The fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis has sparked outrage, and, predictably, a wave of protests dominated by the far-left’s inflammatory rhetoric.

While the incident itself remains under investigation, with federal authorities asserting that Good charged at agents with her vehicle, the response from activists has veered into dangerous territory, including calls for violence against law enforcement and even death threats against public officials.

In Lower Manhattan’s Foley Square, hundreds gathered for an “emergency protest” organized by groups like Hands Off NYC hours after the shooting. Murad Awawdeh, CEO of the New York Immigrant Coalition, denounced ICE as “a rogue, lawless agency that continues to sow panic, chaos, and fear” across the country, and called for its abolition. Such hyperbolic language is par for the course from open-borders advocates who view any enforcement of immigration laws as inherently illegitimate.

By Thursday evening, the protests quickly escalated beyond mere criticism, veering into violent threats.

Video shared by independent journalist Oliya Scootercaster captured the crowd of protesters chanting “Kristi Noem will hang!“—a direct threat against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has vigorously defended the agent’s actions. The same protesters shouted “Save a life, kill an ICE,” while thousands chanted “Abolish ICE!” amid cries of “Kill Them All, Burn Them All” as marchers took to Manhattan’s streets.

NOW: “Kristi Noem will Hang!” Huge crowd chants in Foley Square NYC, also “Save a life, kill an ICE” as they gather to protest the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis.

Some in the crowd condemn the talk of killing. pic.twitter.com/ifrXNZB0dz

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) January 8, 2026

“Abolish ICE!” thousands Chant in NYC as some people chant “Kill Them All, Burn Them All” as they march through Manhattan

Video by @yyeeaahhhboiii2
Desk@freedomnews.tv to license pic.twitter.com/goecYeYdOl

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) January 9, 2026

Noem labeled Good a “domestic terrorist” who charged at ICE agents with her vehicle, endangering lives in the process. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed this earlier today, describing the shooting as occurring “as a result of a larger, sinister, left-wing movement that has spread across our country.”

Vice President JD Vance responded to attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after Wednesday’s shooting by standing strong and pledging, “We’re going to work even harder to enforce the law.”

“To the radicals assaulting them, doxxing them, and threatening them: congratulations, we’re going to work even harder to enforce the law,” the vice president added.

I want every ICE officer to know that their president, vice president, and the entire administration stands behind them.

To the radicals assaulting them, doxxing them, and threatening them: congratulations, we’re going to work even harder to enforce the law.

— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 8, 2026

Meanwhile, details about Good herself raise further questions.

The activist was driving a Honda Pilot SUV registered with Missouri license plates, and business records show she operated a maintenance company in Kansas City, Missouri, called “B.Good Handywork LLC.”

Although the Minneapolis City Council hastily declared her “a member of our community,” this glosses over whether she was a full-time resident or part of an out-of-town left-wing resistance network conducting pressure campaigns against ICE in the sanctuary city.

One eyewitness said that Good was “the main car in the protest, as I understand it. She was very successful in blocking traffic. She was doing exactly what she set out to do.”

The witness recalled waking to “some commotion out front” and hearing “some whistles going on out front”—whistles that sounded before Good accelerated her vehicle forward after blocking the street, prompting the officer to fire.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Bayer and its Monsanto division are suing COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, alleging they used technology Monsanto developed and patented in the 1980s in their vaccines.

Bayer said in lawsuits that Pfizer, its partner BioNTech, and Moderna wrongly used technology Monsanto developed and used to make plants resistant to insects.

Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna included the technology in their shots to enhance the stability of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) “and thus the vaccines’ ability to confer immunity to the virus,” lawyers for Bayer and Monsanto said in the suits, which were filed on Jan. 6 with the U.S. court in Delaware.

Bayer was not involved in COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing or production.

Bayer said it was not seeking to interfere with the production of the COVID-19 vaccines, which are still being made and sold, but said the court should award it money, describing the defendants as having “profited handsomely from infringing vaccine sales worldwide.”

“Plaintiffs are entitled to damages as a result of Defendants’ infringement of the … Patent in an amount yet to be determined and adequate to compensate Plaintiffs for Defendants’ infringement, but in no event less than a reasonable royalty for the use made of the patented invention by Defendants, together with interest and costs as fixed by the Court,” with the exception of acts of infringement covered by one federal law, the filings state.

Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna earned billions of dollars from their vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic, according to company reports. Pfizer, for example, reported making $11.2 billion in 2023 from its shot.

“BioNTech is aware that Bayer and Monsanto have filed an action for infringement with respect to one patent against Pfizer and BioNTech,” a spokesperson for BioNTech told The Epoch Times in an email. The company declined further comment.

“Moderna is aware of the litigation and will defend ourselves against these claims,” a spokesman for Moderna told The Epoch Times via email.

Pfizer did not return an inquiry.

In a third lawsuit, lodged in federal court in New Jersey, Bayer said Johnson & Johnson also infringed on a patent with its COVID-19 vaccine, which did not utilize mRNA.

That complaint said Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which delivered DNA to a recipient’s cells to trigger protection, would not have been effective without the patented sequence and template that Bayer developed and patented.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was withdrawn from the market in 2023. Johnson & Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.

The new complaints are the latest over the COVID-19 vaccines. Other suits have involved Pfizer and Moderna, including a suit brought by Moderna against Pfizer.

A court in England ruled in 2024 that Pfizer infringed on a Moderna patent.

The White House issued two interesting, and somewhat perplexing new statements on Venezuela amid the post-Maduro ‘transition’.

First, the White House said Wednesday that the US would be “dictating” future decisions made by the Venezuelan government – which is now officially headed up by Acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s VP since 2018, and is seen as a ‘loyalist’ to his political movement and system.

“We’re continuing to be in close coordination with the interim authorities,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters in the latest press briefing.

Leavitt added that “their decisions are going to continue to be dictated by the United States of America.” As expected, officials in Caracas are pushing back.

“The government of Venezuela is in charge in our country, and no one else. There is no foreign agent governing Venezuela,” Rodriguez said, and she went to call on Washington to release Maduro, who has declared to a New York federal court that he is a political “prisoner”. 

As for the future of Venezuelan oil, Vice President JD Vance said the US has leverage over Venezuela through control of where it is permitted to sell its oil.

“We control the energy resources, and we tell the regime, you’re allowed to sell the oil so long as you serve America’s national interest, you’re not allowed to sell it if you can’t serve America’s national interest,” Vance told FOX this week.

The other interesting and highly revealing statement concerns questions of timeline. President Trump has newly said that oversight of Venezuela could last “years”.

According to the NY Times, which interviewed Trump on his plans for Venezuela:

President Trump said on Wednesday evening that he expected the United States would be running Venezuela and extracting oil from its huge reserves for years, and insisted that the interim government of the country — all former loyalists to the now-imprisoned Nicolás Maduro — is “giving us everything that we feel is necessary.”

“Only time will tell,” he said, when asked how long the administration will demand direct oversight of the South American nation, with the hovering threat of American military action from an armada just off shore.

“We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” Mr. Trump said during a nearly two-hour interview. “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need.”

The publication reviews further, “Mr. Trump’s remarks came hours after administration officials said the United States plans to effectively assume control of selling Venezuela’s oil indefinitely, part of a three-phase plan that Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined for members of Congress.”

The Times adds: “While Republican lawmakers have been largely supportive of the administration’s actions, Democrats on Wednesday reiterated their warnings that the United States was headed toward a protracted international intervention without clear legal authority.”

Indeed some degree of blowback or internal turmoil is expected, given Venezuela’s long fractured factions including anti-Chavista armed groups, also which operate out of neighboring Colombia.

Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

Talk show loser Jimmy Kimmel unleashed another unhinged rant against President Trump during a monologue Wednesday, peddling the absurd narrative that Trump is out to “kill” citizens through ICE operations. 

Fresh off a justified self-defense shooting by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Kimmel twisted the facts to fuel leftist outrage, ignoring the real threats from violent agitators obstructing law enforcement.

This comes as no surprise from a host whose Trump Derangement Syndrome has consumed his failing show, turning it into a nightly echo chamber for anti-America propaganda.

Jimmy Kimmel pushes the narrative that President Trump is ordering ICE to kill Americans:

“He isn’t just killing people overseas…”

“Get the f*ck out of Minneapolis! Get the f*ck out of all of these cities!”

Why is ABC allowing such sick depravity on their network? pic.twitter.com/wsOUkCrxoe

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 8, 2026

Desperate for relevance, Kimmel presented custom t-shirts during the pathetic segment. The prop was inserted presumably as the ‘comedy’, because otherwise it would’ve literally been just him claiming Trump wants to murder people.

He flashed one that read “Donald J Trump is going to kill you” and another aimed at ICE demanding “Get the f*** out of Minneapolis.”

He claimed, “He isn’t just killing people overseas an ICE agent today shot and killed An unarmed 37 year old woman during an ice operation In Minneapolis who were there under the guise of protecting us.”

He then attempted to ridicule Trump’s Truth Social post defending the agent, reading it aloud before dismissively suggesting “Now I saw this video It didn’t look like anybody got run over to me.”

This isn’t comedy or entertainment; it’s a sad bid for attention from a soon to be unemployed has-been. Why does anyone need Kimmel’s withering commentary? Even leftists must find this beyond cringe.

Kimmel’s obsession with Trump borders on pathological—it’s literally all he talks about every night on his low-rated ABC show that absolutely no one watches. With ratings in the toilet, it’s a safe bet ABC axes the irrelevant relic as soon as his contract expires.

Kimmel’s studio audience, behaving like trained seals, reacted with forced applause when he played footage of the embarrassing Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey denouncing ICE. Frey called the self-defense claim “bullshit” and labeled it “An agent recklessly using power that resulted In somebody dying,” before saying ICE should “get the fuck out” of the city.

Frey’s remarks have stoked more chaos, his rhetoric encouraging radicals to confront federal agents enforcing the law. Instead of condemning the agitators, Kimmel amplified Frey’s inflammatory words, instructing his crowd to applaud what amounts to incitement against law enforcement.

Radicals are increasingly interfering with ICE operations, endangering agents and the public. Earlier, pundit Scott Jennings blasted the “vigilantism” of leftists impeding ICE operations.

This morning, the fallout boiled over as leftists in Minneapolis began assaulting federal agents, turning protests into outright attacks.

🚨 NOW: Leftists are GETTING VIOLENT in Minneapolis with federal agents, they are now actively confronting agents in the name of terrorism

Schools are literally CLOSED because of this crap. IT’S ONLY 8AM! pic.twitter.com/PLNlY6sZXq

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 8, 2026

The threats escalated, as rioters screamed at agents: “We’re going to fucking find you, and we’re going to fucking kill you! You’re going to fucking die, bitch!”

🚨 BREAKING: Leftist rioters just threatened to M*RDER federal immigration agents in Minneapolis because of Democrat rhetoric

“We’re going to f*cking find you, and we’re going to f*cking kill you! You’re going to f*cking die, b*tch!”

ARREST THEM NOW! pic.twitter.com/hirUGmHRY6

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 8, 2026

Arrests were made following the violent confrontations

🚨 JUST IN: Federal agents are ARRESTING MULTIPLE leftist rioters in Minneapolis already after a violent confrontation

This can get REALLY bad. Democrat officials Jacob Frey and Tim Walz have convinced these people ICE needs to be violently attacked.

Pray for all of them 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/RSFjfJO3P4

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 8, 2026

🚨 JUST IN: Federal agents in Minneapolis are performing TAKEDOWNS and ARRESTS of violent leftists who are surrounding and ambushing them

MORE FAFO 🔥🔥

Hold nothing back.

These rioters must be taught ORDER is the only way forward 🇺🇸

pic.twitter.com/TGs9agHGqa

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 8, 2026

Journalist Nick Sortor urged Trump to federalise the National Guard from Tim Walz’s control before it spirals.

🚨 BREAKING: CLASHES are underway as leftists attempt to BLOCK DHS agents from leaving their facility in Minneapolis

President Trump should federalize the National Guard. Take them from Tim Walz.

Before this gets INCREDIBLY dangerous. pic.twitter.com/8BWfN3CQ1C

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 8, 2026

These acts aren’t protest—they’re assaults on law and order, egged on by figures like Kimmel and Frey who prioritise division over security.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Update (1858):

The New York Post reports that Renee Nicole Good was an anti-ICE “warrior” and part of a network of left-wing activists who worked to “document and resist” ICE operations in Minnesota.  

Key details from the NYPost report:

Good, who moved to the city last year, linked up with the anti-ICE activists through her 6-year-old son’s woke charter school, which boasts that it puts “social justice first” and “involving kids in political and social activism,” multiple local sources said.

“She was a warrior. She died doing what was right,” a mother named Leesa, whose child attends the same school, told The Post at a growing vigil where Good was killed Wednesday.

Good and her wife Rebecca, 40, who were raising the child together and sent the boy to Southside Family Charter School, a K-5 academy opened in 1972 which has from its inception been “unabashedly dedicated to social justice education,” according to co-founder Susie Oppenheim.

It was through her involvement in the school community that Good became involved in “ICE Watch” — a loose coalition of activists dedicated to disrupting ICE raids in the sanctuary city.

“From my understanding, she was involved in social justice … we are a tight-knit community and a lot of parents are [activists],” former Southside gym teacher Rashad Rich, who resigned from the school last month, told The Post.

. . .

County worker Kristin Peter, 30, who was also at the vigil, said Renee was on the same ICE Watch team as one of her coworkers, and that she herself was attending a meeting of the group Thursday night.

NYPost’s report throws a wrench into the just a “driver” or just a “woman” narrative that some corporate media outlets ran earlier.

*   *   * 

Update (1755ET):

Renee Nicole Good, the woman shot and killed by ICE, was driving a Honda Pilot SUV that the Missouri Department of Revenue confirmed was registered with Missouri license plates. Business records show that Good operated a maintenance company in Kansas City, Missouri, called “B.Good Handywork LLC.”

Even though the Minneapolis City Council released a statement saying Good was “a member of our community,” it does not answer whether she was a full-time resident or simply part of an out-of-town left-wing resistance network conducting pressure campaigns against ICE operations in the sanctuary city.

One eyewitness described Good as “the main car in the protest, as I understand it. She was very successful in blocking traffic. She was doing exactly what she set out to do.”

🚨BREAKING: Witness to the Minneapolis ICE shooting says 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was deliberately blocking ICE vehicles.

“She was very effective in stopping traffic. She was doing exactly what she set out to do,” the witness said. pic.twitter.com/MU5WplqbEs

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) January 7, 2026

At the beginning of the interview, the eyewitness said, “I woke up to some commotion out front. I heard some whistles going on out front.”

We must note that the whistles sounded before Good accelerated her car forward after blocking the street, prompting the officer to fire several shots into the vehicle, killing the activist.

Reuters associates “shrill sound of whistles” as an “anti-ICE resistance tool”…

Democrats were quick to label Good as a “legal observer.”

Local media confirmed. 

Left-wing activists can train to be legal observers with the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild. As the Capital Research Center notes, the NLG has been consistently identified with radical-left politics and was heavily influenced by communists in its early years. Key Weather Underground figures like Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers had strong ties to the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Dohrn served as the first law student organizer.

“The idea of community members watching law enforcement officers through organized patrols originates from the Black Power Movement,” NLG wrote on its website, adding, “The National Lawyers Guild, as the first integrated bar association in the U.S., took components from this practice and developed its Legal Observer Program in 1968 in New York City in response to protests at Columbia University and city-wide antiwar and racial justice demonstrations.”

Not even a week ago, we noted, “Today, the Guild provides legal support and protest training for Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other left-wing street movements, teaching activists how to push confrontation to the legal edge without crossing into prosecutable domestic terrorism.”

It appears the White House has some understanding of why Good was blocking the street or impeding ICE agents, as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier that the Minneapolis ICE shooting “occurred as a result of a larger, sinister, left-wing movement that has spread across our country.”

NOW – White House says fatal Minneapolis ICE shooting “occurred as a result of a larger, sinister, left-wing movement that has spread across our country.” pic.twitter.com/26L1EXAG29

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 8, 2026

MSM being MSM.

Meanwhile… 

Minneapolis (Jan. 8) — Antifa-linked anarchist & far-left extremists have set up blockades on streets using stolen property to slow down DHS vehicles & block drivers. They are standing guard. The tactic was used by Antifa during the 2020 riots to occupy. pic.twitter.com/o9CDW5vTr4

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) January 8, 2026

POLITICAL VIOLENCE: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey refuses to reveal the identities of the NGOs he’s working with to organize protests in his city. The DOJ is investigating the groups with funding and directives from Soros and CCP-linked NGOs. pic.twitter.com/C9cWgIZ5VN

— @amuse (@amuse) January 8, 2026

MSM’s narrative… 

Democrats have been seeking a proper narrative to justify new rounds of protests and riots, similar to the Los Angeles unrest last summer, to reshape public perception of ICE.

*   *   * 

It didn’t take long. Within hours of an ICE-involved shooting in the Minneapolis area, the Democratic Party’s protest industrial complex moved into action, quickly creating conditions for coordinated demonstrations across multiple cities. The rapid response suggested these nonprofit activist networks were on standby, waiting for a catalytic event, as an army of radicals intensified pressure campaigns against federal agents, blocking streets, harassing officers, and openly doxxing them.

I want every ICE officer to know that their president, vice president, and the entire administration stands behind them.

To the radicals assaulting them, doxxing them, and threatening them: congratulations, we’re going to work even harder to enforce the law.

— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 8, 2026

Shortly after the ICE-involved shooting that left one woman dead, multiple videos of the incident went viral on X. In at least one video, she appears to be blocking the street with her vehicle in an attempt to impede ICE agents and is later shot and killed after advancing toward one of the agents. Numerous angles of the incident are circulating on X, offering competing narratives.

video shows ICE shooting in Minneapolis. pic.twitter.com/7E2GPAFfly

— Suhr Majesty (@ULTRA_MAJESTY) January 7, 2026

The Democratic Party’s propaganda machine, desperately searching for the next narrative after the optically displeasing Somali-linked daycare fraud scandal, was quick to deploy a new storyline.

As we noted hours before protest activity erupted in the Minneapolis area (read here), the left-wing nonprofit Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee functioned as a rapid-response mobilization hub, coordinating a coalition of left-wing activist groups to flood the streets by late evening.

Footage of the demonstrations:

Anti ICE protesters are attacking innocents in vehicles.

This is exactly what @GovTimWalz and @Jacob_Frey asked for………buckle up.pic.twitter.com/Y2fPQ9VpCH

— Spitfire (@RealSpitfire) January 8, 2026

HOLY SH*T 🚨 Anti ICE Protestors are now waving FOREIGN FLAGS while chanting “F*CK ICE”

If you don’t want to be in this country

GET THE F*CK OUT pic.twitter.com/DZqJFypNe7

— MAGA Voice (@MAGAVoice) January 8, 2026

Anti ICE protest happening now in Foley Square after Minneapolis shooting. pic.twitter.com/oOZK4mV5nw

— Marla Diamond (@MDiamond8) January 7, 2026

The rapid response extended beyond Minnesota. In New York, Party for Socialism and Liberation New York City, reportedly funded by China-based far-left billionaire Neville Roy Singham, mobilized activists within hours.

EXPOSED 🚨 The protest tonight in New York City against ICE is being paid for and organized by ‘PSL New York City – Party for Socialism and Liberation’

They are funded by Neville Roy Singham who lives in China and works with the CCP

He donated over $20 million to entities like… pic.twitter.com/Fy508FFbqn

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 8, 2026

About 1500-1000 anti ice protesters now marching around federal plaza. pic.twitter.com/GYMLcaW9Rk

— Ali (@MerruX) January 8, 2026

🚨BREAKING: NYC PROTESTORS CALL TO “TOPPLE THE TRUMP REGIME.”

Notice the yellow signs we’ve seen at every protest? pic.twitter.com/61HJltNiW3

— Nick Jacobs (@nickjacobs03) January 8, 2026

Communist Jackson Hinkle appeared enthusiastic about what appeared to be multi-city coordinated protests.

BREAKING: Tonight, cities across the country erupted in protest against ICEpic.twitter.com/CngPJd6AfE

— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) January 8, 2026

In Seattle:

🚨 Breaking — Antifa and leftist protesters are on the march in Seattle, chanting “Death to ICE!” pic.twitter.com/dQSBf5z4QN

— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) January 8, 2026

Looking ahead, the socialists are planning pro-Maduro protests in the US, funded by PSL. 

The Trump Administration has kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and started a blatantly criminal war against Venezuela.

Take action with DSA! ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/3DHbts9UOO

— DSA (@DemSocialists) January 7, 2026

Democrats appear prime for a George Floyd 2.0 moment.

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Donald Trump is asking the state of Georgia to reimburse $6.26 million in attorney fees and costs he incurred defending against his now-dismissed election interference case in the state.

In a motion filed Jan. 7 in Fulton County Superior Court, Trump’s legal team cited a 2025 Georgia law under which if a prosecutor is disqualified from a case because of improper conduct and the case is subsequently dismissed, defendants in that case are entitled to request “all reasonable attorney’s fees and costs incurred” in their defense.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had indicted Trump over an alleged unlawful conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, one of four criminal cases he faced while running for another term as president.

The Georgia Court of Appeals later disqualified Willis due to an “appearance of impropriety” stemming from her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to lead the case. The ruling was subsequently upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court.

The case formally ended in late November 2025, when the special prosecutor who took over chose not to move forward with any charges.

Trump’s motion seeks a total reimbursement of $6,261,613.08. The filing includes more than 200 pages of documentation to show how the money was spent, most of it on legal fees.

According to the filing, over $2.31 million went to the law firm of Jennifer Little, Trump’s longest-serving attorney on the case. Drew Findling, who represented Trump in the case for about a year, was paid $1.46 million to his firm. Steve Sadow, who replaced Findling as lead counsel in the Georgia case, received $1.52 million to his firm.

“In accordance with Georgia law, President Trump has moved the Court to award reasonable attorney fees and costs incurred in his defense of the politically motivated, and now rightfully dismissed, case brought by disqualified DA Fani Willis,” Sadow said in a statement.

The request will be decided by Superior Judge Scott McAfee. If he awards the fees and costs, the money would be paid from the budget of the Fulton County district attorney’s office.

Under the new state law, the judge is required to grant such a motion if he finds that the amount requested is “reasonable.”

Trump’s co-defendants could also seek reimbursement for their own legal bills. A total of 18 people were indicted alongside Trump in August 2023, including former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Most defendants, including Trump, pleaded not guilty. Four accepted plea deals, which remain in force.

The Fulton County district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The Georgia case was the last remaining criminal prosecution against Trump. A pair of federal cases, one focused on his actions in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol and another on his handling of classified documents, was dropped after he returned to the White House earlier in 2025.

The fourth case, in which Trump was accused of approving a scheme to falsify business records to conceal a hush-money payment to an adult film actress, concluded in January 2025, when a New York judge sentenced him to an “unconditional discharge.” The ruling spared him any penalty, including jail time or a fine, but did not vacate his criminal conviction.

Trump has maintained his innocence in the New York case, and his legal team is appealing to overturn the conviction.

On Wednesday morning, during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good accelerated towards an ICE agent with her car, and he responded with lethal force. Good was shot and killed.

Democrats and media figures rushed to condemn the shooting as an unjustified murder. 

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey claimed to have watched the video and dismissed the federal government’s claims of self-defense as “bullshit.”

SHAMELESS!

Jacob Frey absolves the victim who tried to run over ICE agents of any responsibility and blames ICE for “killing people.” pic.twitter.com/p6alPKJkJf

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 7, 2026

Gov. Tim Walz claimed to have watched the video and disputed the Department of Homeland Security’s assessment that the ICE officer acted in self-defense.

I’ve seen the video.

Don’t believe this propaganda machine.

The state will ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice. https://t.co/3faWW4bQvV

— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) January 7, 2026

Others were even less subtle.

”The officer not only needs to be fired and suspended, but based on the video, he needs to be charged with murder,” Rep.Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) claimed.

Dan Goldman dumps gas on the fire: “It was an outright m*rder.”

“This officer…needs to be charged with m*rder.”

Democrats doing their level best to ensure Minneapolis is in flames tonight.pic.twitter.com/io75RP6MrL

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) January 7, 2026

All claimed to have watched the video of the incident, and many people in the legacy media and on social media rushed to condemn the ICE agent. However, NBC News chose to take an objective look at the video evidence and the facts and vindicated the ICE agent. 

NBC correspondents Tom Winter and Tom Llamas reviewed the footage on air, highlighting critical details that undercut the narrative being pushed by members of the Democratic Party. 

Based on the footage, Winter concluded that Renee Nicole Good had to have been aware that it was law enforcement officers who were confronting her. “We don’t know what happened before this, but they’re definitely gonna look at the fact this is an unmarked vehicle, but the lights are on, these are clearly members of law enforcement, so that’s at least known to this driver,” he explained.

“Those officers approach the vehicle, they try to open the door,” Llamas added. 

“Whatever is said here, what these officers say, if the driver said anything or not, could really help them understand whether or not they thought there was some sort of an imminent threat. Was this person trying to listen to them? Were they scared?” Winter said.

Llamas then described the sequence that led to the shooting. “And then, of course, what the driver does next … trying to leave there. One of the officers felt like they were forced to fire, and they do,” he said. 

The footage they reviewed showed the vehicle accelerating with an officer positioned directly in front of it. But the more telling footage came from a different angle, making the danger posed to the ICE agents even clearer.

 “Well, this appears to show an officer right in front of the vehicle. That, and between the way that the vehicle was moving and the timeline of that, how was the officer responding in that split second gonna be critical for investigators,” Winter explained.

NBC Nightly News was the only legacy evening newscast to report that the woman shot by the ICE officer in Minneapolis was in fact obstructing ICE by blocking traffic pic.twitter.com/qQCjO5cShE

— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) January 8, 2026

NBC’s video analysis laid out the key facts in a surprisingly objective way. They saw was anyone could see just by watching: Agents confronted a vehicle blocking them. The driver knew law enforcement was present based on the emergency lights. An officer stood directly in front of the car before it accelerated. The agent made a split-second decision to fire as the vehicle moved forward. 

While there will obviously be an investigation, what we can say for sure at this point is that in all the videos circulating on social media showing the shooting from different angles, they all show the driver accelerating into the ICE agent before he fired his weapon.

In a separate segment, Winter also revealed what law enforcement sources told him about the optics versus the legality. 

“I think from a law enforcement perspective, what you’ve heard law enforcement say is that they don’t – they don’t like the way that this shooting looks,” he explained. “And in speaking with people from law enforcement, from that part of the country, they use a phrase that is sometimes heard in law enforcement circles: lawful but awful. They don’t like the look of it, but from a legal perspective, it might be okay,“

NBC’s Tom Winters with an accurate reaction from the 4pm hour to the deadly ICE-involved shooting:

“I think from a law enforcement perspective, what you’ve heard law enforcement say is that they don’t — they don’t like the way that this shooting looks. And in speaking with… pic.twitter.com/kVvY5oR9Vo

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 8, 2026

Additionally, Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow at conservative nonprofit Advancing American Freedom, told the Daily Mail that under the law, the use of deadly force is justified when an officer can reasonably perceive a threat of serious bodily harm or death.

There has been much speculation online over the direction of the wheels as Good appears to be turning down the road away from the officers.

Others have questioned why Ross was standing in front of the car.

Swearer explained that both points are irrelevant to the law.

“He explicitly does not have a duty to retreat in the way that a civilian would under these circumstances,” she told the Mail.

“It doesn’t matter whether that driver subjectively was not trying to hit the officer,’ Swearer added.

“It matters what the officer can reasonably perceive. He can’t read her mind. He just knows that you have someone who’s ignoring lawful commands, who is moving the car toward him. That is deadly force.”

She compared it to a cop being confronted by a suspect who is reaching for a gun in his waistband while being asked to keep his hands up.

“They don’t have to wait until they’re actually being shot or actually being run over to respond,” she said.

While Democrats are hungry to politicize the shooting, the level-headed analysis from NBC News and Amy Shearer clearly opens the door wide for a self-defense argument by the ICE agent.

The FBI now handles the investigation. The footage will determine whether the shooting was justified under the law. But the detailed NBC breakdown already reveals what Democrats and local officials either missed or, perhaps more likely, chose to ignore in their rush to judgment.

First, Trump short-circuited the Fed’s rate-cut process. Now he is going after QE by launching his own version of it. 

In a post on late Thursday post on Truth Social, President Trump said he was directing the purchase of $200 billion in mortgage bonds, which he framed as his latest effort to bring down housing costs ahead of the November midterm election.

“This will drive Mortgage Rates DOWN, monthly payments DOWN, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable,” Trump wrote in his post.

He added that his decision not to sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during his first term allowed them to amass “$200 BILLION DOLLARS IN CASH” and that he was making his announcement “because of that.”

Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, said soon after that the president aims for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae to execute the purchases. Pulte said Thursday the bond purchases “can be executed very quickly. We have the capability, we have the cash to do it, and we are going to go about executing it very smartly and in a very big way.”

“It is one of my many steps in restoring Affordability, something that the Biden Administration absolutely destroyed,” the president said. Mortgage backed securities rallied relative to Treasuries on the news.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have added billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities and home loans to their balance sheets in recent months, fueling speculation that they’re trying to push down lending rates and boost their profitability ahead of a potential public offering; now those speculations have been validated. 

The government-backed housing-finance giants increased their retained portfolios, the portion of bonds and loans they hold onto rather than sell to investors, by more than 25% in the five months through October, according to recent figures.

The announcement comes one day after Trump said on Wednesday that he would seek to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes. The president’s advisers have repeatedly raised alarms that affordability has become a political albatross for the GOP and could cost the party control of Congress in the elections this fall.

In keeping with Trump’s housing obsession, overnight Politico reported that the White House is drafting an executive order broadly targeted at addressing Americans’ frustration with the cost of living, including a push to allow people to dip into their retirement and college savings accounts to afford down payments on homes.

Of course, by simply adding even more fuel to the demand side – which is what this kind of conversion from savings into home equity will do – it will achieve the opposite of what Trump is pursuing, which means even more mortgage bond purchases, which means even more rate cuts, which means even more direct intervention in the market by various third parties, which means even more endogenous liquidity generated, and so on. Of course, it also means we have barely scratched the surface of where gold and bitcoin will eventually trade. 

By all accounts, protests and unrest have been spreading rapidly in Iran, now over a week-and-a-half into economic and anti-government protests which have begun to grind the country to a halt. On Thursday the demonstrations have disrupted life in the capital in a big way, and there are reports of nationwide internet and cellular outages.

Anti-government slogans and calls to “rise up” have been observed in Tehran and elsewhere, and in some places supporters of exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi have actually heeded his repeat public calls to take to the streets (though this ‘pro-Shah’ contingent likely only remains an extreme minority at this stage).

NetBlocks has alleged that Iranian authorities have intentionally blocked internet access to the citizenry, possibly as a precursor to a bigger crackdown after dozens have been reported dead (some 45, based on unverified numbers, but which includes some security personnel) – but this remains speculation. 

The internet outages were first reported in western city of Kermanshah earlier in the day Thursday, but into the night hours (local), the NY Times is freshly describing, “As the government cracked down in various cities, internet connectivity data showed an abrupt and near-total drop in connection levels in Iran on Thursday afternoon, according to NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group, and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Internet Outage Detection and Analysis database.”

The country is nearly completely offline and in the dark as far as online communication and access. This is likely to only compound the nation’s problems, and stir up more sustained protests, after late last month a sudden currency slide amid already difficult economic conditions resulted in key central Tehran shops shuttering in protest and panic. US-led sanctions have loomed large over all of this.

Iranian Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday called for restraint among police and security forces in dealing with the raging crowds. “Any violent or coercive behavior should be avoided,” said Pezeshkian in an online statement. He called for “utmost restraint” as well as “dialogue, engagement and listening to the people’s demands.”

NOW: Massive protest in Tehran, Iran. pic.twitter.com/qudbHcIkVA

— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 8, 2026

People are watching President Trump’s reactions very closely, especially coming off his giving the order for military forces to go into Venezuela to oust Maduro. He has reiterated that the United States will strike “very hard” if Iran starts killing protesters.

However, he has also lately seemed to suggest that violence or deaths during “crowd control” can be ambiguous and hard to assess. This perhaps gives him an ‘out’ at a moment the US hawks are circling, and members of his own cabinet might be pressuring toward action.

But a fresh statement from Vice President J.D. Vance has just injected something new and raised the stakes in a significant way. He’s calling for the Iranians to enter fresh negotiations with Washington, or as he put it in fresh remarks to “actually have a real negotiation” over its nuclear program (which was set-back in a big way by the last June US bombing raid on three key nuclear development sites).

🇺🇸🇮🇷U.S. Vice President Vance on the current protests in Iran:

“Obviously, the Iranian regime has a lot of problems. And as the president The States has said, the smartest thing for them to have done, it was true two months ago, it’s true today, is for them to actually have a… pic.twitter.com/CZ0ILPq6eb

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) January 8, 2026

Tehran has every reason to not trust Washington at this point, for all the obvious reasons and fact that it was just bombed last summer at the very moment after it entered new dialogue with the US.

Iran’s leadership is increasingly pointing to the violence being unleashed on security forces and police by at least some of the protesters and rioters. Also, the scenario of Mossad or CIA operatives who might be exacerbating the situation remains a real and plausible threat. At the same time, there has appeared evidence purporting to show violent surprise attacks on police or security officials…

1/4 An Afghan national killed Lt. Col. Mahmoud Haqiqat, the police chief of Iranshahr, in a brazen, targeted attack in Iran’s southeastern Sistan–Baluchestan province. pic.twitter.com/dSMkllY9Ot

— South Asia Times (@_southasiatimes) January 8, 2026

Various external monitors have said the protests have now spread to over 100 cities and towns spanning all 31 of Iran’s provinces. At least 2,200 demonstrators have been detained, according to reports.

BBC Persian meanwhile says that it has independently verified the names and deaths of 21 individuals, while Iranian officials have announced that five security personnel have been killed. This suggests that at least in some locales, anti-government groups could become armed. There are some external powers – like Israel – that would probably applaud such internal fracturing, which would only serve to further weaken the Islamic Republic.