Chapter 1: What events led to the tensions in Minneapolis this week?
I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid.
And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats.
We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual.
reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about what might happen next. The new season of Autocracy in America, available now.
Minneapolis remains tense this week. People are out on the streets clashing with ICE agents. Social media is full of a new kind of video. Federal agents not out arresting undocumented immigrants, but getting into physical confrontations with American citizens, sometimes on otherwise quiet suburban streets.
One video circulating this week showed a masked ICE agent shoving a Minneapolis city councilman into the streets. The protests come, of course, after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed an unarmed protester, Renee Good, in her car.
And they've grown dramatically with the Trump administration's response to the shooting, which has been no Department of Justice investigation, no sense of accountability, or even discussion of accountability. In fact, the administration has reflexively defended the shooter and dismissed Goode as highly disrespectful and committing an act of domestic terrorism.
And then the administration is sending hundreds more officers into the city to double down on their mission. which leaves citizens everywhere asking, have we reached the point where a federal agent can shoot an unarmed American citizen and we just continue on with the program? I'm Hannah Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic. Today, will there be justice or will things only get worse?
Back in October, as Illinois leaders pushed back on the immigration deployment in their state, Trump's deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, had this message on Fox News.
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Chapter 2: How has the Trump administration responded to the shooting of Renee Good?
How does that inversion change the power dynamic here?
I think... One difficult aspect of it is that it's not something that we are super familiar with in recent decades. And so I think it's just unfamiliar to people that states actually have this power and have this role and that that is a proper role for states to play. And then I think the other way it impacts it is that...
There are dynamics about the investigation process that are flipped, where instead of concerns about a state withholding information from federal investigators, that is now flipped as well, where there's concerns about federal investigators withholding information from state investigators.
Looking back at the history, is there a case, a moment, an instance, which gives you hope about this situation, where something or someone or some state has risen to the occasion in a way that we can look to now and think, oh, that's the model?
There are several cases where federal courts have recognized that federal officers do not have absolute immunity and that even where the facts are sufficiently disputed, the case can go ahead. So I would specifically point to the U.S. Supreme Court deciding in a 1906 case where two federal soldiers shot and killed a man who they believed was stealing from federal property.
And we've seen this in other cases, too, where if the facts are sufficiently in dispute and there's a version of them that seems to suggest that the officer was just not acting reasonably, those cases can go ahead. Even if the officer ultimately wins at trial, that immunity step, I think, is really important for getting the case over that hurdle and to a trial and recognizing
But it doesn't have to be that the facts are all predetermined. It can be enough that there is this debate over what the officer did was reasonable.
I think what's challenging about this particular moment is that the federal government didn't just forgo investigating whether the shooting was justified. Now they seem to be opening an investigation into Becca Good, the widow of Renee Good. So what do you make of all that? The federal government's just absolute definitive stance.
It is really unprecedented to see that type of extreme defense of an officer before watching the whole process play out and gathering all the facts. And I think it is a point that really underscores how important it is to have states protecting their residents as well.
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Chapter 3: What legal challenges exist in prosecuting federal agents like ICE officers?
And then there's this week in which things seem to be amping up in Minneapolis. Like, we've seen videos of ICE agents breaking a car window, shoving a city councilman. How do you think the administration response is affecting how ICE officers are behaving on the streets? Like, does it embolden them? Are they worried? Like, what's your sense of that?
I think it emboldens them. I think when they see other administration officials with this kind of unqualified defense of whatever they're doing and an investigation that is trying to criminalize Renee Good and her partner, turning the focus of the attention to them,
You know, I think that that undoubtedly sends a signal to continue to do what they're doing, to not give any ground to protesters or to public officials in Minnesota. And what we saw in Chicago in the late summer and fall was not dissimilar. They shot and killed a guy who wouldn't comply with their orders in his car.
It happened during a traffic stop in Franklin Park. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the man resisted arrest and dragged the officer.
They shot a protester, Marimar Martinez, who was in her vehicle five times.
The Department of Homeland Security says the woman was one of several people using their vehicles to box in agents.
And then tried to charge her with, you know, federal crime, ultimately dropping the charges. But again, we saw protesters and agents and officers in these intense confrontations in the street. We saw them pulling their guns. We saw them shooting people.
But, you know, once the evidence made its way into courtrooms and it started to go badly for the administration, the administration kind of pulled back. And we're at the stage right now where, you know— It's too early to say what their response will be once evidence involving the shooting and other incidents is introduced into court.
But it doesn't seem like this administration is going to back down from street-level protests or from public officials in Minneapolis, you know, dropping F-bombs at press conferences.
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Chapter 4: What role do state authorities play in holding federal agents accountable?
That the root of all of this is the Trump administration's quest for a million deportations a year, a mass deportation campaign that is going to be on this kind of happened in this episodic rolling basis in blue Democratic run cities.
and a desire to have imagery of confrontation in which they can have this political fight over immigration, the future of this country, left-wing protesters, have all of these things play out on social media, on television,
i think that they think it is winning politics for them and i think that they think that this is winning policy for them this is what stephen miller has been building up to his entire political career we didn't see it on this kind of level you know in the first trump administration because there were checks there were safeguards the border was still the focus but now that the border is basically closed and all of the energy and the resources and attention are on this deportation campaign
These confrontations are what they've been building up to for a long time.
So where this goes, Trump is not going to be president forever. It does feel right now like the Department of Homeland Security has become much more openly political than we're used to a federal department being. So do the DHS people worry about what happens when Trump is not in office?
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Chapter 5: How does federal immunity affect prosecutions of federal officers?
So this is something that I'm writing about this week. And I think that the main takeaway is that the Department of Homeland Security has gotten way off of its foundational mission. But at the core of it is this unresolved conflict in our politics and our country about immigration enforcement and the role of immigration and immigrants in American society.
And they're two completely divergent visions right now that are clashing in a way we've never seen.
Thank you, Nick. Thanks for joining us.
My pleasure. Always good to be with you.
This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Rosie Hughes and Janae West. It was edited by Kevin Townsend and fact-checked by Alex Moroño-Porto. Rob Smirsiak engineered and composed original music. Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Audio at the Atlantic, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.
Listeners, if you enjoy the show, you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to The Atlantic at theatlantic.com slash listener. I'm Hannah Rosen. Thank you for listening.
I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid.
And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats.
We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual.
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