On January 3rd, the American military extracted the murderous dictator Nicolás Maduro from Caracas. On January 7th, ICE killed a mother in her car in Minnesota. These are two glimpses of a larger story about death and lies.

The abduction of Maduro was not about naming his crimes, but about ignoring them. The worst thing that Maduro did is just what Trump is beginning to do: killing civilians and blaming them for their own deaths. After Minneapolis, Maduro’s lies are being repeated: in American English, by American authorities.

Timothy Snyder, “Maduro in Minneapolis”

Everyone on the scene [of Renee Nicole Good’s death] had witnessed the crossing of a crucial line in Donald Trump’s mass-deportation project: ICE had just killed an American citizen on American soil.

The administration has since declared that the agent “is protected by absolute immunity,” whatever that means, a signal of unconditional support for an agency bloated with thousands of new, heavily armed, and minimally trained recruits, deployed around the country to help achieve Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million immigrants a year. Events such as Good’s death set the stage for yet more lethal confrontations, which the administration can be trusted to defend with the same specious pretext. What is now overt, in a way that it hadn’t been Wednesday morning, is that these agents are at war with the public, and have been for some time.

Elizabeth Bruenig, “This Will Happen Again”