The Instant Verdict Machine

By Abe Greenwald

Thursday, January 08, 2026

 

In theory, it’s possible to keep one’s head during a national tragedy. In reality, however, that option seems to be slipping away from us. Which is itself a national tragedy of another sort.

 

Americans are losing their minds over an ICE officer’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis yesterday. Social media users are swearing off their go-to platforms because they can’t accept different interpretations of yesterday’s event; commentators and political officials on the left and right are going maximalist at full speed.

 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that Good had committed an act of “domestic terrorism,” which is a repugnant and dangerous thing to say in the immediate aftermath of a very confusing confrontation. Not to be outdone, Donald Trump said that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey commented that ICE is “terrorizing communities” and therefore “something like this was going to happen,” as if the huge mobilization of activists obstructing ICE raids around the country has nothing to do with it.

 

Somehow, it’s the messiest incidents—in which everything is unclear—that provoke the most absolute sense of certainty among onlookers. Everyone is certain—but not in agreement. Some are certain that the officer didn’t have to shoot; others are just as certain that Good was trying to kill the officer with her automobile; others are certain that she was summoning her own death merely by resisting an ICE directive; still others (such as Frey) are certain that ICE’s presence in Minneapolis guaranteed an inevitable fatality.

 

There are some things we can be certain about at this point in the story, but none of them is listed above. For one thing, this was a tragedy. Amid a crowd of anti-ICE protesters, ICE agents approached an SUV that was blocking a residential street and asked the driver, Good, to get out of the car. In a matter of seconds, Good instead decided to hit the gas, and one of the ICE agents positioned somewhere near the front of the moving car shot her through the windshield.

 

We cannot be sure of what Good’s intentions were when she began driving. We can’t know exactly how the ICE agent perceived the situation in the instant that he opened fire (he wasn’t watching things unfold in social media clips), or how accurate was his interpretation of the threat to his life. And—perhaps most important—we don’t know how we would react in the shoes of any of the participants. But everyone nonetheless is eager to weigh in on the unknowns.

 

Haven’t we seen enough of this sort of thing in the past few years to hold off on our impulsive certainty? It’s wise to keep in mind the 2019 case of Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann. Initial clips on social media seemed to show him smirking at a Native American activist at the Lincoln Memorial. For this, he was doxed and vilified. It turned out that his class had been taunted by Black Hebrew Israelites and then by Native American demonstrators. Sandmann was essentially standing there, trapped. This is to say nothing of the misguided analyses that immediately followed multiple fatal police shootings in the post–George Floyd years.

 

If you’re outraged because you think the country is headed toward chaos, lawlessness, or tyranny, don’t contribute to the mess by reactively proclaiming every tragedy proof of the breakdown. Unlike the ICE officer in Minnesota, you have the luxury of waiting for more information before responding. Use it. Pausing can be a moral act.