I have a jobs report to write up this morning (4.6 percent and 42k are my guesses) and have some time on the road this weekend, so may not be here for a few days. I did want to take a moment to comment on the killing of Renee Good.

I remember long ago reading the great English historian E.P. Thompson making the point that when you have an incident where the police or military kill protestors, what is more important than the initial incident is the official reaction. Nervous and poorly trained people with guns make mistakes or can get carried away with anger. That is horrible when it results in innocent people being killed or wounded, but it happens.

What matters for policy purposes is how the government responds. Does it promise a serious investigation, does it try to make amends as best as possible to the victims or the families? 

In the Good killing the reaction is 180 degrees in the other direction. Donald Trump and Kristi Noem immediately pushed absurd lies about the event, which we can all recognize. We have the videos. 

Trump told us the ICE officer was run over and subsequently hospitalized and is lucky to be alive. It’s clear as day that he was not run over or injured at all. He is shown hustling to his car to get away from the scene of the crime.

Noem pushed a crazy story about how the ICE officers had their car stuck in snow and then were surrounded by protestors. Again, this picture clearly had nothing to do with reality. No one was stuck in snow and no one was surrounded, except perhaps Renee Good before her killing.

JD Vance decided to throw in that Good was a domestic terrorist. Although it may not seem that way most of the time, Vance has been to law school. He knows that he can lie about a dead person with impunity since their family can’t bring a defamation suit. (The reluctance to use defamation suits against these clowns is something I cannot understand.) 

Anyhow, when the government laughs and lies about shooting its political opponents, it’s a scary sight. This is not a time to back down. There are protests all over the country, those in a position to do so should find one. And don’t let them distract you from the Epstein files that they are illegally concealing.