We Can See the Storm

The rains have stopped.

Ice to be melted is all that remains.

Yet why do we feel drenched in the yellow slush left behind after a post–dog walk snowfall?

On her show, Judge Judy, Judge Judith Sheindlin was a human lie detector. A plaintiff wouldn’t finish a sentence before she boomed, “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining!”[1] It startled me with its raw directness, and today it has never rung more true.

This week, this month has at times played out like a dystopian tragedy, thrusting the country, specifically Minnesota, into a state of existence we never believed would take root within these borders. Yet here that state is flashing like a bright neon sign.

Again and again, the regime tries to gaslight the people into not seeing what they clearly have seen. But it just needs to stop. It needs to stop peeing on our collective legs and telling us it’s raining!

On January 7, 2026, Renée Nicole Good, poet, mother, wife, was killed by Jonathan Ross while serving as a legal observer of ICE operations in her community. The shooter or a fellow agent called her a f*%king b*@ch as the car with her lifeless body drifted into a pole[2].

On January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the VA hospital, was fatally shot by BCP agents while defending a woman whom agents had pepper-sprayed and shoved to the ground. Pretti guarded himself against agents with his phone, not the weapon he was permitted to carry. As witnesses looked on in horror at the aftermath of Pretti’s shooting, agents turned to the crowd and said, “Boo hoo.[3]”

In this world where everyone has a camera, there are numerous videos of these two fatal shootings. Video shows Good angling away from the agent’s vehicle, and Pretti holding a phone while directing traffic and helping women who agents had shoved to the ground.

Any offenses Good or Pretti committed, perceived or valid, are not death penalty offenses. The agents’ follow-up declarations are vile.

The administration has not offered the familiar language of condolence of “thoughts and prayers” and only just now, four days later, has maybe committed to an investigation.

The public has been bombarded with soundbite after broadcast after article. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem weakly called Renée Good’s death a “tragedy” while coining her a “domestic terrorist” and “agitator” who “weaponized her vehicle” against ICE agents.

Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino referred to Pretti as the “suspect,” alleging he sought “…to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

Words are powerful, and in these cases, are wrongly spun to defame people in the prime of their lives, who by all accounts were good people trying to do the right thing to help vulnerable friends, neighbors, and strangers.

It’s not raining, but is your leg damp, too?

This administration is increasingly dangerous. By asserting expanded enforcement powers that test Fourth Amendment limits, the system is shedding any remaining restraints. Recruiting requirements have been truncated, as likely has the training program, reportedly down to 47 or 48 days from five months, resulting in ill-trained recruits.

Border Patrol and ICE are permitted to use “less-lethal” force, such as pepper spray, against people deemed violent or aggressive, yet those categories leave enormous discretion in practice. In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested filming immigration [4] agents was an act of “violence or aggression.” Filming does not physically harm agents, and in the United States, there is no general expectation of privacy in public. So whose definition of violent and aggressive is correct: the person armed with pepper spray and guns, or people with whistles and smartphone cameras? And when did the risk of crossing the line lead to death instead of detainment?

Citizens are rightfully frightened about these law enforcement agencies’ short fuses and increasingly itchy trigger fingers. After the killing of Renée Good, ICE agents pulled a confused and non-violent woman from her car. Agents appear more emboldened to do harm through questioning whether residents had “learned” from the recent tragedy of Good’s death.

Intimidation tactics are ramping up with agents recording identifying information of people exercising their First Amendment rights, threatening to log the information in a database of “agitators”.

A full-blown storm is pouring down our backs, soaking our legs.

“Just comply” echoes with a history we hoped never to hear again.

The past shows that state violence rarely confines itself neatly to its stated targets. This month, federal agents killed two American citizens and wounded others during an immigration crackdown. That fact alone should trouble anyone who believes these powers will always be used only on “others.”

Germany embedded its reckoning into sidewalks and public squares.

Tucked into the cobblestones at Ludwig Maximilian University, the Weiẞe Rose, White Rose, memorial marks Hans and Sophie Scholl, students executed for distributing leaflets urging Germans to refuse official lies. Resistance, the memorial suggests, is something ordinary people step into.

Stolpersteine mark the homes and workplaces of people disappeared by the state, forcing pedestrians to stumble over and learn their names.

Germany built monuments because language failed. In the U.S., we’re still arguing over semantics.

This downpour of confusion, distraction, and lies was not weather. This was policy. This was choice. This was people. And when modern power borrows old tactics and aesthetics, the past comes rushing back, whether invited or not.

In a courtroom in Nuremberg, the world once decided that horror did not simply fall from the sky. It had authors. It had architects. It had systems responsible for those actions.

Today, we’re calling it rain.

· [1] The catchy phrase might be a misquote from the Clint Eastwood film, The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Writers: Forrest Carter, Philip Kaufman, Sonia Chernus, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075029/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_accord_1_cdt_t_35

[2] Heard on agent’s camera video.

[3] Reported on various updates of The Bulwark, Jan. 24 – 26, 2026.

[4] DHS press briefing, July 12, 2025.