Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
We're Sure Kash Will Do a Great Job
The U.S. Department of Justice today began conducting an extensive cover up on behalf of Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good on Wednesday.
That’s my takeaway after reading today's statement from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension announcing that the U.S. Attorney's Office has shut the BCA out of any ongoing investigation.
“The BCA [will] no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation,” the bureau states.
The bureau says it “expect[s] the FBI to conduct a thorough and complete investigation.” Gov. Tim Walz, however, is doubtful of a “fair outcome.”
I’m with the guv. If you expect Pam Bondi’s DOJ to conduct an impartial investigation, especially after multiple administration figures from the president on down have already exonerated Ross—calling Good a “professional agitator” (Trump), a “domestic terrorist” (Kristi Noem), and a “deranged leftist” (JD Vance)—I’ve got a farm in Greenland I’d like to sell you.
And politics aside, if you think Kash Patel’s FBI is even capable of doing a pro job, remember how clumsily he handled the Charlie Kirk case—and that was a guy they didn’t want dead.
However, the BCA’s smol bean act is also a little grating. While an investigation would certainly go smoother with the cooperation of the feds, the BCA is not without power here. To start, I’m told there were a few witnesses to the killing.
Terrorist Threat Closes Minneapolis Public Schools
You’d think that after executing a woman on a city street, the DHS forces now occupying Minneapolis would call it a day. But that’d be underestimating this goon squad’s drive to terrorize the people of Minnesota.
While much of the city was mourning Renee Nicole Good, armed U.S. Border Patrol thugs raided Roosevelt High School in south Minneapolis, where students were just getting out of class.
As Elizabeth Shockman reports for MPR News, school officials say officers “began tackling people, handcuffed two staff members, and released chemical weapons on bystanders.”
“They don’t care. They’re just animals,” one school official said. “I’ve never seen people behave like this.”
As a result of rampant DHS thuggery, Minneapolis Public Schools were closed for the rest of the week, with the school district saying it acted “out of an abundance of caution.”
In other words, the federal government has made it unsafe for Minneapolis children to attend school.
Let’s Read Renee Good’s Poetry
Renee Nicole Good was a human being. She had a wife and a son, and there is a GoFundMe up and running to support her family that has so far raised over $1 million.
Good also had a career as a respected and award-winning poet. She won the 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize with her poem “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” credited to her previous married name Renée Nicole Macklin. It’s more than worth a read.
The poem begins imagistically:
i want back my rocking chairs,
solipsist sunsets,
& coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches.
And closes with the stark lines:
life is merely
to ovum and sperm
and where those two meet
and how often and how well
and what dies there.
You can read the rest of the poem here.
More ICE-Involved News
- As stated previously, the Star Tribune identified the killer of Renee Nicole Good earlier today as Jonathan Ross. How’d they do it? Well, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem mentioned that the killer had previously “been dragged by a vehicle” in Minnesota. That gave the Strib’s sleuths enough to work with the search court records and pinpoint the agent. Gotta hate when you go through all that work to hide your face and then your boss doxxes you on TV.
- Not that we need confirmation of what we’ve already seen with our own eyes, but both the New York Times and the Washington Post have analyzed multiple videos taken of Good’s killing and determined that what’s shown contradicts the story that Good was trying to run Ross down, as floated by Trump, Noem, Vance, and the hateful echo chamber that supports them.
- Though ICE managed not to shoot any other Minnesotans today, they did pounce on protesters outside the Bishop Whipple Federal Building this morning and spray them with tear gas.
- In case you thought ICE was only targeting south Minneapolis and Cedar-Riverside: Agents snatched two observers off the streets in Northeast earlier today. Per a GoFundMe, Mar Navarro, aka DJ Q of Gothess, and local artist Anna Brauch have both been released, the latter with broken bones in her hand.
- For Slate, Nitish Pahwa looks at the right-wing misinfo campaign, conducted by Nick Shirley and other influencers, that has helped make Minneapolis such a fertile ground for ICE abuse.
- Over at Defector, Albert Burneko asks Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), “How Hard Is It to Oppose Murder?” after she provided this frustrating take on Wednesday’s events. (Incidentally, Klobuchar voted to confirm a Trump District Judge appointee today. Now I ask you, how does that help bring the price of groceries down?)
- It takes a lot to get Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) to say anything negative about law enforcement, but the U.S. Senate hopeful demanded on Wednesday that ICE leave Minnesota, in a tweet calling out “misguided, illegal, and outright dangerous immigration policies.” In response, her opponent for the DFL nomination in the Senate race, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, reminded everyone that Craig voted for the reprehensible anti-immigrant Laken-Riley Act last fall. Craig also got into a tiff on the House floor today with Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), accusing Republicans of “political stunts,” to which Emmer replied, “Take a walk.” Truly a sad day for bipartisanship. We can only hope their shared love of crypto will someday help them bridge their differences.
- And, finally, the Trump administration announced that it will deploy 100 more agents to Minnesota, in case you somehow think this is about enforcement rather than intimidation. In the words of an exhausted Sen. Tina Smith, "Leave us the fuck alone.”
