Next Up with Mark Halperin
How America’s Red-Blue Divide Plays Into the ICE Shooting in MN, and Trump’s Global Power Plays Explained
08 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What does the Minnesota shooting reveal about America's political divide?
Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I'm Mark Halpern, Editor-in-Chief of the live interactive video platform Two-Way and your host here, Guide to Everything NextUp. Delighted to have you back. All you Nexters who are tuning in for our second episode of the week and second of the year. Very happy. to have you here. We've got some great guests and a great conversation in a busy, busy news week already.
Jeff Rowe will be here. He's a Republican strategist, one of the smartest people in politics I know, and he doesn't do a lot of media.
Chapter 2: How does the immigration debate relate to the Minnesota tragedy?
He's a semi-reclusive figure. So Jeff will be here, along with Jaime Moore, a Democratic strategist. We'll have a great conversation about everything that's going on in politics. And then after that, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, longtime Republican member of the Congress who was tapped by President Trump to figure out a new way to balance
the economy, how to grow the economy with a clean environment, and talk to the administrator about how he's trying to do those things, which some see as contradictory, but Lee Zeldin thinks they can do them both. So we'll talk about that with those three great guests coming up.
But before that, in just a moment, my reported monologue on the national crisis in Minnesota in the wake of the shooting by an ICE officer. We'll talk about what I've learned about that since it occurred. My reported monologue is next up.
Chapter 3: What insights do Democratic and Republican strategists offer on the immigration fight?
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Chapter 4: How is Trump's strategy on Greenland misunderstood by Europe?
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I've gotten so many messages in the last few days and talked to so many people since the murder occurred.
Chapter 5: What changes is the Trump EPA making in environmental policy?
There you go. Since the woman was killed in Minnesota. One text this morning, early, pre-dawn, from someone I know, a very thoughtful person, a Republican. This is what they texted. The ice thug murdered her. That was it. Just a declaration.
And then a little later in the morning, Hillary Clinton went on Twitter and tweeted a picture of the memorial service, impromptu memorial service that was held for Renee Good, the woman who was killed. And she used the M word, too. Last night at the corner where an ICE agent murdered.
Chapter 6: How does the Trump administration balance economic growth and environmental protection?
Renee Good, thousands of Minnesotans gathered in the frigid dark to protest her killing. And I know people on the right are upset that anybody's saying that the officer murdered her. or in some cases that he did anything wrong. Here's my friend Eric Erickson in his newsletter, which again, a Substack I recommend to you. Eric had a much different point of view.
Another person like Hillary Clinton, a person of good faith and concern about what happened in Minnesota and mourning the loss of life of Renee Good. Eric wrote this, Ms. Good should not have been attempting to obstruct ICE agents. She should not have used her car as a barricade.
she should not ignored the ice agents she should not have struck an ice agent with her vehicle so um my reported monologue today is a little bit different than normal normal i'm talking normally i'm talking to um people at senior levels of government and politics and business uh to learn what's going on uh right the best information typically in your reporting is going to come from the people most in the know and for good or for ill that's often the most powerful people
Chapter 7: What are the challenges facing the Republican Party in the upcoming midterms?
My reporting monologue today is a little bit different. I have talked to a lot of people in politics and government and business about the events of Minnesota, but a lot of the best reporting I've done, including some coming my way, has come voluntarily from what I would call everyday people.
regular Americans, some call them ordinary, I would say the opposite of ordinary, about their reaction to it. And it's been consistent so far. If you voted for Kamala Harris in the last presidential election, you're more likely to have said to me that this was murder or something like that, that the fault lies with Donald Trump, that the fault lies with the agent who pulled out his gun.
And if you voted for Donald Trump, you're more likely to say that the fault lies with Ms. Good. And while her death is a tragedy, that she shouldn't have done what she did, what Eric Erickson has said. And I've heard from so many people in emails and texts and phone calls. And then on two way where we've now done two shows where we've heard from a lot of the members of the two way community.
Chapter 8: How do the guests assess Josh Shapiro's chances in the Democratic primary?
And it just falls very neatly, unfortunately, along red, blue. And as often happens in controversial stories where I try to just describe what I see and not take a side, I've taken a lot of criticism already, most of it pretty friendly, not entirely, of people on the blue side saying, you know, you're an idiot for not just calling it a murder. Of course it's a murder.
And for people on the red side who are saying, how could you lay a single piece of the blame at the feet of the officer who did this, the ICE official who pulled the trigger. It's ambiguous. We're going to get more information. So I think sensibly, some people on two-way and who have contacted me said it's too soon to say. So for some it's too soon, but for many it's not.
Here's another email that I got from someone, a very well-meaning person, did not vote for Donald Trump. And so maybe not surprisingly, here's his point of view. He emailed me, I tried a lot of homicide cases. This is back when he was a practicing attorney.
What happened in Minneapolis was at least voluntary manslaughter or second-degree murder, the latter harder to prove, especially because the shooter is a cop. ICE has to cool it, start hiring selectively, not anyone who wants to be a cop. And this email, again, another person expressing the notion that the person who's criminally at fault is the shooter.
It goes to the broader issue, which is this debate about the policy the Trump administration has about ICE. And I've heard from a lot of people on that, too, who are divided again, red versus blue. And that's with elites and that's everyday people. What I'm asking everybody to do, you know, a day into this crisis here as we speak this morning, is take a deep breath. Take a deep breath.
Then take four more. And let's wait to see what we learn. What do we learn about what happened in the run-up to the shooting? What was that woman doing in that neighborhood? Was she engaging with ICE officials at all before they approached her vehicle? And what were they doing? What was the mission they were on that had them be in that neighborhood? And then what happened after?
I remain very concerned about this. What seems to be a failure to get her the best medical care as quickly as possible in the aftermath of the shooting. We don't know that yet, but there's some video evidence that suggests that. So got to get more facts about before and after. And of course, during people can watch the videos and make and make their own judgment. Unfortunately,
sophisticated people of good faith so far have watched the same videos, and they've come away as far apart as an igloo in a volcano, just diametrically opposed about what it is that you can see in those videos. And it's troubling to me because this should be fact-based. It shouldn't be red versus blue on this. But what's driving this is not just red versus blue reflexive.
It's not just red versus blue as they – as they experience the video of the shooting. It's for Red America, the arrival of ICE in these blue cities, these blue states, which we've seen now in other places, but in force in Minneapolis. ICE for them is like a sheriff arriving in town after a long delay. A frontier town that's been overrun by outlaws and They're there to fix the problem.
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