decided not to after 50 households–a majority of those who replied, but just 20% of the whole neighborhood–were opposed.
Screenshot of a deleted post from MCDOT’s Bluesky page.
Even in neighborhoods where there’s vocal support for pedestrian improvements, MCDOT is slow to act. The agency rejected a Rockville neighborhood’s request for a stop sign near Wood Middle School after a driver hit one child, and only relented after another child was killed by a school bus. Here in East Silver Spring, my neighbors and I are pushing for stop signs at two intersections where drivers hit me and my dog and an 11-year-old boy this year. Bethesda Today recently covered that effort and was told by Michael Paylor, who’s in charge of traffic engineering and operations at MCDOT, that “sometimes it’s the best interest of the county to do nothing.”
Montgomery County boasts that it’s one of the first places in the United States to adopt Vision Zero, pledging to end all traffic fatalities by 2030. But between January and October 2025, 358 pedestrians were involved in a crash, 12 of whom died. That’s basically the same as four years ago. Giving people more safe places to walk by building more sidewalks, especially near a transit station that many people will walk to, would go a long way in reversing this trend. If this county were serious about safety, it wouldn’t use “stranger danger” as a reason not to build sidewalks.
The Department of Transportation is overseen by County Executive Marc Elrich, who is term-limited and is instead running for County Council. Next year’s Democratic primary on June 23, 2026 will likely decide his successor, who will be responsible for the agency. We’ll be endorsing in the executive and county council races, and asking the candidates if they support building more sidewalks–or making more excuses.
Log in
reply