On January 7, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mom, was murdered in her SUV on a residential street in Minneapolis. She was killed by an ICE agent who carefully maneuvered around to the driver’s side fender of her vehicle, leaned over the hood, and began shooting her in the face, for no reason. When she tried to pull away, whether voluntarily or not, he continued to shoot her through the open window.

When a doctor sought to render aid, ICE agents menaced and blocked him and lied about having “medics” on the scene. They did not. They denied Renee Good medical attention for 15 minutes. Her murder was done by a group of rogue agents directly ignoring the Bill of Rights, which includes the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on summary execution. No public official at any level has lawful authority to excuse this killing or to interfere in the proper course of justice.

Renee Nicole Good had a 6-year-old child with her second husband, who died in 2023. Their daughter is now orphaned. According to The Times:

She had two children, aged 15 and 12, with her first husband, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. He described her as a devoted Christian who travelled on mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She also loved to sing and was in a chorus at high school before studying vocal performance at college, he said.

In a Facebook post from April 2020, the English department of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, named Renee Macklin as a poetry prizewinner. It said she was originally from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and hosted a podcast with Macklin, adding: “When she is not writing, reading or talking about writing, she has movie marathons and makes messy art with her daughter and two sons.”

When the Challenger space shuttle exploded in January 1986—40 years ago this month—President Reagan addressed the nation in a somber, humble, and dignified manner. He gave a beautiful address which I can still remember as a comforting conclusion to a horrific day.

That speech, written by Peggy Noonan and quoting the poem ‘High Flight‘ by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., ended with these words:

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

All these years later, those words remain a comfort to me. This is not about “style”; it is about whether the highest ranking public servants are willing to say out loud that a society of free people sinks or swims together. We have to have each other’s backs. We have to respect the life and humanity of everyone. We have to believe that the Bill of Rights, and so the nation’s commitment to human rights and freedom, is real.

Children who lived through the shock summary execution of a mother by federal agents on January 7, 2026, will remember where they were and how the government responded. Adding to the horror of Renee Good’s killing by a federal agent acting against the most fundamental rights enshrined in U.S. law is the horror of senior officials, including the President and Homeland Security Secretary, as well as the collective voice of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, celebrating and defending her killing.

Millions of American children will know that when horror struck, their government responded not with dignity or the defense of life but with gleeful celebration of lawless murder. It is unfathomable that any human being could think it is acceptable to terrorize their nation in this way. 

Minnesota Public Radio is reporting:

Minneapolis Public Schools on Wednesday canceled classes district-wide for the remainder of the week “due to safety concerns,” following the killing of a woman Wednesday by an ICE agent. The district said it was acting “out of an abundance of caution.”

The move came after officials at Roosevelt High School said armed U.S. Border Patrol officers came on school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people, handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders.

Part of the problem is that the Executive leadership in Washington has adopted an authoritarian approach. Instead of prioritizing human rights, personal freedoms, and the rule of law, they are demanding federal agencies, Congress, the Courts, and the American people accept that they use power in any way they wish, regardless of what the law says.

Just one example demonstrates the horrific consequences of this dehumanization of our politics. The unlawful defunding and dismantling of USAID by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Marco Rubio—unlawful because USAID was created by an act of Congress and was ordered funded and staffed by federal law—has led directly to at least 734,000 traceable deaths around the world, including nearly half a million children.

That horrific consequence of lawless behavior was not unforeseeable. It was foreseen. It was reported loudly to the federal government, and to Congress, and in lawsuits. The people who dismantled USAID knew they would be choosing to end hundreds of thousands of lives last year alone and millions by the end of ths decade. 

The denigrating lies told by high-ranking officials smearing a murder victim as a “terrorist” appear to be part of an overt effort to obstruct the lawful course of justice and deny constitutionally guaranteed redress. Today, of all days, we need the Republican Party to consciously put aside the obsession with hyperpartisan behavior. 

To see leading Republicans celebrating the summary execution of a U.S. citizen, a mom, in her car, is too much. This is the kind of shameless cruelty that breaks a nation. We need, all of us, and especially those who hold elective office, to do what Mayor Jacob Frey called for yesterday:

Let us respond right now with our best versions of self… We can show them the kind of courage, bravery, love, and compassion, that makes Minneapolis Minneapolis and that makes America America.

Please spare a moment today to mourn the loss of Renee Good, and hold in your thoughts the millions of children whose future ability to believe in their country may depend on whether our leaders are decent enough to be respectful of a woman whose life was taken for no reason.