January 12, 2026: New ICE Footage of Minneapolis Shooting and When Deadly Force Is Justified, Two Transgender Athlete Cases Before the Supreme Court, Reality of Trump's Greenland Comments, and More.

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What updates are there on the Minneapolis ICE shooting and deadly force justification?

Jordan Berman 0:00
Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased Politics. Today is Monday, January 12th. Let's talk about some news. Quick note first about Iran. I know it's a highly requested topic, but just as a reminder, my general rule here is that I do not dive into international matters until the United States takes some form of you know, action. So when and if the United States does do that and does get involved, I will certainly talk about it then. But for now, we are going to stick to domestic affairs. Starting with some updates to the ICE shooting in Minneapolis. Since we last talked, there have been some updates, and I do want to cover those updates.
Jordan Berman 0:50
I also want to clear up something that I said in last week's episode and answer some of your questions about what kind of jurisdiction ICE agents have over U.S. citizens. So let's start with clearing up some precedent first. In last week's episode, I highlighted the fact that ICE agents cannot fire at the driver of a moving vehicle unless they have the reasonable belief that the driver poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.

What are the implications of Trump's comments about Greenland?

Jordan Berman 1:24
That per The DHS use of force policy to justify the use of deadly force, an agent has to have the reasonable belief that the subject, in this case the driver, poses an imminent threat of either death or serious bodily injury. And that can either be to the agent or to someone else. So whether the shots were justified here comes down to whether the agent had a reasonable belief that Renee Good posed an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, either to that agent or to someone else. And in last week's episode, we talked a little bit about what reasonable belief means. And I said that according to the Supreme Court, when it comes to claims of deadly force, it is an objective standard. Meaning the reasonableness of an agent's use of force has to be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene rather than with the 2020 vision of hindsight.
Jordan Berman 2:28
So courts will ask what a reasonable officer on the scene would have done based on the circumstances that the officer actually faced. not with hindsight after all the facts are known. And in answering that question, courts allow for the fact that agents and officers are often forced to make split-second decisions in situations that are tense or uncertain, you know, rapidly evolving.

What do we need to know about the Supreme Court hearing on transgender athlete cases?

Jordan Berman 2:52
So there's quite a lot of deference given to law enforcement officers, including ICE agents. But this is the part that I messed up. So in last week's episode, I said that the question is, at the moment the shots were fired, regardless of what happened leading up to that moment, regardless of the actions the officer took beforehand, would a reasonable officer have believed that the driver posed an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury? Now, that's sometimes called the moment of threat doctrine. But the Supreme Court actually rejected that doctrine very recently in May of last year. And it was in a case called Barnes versus Felix. So the Supreme Court said in Barnes that the moment of threat doctrine is.
Jordan Berman 3:40
improperly narrows the Fourth Amendment reasonable officer analysis because one, it ignores relevant context and events leading up to the shooting, and two, it conflicts with longstanding precedent requiring a broader totality of the circumstances review. So per the court's ruling in Barnes, courts must look not just at what was happening in the millisecond when the trigger was pulled. They have to consider all relevant circumstances the officer knew before that happened. So deadly force claims are judged by whether a reasonable officer on the scene would have believed there was an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. And this judgment is objective and it accounts for split second decisions.
Jordan Berman 4:34
But courts cannot limit that inquiry to just the moment the officer pulled the trigger. They have to consider the broader context leading up to that moment. So that is what we're looking at here in the wake of Renee Good's death.

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