The Body That Moved the Needle
Minneapolis, the budget for brutality, and the body that finally mattered
The views expressed in this article are my own and do not represent those of any organization I work with.
I grew up in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. Every morning before school, I stood in a classroom and pledged allegiance to the flag with my hand over my heart. I meant it. I still mean it. My patriotism isn’t performative. It’s not a bumper sticker or a campaign prop. It’s something I carry in my chest, something I learned before I had language for what a country was supposed to be.
I say this because I need you to understand where I’m coming from when I tell you that I am heartbroken. And I am furious.
On January 7, 2026, Renée Good, a 37-year-old American woman, was shot three times by an ICE agent in Minneapolis while sitting in her car. Video evidence contradicts the federal government’s claim that she ran him over. The Department of Justice declined to investigate whether her civil rights were violated. Multiple federal prosecutors resigned in protest.
On January 24, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA nurse who spent his career caring for veterans, was pepper-sprayed, wrestled to the ground by six federal agents, and shot dead on an icy Minneapolis street. He had been filming them with his phone. He had been directing traffic. Video shows an agent removing a gun and stepping away from Pretti roughly one second before another agent killed him.
Two American citizens. Dead. In broad daylight. On camera.
The Department of Homeland Security called them domestic terrorists. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino referred to both of them as “suspects.”
Let’s not mince words about what that language means.
I need to say something here that I’ve been sitting with, and it’s ugly, and it’s true.
I am fully aware of the reality that it took the killing of a white male gun owner to move the needle on this issue in the halls of power.
A dead lesbian didn’t do it. Renée Good was shot three times, on video, and Congress kept moving. The administration kept lying. The machine kept grinding.
Countless dead Black and brown people didn’t do it. ICE has shot 12 people since September. Four others have been killed during federal deportation operations. The bodies have been piling up for months, and the political calculus didn’t shift.
But a white man with a gun, a VA nurse who served veterans, who was armed and exercising his Second Amendment rights? Now suddenly Republicans are calling for investigations. Now the NRA takes issue with the administration’s justifications. Now we’re having a national conversation.
This is not lost on me. I knew this is what it would take. And that is absolutely fucked.
It lays bare who America has always been. Progress be damned.
Years ago, after Charlottesville, I wrote a piece called “Dear America, Own Your Shit.” I was processing my rage at watching Neo-Nazis march through a college town with tiki torches, at watching a white domestic terrorist plow his car through peaceful protesters and not be called what he was, at watching this country show its whole ass and pretend it was surprised by what it saw in the mirror.
I wrote: “Own slavery. Own segregation. Own Jim Crow. Own lynchings. Own gerrymandering. Own the wage gap. Own unjust targeted prosecution and incarceration. Own police brutality. Own the shame. Own the guilt. Because we all let it get this far.”
I’m republishing that piece alongside this one, because the throughline is unbroken. The same country that couldn’t call a white man driving a car into a crowd a terrorist is the same country that calls American citizens “suspects” and “domestic terrorists” for filming federal agents and directing traffic. The same country that has always valued some lives over others. The same country that only pays attention when the right kind of victim dies.
We haven’t learned a goddamn thing. We’ve just gotten more divided and callous, giving over to the fear that feeds authoritarianism.
Here is what I keep turning over in my head:
ICE now has $85 billion at its disposal. That’s $75 billion from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed last July, plus its base budget of around $10 billion. That makes it the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country, larger than the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Marshals combined.
And what are we getting for that money?
We’re getting agents who refuse to show their faces. Who won’t wear name badges. Who operate in American neighborhoods with less accountability than a mall security guard. We’re getting an agency that the administration has deployed to Minneapolis, not the border, not to the states with the highest undocumented populations, but to a city that opposed its policies. The pattern is unmistakable. This is not about public safety. This is retribution dressed up as law enforcement.
Meanwhile, Congress is fighting over whether to keep the government open. The House bundled DHS funding together with healthcare, defense, transportation, and everything else, then sent it to the Senate like a hostage negotiation. Vote for all of it, or none of it.
And here’s the obscene part: if funding lapses, ICE keeps operating. They have years of funding banked. But FEMA workers go unpaid. TSA agents work without paychecks. The Coast Guard takes the hit. And the healthcare programs that millions of Americans depend on hang in the balance, again, because we cannot stop funding a deportation machine long enough to fund a functional society.
I write about healthcare access for a living. I spend my days tracking what happens when systems fail people, when eligibility gets slashed, when formularies get gutted, when bureaucracy becomes a weapon against the vulnerable. Next week, I’ll be covering the appropriations funding in that capacity for my day job.
But this piece is personal. This is me, sitting with my thoughts, watching my country and trying to make sense of it.
When I watch what’s happening in Minneapolis, I don’t see it as separate from the work I do. I see it as the same disease with a different symptom.
We have $85 billion for ICE and a healthcare system held together with duct tape and expiring subsidies. We have $45 billion earmarked for immigration detention facilities and states like Florida slashing HIV drug access for 16,000 people because they claim they can’t afford it. We have money to triple the budget of a federal agency that kills American citizens on camera, and we have a Congress that spent 43 days shut down last fall because it couldn’t agree on whether people should be able to afford health insurance.
This is not a funding problem. This is a values problem. And the values on display right now are telling us exactly what kind of country we are. What kind of country we have always been.
The First Amendment guarantees the right to observe and film law enforcement. Alex Pretti was exercising that right when he was killed.
The Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. Federal officials cited Pretti being armed as justification, even as video shows an agent removing a weapon and stepping away before the fatal shot. If carrying a gun is grounds for execution by federal agents, then every gun owner in America should be paying attention. But let’s be honest: they’re only paying attention now because the gun owner was white.
The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable seizure. American citizens are being detained, brutalized, and killed in their own neighborhoods.
These are not partisan talking points. These are the foundational rights that generations of Americans have fought and died to protect. And they are being violated, on video, by federal agents with an $85 billion budget and zero accountability.
If DHS agents were acting within the law, they should not be afraid to show their faces. They should not be afraid to wear their names on their chests. They should not be afraid to be filmed in the course of doing their jobs. Thousands of peace officers across this country do exactly that, every single day, because that is what legitimate law enforcement looks like in a democracy.
America does not need a secret police force. The very concept is antithetical to the intent of the Founders and to the spirit and letter of the Constitution.
I know where my patriotism is focused. I know where my loyalty is pledged. And it is not to any man who would consider himself a king.
I love this country. I love it enough to be devastated by what I am watching. I love it enough to be furious at the corruption, the cowardice, and the complicity. I love it enough to say, out loud, what we all know but don’t want to admit: this country has always been this. The violence isn’t new. The dehumanization isn’t new. The selective outrage isn’t new.
What’s new is the scale. What’s new is the budget. What’s new is the brazenness.
And what’s old, what’s exhaustingly, heartbreakingly old, is who has to die before anyone with power gives a damn.
I don’t know how this ends. I don’t know if Congress will find its spine. I don’t know if the appropriations fight will result in accountability or just another round of capitulation dressed up as compromise.
But I know this: the soul of this country is not an abstraction. It is not a talking point. It is measured in how we treat the vulnerable, in what we fund and what we starve, in whether we hold power accountable or look away because it’s easier.
Right now, we are telling on ourselves. We are showing the world, and ourselves, exactly who we are.
I wrote letters to my senators today. I told them what I think. I told them what I need them to do. I’m sharing this with you because I believe you should do the same. Call them. Write them. Show up. Make noise. Do not let this moment pass in silence.
The people who fought and died for this country did not do so for us to hand it over to fear. They did not sacrifice so that we could watch American citizens gunned down in the street and shrug because the politics were inconvenient.
I refuse to accept that. I hope you do too.
If you want to contact your senators, you can find their information at senate.gov.
Tell them you’re watching. Tell them you expect more. Tell them the Constitution demands courage, not compliance.
In love and frustration,
Travis
I read the entire article in its full length. Credible message. Thanks.