The Execution of Renee Good
Renee Nicole Good is dead tonight, and the world is poorer, darker, and less whole. She was killed in an indefensible assault by ICE agents enforcing the will of Stephen Miller and driven by the zealotry of calculating ideologues. I almost said that the ideologues were demented, but that doesn’t address the nature of this program. It’s an ice-cold strategy of ethnic cleansing to rid the country of a docile minority and feed the beast of white supremacism. It’s a classic example of overzealous enforcement, powered by the savage politics of Christian nationalism.
The human loss here is deeply unsettling. Renee Nicole Good was valorized for her character, with a radiant kindness that warmed friends and family. She was the widow of a veteran, the mother of three children, and she left behind a beloved wife. People who knew her declared that she focused her attention on others, giving voice to their experience in prize-winning poetry. She was the kind of woman you would have wanted as your friend, and she died bearing witness to the suffering of immigrants. The cause was a bullet fired at point blank range by an ICE agent determined to teach a lesson.
That is not what our government would have us believe. The Trumpismo Goon Squad piled on, claiming that Renee Good had it coming. She disobeyed orders. She tried to ram an officer. She interfered with the proper functioning of law enforcement. She was an urban terrorist, employed by ANTIFA, an ultra-liberal enemy of the American people. At different times in the course of the day, Kristi Noem, J.D. Vance, and spokesmodels for MAGA all spoke with despicable disrespect, positioning Renee Good as a force of evil.
She was, of course, no such thing. I have watched the recording of the fatal encounter, and it shows a woman moving away from violence. There is no moment in the video where you could possibly argue that she tried to mow down the officer who charged her. Our Vice President fabricated an inflammatory episode that bears absolutely no resemblance to the reality of the evidence. But that didn’t stop him from describing it loudly.
And so we have another notch in the belt of the Administration. But 2026 will be a different kind of year, or there is no judge and there is no justice. We have just a few months to prepare for the midterms by persuading our neighbors that our leaders are corrupt, that they are self-dealing tyrants who must be brought low. Along with you, I raise the flag of Renee Good, and hope that I can emulate her shining goodness.