🛡️ Absolute Impunity

By Rob C.

Art by Adam Zyglis

TL;DR: Vice President JD Vance has officially declared that federal agents possess “absolute immunity,” essentially granting a “license to kill” to Trump’s personal border militia. After the cold-blooded shooting of Renee Nicole Good—a 37-year-old poet and mother—in South Minneapolis, the administration has pivoted from “Law and Order” to “Lie and Order.” Despite video evidence showing the officer walking uninjured, the White House is peddling a fantasy of “domestic terrorism” to shield an agent with a history of violence. This shows how quickly law enforcement can become a private arm of power when immunity replaces accountability.

It takes a special kind of moral vacancy to stand before the American people and argue that a badge should serve as a literal get-out-of-jail-free card for homicide. But JD Vance, our couch-loving Vice President and chief sycophant, managed to do just that this week. Following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Vance leaned into the microphone to inform us that federal law enforcement operates under a standard of “absolute immunity.” In his view, the constitution is less of a binding legal document and more of a polite suggestion that agents can ignore whenever they feel a bit “sensitive.” According to Vance, if an officer decides to harass, brutalize, or end the life of a U.S. citizen without a shred of due process, that’s just “doing the job.”

The “job” in this case was performed by Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent who seemingly views South Minneapolis as a personal shooting gallery. Ross put several bullets into Renee Nicole Good—a poet, writer, and mother of three—as she attempted to drive away from a scene where she wasn’t even the target of an arrest. It’s worth noting that Ross has a bit of a pattern when it comes to “tense” traffic encounters. Just six months ago, he managed to get himself dragged 100 yards after smashing a car window and firing a taser into a driver’s face. Instead of questioning why a man with such a volatile track record was back on the streets of a city already traumatized by police violence, Vance and the MAGA noise machine have spent the last 48 hours turning him into a martyr.

The geography of this execution is not an accident. Renee was killed just a mile away from 38th and Chicago, the spot where Derek Chauvin kneeled the life out of George Floyd while the world watched. It seems the “American Gestapo” is determined to prove that the lessons of 2020 were merely an invitation to be more efficient. Under this lawless administration, the restraints are not just loosened; they’ve been thrown into a shredder along with the Epstein files. While the Justice Department continues to move heaven and earth to hide Trump’s name from those pesky flight logs, they are simultaneously clearing the path for agents like Ross to operate with the same total disregard for human life that we saw on that street corner six years ago.

The gaslighting that followed the shooting has been nothing short of Olympic-level. Trump took to Truth Social to scream into the digital void that Ross had been “viciously ran over” and was “lucky to be alive.” He even claimed the officer was “recovering in the hospital,” a touching sentiment that would be far more convincing if the available video didn’t show Ross walking around the crime scene perfectly fine immediately after the shots were fired. Not to be outdone, Kristi Noem and the rest of the boot-licking chorus have spent the week slandering the victim, labeling a 37-year-old poet a “domestic terrorist” to justify her execution. They have to lie, because the truth—that a federal agent killed a citizen for the crime of being in his way—is the final nail in the coffin of American liberty.

If you’ve noticed that the “officers” currently roaming our streets look less like professional law enforcement and more like the guys who get kicked out of a Buffalo Wild Wings for starting a fight, you’re not imagining it. To meet the aggressive quotas of the “One Big Horrible Bill,” the Trump administration has effectively turned the ICE hiring process into a “loyalty” ceremony. In just four months, the agency more than doubled its workforce, adding 12,000 new agents. How did they do it so fast? Simple: they stopped caring if the people they were arming were actually, you know, sane or law-abiding.

The standards haven’t just been lowered; they’ve been buried in an unmarked grave. The training program, which used to take a respectable six months, has been gutted down to a six-week “crash course”—just enough time to teach a recruit how to clear a room and which end of the Taser goes toward the “domestic terrorist.” Even more terrifying is the “preliminary suitability” loophole. This allows new hires to “enter on duty”—complete with a badge, a gun, and the authority to ruin lives—while their background investigations are still “pending.” We’ve basically invited the very people who failed their drug tests or have pending criminal charges to be the ones enforcing the law.

Giving any human being “absolute immunity” is a recipe for a graveyard. When you hand a man a gun, a badge, and the promise that he will never face a jury, you aren’t creating a peace officer; you are creating a predator. The speed at which this fascist infrastructure is being installed should terrify anyone who still believes they have rights. If the Vice President can declare a murder “legal” from a podium before an investigation even begins, then the law is officially dead. We are living in a country where the only thing being “protected” is the power of the corporate state and the men who pull the triggers for it.

Please like, share, and subscribe to help us fight the “Absolute Stupidity” of the new regime.

— Robert Cain, author of Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet.